Court in Venezuela Orders Release of a Judge Once Scorned and Jailed by Chávez

Abstract: During the three and a half years that she was held in prison or under house arrest, Judge Lourdes Afiuni became a symbol of political persecution for many in Venezuela under President Hugo Chávez. On Friday, a court in Caracas, acting at the government’s request, ordered Ms. Afiuni to be set free in the latest sign of a shifting political landscape in post-Chávez Venezuela. Ms. Afiuni was jailed in December 2009 after issuing a court ruling that infuriated Mr. Chávez, who went on television and demanded that she be sentenced to 30 years in prison. For years Mr. Chávez ignored international appeals for her release, including from the American leftist intellectual Noam Chomsky. Mr. Chávez, a charismatic socialist, died in March, leaving a bitterly divided country. His handpicked successor, Nicolás Maduro, was elected by a slim margin in April and since then has confronted political turmoil and serious economic difficulties that have tested his nascent leadership skills. As Mr. Maduro lurches from one crisis to the next, the quality he seems to have honed most is delivering mixed messages at top volume. He branded President Obama “the big boss of the devils” and then sent his foreign minister to shake hands with Secretary of State John Kerry and call for warmer relations. He assailed capitalists for causing soaring inflation and rampant product shortages and then sat down with the head of the country’s biggest private company to discuss the economy. And while he has relentlessly vilified the political opposition and the man he edged out in the election, Henrique Capriles Radonski, as traitors and coup plotters, his government has made some moves that could be seen as concessions to longstanding grievances of the opposition, which has been demanding Ms. Afiuni’s release. “There are lots of mixed signals,” said Elsa Cardozo, a professor of political science at the Central University of Venezuela. “It is clear the government of President Maduro is in a situation that is forcing it to make some changes in direction. What we don’t know is if they are permanent changes or tactical changes.” But while government opponents have long called for Ms. Afiuni’s release, the action may actually be intended to counter an opposition campaign to take its message abroad, with leaders visiting countries around the world to make the case that Mr. Maduro was unfairly declared the winner of a flawed election and that his government is repressive. The opposition routinely points to Ms. Afiuni as the most prominent among a group of what it calls political prisoners, who it says were jailed arbitrarily or were convicted in politically motivated trials. “I view it as a sign from the government to the outside world, the international community, that it is trying to show that it is respectful of human rights,” José Vicente Haro, a constitutional law expert, said of Ms. Afiuni’s release. Ms. Afiuni was arrested after she ordered a jailed businessman accused of evading currency controls freed while awaiting trial. She has said that the man had been held in custody for longer than Venezuelan law generally permitted under the circumstances and that her ruling complied with a recommendation by United Nations human rights monitors. Her lawyer, José Amalio Graterol, confirmed reports last year that she was raped while in prison, became pregnant and had an abortion, which led to other health problems. She was moved to house arrest in Caracas in 2011. Ms. Afiuni’s trial began last November and is continuing, although she has refused to attend it. Last week the national prosecutor’s office made a surprise announcement that it had asked a court to release Ms. Afiuni from house arrest, citing her need for medical treatment. The prosecutor asked the court to require her to report to the authorities every 15 days and to bar her from leaving the country and speaking to the news media. “A judge never should have been imprisoned for three years and six months for issuing a decision in accordance with the law,” Ms. Afiuni’s lawyer, Mr. Graterol, said Friday, adding that her case had intimidated other judges who feared defying the government.

Lourdes Afiuni
Caracas
Nicolas Maduro
Hugo Chavez
Political prisoner
Venezuela


Republican Candidates Set Fast Pace for Spending

Abstract: WASHINGTON, April 13 — Mitt Romney , whose presidential campaign leads the Republican primary field in fund-raising, spent nearly 60 percent of the $20.7 million he raised in the first quarter, setting a breakneck pace for the start of the 2008 race. Rudolph W. Giuliani , the runner-up in fund-raising among the Republicans , spent more than 40 percent of the $13.8 million his campaign brought in, leaving both candidates with roughly the same amount in the bank as of the beginning of April. Their expenses, disclosed Friday in first-quarter financial reports filed with the Federal Election Commission , underscore the heavy costs that each candidate has incurred to bring in their contributions and, in Mr. Romney’s case, raise his profile among voters. Mr. Romney, for his part, spent more than any candidate had even raised during this stage of the 2004 presidential race. He spent $11.6 million during the quarter. The reports also indicate the relatively narrow base of big donors behind each of the Republican primary’s two fund-raising leaders. Mr. Romney raised about $9.2 million, nearly half his first-quarter total, from about 4,000 contributors who gave the maximum $2,300 allowed under campaign finance laws. Mr. Giuliani’s primary campaign raised about $7.6 million, more than half its total, from about 3,300 donors who paid the maximum. About 430 gave an additional $2,300 to Mr. Giuliani’s general election fund, as well. With 32,000 donors, Mr. Romney’s average contribution was about $650. With about 28,000 donors, Mr. Giuliani’s average contribution was over $500. In contrast, the campaign of Senator John McCain, Republican of Arizona, had 50,000 donors. The campaign of Senator Barack Obama, Democrat of Illinois, had more than 100,000. Both had average contributions of about $250 a donor, based on their disclosures so far. The first-quarter reports are the first look at the scramble for money behind the 2008 presidential race. For the first time since the advent of public financing of presidential campaigns in the aftermath of Watergate, all the leading candidates are planning to reject public matching funds to spend without limits for the primary and the general election. Unlike the case before public financing, election laws now cap individual contributions — this year at $2,300 each for the primary and the general election — placing special importance on so-called bundlers who collect $2,300 checks from rich friends and associates. Candidates are required to file their reports by Sunday. Mr. Romney and Mr. Giuliani’s campaigns chose to file two days ahead of that deadline. Mr. Giuliani’s campaign filed in the morning, presumably to maximize attention to the amount of cash he has on hand. Dependence on a relatively small number of donors who have already contributed the maximum to the campaign could be a potential liability in part because it could make it hard for candidates to sustain their fund-raising pace. Candidates with a larger number of smaller contributors can go back to them again for more cash, and they can also cite their donor rolls as evidence of popular support. The Romney and Giuliani campaign reports provide snapshots of their respective candidacies. Mr. Romney began the campaign little known outside of Massachusetts, where he was governor; Michigan, where his father was governor; and Utah, where he was chief executive of the 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City. And as he stepped forward to introduce himself to Republican primary voters, he came under fire from the right for past liberal stances on social issues like abortion (he says his views evolved). Mr. Romney had substantial financial resources. He is the multimillionaire founder of a major private equity firm, and his personal wealth gives his campaign a reserve if needed. (To jump-start his fund-raising, he lent the campaign $2.35 million.) His family is among the best-known in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, enabling him to tap networks of rich Mormons, as well as Wall Street financiers. He raised about $2.8 million in Utah, $2.3 million in Massachusetts and $1 million in Michigan — about 30 percent of his total. He raised more than $140,000 from executives of his former companies, Bain consulting and Bain Capital. Mr. Romney used his war chest to spend nearly $2 million on television advertising in selected states, much more than any of his primary rivals, to introduce himself to voters on his own terms before others could characterize him. He also spent heavily on fund-raising consultants in 16 states, for example paying more than $200,000 to buy a list of potential donors from a Virginia direct mail firm. Mr. Giuliani’s greatest asset, in contrast, is the fame he acquired as the mayor of New York after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. In a conference call to discuss the fund-raising report, Mr. Giuliani’s aides noted that they had raised most of their campaign contributions, about $10 million, in the last month of the quarter. They acknowledged a late start in spending and fund-raising, but said the big March demonstrated their momentum. Mr. Giuliani’s first-quarter report did little to address the question of whether he can extend his reputation for strength under fire into deeper support from Republican primary voters in other parts of the country, where his liberal views on social issues are not yet well known. Mr. Giuliani raised more than 30 percent of his first-quarter contributions from three states, New York, New Jersey and Connecticut, with about $4.5 million coming from the New York area and $1.3 million from Los Angeles. Employees of Mr. Giuliani’s law and consulting firms gave about $77,000. The rest of the presidential candidates are expected to file their reports over the weekend. In anticipation of new scrutiny, Mr. Obama, who raised $25 million during the first quarter, disclosed Friday that his campaign had returned 49 political contributions totaling $50,566 from registered lobbyists. Mr. Obama’s campaign has promised to refuse contributions from registered lobbyists. Accepting such donations is legal, and the Obama campaign has sought contributions from the clients of lobbyists or other interest parties. But the campaign has declared the ban on lobbyists’ money to burnish Mr. Obama’s image as a candidate intent on changing the business of Washington. The campaign said the checks were accepted inadvertently. “Giving back these donations is part of our best efforts to ensure we stay true to our commitment to not take money from federal lobbyists,” Bill Burton, a campaign spokesman, said. “As we’ve said and as this illustrates, this policy isn’t a perfect solution to the problem of money and politics and special interest sway in Washington.”

