3 Hillary Clinton Emails Deemed ‘Secret’ in State Dept. Review of 6,300 Pages

Abstract: WASHINGTON — Three emails sent to Hillary Rodham Clinton in 2011 when she was secretary of state contained information that should have been considered “secret,” the government’s second-highest classification, according to a State Department review of about 6,300 pages of her emails made public on Wednesday. In one case, officials have deemed the email secret because aides to Mrs. Clinton attached a document containing the minutes of secret negotiations in 2008 between Israelis and Palestinians that had been posted online by the Al Jazeera television network. In another instance, two emails sent to Mrs. Clinton contained summaries of confidential discussions among officials of six world powers about Iran’s nuclear program . The emails, sent by Jake Sullivan, one of Mrs. Clinton’s top advisers at the State Department, have now been marked secret by the department. The heavily redacted emails were posted online by the State Department, the latest in a series of monthly disclosures ordered by a court after revelations that Mrs. Clinton had used a private email system when she was secretary of state. Among the emails released Wednesday were five that appear to be attempts by hackers to penetrate Mrs. Clinton’s email system. The messages appear to be notices of speeding tickets from the New York State Department of Motor Vehicles. But the emails are well known as phishing attempts by hackers in Russia. It is not clear whether Mrs. Clinton clicked on the malware-infected messages. By itself, the spam directed at Mrs. Clinton’s email does not indicate that her server was infected, or that the Russian hackers suspected of originating the phishing campaign had access to her network. But it does raise questions, because the State Department itself has been subjected to relentless attacks from Russian cyberespionage experts. The emails could have been randomly generated, rather than directed at her. But because her email address was not widely known, the attempt to lure her to respond to a fake email probably passed through someone who knew her well enough to have the address, and to be an unknowing conduit for the infected email. Investigators who now have the server will look for malware or spyware, but malicious code found on State Department servers last year was complex, so there is no assurance that there would be evidence of any attack on Mrs. Clinton’s server. “As we have said before, there is no evidence that the system was ever breached,” said Nick Merrill, a spokesman for Mrs. Clinton. “All these emails show is that, like millions of other Americans, she received spam.” The latest batch of emails also includes quirky exchanges between Mrs. Clinton and her aides on topics as varied as Mrs. Clinton’s difficulty adjusting the volume on her phone and her frustrations with a White House operator who did not believe she was really the secretary of state. As a presidential candidate, Mrs. Clinton has repeatedly had to answer questions about the private server she used for the emails she sent and received. It is against the law to possess classified electronic material outside a secured government network. Dozens of emails Mrs. Clinton sent and received were not classified at the time they were sent, but have now been made “confidential.” One other email, made public in May, has been reclassified as secret. The inspector general for the intelligence community said in August that two other emails were “top secret,” although the State Department has contested that classification. A spokesman for Mrs. Clinton’s campaign did not respond to a request for comment on the emails released Wednesday. All three of the “secret” emails released by the State Department were almost completely redacted before they were posted online. More Hillary Clinton Emails Released by the State Department The State Department released another batch of emails on Wednesday from Hillary Rodham Clinton’s private server that she used while she was secretary of state. Of the 6,300 pages that were made public, three emails should have been considered “secret,” the government’s second-highest classification, according to a State Department review. The “secret” email containing the 2008 Israeli-Palestinian document noted only the attendees at the meeting in Jerusalem on June 15, 2008. They included Condoleezza Rice, then the secretary of state, and several officials from Israel and the Palestinian Authority. That document remained available on Al Jazeera’s website. The two emails about the Iran nuclear program were sent by Mr. Sullivan in January 2011 and appear to include a summary of talks conducted by the “P5+1,” the permanent members of the United Nations Security Council and Germany. The subject line was “FW: Summary of Day One of Istanbul P5+1 talks.” State Department officials appear to have concluded that those details about conversations among foreign officials should have been classified as secret at the time they were sent. Many of the other emails released on Wednesday provided a window into the day-to-day communications of Mrs. Clinton’s State Department. In one email in February 2010, Mrs. Clinton complained to Huma Abedin, a top aide, of troubles trying to place a telephone call. “Right now I’m fighting w the WH operator who doesn’t believe I am who I say and wants my direct office line even tho I’m not there,” Mrs. Clinton wrote. Other emails suggest the secretary of state’s lack of technological prowess. In one, Mrs. Clinton tells Ms. Abedin that she cannot turn on her phone’s ringer. “Monica will come turn ringer on,” Ms. Abedin replied. “Any that u want us to set up, let me know.” Many of the emails to Mrs. Clinton offer fawning compliments from friends, family or staff members. But in at least one, praise came from an unexpected source: Anita McBride, who was chief of staff to Laura Bush, the former first lady. “We are so fortunate she is where she is. I know it’s so damn hard,” Ms. McBride wrote to one of Mrs. Clinton’s aides. “I’ll pray for her.” In one email, Mrs. Clinton demanded to know who “made the decision that State will not use the terms ‘mother and father’ and instead substitute ‘parent one and two.’ ” Mrs. Clinton wrote that someone should “address this today” to avoid “a huge Fox-generated media storm led by Palin et al.” “I’m not defending that decision, which I disagree w and knew nothing about, in front of this Congress,” she added. Mrs. Clinton’s emails also show her private frustration over her interactions with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel as she pressed his government in early 2010 to make concessions the United States believed were critical to move toward a peace settlement. “FYI. Israelis spinning up a storm, starting with plane briefing on the way over,” an aide to Mrs. Clinton wrote to her, noting that one reporter at the briefing said the Israelis “sounded a bit cocky.” “They always sound cocky — in the air or on the ground,” Mrs. Clinton wrote back, to Mr. Sullivan.