Presidential Election of 2008
Romney Mitt
Giuliani Rudolph W
Republican Party
Federal Election Commission


Google’s Next Stop May Be in Congress

Abstract: SAN FRANCISCO — Now that a judge has curtailed Google ’s ambitions to create a giant digital bookstore and library, the company is left with few appealing options. Google and groups representing publishers and authors were assessing their options Wednesday, trying to figure out whether they would remain allies or become enemies again. The two sides seemed unlikely to agree on a new settlement. Their original settlement, which would have let Google scan and make available every book ever published, was rejected by a federal judge Tuesday, the latest twist in a seven-year legal process. Instead, Google may take the battle from the courtroom to Congress, to promote a law that would make orphan works — books that are still under copyright but whose author or copyright owner can’t be found — widely available. “The publishers have said, ‘We want to settle,’ but Google’s motivation to settle is quite a bit lower,” said Pamela Samuelson, an expert in digital copyright law at the University of California, Berkeley, who has opposed the settlement. Still, she said, Google, which has already scanned 15 million books, is unlikely to give up. “The next thing to do is think about going to Congress and getting legislation that would make particularly orphan works available to the public,” she said. Aside from appealing the decision of the judge, Denny Chin , publishers and authors have several choices. They could drop or revive their original copyright lawsuit against Google, which claimed that even Google’s more modest initial plan to scan books and show snippets of their text was illegal. Those issues have never been litigated. Dropping the suit seems unlikely given the amount of money and time the publishers have already invested in the fight, said people briefed on the negotiations but who were not authorized to discuss them publicly because they were confidential. Several analysts said the publishers would like to avoid going to court. Another option, which publishers and authors said Wednesday was attractive to them, would be to reach a new settlement with Google that requires each author or copyright owner to opt in and permit Google to digitize their works. Judge Chin said that many of his concerns would be ameliorated if the parties came to this agreement. “We’d love to sit down with our negotiating partners and arrive at a very quick solution,” said Scott Turow, president of the Authors Guild, which was a party to the original settlement. “But given the complexity of this, the Cubs might win the World Series before this is resolved.” Google, which declined to discuss the case on Wednesday, has called the opt-in solution unworkable. Google would not be interested in such an agreement because it already allows publishers to join with Google to show more of their digitized works, and the point of the original settlement was to automatically opt in vast quantities of books, said people briefed on the settlement who were not authorized to speak publicly about it. The settlement also would have given Google exclusive access to millions of orphan works. By agreeing to an opt-in arrangement, Google would lose those books because there are no clear copyright owners to opt in. Scholars estimate that half of all books may be orphans. These range from privately published autobiographies to books that are vital for academics and researchers and are stored in university libraries. Congress has twice considered legislation to address orphan works, spurred on by a 2006 report by the United States Copyright Office that recommended free use of orphan works if there had been a diligent search for the owner. But the legislation was stymied because policy makers were waiting for the outcome of the Google Books settlement, Professor Samuelson said. Judge Chin pointed to such efforts in his ruling , saying that “the establishment of a mechanism for exploiting unclaimed books is a matter more suited for Congress than this court.” Advocates of open access to orphan works cheered the rejection of the settlement, saying it could pave the way for legislation that would let anyone — not just Google — use the books.. “If Congress can wake up to the importance of this issue, there’s a good chance they will pass orphan books legislation, and they will do so in the interest of the general public, not favoring any enterprise,” said Robert Darnton, director of the Harvard University Library, who is helping to lead a project to create a nonprofit digital library. Google has endorsed such legislation in the past, and people briefed on the negotiations said they expected Google to now aggressively pursue it in Congress. That might be the only thing all sides agree on, said Hadrian R. Katz, a lawyer who argued against Google on behalf of his client, the Internet Archive. “I think there’d be a renewed effort to get that kind of legislation, which would probably be in everybody’s interest,” he said.

Google Book Search
Chin Denny
Book Trade and Publishing
Copyrights and Copyright Violations
Google Inc
Law and Legislation


Banks Are Prevailing in a Tug of War

Abstract: Informed debate is a crucial part of public policy development. But the behind-the-scenes tug of war between banks and the government over the results of their recent stress tests strains the already tenuous credibility of the exercise. It also shows that banks have become too powerful. How so? First, banks and their regulators run stress tests all the time, on individual products, divisions and the institutions as a whole. Without them, it would be very difficult to manage risk or allocate capital among business lines. The current crisis proved these tests were inadequate — or in some cases, ignored by bank managers. But that’s largely because of management incentives to take excessive risks, and the failure of the tests to use sufficiently grim projections. So it’s curious that regulators have put so much stock in the tests they announced in February. The release of their results has been delayed while banks ask for clemency. Since the results will determine which institutions will be forced to raise private capital or take further government infusions, the stakes are high. But like the banks’ earlier and insufficiently stressful stress tests, the government’s worst-case outlooks aren’t all that far-fetched. They also use banks’ own estimates, meaning unscrupulous managers could tweak them to get a better grade. And bankers say they’ll produce very little information that regulators don’t already have. Because of this, bank risk managers (not the most credible group these days) tend to view these tests as a public relations stunt that regulators will use to force their institutions to toe Uncle Sam’s line. That, in itself, is worrying. Regulators shouldn’t have to invent justifications for regulating properly. The right response by a bank when its overseer says jump is, “How high?” That regulators are wrangling with banks over the results of these tests shows that they are not confident in their ability to understand the institutions. That gives banks too much power because regulators are forced to rely on many of their assertions about, say, complex products’ values. It would be better for watchdogs to demand that they reduce their complexity to comprehensible levels. Otherwise the banks will retain the upper hand and no amount of testing will be sufficient to diagnose their problems. May Day’s Softer Side “What the bourgeoisie therefore produces, above all, are its own grave-diggers.” Stirring words, but they won’t be on the lips of the union protesters clogging the streets of big European cities on Monday, the May Day bank holiday. If the marchers want a rallying cry relevant to the current crisis of capitalism, they won’t find it in the grim conclusion to Marx’s Communist Manifesto. The worst recession in decades might have been expected to spawn more widespread violence than it has. European unemployment is up sharply, to 8.9 percent in the euro zone and 17.4 percent in Spain. There are now 14 million nonworkers in the euro zone. But these seemingly alarming rates of unemployment aren’t exceptional by the standards of the last two decades. And while unemployment can be hard on those it affects, Europe’s jobless don’t seem to be suffering enough to do much more than moan. Unemployment benefits are generous, health care is widely available, homelessness is minimal. Unemployment has lost it stigma as well as its sting. The jobless include many with a socially acceptable reason for being out of work — early retirement, extended education, widening definitions of disability, or just taking a break. That may explain why governments have to prod hard to get people back to work. But the complacency of nonworkers cuts both ways. It is frustrating, in that their return to the labor force would help restore economic balance by lowering wages and reducing the burden on government. But the relative lack of violence is also a sign of economic success. In precapitalist days, a downturn meant famine. Industrial workers were often destitute in Marx’s time. If this crisis is the worst that modern capitalism can manage, then bosses, workers and nonworkers should really unite on May Day to celebrate. DWIGHT CASS and EDWARD HADAS

Banks and Banking
Obama Financial Stability Plan
Subprime Mortgage Crisis
Economic Conditions and Trends


France Dares to Dream as Tsonga Defeats Federer

Abstract: PARIS — Jo-Wilfried Tsonga’s surprisingly straightforward 7-5, 6-3, 6-3 quarterfinal victory over Roger Federer on Tuesday at the French Open could be seen through two different lenses. It could be seen through the lens of a Federer analyst, who now has more confirmation than ever of a great and classy champion’s slow fade from Grand Slam power. There were hints aplenty under pressure in the brilliant Paris sunshine: shots off the frame; leaps that did not appear to leave as much space between the red clay and Federer’s sneakers as usual; missed opportunities off short balls; and even — gasp — missed overheads. “Missing smashes goes hand in hand with missing so many other things,” said Federer, sounding more melancholy than devastated. But there was also the much more rose-colored lens available to Tsonga observers, of which there will now be millions more than usual in France after this performance. Tsonga, a 28-year-old who professes to prefer the quiet life of the Swiss countryside to the Parisian party scene, does not yet have a Grand Slam title. But he undeniably has charisma, just like France’s last men’s singles champion at Roland Garros — Yannick Noah, who won here with brio in 1983 and remains one of France’s most popular men 30 years later. It still seems early to start talking about history repeating itself. The pretournament favorites — the seven-time champion Rafael Nadal and the top-ranked Novak Djokovic — are still in contention in the other half of the draw and on course for a semifinal showdown. But the sixth-seeded Tsonga does have an opening in his half, with a semifinal on Friday against David Ferrer of Spain rather than a bona-fide member of the game’s Big Four. Ferrer, 31, unlike Tsonga, has never reached a major final. But the bad news for those boarding the French bandwagon is that the fourth-seeded Ferrer, like Tsonga, has yet to drop a set in Paris this year and was in relentless, energy-conserving form again Tuesday as he overwhelmed his compatriot Tommy Robredo, 6-2, 6-1, 6-1, in 1 hour 26 minutes. Image Roger Federer, the 17-time Grand Slam champion, lost to Jo-Wilfried Tsonga, 7-5, 6-3, 6-3, on Tuesday. Credit Gonzalo Fuentes/Reuters “I wasn’t 100 percent ready to fight that match and playing with a guy like David, who is a machine, it’s very tough to be like that,” said Robredo, who had reached the quarterfinals by coming back three times in a row from two sets down to win. No, it will not be easy for Tsonga, soaring confidence and all, to reach even the final in Paris this year, but the French are officially dreaming of another 1983 and another Noah. “It’s not too early to think about it because they are both charismatic players; because it’s been exactly 30 years and because they are both French guys of mixed race,” said Cédric Pioline, the former French star and French Open semifinalist. “There are parallels that are there right in front of us, that are true and that we cannot ignore.” “The atmosphere that was there today, you could almost feel like it was a final. The semifinal against Ferrer will be another note higher and if Jo does indeed manage to reach the final, I don’t know who’ll be across the net but it won’t be a French player that’s for sure, and the atmosphere behind him will be enormous, enormous. There will be so much energy and if he can put both his fingers right into the socket and feel all that power, it will be, wow, like triple turbo.” Asked what kind of relationship he had with Noah, now a popular singer, Tsonga said: “Well, when he sings, I dance. That’s my relationship. When he says something to me, I listen to him.” For now, France and Tsonga will have to settle for his victory over Federer, who had beaten him in 9 of their 12 previous matches, most recently at this year’s Australian Open in a five-set crowd pleaser that seemed to predict a closer match Tuesday. Federer struck first, breaking Tsonga in the fifth game, and was soon up by 4-2. But he could not hold a 40-15 lead in his next service game and Tsonga never trailed again, dominating with his first serve and punching holes with surprising ease in Federer’s defenses. Tsonga’s weaknesses have long been clear: returns and a backhand that has lacked the pop of his world-class serve and forehand. But he did damage with it regularly Tuesday, perhaps the result made under new coach Roger Rasheed. Tsonga spent more than a season without an official coach trying to understand his game and motivations before hiring Rasheed this year. Rasheed, an Australian, was previously the taskmaster and innovator in chief with Lleyton Hewitt and Tsonga’s compatriot Gaël Monfils. “I choose to take Roger, because I knew this guy was able to give me the passion for the game and to give me his passion for the game,” Tsonga said. Image Sixth-seeded Jo-Wilfried Tsonga, left, defeated No. 2 Roger Federer in straight sets Tuesday as he bids to become the first Frenchman to win the French Open in 30 years. Credit Matthew Stockman/Getty Images While Federer had to settle for that lone break in the first set, Tsonga broke Federer eight times in all, winning 42 percent of the points on Federer’s first serve and 58 percent of the points on Federer’s second serve. Federer rebuffed any suggestion that he was suffering from a revival of the back problems that have affected him intermittently. “No, no issues,” he said. “They have so much more energy here, the French guys, than maybe elsewhere,” Federer said of Tsonga. “I thought he played great today. He was in all areas better than me today. That’s why the result was pretty clean.” Federer, a 17-time Grand Slam singles champion, will now try to defend his Wimbledon title. Grass-court tennis has lifted him out of the doldrums in the past, but this season has been particularly disappointing by his standards. He has not won a tournament since Cincinnati last August, and although he reached the semifinals at the Australian Open, he has reached only one final this year. That was in Rome, where Nadal overwhelmed him, once again, on clay. Tsonga has spoiled major moments for Federer in the quarterfinals before. At Wimbledon in 2011, he became the first man to overcome a two-set deficit and beat Federer in a Grand Slam tournament. Tsonga, whose only appearance in a Grand Slam final came at the 2008 Australian Open, may also be less intimidated by Federer than ever. They spent considerable time together in the off-season in South America, with Tsonga playing second fiddle to Federer’s Stradivarius on the Swiss superstar’s lucrative tour of the continent. There is a genuine connection between them now, but that did not remove the sting of being upstaged on a court where Federer had only been beaten in straight sets in his prime by clay-court royalty like Nadal, Novak Djokovic and the former champion Gustavo Kuerten. At 3-3 in the third set Tuesday, with Federer facing yet another break point, he came forward and hit a deft half volley that dropped on Tsonga’s side of the net. The Frenchman sprinted forward and ripped a low, lunging, two-handed backhand that grazed the net and left Federer twisting to get out of the way. The ball struck him in the upper back, giving Tsonga the last break he would require, and though he held up his hand to apologize, Federer never looked back. “Come on, Roger!” someone yelled from the stands, as so many have yelled from these stands through the years. But this was a different sort of day, no matter how you looked at it, and cheers of “Allez Jo!” were much more common down the stretch. Just imagine the sound effects if Tsonga keeps winning.

Roger Federer
Jo-Wilfried Tsonga
Tennis
French Open


Xavier and Cincinnati Regrouped and Found Postseason Success

Abstract: One player lay at midcourt, blood pouring off his face. Another was throwing punches at every opponent he could see. A third stood on the scorer’s table, egging on a howling crowd at the Cintas Center in Cincinnati. Expletive-laced challenges were hurled back and forth. All the while, a national television audience watched as one of college basketball’s fiercest rivalries exploded into chaos. The reputations of the two teams involved appeared to be in tatters. Yet now, little more than three months after a Dec. 10 brawl that was, for better or worse, one of the signature moments of college basketball’s regular season, both Xavier and Cincinnati are among the 16 teams left in the N.C.A.A. tournament. And the wild brawl has become, if not forgotten, then certainly a secondary chapter to the teams’ seasons. The Bearcats, seeded sixth in the East, will play No. 2 Ohio State in Boston on Thursday night. The 10th-seeded Musketeers will play No. 3 Baylor in a South Region game in Atlanta on Friday. “We disciplined the guys that did wrong, we apologized, and then we told them how much we loved them, what we expected of them, and moved on,” Cincinnati Coach Mick Cronin said Wednesday. “We knew who we really are. We really focused on making sure we were having fun and not letting that define us.” The tension that exists between Cincinnati — the large public university — and Xavier — the smaller, more affluent Jesuit university a few miles away — mounted a few days before their annual matchup in December. Bearcats guard Sean Kilpatrick needled Xavier’s star guard Tu Holloway, saying that Holloway, the reigning Atlantic 10 player of the year, was not even good enough to start for Cincinnati, which plays in the Big East. The game was heated, with the teams exchanging words on the way to the locker room at halftime. But as Xavier pulled away to what would be a 76-53 victory, the trash talk became more intense. Holloway made a layup with 18 seconds left and yelled at the Cincinnati bench as he ran past on his way back up the court. As the final seconds ticked away, Holloway and the Cincinnati freshman guard Ge’Lawn Guyn went nose to nose. Guyn pushed Holloway in the face, and Xavier’s Dez Wells shoved Guyn to the floor in retaliation. Cincinnati center Yancy Gates then threw the ball at Holloway, causing a full-scale brawl to erupt. Gates then threw a punch at Xavier center Kenny Frease, who was looking elsewhere. The right cross opened up a nasty gash under Frease’s left eye. The Bearcats’ Cheikh Mbodj then kicked Frease after he fell to the floor following a hit by Gates. Frease managed to escape the melee and wander upcourt, bleeding profusely, before lying down and receiving treatment. The game was called with 9.4 seconds left, and the floor was cleared after several minutes. In the postgame news conference, Holloway, who had been up on the scorer’s table during the brawl, said that the Musketeers were “grown men over here,” adding: “We’ve got a whole bunch of gangsters in the locker room — not thugs, but tough guys on the court. And we went out there and zipped them up,” an apparent reference to putting the Bearcats in body bags. Cronin talked angrily after the game of physically removing the jerseys of his players, saying they needed to realize “how lucky they are to even be here, let alone have a scholarship.” “Mick Cronin did a remarkable job of dealing with that head-on in the postgame press conference and obviously in the locker room with his own team,” Dan Gavitt, the associate commissioner of basketball for the Big East, said. “There’s no preparation or script for an incident like that, and he stood up and said the right things and did the right things and in the long run his team benefitted from it.” Xavier Coach Chris Mack sent out a Twitter message after the game that said: “If my players say they’ve been taught to be tough their whole life, they mean ON THE FLOOR. Nothing else is condoned.” Gates, Mbodj, and the Cincinnati freshman Octavius Ellis were given six-game suspensions, with Guyn suspended for a game. Gates tearfully apologized the day after the brawl, and his private apology to Frease was reportedly a factor in his not facing criminal charges. Xavier suspended four players, three of them starters, including Holloway, who missed the next game, a loss to Oral Roberts. The Musketeers, who had been 8-0 after beating Cincinnati, lost the two games after that as well. They struggled during Atlantic 10 conference play, and went 13-12 after the brawl. “After that game our confidence was lost a little bit,” Holloway said last week, “and it took a couple of months to get it back.” It was in the conference tournament in Atlantic City that Xavier righted itself, making the title game, where it lost to St. Bonaventure. Holloway then showed that he could start for any team in the country, scoring 25 points in Xavier’s N.C.A.A. tournament opener against Notre Dame, including a high-arcing bank shot with 21.3 seconds to go that put Xavier ahead for good. He added 21 in the Musketeers’ victory over Lehigh last Sunday, to go with Frease’s 25 points and 12 rebounds. “The adversity we see in the N.C.A.A. tournament, we’ve been through a lot more than that,” Frease said before the Lehigh game. At the time of the brawl, Cincinnati was 5-3, but the fallout seemed to galvanize the team. The Bearcats won seven straight after the Xavier game, and went 12-6 in Big East play and made the conference tournament final, upsetting top-seeded Syracuse. Gates had a double-double in the opening tournament win over Texas, then played a rugged game against Florida State on Sunday night, battling larger players inside in a 62-56 win. And despite being a 60 percent free-throw shooter, Gates made three critical free throws in the final moments. Now Cincinnati finds itself in the Round of 16, just like its crosstown rival, Xavier. It is a long way from the ugliness of Dec. 10. “We’ve been on a mission to define what Cincinnati basketball is all about, what our university and city is all about, and the kids have banded together to do that,” Cronin said. “It hasn’t been easy.”

Xavier University of Ohio
University of Cincinnati
National Collegiate Athletic Assn
Basketball
College Athletics
Basketball (College)
NCAA Basketball Championships (Men)


Giants’ Jason Pierre-Paul Makes First Comments Since Fireworks Accident

Abstract: EAST RUTHERFORD, N.J. — Alternately smiling and somber, Giants defensive end Jason Pierre-Paul said Friday that he felt lucky to be alive after a Fourth of July fireworks accident caused the amputation of his right index finger and severely damaged his right thumb and middle finger. “I’m just very fortunate that I’m alive,” Pierre-Paul said in his first comments to the news media since the accident. “I’m just fortunate to have a hand.” During the hospitalization for his injuries, he said, he was near others with Fourth of July-related wounds. “I saw a kid die at the age of 12 years old,” Pierre-Paul said. “One they had to cut off his whole finger.” He added that “there were probably 12 people in that hospital” with similar injuries and that his hand was “the best one.” Pierre-Paul declined to be specific about his accident, although he said he had set off fireworks on the holiday for the past six or seven years for children around his South Florida neighborhood. “Things happen, mistakes happen, incidents happen,” he said. Asked for his initial reaction when the fireworks injured his hand, he replied: “I wasn’t worried at all. I wasn’t in shock or nothing. I looked at my hand and my fiancée was going crazy, but I kept calm through the whole situation.” Pierre-Paul indicated there was more to the story, which he said he planned to tell at a later date. He said Friday was not the right time to be more revealing because he wanted to focus on helping the Giants win games. Asked if he was suggesting that the accident was not his fault, Pierre-Paul replied: “No, I’m not saying that. By me buying the fireworks, it was my fault.” He was aware that he had been harshly criticized and mocked nationwide for actions and decisions that have so far cost him millions in salary. But he did not agree with those sentiments. “I wasn’t embarrassed by nothing,” he said. “People are going to have their own opinions. But I didn’t care about none of that because I knew one way or another, I was going to return back to football. Just coming back to the Giants, I’ve already won.” Pierre-Paul, who rubbed his left hand across his surgically reconstructed right hand repeatedly as he spoke for 12 minutes with reporters at his locker, was making no predictions about how effective he would be as a football player. But he defiantly announced that he felt no different from before. He is expected to play next month. “I am the Jason Pierre-Paul I was last year,” he said. “The skill set is the same. It’s not going to be a major adjustment. As far as like my hand goes, I’ll get used to it.” The Giants rank second to last in the N.F.L. in quarterback sacks this season. “Just looking at the games, you can tell they needed a pass rusher,” said Pierre-Paul, who will wear a special glove while playing. Laughing, he said: “Of course, it’s a special glove. I’m missing an index finger.” Pierre-Paul denied rebuffing Giants medical personnel who arrived at his hospital shortly after his accident. “You can’t do nothing when you’re on anesthesia, waking up, going in and out” of consciousness, he said. “I had no reason not to let them in. I just didn’t know. “I don’t know who was making my decisions. It could’ve been the doctors.” When pressed on why he stayed out of touch with the Giants for months after the accident, Pierre-Paul responded, “Next question.” Later, he credited the Giants for being “a very caring organization.” “They did a great job handling it,” he said. “I thank them for giving me a second chance.” Not surprisingly, Pierre-Paul added that his days exploding fireworks on the Fourth of July were over. “As far as fireworks, they’re very dangerous,” he said. “You shouldn’t play with them. Because it had been seven years I did it and it just went off. “You live and learn. People make mistakes. We’re all human. We’re all people.”