Hillary Clinton
State Department
Email
2016 Presidential Election


For Romney and Ryan, It’s Hardball and Softball

Abstract: PAINESVILLE, Ohio — One of the advantages of the partnership between Mitt Romney and Paul D. Ryan is their ability to offer varied messages on the campaign trail — unusually varied, as shown on Friday. The running mates punched a list of campaign goals — rallying the conservative base, turning up the heat on President Obama and reaching out to women watching morning television — when each day counting down to Nov. 6 matters. While Mr. Ryan played the hammer of Thor, pounding President Obama in unusually caustic terms, Mr. Romney allowed a lighthearted, humanizing glimpse of himself in an interview for ABC’s “Live!” morning show. Mr. Romney and his wife, Ann, proved themselves adept consumers of pop culture, disclosing that “Modern Family” is their favorite television show and that Mr. Romney prefers Snooki (of “Jersey Shore”) to Honey Boo Boo (of the reality TV show). Asked if they kept up with the Kardashians, Mrs. Romney replied: “Who keeps up with the Kardashians? Who can keep up with the Kardashians?” The interview, to be broadcast Tuesday, was booked before the explosion of anti-American violence in the Middle East, and while Mr. Romney has addressed that and other weighty topics in recent days, he threw himself into the interview with the morning hosts Kelly Ripa and Michael Strahan. Later on Friday, Mr. Romney somberly asked for a moment of silence for the four American diplomats killed in Libya, delaying his stump speech while the bodies were honored at Joint Base Andrews in Maryland. Meanwhile, Mr. Ryan was the iron fist inside Mr. Romney’s velvet glove. He spoke to a very different audience from the expected viewers of “Live!” — social conservatives gathered in Washington for the Values Voter Summit sponsored by the Family Research Council, which opposes abortion and gay marriage. Mr. Ryan nodded to both those issues, but his main thrust was to dial up the attacks against President Obama, accusing the president of using “straw-man arguments” because he has no record on which to run. “Lately he’s been trying out a new tactic,” Mr. Ryan said. “It’s a classic Barack Obama straw man: If anyone dares to point out the facts of his record, why then, they’re just being negative and pessimistic about the country. The new straw man is people hoping for the decline of America.” “It’s pretty sad, but this is the closest President Obama can come these days to sounding positive himself,” he added. If the intent was to sharpen the contrast between the two presidential campaigns and motivate part of the conservative base at a time when new polls show Mr. Obama gaining a slight advantage, Mr. Ryan may have succeeded. He was frequently cheered. In response, the Obama campaign criticized Mr. Ryan’s tone as much as his substance. “Today, speaking at a values summit, he unleashed a series of over-the-top, dishonest attacks against the president that once again reminded voters that he’s just not ready for prime time,” said Danny Kanner, an Obama campaign spokesman. “In the not too distant past, Mitt Romney and Congressman Ryan said they wanted a serious debate on substantive issues. We’re still waiting.” The Romneys were unusually playful in their joint interview, part of an effort to humanize Mr. Romney that began at the Republican National Convention and included an intimate portrait of the couple at their New Hampshire lake house filmed for CBS News’s “60 Minutes.” When Mr. Strahan asked Mr. Romney what he wears to bed, the former governor of Massachusetts asked: “Really? Really?” before saying: “I hear the best answer is as little as possible.” Asked for an embarrassing story, Mrs. Romney delighted the audience with a tale about the time she and Anita Perry, the wife of Gov. Rick Perry of Texas, were wandering around the White House and stumbled on President George W. Bush getting a massage. “He was covered up, but I was so embarrassed that the next time I did see him I didn’t know what I was going to say to him,” she recalled. “We were going down the elevator from the White House, going to an event together, and I walked up to the elevator and am just like blushing, blushing, blushing, and he looks at me and he winks as he does and says, ‘I look pretty good, don’t I?’ ”