Football
Jason Pierre-Paul
Fireworks
Giants


A 3-D Printed Car, Ready for the Road

Abstract: DETROIT — TUCKED away among the gleaming steel machines on display at the North American International Auto Show this week, an Arizona start-up was trying something new: manufacturing a car from scratch right on the convention floor. Thanks to 3-D printing, a vehicle whose body, frame and interior were constructed from a carbon-polymer composite materialized as puzzled onlookers watched. After workers installed an electric motor, suspension and tires, the small car — which resembled a coupe crossed with a dune buggy — was ready to go. The idea was the brainchild of John B. Rogers Jr., the founder and chief executive of Local Motors, based in Phoenix. Mr. Rogers, who prefers to be called Jay, was an infantry commander in the Marines, has an M.B.A. from Harvard and is determined to simplify the way automobiles are produced. Mr. Rogers is no stranger to mobile machines: His grandfather ran the Indian Motorcycle Company and was also the first distributor of Cummins engines in the United States. He himself started a small custom rally-car business in Arizona in 2007, Local Motors. But two years ago, as he read about the auto industry’s attempts to make lighter auto panels and parts, he had an epiphany. “It occurred to me that our enemy was the supply chain. There are just too many parts,” he said in an interview. “That was the genesis of all this.” The question though, was what could be done about it. Cars need parts, thousands of them. Mr. Rogers said he started obsessing about the idea of making a vehicle from a few solid pieces, and began looking for a material. He talked to experts about hardened clay, but that went nowhere. Other options, deemed impractical, also fizzled out. Then a colleague attending a conference in Boston happened to cross paths with an engineer from Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee, who invited Mr. Rogers to visit the lab. Inside was an enormous device with a robot arm that emitted moldable plastic and made shapes — a 3-D printer. “As soon as I saw that, I said, ‘That’s my machine,’ ” Mr. Rogers said. “I asked, ‘Can we make a car?’ ” This week in Detroit, he showed off the answer — part of a road show in recent months as he has traveled the country with his creation, the Strati concept vehicle. Aside from a few dozen additional components, like the electric motor, wheels and suspension parts, the small concept car is made from 3-D printed carbon-polymer material. On Monday, Mr. Rogers announced bigger plans: Local Motors would build a production factory outside Washington, capable of making up to 3,000 3-D printed vehicles a year. The so-called microfactory, Local Motors’ fourth, is set to be completed within a year and will sell cars to the public. The company has its original microfactory in Phoenix and another in Las Vegas. It is also building one in Oak Ridge, Tenn., near the national laboratory, its partner. Part retail store, part factory, the Washington plant will let consumers browse the designs, customize their cars, then have them created on one of the half-dozen industrial-grade 3-D printers on site and assembled in a matter of days. “We like to think of it as Build-A-Bear, mashed up with Ikea, mashed up with Formula One,” Mr. Rogers said. But the cars may not be entirely street legal. Local Motors’ first 3-D-printed car is categorized as a “neighborhood electric vehicle ,” much like a golf cart. Under federal regulations, it is legal on public roads at speeds up to 25 miles per hour, and some states allow certain road access up to 45 miles per hour. The company plans to offer a vehicle that can be driven on all roads in the United States by 2017, Mr. Rogers said. That would require passing safety requirements set by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, including crash tests. Jessica Caldwell, a senior analyst at Edmunds.com, said that while the market for customization of cars was blossoming, a 3-D-printed car remained “a bit gimmicky at this point in time.” Noting that the price begins at $18,000 and tops out at $30,000, she said most buyers would opt for a vehicle with more traditional amenities. “I struggle to understand the value to the consumer besides having something cool and cutting-edge,” she said. Terry Wohlers, president of the research firm Wohlers Associates, which tracks the 3-D printing industry, said while he did not anticipate the Fords or Toyotas of the world adopting 3-D-printed car bodies any time soon, the idea might work on a smaller scale. “If you’re looking at low quantity, individualized kind of production, that could make sense,” Mr. Wohlers said. “But right now, the cost is too prohibitive to use for large-scale production.” And although Toyota may not use 3-D printing for its Camrys, the major automakers have already adopted the technology when it comes to designing their cars: building models quickly, and testing the form, fit and function of certain elements. “They’re all using it in a big way,” Mr. Wohlers said. Some high-end automakers are going even further, integrating select 3-D-printed parts into production models. Examples include Lamborghini, which uses the technology for part of a console component, and Bentley, where part of a dashboard panel was printed that way, he said. “Over time, we will see more of them adopt this kind of technology, if not for whole cars, for certain hard-to-produce or complicated parts that 3-D printing can make easier,” he said. The cost of 3-D printing machines is also likely to drop. Currently, plastics-based machines average around $75,000, and machines that can 3-D print metal, a relatively new invention, cost upward of $500,000 each. Mr. Rogers said Local Motors believed that a market existed for locally produced, individualized vehicles made with 3-D printing. “This is not just a science experiment, but is something that can be developed, brought forward safely and enjoyed by consumers around the world,” he said. “It’s about allowing local communities, and people within those communities, to tailor vehicles to suit their individual needs.”

Cars
North American International Auto Show
3-D Printers
Compact Cars Microcars
Local Motors


California: 11 Are Hurt in Prison Riot

Abstract: A riot at the California State Prison in Folsom on Wednesday left 11 inmates hospitalized, including one who was shot by officers, officials said. The disturbance, which broke out around 11 a.m. in a yard at the maximum-security prison, involved an unknown number of inmates, officials said. In addition to the inmate who was shot, at least 10 were either stabbed or slashed. Their conditions have not been released. It is at least the second known episode within a year at the prison, commonly known as New Folsom, 20 miles east of Sacramento.

Prisons and Prisoners
Demonstrations Protests and Riots
California State Prison
California


Thailand: American Sentenced for Defaming King

Abstract: A court in Thailand on Thursday sentenced an American citizen, Joe Gordon, to two and a half years in prison for defaming the country’s royal family. Mr. Gordon, who was born in Thailand, had been accused of translating excerpts of a banned biography of King Bhumibol Adulyadej and then posting them online. Mr. Gordon, 55, pleaded guilty to the charges in October, and as a result a judge in Bangkok’s criminal court reduced by half his proposed sentence of five years.

Gordon Joe
Bhumibol Adulyadej
Libel and Slander
Thailand
Sentences (Criminal)
Royal Family


A Cruel Beauty in Grudge Match of the Dons

Abstract: MILTON KEYNES, ENGLAND — The F.A. Cup, the oldest knockout tournament of them all, was founded on the belief that playing soccer could settle any score. But nothing in its 140 years could have been more of a grudge match than the one played Sunday between the Milton Keynes Dons and A.F.C. Wimbledon. The teams have a shared past, and that is the cause of their bitter dispute. Fans of the original Wimbledon F.C., the 1988 F.A. Cup winner, accuse Milton Keynes of being an illegitimate club — of stealing Wimbledon’s name and its place in the English leagues almost a decade ago. What happened was that Wimbledon was going bankrupt when Milton Keynes, a new town with no team in the professional ranks, persuaded the Football Association to allow it to leapfrog the minor leagues and to “move” Wimbledon 56 miles, or about 90 kilometers, north of its west London location. Hence the name MK Dons, as in Wimble-don. Resentment and rancor have existed ever since and have been the spur to a remarkable rise that took a newly formed, renamed A.F.C. Wimbledon, just nine years to go from volunteers on Wimbledon Common up through five promotions of the semiprofessional pyramid of English soccer until it reached the fourth tier of full-time competition. A.F.C. stands today just one division below Milton Keynes. As fate would have it, the Wimbledon team, still wholly run by a fans’ trust, was drawn to play at Milton Keynes in the second round of the F.A. Cup on Sunday. On a bright and frosty morning, some 3,200 Wimbledon supporters made the hour and a half journey. Others, who had sworn never to set foot in Milton Keynes, gathered at their own club headquarters to watch the game on TV screens. Perhaps against the odds, the contest was even until the final moments of time added on for injuries and stoppages. Milton Keynes did most of the attacking, Wimbledon held on in robust defense and broke with defiant will. Even the Wimbledon hard-liners who had arrived at the stadium with face masks and full anticontamination suits were by this time under the thrall of the game. Soccer, as the founding fathers had envisaged, was engaging all minds, breaking down the bitterness. But then, as someone said, the cruel beauty of the F.A. Cup arrived. The man who said that, Lawrie Sanchez, had scored the only goal of the 1988 final when Wimbledon F.C., top dog of all the underdogs, defeated the mighty Liverpool to win the Cup at Wembley Stadium. The Sanchez side, known as the Crazy Gang, would do anything and everything, even bending the rules if they could get away with it, to win. The new Wimbledon is muscular, spirited and, as it showed Sunday, will do everything within the laws to stay in a contest. How they ran. How they stayed compact in defense. How they retaliated after Milton Keynes’s Stephen Gleeson scored on the stroke of halftime with a wonderful shot. He struck it from 30 meters, or about 100 feet, and the trajectory left Wimbledon’s 42-year-old veteran keeper groping at air as the ball swerved away into the top left corner of his net. Little by little, Wimbledon turned defense into attack. On the hour, midfielder Jack Midsun turned industrious running into gold. He passed the ball out wide to the winger Toby Ajala. And, bursting his lungs to keep on running, Midsun demanded the return pass, threw himself head first at the ball and guided it from right to left inside the far post. One-one, and a replay at Wimbledon — a second game in case of a draw worth upward of $150,000 in TV revenue — beckoned. A plane circling overhead in the blue sky trailed a banner “We are Wimbledon.” Apparently it was hired by a fan of the original team who could not be there because he is a resident of West Virginia. That fan doubtless suffered the cruel beauty of the Cup in the closing minutes. Right on full time, Wimbledon broke into another counterattack. Steven Gregory found the power to burst past his opposing defender, but his low shot was diverted inches around the foot of a post by the fingertips of goalie David Martin. The sheer relief of Milton Keynes then turned into an eruption of sound seldom heard in the 30,000-seat stadium, built when the team acquired the status and identity of the doomed old Dons. It was MK’s turn to break the length of the field and, from a corner that Wimbledon failed to clear, the home team’s right back, Jon Otsemobor, did something he will never regret or forget. He nonchalantly stuck out his left leg to the bouncing ball. He caught it with a flick he might claim was intended, but few will believe him. It glanced off his shin and deceived everyone in the crowded goal mouth. It nestled in the net. Cruel beauty, indeed. The Cup tie was over, but the resentment may linger for generations. Milton Keynes’s founder, the property developer and former musical entrepreneur Pete Winkelman, is the man who negotiated the land deal that allowed supermarket chains to pay enough to share it with a soccer club that at that time scarcely existed. Winkelman admits now that this transaction — akin to a franchise moving across states in the United States — may never happen again in England. But he refuses Wimbledon’s requests to a least remove the word Dons from his club’s title. He has a victory, but few admirers west of London.

Soccer
Football Association Cup (Soccer)
England


Palin Defends Political Speech; ‘Blood Libel’ Stirs Critics

Abstract: WASHINGTON — Sarah Palin broke her silence on Wednesday and delivered a forceful denunciation of her critics in a video message about the Arizona shootings , accusing commentators and journalists of “blood libel” in a frenzied rush to blame heated political speech for the violence. As she sought to defend herself and seize control of a debate that has been boiling for days, Ms. Palin awakened a new controversy by invoking a phrase fraught with religious symbolism about the false accusation used by anti-Semites of Jews murdering Christian children. It was unclear whether Ms. Palin was aware of the historical meaning of the phrase. “Acts of monstrous criminality stand on their own,” Ms. Palin said. “Especially within hours of a tragedy unfolding, journalists and pundits should not manufacture a blood libel that serves only to incite the very hatred and violence that they purport to condemn. That is reprehensible.” The video from Ms. Palin, running nearly eight minutes, was recorded in her home television studio in Alaska and released early Wednesday morning. Her words dominated the political landscape for nearly 12 hours before President Obama arrived in Tucson to speak at a memorial service honoring the six dead and 14 injured in the shootings. For Ms. Palin, a former Alaska governor, the video provided one of the clearest signs yet that she is carefully tending to her image as she decides whether to seek the 2012 Republican presidential nomination. And it showed her continued determination to do so on her own terms and under her own control, without responding to questions or appearing in a public forum. She spoke in a somber tone, absent the witticisms often woven into her political speeches, as she sought to contain a debate that had linked her — unfairly, she argued — with the assassination attempt on Representative Gabrielle Giffords, Democrat of Arizona. In the midterm elections last year, Ms. Palin used a map with cross hairs over several swing Congressional districts, which Ms. Giffords highlighted in a television interview at the time as an example of overheated political speech. In the video statement, Ms. Palin rejected criticism of the map, and sought to cast that criticism as a broader indictment of the basic rights to free speech exercised by people of all political persuasions. “We know violence isn’t the answer,” Ms. Palin said, sitting against a backdrop of a fireplace and an American flag. “When we take up our arms, we’re talking about our votes.” The video stirred an emotional response from some Democratic lawmakers, Jewish groups and even some fellow Republicans, who said it was in poor taste for Ms. Palin to deliver her statement on a day that was devoted to remembering victims of last weekend’s shooting. The video played throughout the day on cable television and on the Internet. Matthew Dowd, a former political adviser to President George W. Bush who has become a frequent critic of Republicans, said that the tone of Ms. Palin’s message was not appropriate for the moment of national grief and that she had missed an opportunity to be seen as a leader. “Sarah Palin seems trapped in a world that is all about confrontation and bravado,” Mr. Dowd said. “When the country seeks comforting and consensus, she offers conflict and confrontation.” Advisers to Ms. Palin did not respond to interview requests on Wednesday, and she did not cite any specific examples of what she considered to be unfair coverage or commentary. Ms. Palin offered her deep condolences for victims of the shooting, then went on to dismiss suggestions that political speech should be toned down. She did not mention the shooting suspect, Jared L. Loughner, by name, but said that the violence could not be blamed on talk radio or those who participated in political debate. “There are those who claim political rhetoric is to blame for the despicable act of this deranged apparently apolitical criminal,” Ms. Palin said. “And they claim political debate has somehow gotten more heated just recently. But when was it less heated — back in those calm days when political figures literally settled their differences with dueling pistols?” Ms. Palin also turned to the words of former President Ronald Reagan, saying that society should not be blamed for the acts of an individual. She said she had spent the last several days “praying for guidance,” as she sorted out the lessons of the Arizona tragedy. “We must reject the idea that every time a law’s broken, society is guilty rather than the lawbreaker,” Ms. Palin said. “It is time to restore the American precept that each individual is accountable for his actions.” The video , which seemed to be aimed at appealing to her committed supporters rather than winning over her critics, contained several references to the country’s “foundational freedoms” and the intentions of the nation’s founders. Twice, she called the United States “exceptional,” a frequent dig at Mr. Obama, whom conservatives accuse of not believing in the concept of “American exceptionalism.” The White House did not comment on Ms. Palin’s statement, and the president did not mention her in his address on Wednesday evening. “President Obama and I may not agree on everything,” she said, “but I know he would join me in affirming the health of our democratic process.”

Palin Sarah
Tucson Shooting (2011)
Speeches and Statements
Libel and Slander


Violence Spurs Identity Crisis in Free-Spirited Santa Cruz

Abstract: SANTA CRUZ, Calif. — Keep it weird? Or keep it safe and clean? “Keep Santa Cruz Weird” was the longstanding, if unofficial, motto for this small beachfront city proud of its tolerance and its offbeat vibe. People came for Santa Cruz’s 1960s-imbued live-and-let-live attitude, its progressive politics, the great weather, the University of California campus, the hard-partying surfing scene and the freewheeling drug culture. But “Keep Santa Cruz Safe and Clean” began appearing on bumpers in recent years as the city was rattled by acts of violence, its streets and parks seemingly overwhelmed by homelessness and drugs. To hear the supporters of the new slogan, Santa Cruz’s famous tolerance was guilty of enabling. The dueling slogans captured the fight over the city’s politics and policies, as well as its spirit. The debate has only intensified since the recent killings of Sgt. Butch Baker and Officer Elizabeth Butler, the first two police officers to die on duty in the Santa Cruz Police Department’s 157-year history. On Feb. 26, the two went to speak to Jeremy Goulet, 35, an Army veteran with a history of sexual assaults in the military and in civilian life. Mr. Goulet, who had been arrested after trying to attack a co-worker in her home here, gunned down the officers before being killed later in a shootout. He had run-ins with the law in Portland, Ore., and Berkeley, Calif., before moving to Santa Cruz late last year. Image An officer at the scene in Santa Cruz, Calif., where two colleagues were fatally shot in February. Credit Thomas Mendoza/Associated Press “It could have happened in any one of those communities — it happened here,” Mayor Hilary Bryant said. “It’s particularly difficult for us as a community to deal with that because it happened on top of a series of incidents of violence in a short period of time.” Last month, a man was shot to death outside a popular bar, and a student at the University of California, Santa Cruz, was shot in the head during a robbery, though she survived. And last year, in a random killing that spoke to this city’s growing unease with homelessness, a mentally disturbed transient man fatally stabbed a well-known local businesswoman on a downtown street just before noon. The violence has shaken Santa Cruz, a city of 62,000 residents, a place small enough that many know by name or face the 84 officers on the police force. “The kind of grieving that’s going on and the sense of violation that folks are feeling around this shooting is very intimate, almost familial,” said the Rev. Dave Grishaw-Jones, the senior minister of First Congregational Church. “It’s not a big city.” In churches, at City Council meetings and in the pages of The Santa Cruz Sentinel, the violence has focused heated debates on the city’s policies toward drug abuse and homelessness. Did a needle exchange program — run with little oversight, as Mayor Bryant said — draw users here from other cities? Did overly generous services for the homeless attract outsiders, many of whom can be seen camping out in the city’s parks and woods? Image Sgt. Butch Baker, who was killed while responding to a report of a sexual assault in February. Credit Santa Cruz Police Department, via Associated Press According to the Police Department’s statistics, crime has been flat in recent years, except for an increase in property theft. But about 40 percent of calls to the police involve the homeless, and the homeless make up a third of total arrests, mostly on charges of drug abuse, property crime and burglaries, said Deputy Chief Steve Clark. Regina Henderson, a neighborhood organizer who first landed here 38 years ago while following the Grateful Dead to San Francisco, said, “We draw people from all over who are very unstable, and their aggressive behavior has infiltrated our little town.” For Ms. Henderson, her view on crime changed five years ago when she stumbled upon a dead man lying along the levee near her home, a needle stuck in his arm. She formed a neighborhood watch group and joined Take Back Santa Cruz, an organization established by like-minded residents in 2009. Young families had also moved into neighborhoods, replacing longtime residents inured to the city’s social problems. “They’re not content to having a lot of dirty needles in the playgrounds,” said Lisa Rose, who has lived here since 1968. “I just shrug my shoulders and say, ‘Oh, that was unpleasant,’ when I’m accosted on the street. I’ve just grown to accept it, and maybe it shouldn’t be accepted. You know that old story about putting a frog in a pot of slowly boiling water and how it won’t jump out? That’s me.” Image Officer Elizabeth Butler was also fatally shot by the same gunman. Credit Santa Cruz Police Department, via Associated Press Take Back Santa Cruz — which has promoted the slogan “Keep Santa Cruz Safe and Clean” — quickly became an influential force in the city. One of its leaders, Pamela Comstock, was elected to the City Council in November. “We have a history of accepting unique and different behaviors, but at some point that became deviant behavior,” Ms. Comstock said, adding that the city’s open drug culture brings in both dealers and users from the outside. The city, Ms. Comstock said, should shift money and resources to programs for families and children and away from homeless services. Until a few years ago, the police felt hamstrung by a City Council and a community that, reflecting their roots from the 1960s, looked askance at authority. “For a lot of years, I felt we were seen as a necessary evil,” said Deputy Chief Clark, a 28-year veteran. “I would absolutely say that is not the current attitude of the City Council or the community. I think this community has realized what a mess we’ve made.” But other city leaders caution that in an overemotional response to the recent violence, Santa Cruz could lose what made it special in the first place. Image Jeremy Goulet, accused of shooting Sgt. Baker and Officer Butler, was later killed in a shootout with officers. Credit Santa Cruz Police Department, via Associated Press Don Lane, a city councilman who also sits on the board of two homeless organizations, said the killings of the police officers had nothing to do with the homeless. “Everybody wants to say we really need to reflect on what’s going on here and why it happened, and then very quickly they go to that issue: Is Santa Cruz too tolerant and welcoming?” he said. “Personally, I’m not sure how that connection is made.” Neal Coonerty, a former mayor and current Santa Cruz County supervisor, also rejected suggestions that the killings of the police officers reflected deeper problems in the city. “We were more the victims in this situation than we are somehow enabling the violence to happen,” he said. A decade ago, Mr. Coonerty’s family-owned business, Bookshop Santa Cruz, began selling T-shirts, mugs and bumper stickers with the slogan “Keep Santa Cruz Weird.” It was meant, he said, to counter City Council efforts to restrict street performers downtown. “Some people have interpreted that somehow it has something to do with being relaxed about drug use and violence,” he said. “It’s the furthest thing. It had to deal with street performers. But people twisted its meaning and are implying that it had something to do with the terrible events that happened.”