Obama Barack
Romney Mitt
Ryan Paul D Jr
Presidential Election of 2012


Inflation Robs Russians of Buying Power

Abstract: RAMENSKOYE, Russia — A basic barometer of economic activity in this tidy town south of Moscow is the pirozhok, a small pie filled with cabbage and meat that is a staple of the Russian diet. In good times they sell briskly, snapped up by hungry commuters at Arina’s Hangout, a tiny shop near the train station. But sales are down by almost half, a gloomy reflection of Russia ’s economic slump. “There were just physically fewer people,” said Irina A. Safonova, the owner of the shop, which on a recent weekday was serving pies to a slow trickle of customers. “We used to have lines. Now look at it.” Russians are experiencing the first sustained decline in living standards in the 15 years since President Vladimir V. Putin came to power. The ruble has fallen by half against the dollar, driven by the plunging price of oil, the lifeblood of Russia’s economy. As a result, prices of imported goods have shot up, making tea, instant coffee, children’s clothes and back-to-school backpacks suddenly, jarringly expensive. Making matters worse are the retaliatory bans that Russia placed on food imports after the United States and the European Union imposed sanctions for its actions in Ukraine, a policy that took a turn for the weird this month when the government destroyed thousands of tons of what it said were illegally imported foodstuffs including cheese and peaches. The reduced supply means that what remains costs more, even if it is locally produced. Russians are paying a third more for sunflower oil, a fifth more for yogurt and three-quarters more for carrots compared with a year ago, according to government statistics. (The Western sanctions have driven up the cost of borrowing for Russian companies, but they have not had a direct role in the inflation that is raiding Russian pocketbooks.) Inflation has reduced the purchasing power of Russian wages by more than 8 percent in the second quarter, compared with the same period last year, according to figures published by Russia’s Central Bank at the end of July. And in a sign that the worst is far from over, the economy contracted by a steep 4.6 percent in the second quarter, compared with last year, and officially entered its first recession since 2009. “It’s horrible,” said Elena Shcherbakova, a 47-year-old shoe saleswoman whose income, based in part on commissions, has fallen nearly a third since last year. She says she now shops at discount supermarkets, buys the cheapest kind of sausage and carefully counts containers of yogurt instead of throwing them into her cart by the handful the way she used to. It is not clear what, if anything, this means for Mr. Putin. The trouble pales in comparison with the turbulent 1990s, when people’s wages went down by nearly half. Russians have an immense capacity for stoicism, and ubiquitous home gardens make budgets more flexible. Mr. Putin’s popularity ratings have remained high since last year’s annexation of Crimea, which was wildly popular among Russians. Still, the math is proving tricky. In a new draft budget released in July , the Ministry of Finance proposed halting the practice of raising pensions to keep up with inflation, a politically controversial move that would deliver a blow to Mr. Putin’s most loyal base. Investment, food for a hungry economy, has collapsed since the Western sanctions, which also blocked Russia’s ability to borrow on global markets. “They have no way out,” said Sergei Guriev, a professor of economics at Sciences Po in Paris. “Unless oil prices go up, they are really looking at a dead end.” Without further spending cuts and if oil prices remain around current levels, the government will use up its reserve fund, created when the price of oil was high, in about a year, he added. Mr. Putin’s opponents argue that the nationalist talk washing over Russia is being projected by his government to distract attention from the fragile economic situation. They describe it as a battle in every Russian home between the television (the source of government propaganda) and the refrigerator (whose shrinking contents could eventually prompt discontent). In Moscow, some in the educated upper classes agree. “All that Ukrainian noise covers up our internal problems,” said Maria Novychkova, a manager in a textile company who was walking a foot scooter in a park last month. Her company has put employees on four-day workweeks. She cannot afford to vacation abroad because of the weak ruble. “He says we are an ideal country, but we are not,” she said, referring to Mr. Putin. The crisis in Ramenskoye is like a car crash in slow motion, gradual but destructive. The town has tried to modernize in recent years, with an airport for private jets and a PepsiCo juice factory. It is also a bedroom community for Moscow. Commuters are Arina’s main customers. Ms. Safonova, the owner of the pie shop, first noticed a drop in business last fall. There were fewer commuters, and those who remained spent less freely. Once-packed minibuses emptied out. The checkout clerks at the nearby Kopeika supermarket had their wages cut. Then in March, PepsiCo announced that the juice factory in town was closing, citing the bad economy. Prices began jumping. Nescafé went to 389 rubles, about $5.96, from 220 rubles. Ahmad Tea jumped to 319 rubles from 191. Ms. Safonova knew about the sanctions, and that the falling ruble made imports more expensive, but sometimes the logic eluded her. A spike in the price of mushrooms this spring was particularly puzzling. “I said, ‘Why, why?’ These are grown near Moscow, right here, not in Europe!” By summer, the pie shop’s sales had dropped by nearly half, and Ms. Safonova had to lay off four of her eight employees. She now works 18-hour days to compensate. She gave up her big kitchen and now mixes dough five times a day instead of 10. Across Russia, the crisis has prompted a collapse in consumption. International airline travel has fallen almost a fifth since last year, and car sales are down 36 percent in the first half of this year. The production of train cars fell by a third, said Natalia Zubarevich, a researcher at the Higher School of Economics, because fewer goods needed to be transported. In another measure of economic distress, household ruble debt in arrears is up 43 percent since last July , according to the Central Bank. “The cost of the crisis is being borne by everyone, spread around like butter on bread,” said Vladimir Gimpelson, the director of the Center for Labor Market Studies at the Higher School of Economics. As business shrivels across the country, Moscow remains an economic beacon. Alexandra Vasilieva, the cashier at Arina’s Hangout, is from the province of Smolensk in western Russia, where work had dried up so completely that her husband, a window installer, was making just a small fraction of his previous salary. So they came to Ramenskoye and now he commutes more than two hours each way to Moscow for mediocre money. Her son, an auto service worker in Smolensk, lost almost a third of his salary because fewer cars were being brought in for repairs and servicing. “In the provinces, the wages are too small to live on,” she said. Her monthly salary in Ramenskoye — 20,000 rubles — is sinking in value, worth just $305, down from $416 in May. As for Crimea, if she thinks about it at all, it is through the lens of economics. “I’m sick of Crimea,” Ms. Vasilieva said. “I’m sad for people,” she said, referring to Ukrainian refugees, “but why are they getting all this government assistance?” Further pinching Russians’ pocketbooks are trims the government is making to benefits doled out when times were flush. Pensioners in the Moscow region can no longer ride free on the Moscow Metro, a change that affects more than a million people in one of the most densely populated regions in the country. Apartment owners across Russia must now pay a repairs fee every month, which has prompted protests in some regions. Lyudmila, 68, a retired accountant who declined to give her surname, said it was no longer worth it for her husband, an artist who works as a designer on housing projects, to commute into the city to supplement his pension — $153 a month. “If all you have is a pension, you can’t afford to buy shoes,” she said, sitting on a park bench next to her grandson, who was eating a tall white puff of cotton candy. Still, the discontent seems to bypass Mr. Putin. “Honestly, we are so proud he is our president,” said Vyacheslav, 75, a retired factory manager, who also refused to give his surname, as he steered a mostly empty grocery cart through a Kopeika supermarket here last week. “Thanks to him, we have all of this,” he said, gesturing toward a glass display case of beet and potato salads, fried eggplant and pieces of chicken. Then he called his wife to tell her that they were out of the cheapest hot dogs.

Russia
Ruble
Inflation
Vladimir Putin
Economy
Embargoes Sanctions
Jobs
International trade


Narrow Victory for Obama in the Caucuses in Guam

Abstract: Senator Barack Obama appeared to win the Democratic caucuses in Guam on Saturday, defeating Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton by seven votes. When hand-counting finished shortly before 9 a.m. Sunday, delegates pledged to Mr. Obama, of Illinois, had received 2,264 votes, compared with Mrs. Clinton’s slate, which had received 2,257, according to The Associated Press. Turnout at the caucuses was about three times greater than it had been in previous years. Party officials said many people had registered as Democrats at the caucus sites, prompting the nickname “Democrat for a Day.” Although Guamanians are United States citizens, they do not have a vote in the general presidential election. Guam sends eight delegates — with half a vote each, awarded proportionally — to the Democratic National Convention . Because of the closeness of the vote, the outcome in Guam is unlikely to have an impact on the delegate margin. However, the caucuses also determined two of Guam’s five superdelegates. Pilar Lujan, who is uncommitted, won the race for party chairwoman, and Jaime Paulino, who supports Mr. Obama, was elected vice chairman. Two of the island’s other established superdelegates are on record as supporting Mrs. Clinton, of New York. Guam’s caucuses took on added significance this year as the Democrats are locked in a delegate-by-delegate battle. Mr. Obama’s campaign opened an office in Hagatna, the capital, and the two candidates granted interviews to local media. Mrs. Clinton called for giving Guamanians the right to vote for president, while Mr. Obama, who spent part of his youth in Hawaii, stressed his ties to the Pacific Islands.

Presidential Election of 2008
Guam
Obama Barack
Clinton Hillary Rodham
Democratic Party


The Start of a Crisis, Through the Lens of Avis

Abstract: Timothy Geithner , Ben Bernanke and President Obama have been trying to persuade us that the latest financial rescue plan is meant to help us, not Wall Street. The goal, as Mr. Geithner said Monday, is to fix the markets for “small-business lending, large-business borrowing, consumer borrowing, auto finance, student loans , et cetera.” But here’s a question: Do you know many people who want a loan and can’t get one? Probably not. After all, the number of homeowners refinancing their mortgages has tripled over the last few months. The salesmen at my local Toyota dealership tell me that getting a car loan is not a problem. No large company has failed to meet its weekly payroll, as Mr. Obama warned last year might happen. Indeed, if you try to come up with a single prominent victim of the credit squeeze on Main Street — as opposed to victims of the recession — you will have a hard time. This creates a big political problem for the Obama administration and the Federal Reserve . Policy makers are deeply worried that public opinion will eventually cause Congress to abandon the rescue plan. That’s why they keep trying to connect the financial crisis to the day-to-day economy. But their examples tend to be hypothetical — hypothetical businesses that can’t expand or hypothetical families who can’t borrow. Meanwhile, Wall Street is benefiting from the bailout in concrete ways. A.I.G. traders receive bonuses. Money managers like BlackRock will receive subsidies in the latest bailout. As a banner on CNN put it on Monday afternoon, “Bankers Get Billions.” So over the last few weeks, I’ve set out to figure out just how the financial crisis is — and is not — affecting Main Street. There is no doubt that the economy is in terrible shape. The overall volume of loans is, in fact, falling. But is that because banks won’t lend? Or because businesses and families don’t want to borrow? “You can bring the horse to water, but they may not drink,” the bond investor Bill Gross recently told The Wall Street Journal , referring to the government’s efforts to increase lending. Today, I’m going to focus on one industry: the car rental business. It is a simple enough business, and it seems to be suffering from the credit squeeze. This month, Hertz , Enterprise and the Avis Budget Group successfully lobbied the Treasury Department to be eligible for loans from the bailout fund. Yet the picture isn’t a simple one. The worst problem facing the car rental business, at least for now, is not a lack of credit. And you can say the same thing about the broader economy, which helps clarify the precise task that’s facing the White House and the Fed. The car rental industry’s original sin isn’t so different from the economy’s. It took on too much debt. The old Cendant Corporation loaded up Avis with debt before spinning it off as a separate company in 2005. Three private equity firms, including the Carlyle Group and a Merrill Lynch division, did something similar to Hertz the next year. The firms bought Hertz from the Ford Motor Company , piled on debt (largely to pay themselves $1 billion in deal fees — lovely, eh?) and then took the company public. These debts mean that the companies cannot take out the low-interest loans that a healthier company can. Instead, they must turn to the asset-backed securities market, where loans are split into little pieces and investors with an appetite for risk buy them. Avis and Hertz then get the money they need to buy cars for their fleets, in exchange for paying interest to the investors. The mortgage market relied on the same trick, of course, and now that so many mortgage-backed securities have gone bust, the market for other asset-backed securities is moribund. Investors have lost their appetite for risk. Late last year, when Avis tried to renew a $1.35 billion credit line, it ran into trouble. It eventually managed to get the loan, but only at a steep interest rate. The interest on the full credit line will cost $40 million a year more than the interest on the old credit line. For comparison, Avis’s entire cash earnings last year were only $169 million. Even so, Ron Nelson, the company’s chief executive, recently said that the mere fact that it was able to renew the loan was “our most critical accomplishment” in the fourth quarter. Without loans, the rental companies can’t buy cars, and without cars, they don’t have much of a business. But here’s where the story gets complicated. Hertz has plenty of available cash, because none of its credit lines have come due recently. Enterprise, which is in better financial shape, hasn’t been squeezed either. Yet both companies are sharply cutting their vehicle purchases. Overall industry purchases are down 63 percent relative to early last year, and all three companies have also laid off workers. Why? Because the economy is in terrible shape. Fewer people are traveling and renting cars. The companies already own too many cars, thanks to the sweetheart deals that Detroit offered in recent years to clear out its bloated inventory. “From our standpoint, there is no liquidity crisis,” says Patrick Farrell, an Enterprise vice president. “We’re buying fewer cars because we need fewer cars.” All this makes for a wonderful microcosm. The rental car business has been hurt by the credit squeeze. But it has bigger problems. And the company most affected by the squeeze, Avis, isn’t eager to talk in detail about it, presumably out of fear that more attention will further spook lenders. The same dynamic is at work with small businesses. Many are struggling to get financing but are afraid to be identified publicly as a spurned borrower. Instead, they are quietly cobbling together loans any way they can and hoping the squeeze eases soon. If it doesn’t, they — and a whole lot of other businesses — will be in trouble. Hertz has a credit line of about $2 billion coming due next year. Avis has more than $4 billion expiring over the next four years. At the current high interest rates, the costs would be crushing. So it’s true that the credit crunch, for most households and businesses, isn’t yet a crisis. But that’s partly because of the steps the government has already taken, and without more progress, the crunch will become a crisis. The bailout, therefore, needs to continue. Mr. Geithner’s new plan is meant to rid banks of those toxic securities and make bankers confident enough to lend more. Even if the plan works, the government may still need to take over the weakest banks. Mr. Geithner’s request on Tuesday for new powers seemed to be laying the groundwork for such takeovers. But no bailout can fix the economy by itself. In coming days, Congress will be debating the federal budget , and some members are threatening to reduce spending for next year in ways that would undercut the stimulus bill. At the G-20 summit meeting next week, meanwhile, European leaders have signaled that they will resist calls from the Americans and Chinese to get serious about their own stimulus programs. The moral of the car rental story is that this isn’t the time for thrift. If people aren’t renting cars, Avis, Hertz and Enterprise won’t buy cars. And if the global economy doesn’t get some more help, the various bailouts won’t be able to end the recession on their own.