Santa Cruz CA
Crime statistics
Homelessness
Slogans and Mottoes
Drug Abuse
Attacks on Police


William R. Hudgins, 100, Who Led Black-Owned Banks, Dies

Abstract: William R. Hudgins, a former door-to-door salesman in Harlem who helped start the Carver Federal Savings Bank, now the largest black-owned bank in the nation, and was its president for 18 years, died on Friday at his home in Manhattan. Mr. Hudgins, who along with Jackie Robinson later helped start the Freedom National Bank, was 100. The death was announced by his daughter, Jan Hudgins Riley. With seven other Harlem leaders, Mr. Hudgins founded what was originally known as the Carver Federal Savings and Loan Association in 1948, when blacks were facing what an article in The New York Times called “a wall of bias” in obtaining loans from major financial institutions. “There was always black homeownership and business ownership in Harlem in the ’40s, ’50s, ’60s, but the question was who provided the loan money,” Earl G. Graves Sr., the publisher of Black Enterprise Magazine, said yesterday. “It was usually family, friends, persons you knew in the church that you attended or, in the West Indian community, sou-sous, informal credit unions.” “Bill Hudgins recognized the need,” Mr. Graves said. The Carver bank, named for the botanist George Washington Carver, was started on a financial shoestring of $250,000 with $14,000 in cash and the rest in pledges from community residents. By 1962, it had lent more than $30 million to about 3,000 home buyers and maintained more than 32,000 savings accounts. Last year, with branches in Manhattan, Queens, the Bronx and Brooklyn, Carver held assets of $648 million and deposits of $488 million, according to Black Enterprise Magazine. In 1966, Mr. Hudgins joined with another group of black leaders, including Mr. Robinson, who by then had retired as a baseball player, to form the Freedom National Bank. He was its president until 1971. Freedom National went out of business in 1990. William Randolph Hudgins was born in Petersburg, Va., on April 30, 1907. At the age of 2 he was adopted by William and Agnes Hudgins. His adoptive father was a carpenter and owned a delivery truck; his adoptive mother was a music teacher. A tall, thin young man, Mr. Hudgins came to Harlem in his early 20s. He first worked door to door as a Fuller Brush salesman, then took a job at a local dry-cleaning store that specialized in refurbishing costumes from Broadway shows. In 1943, he parlayed the value from several real estate investments to start Best Yet Hair Products, a mail-order business that sold high-quality wigs made from human hair. Because of his business success in the late 1940s, Mr. Hudgins became the first African-American chosen to join the merchants’ division of the Uptown Chamber of Commerce in Manhattan, now called the Greater Harlem Chamber of Commerce. Mr. Hudgins married three times. His first marriage, to the former Martha Fitzgerald, ended in divorce. His second wife, Myrtle Patterson Hudgins, died in 1972. Besides his daughter, Jan, of Manhattan, Mr. Hudgins is survived by his third wife, the former Dorothy Carroll, whom he married in 1972; a son, Alvin, of Sarasota, Fla.; eight grandchildren; and seven great-grandchildren. Although Freedom National Bank was less successful than the Carver bank, a Time magazine article in 1966 offered a glimpse of the mission that Mr. Hudgins envisioned for his banking enterprises. “Almost like a small-town banker, Hudgins gets personally involved in many loan applications,” the article said. “Doubtfuls usually wind up in his second-floor office to plead their cases, and frequently get their loans after careful investigation.”

Hudgins William R
Deaths (Obituaries)
Banks and Banking
Blacks


Climbers of Times Building Get Different Jury Treatment

Abstract: Although they climbed the headquarters of The New York Times on the same day, June 5, Renaldo Clarke and Alain Robert ’s stunts were seen differently. Mr. Robert was something of a professional stuntman, known for climbing buildings around the world to promote the fight against global warming . He seemed to scale the building playfully. Mr. Clarke was unknown until his climb to promote the fight against malaria. He seemed to struggle at times during his ascent. Another difference: Mr. Clarke, who appeared in State Supreme Court in Manhattan for a hearing on Tuesday, was indicted on criminal charges, while Mr. Robert was not. In August, a grand jury voted to indict Mr. Clarke on three counts, the most serious of which was a misdemeanor charge of reckless endangerment, punishable by up to a year in prison. A different grand jury had voted in June to dismiss all criminal charges against Mr. Robert, leaving only a count of disorderly conduct, which is not a crime, but a violation akin to a parking ticket. The difference in the cases may come down to a simple element: Mr. Robert may have been more convincing before the grand jury than Mr. Clarke. (A third man, David Malone, who scaled several floors on July 9 before climbing down, was also indicted. After his stunt, The Times altered the building’s facade.) “It’s a little disappointing,” said Gary A. Farrell, Mr. Clarke’s lawyer. “I guess they bought the first guy’s claim that he’s Mr. Experienced Climber. There’s something to that. He’s got a documented history of doing industrial climbs and Ray Clarke doesn’t.” Mr. Clarke has said that he had climbed other buildings including the Hearst Tower, at 56th Street and Eighth Avenue, but that he had done so unnoticed and had not been arrested. He also said he had been studying blueprints of the Times Building for two years and bought $130 climbing shoes on the day of the climb. On Tuesday, Mr. Farrell told Justice Charles H. Solomon that he would seek a plea deal in which Mr. Clarke could perform community service and have his misdemeanor conviction erased from his record. Daniel J. Castleman, the chief assistant district attorney in Manhattan, declined to comment on why the grand jury had voted differently in the cases. But he said, “We treated both cases similarly in that we presented it to the grand jury, and they voted differently in both cases, which is their prerogative.”

Clarke Renaldo
Robert Alain
Decisions and Verdicts
New York Times


Wells Fargo Swoops In

Abstract: The bold gambit that could reorder American banking began with the chirp of a cellphone in Charlotte, N.C. It was just after 9 p.m. on Thursday, and Robert K. Steel, the chief executive of the Wachovia Corporation , listened to startling news on his phone as he stepped off a plane from New York: Wells Fargo & Company was plotting to wrest his stricken bank from Citigroup . Only four days earlier, assisted by federal regulators, Mr. Steel had agreed to sell Wachovia to Citigroup for a fire-sale $1 a share. Wells Fargo had walked away, and Richard M. Kovacevich, its chairman, had called to wish Mr. Steel good luck. But now Mr. Kovacevich was on the line with a far sweeter deal, one worth about $15 billion — seven times what Citigroup was offering. The call set in motion another game of brinkmanship in a year of extraordinary Wall Street showdowns. At stake is the control of one of the nation’s largest retail banking businesses — a prize that will transform the winner into one of the few giants to emerge from the wreckage of the industry. For Wells Fargo, which is based in San Francisco, Wachovia would expand its reach across the nation. Citigroup, which is based in New York, wants the bank for its large retail operations. The battle has also drawn in federal regulators, who had pushed the teetering Wachovia into the arms of Citigroup but are now seeking to limit taxpayer exposure. The reversal might make it more difficult for the government to broker future rescues. Citigroup is weighing a lawsuit that would claim a breach of contract. The cast of characters include some of the most powerful executives in the industry: Vikram S. Pandit at Citigroup; Mr. Steel, a former confidant of Henry M. Paulson Jr. at both the Treasury and Goldman Sachs; and Mr. Kovacevich, a legendary banker and former Citigroup executive who, until now, has largely shunned the empire-building practiced by his rivals. In the wings is Warren E. Buffett, the largest shareholder of Wells Fargo, who has emerged as the go-to financier for several prominent companies that have come under siege during the credit crisis . For Mr. Steel, the latest chapter began on Thursday night with the call from Mr. Kovacevich, who told him to consider the new offer or he would go public with it on Friday morning. About 10 minutes later, Mr. Steel’s BlackBerry buzzed. It was a merger proposal from Wells Fargo, bearing the approval of that bank’s board. Wachovia executives were stunned. They had not heard from Wells for days, and had been working nonstop alongside Citigroup bankers to close the deal and discuss operational details. Mr. Steel called one of his Wall Street advisers, who was at home watching the vice presidential debate . “Fasten your seat belt,” Mr. Steel told him. At about 11:30 p.m., Mr. Steel convened an emergency meeting of Wachovia’s board, where he described the new offer and a serious potential roadblock. Accepting might involve breaking an agreement with Citigroup that appeared to block a rival bid. After two hours of debate, the board concluded that Wells Fargo’s offer was too good to pass up. Wells Fargo was offering to buy all of Wachovia, whereas Citigroup had proposed buying only part of it. Also, Wells, unlike Citigroup, was not seeking government support. And then there was the money. The board voted in favor of the offer, and, at approximately 2:15 a.m., Mr. Steel placed an awkward call to Mr. Pandit at Citigroup. The deal, he told him, was off. Fifteen minutes later, Mr. Pandit alerted his lawyers and top lieutenants and summoned them to prepare for battle. They met at the law offices of Davis Polk & Wardwell. Groggy, one Citigroup executive forgot his corporate ID card. In the early hours of Friday morning, Wachovia executives learned that Sheila C. Bair, the head of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, which had pressed for the Citigroup deal, would not stand in the way of the new agreement with Wells Fargo, as it would involve no risk to taxpayers. “Neither Chairman Bair nor any person at the F.D.I.C. in any way initiated or solicited this bid from Wells Fargo,” an F.D.I.C. spokesman said on Friday. “When asked for our views, we said that we would not object” because the agency does not have the authority. Other federal regulators said that they would not block Well Fargo’s offer while they reviewed the proposal. By Friday morning the F.D.I.C. said it stood behind the original deal with Citigroup. Bankers working on the deal were mystified by the statement, and said they had assumed the government would ultimately back a deal that did not involve public money. News of the deal reached Wall Street trading desks at 7 a.m. A few hours later, Wells Fargo went public with its offer. Citigroup, its stock sinking, quickly fired back. The Wells-Wachovia deal is “in clear breach” of an exclusivity agreement between Citigroup and Wachovia, Citigroup said. Citigroup claimed it had been irreparably harmed and demanded that Wachovia and Wells Fargo halt their proposed transaction. Mr. Kovacevich told investors in a conference call Friday morning that he was confident the deal would go through. “We think this deal is solid,” he said. When an analyst asked Mr. Steel if he could discuss whether Wachovia had a binding agreement with Citigroup, he replied with one word: No. But Mr. Buffett, in an interview on CNBC, endorsed the Wells Fargo bid on Friday afternoon, calling it superior to Citigroup’s offer. Well Fargo’s reversal came after a little-noticed move on Tuesday by the Internal Revenue Service, which restored tax breaks for banks that take big losses on bad loans inherited through acquisitions. The rule had been viewed as a impediment to bank consolidation. With Wachovia, Wells Fargo estimates that it will absorb about $74 billion in losses. The marketplace passed swift judgment on Friday. As its hold on Wachovia appeared to slip away, Citigroup stumbled in the stock market. Its shares fell nearly 18.5 percent, while shares of Wells Fargo slipped just 1.7 percent. Wachovia was the big winner. Its shares soared nearly 59 percent.