Subprime Mortgage Crisis,2008 Financial Crisis


Fossella Admits He Had an Extramarital Affair

Abstract: Representative Vito J. Fossella, the Staten Island Republican who was arrested on drunken-driving charges in Virginia last week, acknowledged on Thursday that he had fathered a daughter, now 3, in an extramarital affair. But he declined to address questions about his political future. Mr. Fossella, who has three children with his wife on Staten Island, issued a terse statement that said nothing about the events leading to his arrest, which occurred hours after he attended a White House reception celebrating the New York Giants’ victory in the Super Bowl. “My personal failings and imperfections have caused enormous pain to the people I love,” he said in the statement, “and I am truly sorry.” The five-term congressman identified the woman with whom he had the affair as Laura Fay. She is a retired Air Force lieutenant colonel whom he apparently called after he was taken into custody early May 1, saying he was on the way to pick up his sick child. The police said his blood-alcohol level at the time was more than double the legal limit, and he faces a mandatory five days in jail if he is convicted. Mr. Fossella, the only Republican in the city’s Congressional delegation, said in the statement that “there will be many questions, including those about my political future.” But he said that “making any political decisions right now” was the “furthest from my mind.” Republican officials and strategists who would not speak publicly said their preference was for Mr. Fossella to drop his bid for re-election and serve out his current term, which ends in January. That would avoid a special election in potentially difficult political territory, something the Republicans are eager to do after losing two long-held Republican seats in recent special elections elsewhere. Another Republican seat, in Mississippi, is at risk in a special election next week. And Republicans in upstate New York have struggled to find candidates to run for the seats being vacated by Representative Thomas M. Reynolds, a five-term congressman whose district runs from Rochester to Buffalo, and Representative James T. Walsh from the Syracuse area, who has served 10 terms. But some Republicans in Washington and New York doubted that Mr. Fossella could last until January. They said it would be better for him to resign soon than to risk becoming a liability by tarnishing the Republican Party in the fall. Even before Mr. Fossella’s arrest, Democrats had talked of planning a serious challenge because they believe his district is shifting their way. Representative John A. Boehner of Ohio, the House Republican leader, said Mr. Fossella would have to make his own choice. “I think Mr. Fossella is going to have some decisions to make over the weekend,” Mr. Boehner told reporters. He added that it was up to Mr. Fossella and “his family and his constituents.” Mr. Fossella spent much of Thursday on Capitol Hill, casting votes on the House floor and huddling with colleagues, among them Representative Peter T. King, a Republican from Long Island who is a close friend. Mr. King said Mr. Fossella was well aware of the magnitude of the problems he had brought on himself. But Mr. King said Mr. Fossella gave no sign of whether he intended to abandon his re-election campaign or resign. “When people came up to him and said, ‘Hang in there, you can win,’ he said, ‘I’m taking it one day at a time. I’m not even thinking about that now,’ ” Mr. King said. Mr. Fossella’s problems began shortly after midnight on May 1, when he was pulled over by the police for running a red light in Alexandria, Va. He was unsteady on his feet, unable to recite a section of the alphabet and had a “strong smell of alcoholic beverage,” according to a police report. The arrest capped a long and seemingly upbeat day. In the morning, he attended an address to a joint session of Congress by Ireland’s prime minister, Bertie Ahern, six days before Mr. Ahern’s resignation. Then he went to the White House for the ceremony for the Giants. The details on where Mr. Fossella went after that are sketchy. The Daily News reported that the evening ended at a Washington pub and that Mr. Fossella and a friend were so drunk they had to be asked to leave. Mr. Fossella held a press conference on May 2 to apologize. With his wife, Mary Pat, in attendance but not standing by his side, Mr. Fossella said he had no intention of resigning. But he refused to answer specific questions about the events surrounding his arrest. By then, there were already questions about the woman who picked him up at the jail. Court papers showed that he was released to the custody of Colonel Fay at 7:39 a.m. on May 1. That day, Mr. Fossella’s aides described her simply as a “close friend.” But the New York tabloids raised questions about their relationship, noting that they had traveled together as part of a Congressional delegation to Europe in 2003 and that she lived not far from where he was arrested. Court records showed that Mr. Fossella told the police he was going to Grimm Street to see his sick child. Colonel Fay lives on Grimm Street. On Thursday, a spokeswoman for Mr. Fossella, Susan Del Percio, declined to answer questions about his relationship with Colonel Fay and the little girl. Mr. Fossella, a former medical malpractice lawyer who was the Republican chairman of Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg’s re-election campaign in 2005, was elected to Congress in 1997 in a special election. His primary political patron was Guy V. Molinari, a former congressman and Staten Island borough president who once referred to Mr. Fossella as “my son.” Mr. Molinari’s daughter Susan held the seat at the time, but resigned to become an anchor with CBS News. Her father — and Rudolph W. Giuliani, the mayor at the time — backed Mr. Fossella. In that special election, he ran against another well-known State Island politician, Assemblyman Eric N. Vitaliano, a Democrat. The race drew national attention because the Republicans made retaining the seat a priority. Mr. Fossella won with 62 percent of the vote. His socially conservative positions were in sync with his mostly white, heavily Roman Catholic district, which covers all of Staten Island and a small wedge of Brooklyn. He opposes abortion, favored President Bush’s tax cuts and voted with the Republicans 88 percent of the time last year, according to Congressional Quarterly. But some voters in his district said on Thursday that the disclosures about his relationship with Colonel Fay and their daughter were too much. “Vito Fossella’s behavior is a disgrace to himself, his family and to Staten Island,” said Dr. John Ferguson, an anesthesiologist who is a Democrat. Glen Midbo said he was forced to retire from the Fire Department after he was stopped for driving under the influence. He said he also paid a $15,000 fine. “Here’s a guy, a politician making all that money,” Mr. Midbo said. “He should be sent to jail and he should resign.” “Three years later,” he added, “I don’t have my license back. Let’s see how long it takes to get his license back.”

Fossella Vito
House of Representatives
Adultery
Staten Island (NYC)


China Ends Recovery Efforts on Ship That Capsized on Yangtze

Abstract: BEIJING — China has concluded rescue and recovery efforts surrounding a cruise ship that capsized this month on the Yangtze River and has revised its count of the number of people who were on board and the number of survivors, according to official news media. The government proclaimed an end to the operation over the weekend, almost two weeks after the ship overturned amid rain and high winds. Officials said on Saturday, the last day of the efforts, that the ship, known as the Oriental Star or Eastern Star, had 454 people on board at the time of the accident on June 1, not 456 or 458, as officials had said soon afterward. The death count remains the same: The police have identified 442 bodies by using DNA samples and have turned the bodies over to relatives, according to Xinhua, the state-run news agency. At a news conference on Saturday in Jianli, the town in Hubei Province in central China near where the ship capsized, an official, Tang Guanjun, said the number of survivors was actually 12, not 14, as officials had said earlier. He said there had been a miscount of survivors because two people had been recorded separately by different “government organs,” Xinhua reported. He did not give details about the agencies involved in the mistake. Investigating Why the Oriental Star Capsized on the Yangtze River At about 9:20 p.m. that evening, the Oriental Star had passed a cargo ship that had anchored to wait out the storm. Mr. Tang also explained why the official count of the people on board the ship was 458 on June 2. At the time, that number was broken down as 406 tourists, 47 crew members and five tour guides, he said, based on a list provided by the company that owned the ship. But further investigation led officials to conclude that one crew member had left at a previous stop and that a tourism agency had, on paper, mistakenly added five tourists to the passenger list; those five were actually on another tour. The agency had also failed to properly record two new tourists who had joined the Oriental Star trip later. Li Baojun, deputy director of the central office of the Ministry of Civil Affairs, said at the news conference that by 1 p.m. Saturday, 426 bodies had been cremated. In total, 270 items that belonged to passengers were salvaged from the river, he said, and 265 of those had already been claimed by family members. The company that operated the ship, the Chongqing Oriental Ferry Company, suspended its operations after the accident and asked its other five cruise ships on the Yangtze to dock. Officials are investigating the company. Yangtze cruises have been popular for many years , but the capsizing of the Oriental Star was the worst boat disaster in China in decades. One major question that remains unanswered is why the captain chose to continue sailing in the storm when some other nearby ships had received a weather warning and had chosen to drop anchor or not continue on.

China
Boat Accidents
Rescue
Yangtze River
Cruises
Chongqing Oriental Ferry Company


Rushing Games Rise for N.F.L. Playoffs

Abstract: The N.F.L. set a record for passing touchdowns a week ago, with 751 this season, smashing the former mark by 19. That should not come as a surprise: the league is flush with outstanding quarterbacks, particularly those schooled in the pass-intensive spread college offenses that have made their transition to the N.F.L. much easier. “I still hear people say, ‘We’ve got to run the ball,’ ” Troy Aikman, a Hall of Fame quarterback and Fox analyst, said of the trend. “I don’t know when that cliché is going to die.” Not in this postseason. The wild-card weekend proved one thing: there’s still a lot of 3-yards-and-a-cloud-of-dust lurking in the hearts of football coaches. And teams that can run the ball and stop the run still have the best chance to advance. None of the four winning teams rushed for fewer than 138 yards this weekend (the Jets had 169 yards, the best of the four winners), and only one of the losing teams, the Kansas City Chiefs, topped 100 yards. The snapshot from the weekend was the electrifying 67-yard touchdown run by Seattle’s Marshawn Lynch in which he broke numerous tackles and straight-armed Tracy Porter into Puget Sound. How out of left field was that run? The Seahawks ranked 31st in rushing this season. But for old-school football, it would be hard to top the times when the Green Bay Packers had two fullbacks — there are teams that do not even have one true fullback — and a running back, James Starks, on the field at the same time. Green Bay’s running game has been nonexistent (ranked 24th this season) ever since Ryan Grant was hurt; Aaron Rodgers was the leading rusher when the Packers last met the Atlanta Falcons, in November. For the playoffs, though, the Packers channeled their inner Lambeaus and Lombardis, grinding out long, punishing drives to keep Michael Vick’s quick-strike Philadelphia offense off the field and surprising even Rodgers. One of the Baltimore Ravens’ drives lasted 10 minutes 20 seconds in a game in which they outrushed the Chiefs, the top-ranked rushing team in the N.F.L. One of the Jets’ drives lasted 9:54. Compare that with New Orleans Saints, whose running game ranked 28th in the regular season, and who had five running backs on injured reserve when they lined up against the Seahawks. The Saints managed a long drive of just five minutes. “We have a quarterback that can stretch the field and make all the throws,” Packers Coach Mike McCarthy said. “But to win week in and week out, you got to have a combination of run and pass.” So is rushing suddenly back in vogue? Not really. Just four of the top 10 rushing teams made the playoffs (Chiefs, Patriots, Jets, Eagles), and Philadelphia’s numbers are skewed because Vick often ends up running on called passing plays. The spoils of the regular season, then, still heavily favor those who pass. But when you think of passing, you think of the Colts , and they were undone Saturday in large part because their run defense, which had been revived in the last four games of the regular season, wore down under the barrage of LaDainian Tomlinson and Shonn Greene. “The ability to run the ball is like sacks — when and where,” said the former Ravens coach Brian Billick, an analyst for the NFL Network who won a Super Bowl in 2000 with a spectacular defense and 2,199 yards rushing. “The ability to run the ball at critical times — red zone, four minutes, third down and medium to short — is vital in tight games, like playoffs, because turnovers and big plays usually negate each other with the good teams that are playing in the postseason. Fundamentals are always more critical when both teams are good.” Expect to see more of it this weekend, when the Steelers, the Patriots, the Falcons and the Bears, all of whom had 1,000-yard rushers in the regular season, enter the playoffs. Colts Face Uncertainty When the Indianapolis Colts’ season ended Saturday night, it began a long, uncertain off-season for a team that is used to stability. With the collective bargaining agreement due to expire in early March, many teams are following the path the Giants owner John Mara discussed last week: waiting for a resolution before doing any contract extensions. There will be no free agency, no trades, no anything if there is a lockout, but the Colts will probably try to complete Peyton Manning’s next contract before that happens. (The Eagles are in the same spot with Michael Vick, although they could also give him the franchise tag for a year, assuming the tag is part of the next labor deal.) But there are other prominent Colts — Joseph Addai, Adam Vinatieri, Clint Session — who have no contract after this season and who are probably stuck in limbo until a new labor agreement is finished. If the deal is not done until late summer, a shorter free-agency period is possible, creating what might be a condensed, frenzied signing-and-trading period. An absence of trading could affect the Eagles, especially, because Kevin Kolb made it clear to Philadelphia reporters Sunday night that he does not want to be in Philadelphia as a backup any longer. Kolb is under contract, and if the Eagles wanted to trade him — a very big if, given the battering Vick took this season — they would have to wait for the new labor deal to start. Needs for the Eliminated Never too early to start pondering off-season needs for the eliminated teams: COLTS Do something about the running game to help Peyton Manning, especially improving the offensive line. Should the run defense be better, too? Yes, but the defense played well enough to beat the Jets, and it was the offense — surprise — that could not close them out. CHIEFS They badly need receivers to make a more balanced offense after Dwayne Bowe, who scored 15 touchdowns in the regular season, disappeared against the Ravens. EAGLES They have to shore up the offensive line to save Michael Vick from the battering that led him to limp through much of Sunday’s game and miss four regular-season games. SAINTS Whither Reggie Bush and the Saints’ running game? Like the underachieving pass rush, these concerns must be addressed for the Saints to challenge for another Super Bowl.