Wells Fargo & Co
Wachovia Corp
Mergers Acquisitions and Divestitures
Citigroup Incorporated
Stocks and Bonds
Subprime Mortgage Crisis


Opel Worker Representatives Deny Reports of Plant Closings in Europe

Abstract: FRANKFURT — Worker representatives at General Motors ’ Opel unit said Friday there were no negotiations about closing factories in Europe, partly contradicting reports of impending shutdowns in Britain and Germany. “Speculation that local negotiations on savings are taking place is denied,” the Opel/Vauxhall European Employee Forum said. Vauxhall is the brand name G.M. uses in Britain. In Europe, no shutdowns would be possible without prior negotiations with workers. The workers group was responding to numerous press reports that Opel’s supervisory board will meet next week to consider closing factories in Bochum, Germany, and Ellesmere Port, Britain. A spokesman for Opel in Germany, Andreas Krömer, said he could not comment on the reports of factory closings. But he said, “It’s clear that Opel must achieve sustainable profitability.” A G.M. spokesman, Klaus-Peter Martin, said, “We have not announced anything. We are not commenting on speculation or speculative stories that are out there.” Whether or not G.M. is planning to close any European factories soon, there is little doubt that painful measures lie ahead. Opel was largely responsible for a $747 million loss that G.M.’s European unit reported for 2011. All of the makers of midprice cars in Europe suffer from overcapacity, and Opel’s problems are among the most acute. Karl-Friedrich Stracke, the chief executive of Opel, said earlier this month that the company’s factories were operating at only 80 percent capacity. Surplus capacity is deadly for carmakers, because they must continue to pay for upkeep and the salaries of unproductive workers. The pressure is only likely to get worse as the European economy slips into recession. Registrations of new cars in Europe were down 8.3 percent in Europe in January and February. During the same period Opel’s market share in the European Union sank to 6.1 percent from 7 percent a year earlier. Other European brands including Renault, Fiat, Peugeot and Citroën also lost ground. With the exception of Volkswagen and Ford of Europe, the midprice carmakers have been losing share to Bayerische Motoren Werke and Daimler, which are offering smaller, lower-priced models. In addition, the Hyundai-Kia alliance has been making inroads in Europe. The statement from Opel/Vauxhall workers Friday signaled the struggle that awaits G.M. as it tries to cut costs in the face of determined worker opposition. In return for earlier concessions, Opel had agreed not to close any plants or lay off any workers until at least 2014. The workers group argued that closing plants is itself expensive and will not solve Opel’s problems. Instead, the company should stop importing some vehicles from outside Europe and try harder to develop export markets for the Opel brand. “It makes little sense to speculate on expensive plant closures,” the workers group said. “Such costly closures will make sure it will take years for the company to return to profit.” Workers complain that G.M. has put more emphasis on building sales in Europe for Chevrolet brand cars made primarily in South Korea. Chevrolet increased its market share in Europe to 1.7 percent in January and February from 1.2 percent a year earlier, according to data compiled by the European Automobile Manufacturers' Association. The worker representatives issued a demand that G.M. management “clearly reject the public speculation and agree to hold immediate constructive internal talks in order to prevent further damage to Opel/Vauxhall.” Any actions that G.M. takes in Europe to reduce capacity would be far less severe than the cutbacks it made in North America before and during its 2009 bankruptcy. G.M. eliminated tens of thousands of jobs in the United States and closed about a dozen plants. It negotiated buyout and early-retirement offers worth up to $140,000 with the United Automobile Workers union to persuade many employees to leave voluntarily. As a result, G.M. earned $7.2 billion last year in North America, by far its most profitable region, after losing more than $70 billion in North America from 2004 through 2008. Since its bankruptcy, G.M. has been increasing production as the market has rebounded, but mostly by adding jobs and shifts at existing plants. It agreed as part of last year’s union contract negotiations to reopen a plant in Tennessee that halted operations in 2009 but otherwise has resisted restarting any shuttered plants to avoid increasing its fixed costs. Nick Bunkley contributed reporting from Detroit.


Florist-Friendly Marketplaces Help Local Flower Shops Hang On

Abstract: This weekend, florists across the country will send out millions of Valentine’s Day bouquets filled with roses, carnations, tulips and other blooming symbols of love. And some will lose money on almost every single sale. The neighborhood flower store, once a retail staple, is rapidly disappearing. Nearly 40 percent of America’s floral businesses have closed since 2000, with 14,000 remaining at last count, in 2013, according to census data. The number of paid employees in the field has been cut in half. A recent market report from IBISWorld put it bluntly: “The florists industry has entered the declining stage of its life cycle.” The recession and shoppers’ changing preferences have played a role: Fresh flowers are a luxury that tends to get scrapped when money is tight. But florists say one of their biggest challenges is a behind-the-scenes margin fight that plays out every time a buyer goes online to arrange a flower delivery. If a shopper goes directly to a florist’s website, the store keeps most of the revenue from the sale. That calculation changes radically if buyers go through national merchants like 1-800-Flowers and FTD.com, or if they search for local sellers on Google and click the resulting ads, which are often placed by virtual companies with no inventory of their own. In all those cases, a big chunk of the transaction is captured by middlemen. That leaves the bricks-and-mortar merchants, to whom the orders are passed for fulfillment, typically collecting 70 percent or less of the sale price, fueling a sort of love-hate relationship with online merchants. While they can increase business for a florist, that business can come at a high price. “It’s break-even at best on the vast majority,” Bonnie Bank, the controller of Superior Florist , an 86-year-old flower shop in Manhattan, said of the orders placed with her shop by outside sellers. “The higher-dollar ones, maybe you can make a small margin.” The dilemma has also created an opening for new entrants into the online market — like BloomNation , a start-up in Santa Monica, Calif., that bills itself as an Etsy for flowers, and GotFlowers , created by a software developer who is also based in California. The industry’s current financial structure has its roots in a century-old practice. In 1910, a group of 15 American florists formed a cooperative, the Florists’ Telegraph Delivery service, to exchange orders. A customer in Denver would, for example, be able to walk into a local flower shop and arrange a delivery to a friend in Boston. The originating florist transmitted the order through the florists’ wire service and received a commission for the effort; the rest of the money was passed on to the fulfilling merchant. Two changes upended that genteel arrangement. First, technology made it easier for customers to shop with national retailers offering a standardized product catalog, a trend that the Internet rapidly accelerated. And around the same time, the wire services began competing more directly with their merchants to capture incoming sales. In 1994, the members of FTD, which had by then been renamed Florists’ Transworld Delivery, privatized their co-op and sold it to an investment fund for $150 million . In a typical wire service transaction today, the originating merchant receives 20 percent of the sale price, and the wire service — FTD, 1-800-Flowers and Teleflora are the industry’s big three — keeps 7 percent. If an order comes in directly through a wire’s website, the service keeps the full 27 percent. Amplifying the problem for merchants is the rise of “order gatherers” that create elaborate virtual storefronts and advertise extensively on search engines. Their aim is to capture the 20 percent commission, plus service and delivery fees. The flower shops that receive those orders through their wire services say they are stuck with low-price, low-margin orders, and consumer websites are filled with scathing reviews from customers complaining about how little the delivered flowers look like the photos they saw. “It’s really deceptive,” said Mike Fiannaca, the president of Sparks Florist in Nevada, who created a YouTube video that demonstrates how order gatherers use his store’s name in their ad links. “We want to give all our customers the best possible value, and the experience with these sites is often terrible.” Irked by misleading orders and the wire services’ fees, Rhoda Paurus, the owner of St. Cloud Floral in Minnesota, is considering dropping both of her services, FTD and Teleflora. She took the first step toward separation in May, when she switched her website’s e-commerce system from Teleflora’s to one run by BloomNation. BloomNation charges a flat 10 percent fee on the orders it processes, and it does not have a standardized product catalog. Merchants take and post photos of their own arrangements. Image Work orders are pasted on the wall in St. Cloud Floral in St. Cloud, Minn. Credit Jenn Ackerman for The New York Times That part particularly delights Ms. Paurus, who changes her photos daily. “If we get a double shipment of roses, within a few minutes, we can have a rose special on our website,” she said. BloomNation’s executives say 1,500 shops are using their marketplace. Farbod Shoraka, one of the founders, began working on the concept five years ago after hearing from his aunt, a florist, about her business’s many pain points. “The consumer was frustrated, the business owner was frustrated, and the middleman was making all the money,” Mr. Shoraka said. “It was a very clearly broken model, from a business standpoint.” So why do florists stick with it? Some of them say they value the sales volume that the wire services bring in and have found ways to make the orders profitable. Others point to the industry’s reliance on the vendors it has worked with for decades. “A lot of florists still rely on the wire services to send their outgoing orders, including many florists we have worked with for years and years,” Ms. Bank said. “Although we try to talk them into paying us directly, many are resistant. That’s why we will likely continue with Teleflora, to maintain those relationships.” The wire services say they play a vital role in marketing florists’ goods. “I truly believe, in my heart of hearts, that if it weren’t for people and organizations like ours, there would be no retail flower shops left,” said Mark Nance, president of the 1-800-Flowers wire service BloomNet . “The retail shop can’t compete on a worldwide scale. We’re doing everything we can for those shops so they won’t be displaced by something like Amazon.” FTD noted that many florists gain new local customers from orders originated by FTD, and Teleflora said its fees were “in line with the standards needed to successfully promote consumer awareness and orders in a competitive marketplace.” Chris Drummond, a third-generation florist and the president of Plaza Flowers in Philadelphia and Norristown, Pa., agrees with that view. He advertises aggressively through a variety of channels, including online campaigns, search engine ads, direct mail, fliers and promotional deliveries to potential business clients. “We run analytics to quantify what it costs to acquire an order,” he said. “My cost across all of the platforms usually ranges from 24 to 30 percent. In the end, no matter what I use, I have to figure out how to make money on about 73 percent of the sale.” But as their industry shrinks, some flower shop owners are stepping up their efforts to change the way it operates. Real Local Florists , an advocacy group, began working several years ago with Sundaram Natarajan, a software developer,on an e-commerce system for florists’ websites that would offer a less expensive alternative to the wire services’ systems. Mr. Natarajan’s software, GotFlowers, is now used by 50 shops nationwide. Recently the group requested a new feature, now in development, and it is one that sounds rather familiar. “We had the idea that we wanted to create our own florist-to-florist network,” said Mr. Fiannaca, one of the group’s founders. “I can send an order to a member florist, and his or her products would populate on my web page.” So a century later, Real Local Florists is essentially working to recreate the kind of co-op that FTD pioneered. When asked about the similarity, Mr. Fiannaca laughed. “It’s a good model,” he said. “It just has to be one that helps keep local florists in business.”