Football
National Football League
Lynch Marshawn
Super Bowl
Indianapolis Colts


Missing a Larynx, He’s Become the Voice of Antismoking Efforts

Abstract: THE image of Ronaldo Martinez, a smoker who had his larynx removed and speaks through an artificial voice box, was scary enough to prompt thousands of New Yorkers to quit cigarettes last year. His description — in his synthesized voice — of how he can no longer swim because he would drown if water got into his throat hole helped bring about a threefold increase in calls to the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene from people interested in smoking cessation. Despite its effectiveness, the future of the campaign, officially entitled “Nothing Will Ever Be the Same,” hangs in the balance as the city health department reviews its anti-tobacco advertising strategy. The city is planning a new television effort against tobacco in the fall, with a projected ad budget of $8 million. Dr. Thomas R. Frieden, the city’s health commissioner, acknowledged the success of the spots, but on the subject of their future would say only, “We’re looking at all the options.” The scared-straight campaign — which recalled a California health department ad from years past in which a larynx cancer patient was shown smoking a cigarette through her tracheotomy tube — was only one component of Mayor Bloomberg’s antismoking efforts. Others included higher taxes on cigarettes and smoking bans in bars and restaurants. These efforts combined to help lower rates among New Yorkers by 19 percent from 2002 to 2006, the city health department said, for an average annual decrease of 5 percent. Nationally, the average annual decline in smoking across the United States was 3 percent during that period, according to a report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. And Mr. Martinez, a 53-year-old Bronx resident who has lived in Puerto Rico, has become something of a local hero. In a telephone interview, he said that he was currently seeking a job and was prepared to go anywhere to stay involved with the antismoking campaign. On the street, “people run and call after me, everybody wants to spend a day with me so they can see how I live,” he said. “To the tobacco companies, I have nothing to say except that they are responsible for the pain and consequences of smoking.” • In 2006 alone — the year that the “Nothing Will Ever Be the Same” campaign was introduced — the percentage of New York City residents who smoked declined to 17.5 percent compared with 2005 when it was 18.9 percent, the health department said. Perhaps because of Mr. Martinez, the statistics were particularly striking among men (who showed an 11.6 percent decline in smoking rates in the city in 2006) and Hispanics (a 15.2 percent decline). The figures were released by city researchers writing for a C.D.C. publication. Although Mr. Martinez, who appears in four television spots and several print ads, became the most famous person in the campaign, other spots showed a variety of ordinary people telling their stories of suffering caused by smoking. In New York, the spots ran throughout 2006 as part of a $10 million television blitz and went back into rotation, from April to May this year, as part of an additional $1.2 million in spending. The spots appeared on all the main broadcast networks in addition to Telemundo and Univision, the cable networks TBS and TNT, and on Time Warner Cable and Cablevision systems. The campaign’s online component encouraged people to send others an e-mail message with an audio download of Mr. Martinez’s unmistakable voice. The message was sent 5,000 times. • The spots featuring Mr. Martinez are not homegrown, nor are they new. They were created by Geovision, a multicultural ad agency in Watertown, Mass., and were originally produced for the Massachusetts Department of Public Health in the late 1990s. Despite proving their mettle, they were discontinued in 2001 after Massachusetts, along with many other states, redirected its tobacco settlement funds elsewhere. The landmark tobacco settlement of 1998 involving 46 states and the tobacco companies gave those states some money to spend in antismoking efforts. Gregory Connolly, a professor at the Harvard School of Public Health, was formerly the director of the Massachusetts Tobacco Control Program, which commissioned the campaign. “We ran ads using athletes, politicians, rock stars and they don’t work,” he said. “We used the U.S. women’s soccer team. And people said, ‘I’m never going to win gold, but I could be Ronaldo.’ ” Mr. Connolly praised New York City’s efforts and criticized the administration of Gov. Mitt Romney of Massachusetts for cutting the campaign’s funds earlier in the decade. According to a report in The Boston Globe, the Massachusetts health commissioner, John Auerbach, will decide over the next two weeks whether the state will return its antismoking messages to television. Geovision’s president and creative director, Juan Mandelbaum, said that he hoped the ads would return, not just for professional reasons. “I’m from Argentina, and there was always a lit cigarette in the house,” he said. “I can’t tell you how much this means to me. My mother died from smoking aged 71. That is why it is so frustrating that we don’t run the campaign here anymore.” Even as New York City grapples with the future of its antismoking efforts, Dr. Frieden of the health department praised the “Nothing Will Ever Be the Same” campaign. “We scoured the world for the best anti-tobacco ads and we ran a variety from Australia, California and some from Massachusetts,” he said. “When we compared ads, Ronaldo made the most impact.” One of the television ads opens with a doctor snapping on rubber gloves as he prepares to inspect the hole in Mr. Martinez’s throat. In the ad, the cancer survivor tells the viewer how he has to visit the doctor every 12 weeks to see if the cancer in his throat has come back: “I’m always afraid of bad news,” he says, “I will have to do this for the rest of my life.” A 2006 city report found that 57 percent of smokers who saw the ads said that they were more likely to quit. Ninety-two percent of New Yorkers had seen at least one of the ads, while 78 percent had seen two or more. After seeing one of the ads, more than half of the smokers interviewed said they had talked to someone about quitting smoking, the report said. The ads have provoked a strong reaction from smokers and nonsmokers alike. “They are disgusting, horrible and distasteful and they helped,” wrote one poster to the antismoking Web site bulletin board, www.trytostop.org . Bill Mora, a former smoker who lives in Queens, said in a telephone interview that the ads might have kept him from going back to smoking. “They present a very powerful image that I identified with. I recognized him as if I knew him.”