Flowers and Plants
Florists
E Commerce
Valentine's Day
Retail
1-800-Flowerscom
FTD Group
Teleflora
BloomNation
GotFlowers


Virgin Mobile Wants to Be a Friendlier Cellphone Brand

Abstract: DECLARATIONS of love for cellphone companies are few and far between. Dropped calls, rising prices, spotty service and strict contracts make many customers want to throw their hands — and their phones — in the air. Virgin Mobile is hoping to tackle that antipathy head-on with an advertising campaign that starts this week. Allon Tatarka, a creative director at Mother New York, the agency that created the campaign, said many people’s relationships with carriers ranged from lukewarm to vitriolic. “You either don’t care or you hate them,” Mr. Tatarka said. “We’re trying to inject love into that relationship.” Virgin Mobile isn’t a full cellphone company. Instead it’s a brand that offers prepaid cellphones through Sprint in the United States. It hopes to solidify its position with its target market, 18- to 24-year-olds, with a campaign that includes a heavy dose of youth marketing strategies from social media sites like Pinterest and Facebook, as well as mobile applications. Ron Faris, the head of brand marketing for Virgin Mobile USA, said the campaign would “tap into the Zuckerberg in all of us,” a reference to Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook. Banner ads will run on sites like YouTube, Gawker, Buzzfeed and Pandora and television ads will be broadcast on ABC, NBC and Fox during shows like “Modern Family,” “Jimmy Kimmel Live” and “America’s Next Top Model.” “We’re going to change the relationship you have with your cellphone company,” Richard Branson, the founder of the Virgin Group, says in an online video manifesto for the campaign. “We answer to a higher calling,” he adds, underscoring the tagline for the entire campaign.  Mr. Branson is the central character in the campaign’s television ad. “Long before Richard Branson created airlines and spaceships, he envisioned Virgin Mobile,” says the narrator in the ad, which shows Mr. Branson growing up in 1960s London. Robert Passikoff, the president of Brand Keys in New York, a brand and customer-loyalty consulting company, played down Mr. Branson’s celebrity role and said cellphone shoppers were looking for brand reputation, technological leadership and connectivity. The campaign is also emphasizing Virgin’s data services. “Everything has been commoditized to price,” Mr. Faris said. Those in the target audience “don’t need thousands of minutes, they need a ton of data,” he said. After AT&T announced it would no longer offer users unlimited data, the timing could be opportune for Virgin to highlight its $35-a-month unlimited data plan. “Voice talk just isn’t the norm anymore,” said Craig Moffett, an analyst with Sanford C. Bernstein. “This is the Facebook generation that cut its teeth on posting updates to a Web site as a way of communicating.” Creating content for those cellphones is also a big part of the campaign. Virgin worked with Buzzfeed to create content published via social media sites like Tumblr, Facebook and Pinterest and the newly revamped VirginMobileLive.com . “It’s a decision we’re making to move closer to newsroom marketing.” Mr. Faris said. “We want to be a voice where pop culture meets technology.” To hone their editorial skills, Virgin Mobile employees will be trained by the creative services team at Buzzfeed in how to spot news and create content for the sites. “Brands have not yet figured out how to do real-time advertising or real-time content,” said Jonah Peretti, founder and chief executive of Buzzfeed. “They tend to do things with huge lead time.” Spotting and publishing an item about the latest cat video craze or celebrity gossip needs to happen quickly. “It’s not how to make branded content for advertising, it’s showing them how to make really interesting engaging content for their audience,” Mr. Peretti said. Virgin Mobile will also feature weekly profiles of apps to help developers gain exposure. The company will reveal its first app profile at the South by Southwest conference on Friday. A network of 25 technology bloggers, called the VM 25, will help the company promote its contests and other announcements. “We want to be a more hyperaddicted version of your friend on Facebook who you share stuff with,” Mr. Faris said.  Virgin Mobile is not alone in this prepaid market. Companies like MetroPCS have similar offerings for voice and data plans. But Virgin Mobile’s biggest rival is T-Mobile, Mr. Passikoff said. “Basically it’s Sprint going after T-Mobile,” he said. (Virgin Mobile is owned by Sprint in the United States.) Virgin Mobile has not been shy about its disdain for its rival. Carly, the T-Mobile spokeswoman who wears a pink dress while standing against a stark white background, was once a play on ads for Apple’s Mac. Now, in a Virgin Mobile ad, she is parodied as being devoid of cool and is denied entry to a nightclub because of her pink dress. Virgin Mobile did not share the cost of the campaign, only to say the company tended “to spend somewhere between 3 percent and 5 percent of what our competitors spend on paid media.” According to data from Kantar Media, part of WPP, Virgin Mobile spent $20.1 million on advertising from January to September 2010 and $47.4 million for the same period in 2011. T-Mobile spent $425.1 million on advertising from January to September 2011 and MetroPCS spent $85.2 million in the same period.

Virgin Mobile
Cellular Telephones
Advertising and Marketing
Smartphones


ISIS Close to Recapturing Palmyra From Syrian Forces

Abstract: BEIRUT, Lebanon — Islamic State fighters appeared close to retaking Palmyra, Syria, on Saturday, just nine months after Syrian government forces drove them from the desert city, where they had terrorized residents and blown up irreplaceable ancient monuments. Residents said Islamic State militants were battling soldiers in the city’s center, after retaking outlying oil fields and nearly encircling the city over the past week as the government and its allies were focused on a pivotal battle in Aleppo, further north. Losing Palmyra for a second time would be a major symbolic and military blow for the Syrian government, which touted its reconquest of the city in March, after 10 months of Islamic State rule. Russia, the government’s main ally, which had helped with air support and advisers, flew an orchestra to play a victory concert in Palmyra’s ancient amphitheater that month. The Russians also established a small base in the city, but residents said all Russian troops had pulled out in recent days as the militants approached. The setback in Palmyra comes as the government has been scoring its most important victories in years in Aleppo, once Syria’s largest city. The army and allied militias there have retaken most of the eastern half of the city. East Aleppo has been held for four years by rebels opposed to President Bashar al-Assad. Another battle, also unfolding on Saturday, may further complicate the government’s war strategy. A rebel coalition backed by Turkey made advances against the Islamic State, also known as ISIS or ISIL, in the city of Al Bab in northern Aleppo Province, an area that the Syrian government hoped to conquer from the group. Residents were in a state of fear and anxiety, according to activists from the Local Coordination Committee of Palmyra, a group that opposes both Mr. Assad’s government and the Islamic State’s self-described caliphate. The activist group said that residents were being abandoned by government forces, which had withdrawn from several areas. The events echoed those of spring 2015, when most government forces left the area, leaving residents and a few junior soldiers at the hands of the Islamic State. Many of those who remained were executed . On Saturday, pro-government social media accounts reported that Russian advisers and other “allies” — possibly including militiamen from Iraq and the Lebanese group Hezbollah — had abandoned Palmyra as the Islamic State approached, leaving Syrian government troops to fend for themselves. Hezbollah played a major role in the battle to take back Palmyra nine months ago, a victory it sought to publicize in order to show that it, too, was battling terrorism and saving the ancient ruins from further destruction. On Thursday, 34 Syrian soldiers were reported killed in an Islamic State bombing at a location on the outskirts of Palmyra known as the Qatari castle. The Islamic State’s advance came as state news media broadcast statements about the government’s victory in East Aleppo. State television has painted a rosy picture, suggesting that reconstruction work in Aleppo could soon begin and some of the five million refugees outside Syria could start returning home. Mr. Assad, however, called the Aleppo siege a major victory, but said it would not end the war.

ISIS,ISIL,Islamic State
Palmyra Syria
Syria
Terrorism