Smoking and Tobacco
Advertising and Marketing
Medicine and Health
Television
New York City


U.K. Set to Choose Sharp Break From European Union

Abstract: LONDON — If British plans for leaving the European Union have been a dance of the seven veils, the British government removed one of them on Sunday, letting slip to news media that Prime Minister Theresa May is likely to choose to exit Europe’s single market and its customs union — a so-called hard Brexit. Mrs. May is scheduled to make a long-awaited speech on her plans on Tuesday, but the British weekend papers and Sunday news programs were briefed by Downing Street about the main lines of the policy, and some published selected quotations of what Mrs. May is scheduled to say. Officially, a government spokesman on Sunday called the reports “speculation” and emphasized only the extracts of the speech that were leaked by Downing Street itself, with Mrs. May calling for British unity “to make a success of Brexit and build a truly global Britain.” Those extracts were not explicit on the single market or the customs union, but the Sunday newspapers, which receive their own briefings from the government before publication, took much the same line: that Britain is headed for a sharp break with Europe after a transitional period. Downing Street dislikes the term “hard Brexit,” but an outcome along those lines is not unexpected, because it flows logically from the priorities Mrs. May has set out, particularly about controlling the country’s borders. Being outside the single market could damage Britain’s important financial services sector and is likely to hit the value of the pound again, at least temporarily. A week ago, Mrs. May said in a television interview that post-Brexit Britain would not be able to keep “bits” of its European Union membership. That, too, was interpreted as a break with the single market, which requires freedom of movement and labor for all citizens of the bloc. “Often people talk in terms as if somehow we are leaving the E.U. but we still want to kind of keep bits of membership,” she said then. “We are leaving. We are coming out. We are not going to be a member of the E.U. any longer.” She added, “We will be able to have control of our borders, control of our laws.” She and her officials have made it clear that her two main priorities are ending the jurisdiction of the European Court of Justice over British law, and restoring British control over its borders and immigration, including from the European Union. Those decisions mean that Britain could no longer be a part of the single market for goods, capital, people and services of the European Union, because the rules for that market are adjudicated by the European Court of Justice. The situation is similar for the customs union, which applies only to goods. Membership in the customs union would mean that Britain would have to obey European Union regulations on manufacturing standards and would be banned from making separate trade deals with countries — two of the most important reasons pro-Brexit forces have cited for leaving the bloc. Another implication of leaving the single market and the customs union would be Britain’s desire to negotiate a new trade deal with the European Union as a special partner of some kind, but one different from those held by countries like Norway and Turkey. It would also seem to mean trying to negotiate a transitional deal with Brussels while the larger trade deal is being haggled out, which could take many years. Under a transitional deal, which would extend beyond the two-year limit for negotiating the exit, Britain would presumably continue to have a relationship much like the current one, including paying into the European Union’s budget. In an article in The Sunday Times of London, David Davis, the minister in charge of the new Department for Exiting the European Union, wrote that Britain would consider ways to extend or smooth the exit process to provide certainty for businesses. “If it proves necessary, we have said we will consider time for implementation of new arrangements,” he wrote. “We don’t want the E.U. to fail, we want it to prosper economically and politically, and we need to persuade our allies that a strong new partnership with the U.K. will help the E.U. to do that.” In a combative interview published on Sunday, the chancellor of the Exchequer, Philip Hammond, warned that, if no agreement could be reached on market access, Britain could change its economic model from “European style” taxation and regulation to regain competitiveness. “The British people are not going to lie down and say, ‘Too bad, we’ve been wounded,’” he said. “We will change our model and we will come back, and we will be competitively engaged.” Those comments, from an interview with the German newspaper Welt am Sonntag, were interpreted as a warning that Britain could use its corporate tax as a form of leverage in Brexit negotiations. In a television interview on Sunday, Jeremy Corbyn, the leader of the opposition Labour Party, said that Mr. Hammond “appears to be making a sort of threat to the European community,” calling it “a recipe for some kind of trade war with Europe in the future.” But Mrs. May’s speech on Tuesday, judging from the excerpts, is also meant to assuage European Union colleagues by committing Britain to a close, friendly and constructive future relationship. Britain would prefer a duty-free customs relationship with the European Union if one can be negotiated on British terms, which would mean limits on the bloc’s citizens working in Britain and the ability to do separate trade deals. European Union leaders have been largely dismissive of such efforts, but both sides are setting out hard positions before the real negotiations begin, sometime after Britain invokes Article 50 of the Lisbon Treaty to officially begin the process of leaving the bloc. Mrs. May insists that that will take place before the end of March, even if it requires a vote of Parliament, setting off two years of complicated talks on extracting Britain from a union it joined more than 40 years ago. Mr. Hammond is known to have argued strongly inside the government for Britain to keep its access to the single market to protect its financial sector, which accounts for 10 to 12 percent of Britain’s economic output. Bankers and brokers in the City of London are sometimes reviled by many Britons but are also highly paid, so their tax receipts are important to the Treasury. If a significant number of them moved their operations to European Union cities or New York, the pressure on the British government’s budget to pay for health care, pensions, welfare benefits and military spending would increase substantially. Britain already runs a significantly higher yearly deficit than most European countries, about 4.4 percent of gross domestic product, and its cumulative debt is estimated at nearly 85 percent of G.D.P. Mainstream economists — under fire for wrongly predicting an immediate recession after the Brexit vote last June — say those figures are likely to worsen as the pound falls and the economy slows from the delayed effects of Brexit and the uncertainty around it. Mrs. May has also emphasized an interest in working with the incoming American administration of Donald J. Trump, and her government trumpeted its success in arranging a Washington meeting with the new president before the end of February. But her officials were not likely to be happy to discover that Michael Gove, who strongly favored Brexit and whom she fired from the cabinet, had secured the first British interview with Mr. Trump, scheduled to be printed in The Times of London on Monday. That interview comes after Mr. Trump had a series of meetings with Brexit advocates like Nigel Farage, the former leader of the U.K. Independence Party, and Arron Banks, who gave millions to fund UKIP and an alternative “Leave” campaign in the June referendum. Both men are expected to attend Mr. Trump’s inauguration.

Theresa May
Great Britain
Europe
Brexit
EU
European Court of Justice
International trade


Review: ‘Struck’ at the New Jersey Repertory Company

Abstract: You can’t charm me into liking a play. Oh, who am I kidding? Sure you can. And you — or rather, the New Jersey Repertory Company in Long Branch — did so with “Struck,” a somewhat haphazard comedy that nonetheless succeeds because of an abundance of energy and a lot of likability. The story, set in 2013, finds Vera Resnick ( Susan Maris ) hobbling into her Upper West Side apartment with the help of her husband, Nate (Adam Bradley). She’s just been struck by a young man on a bike, and although she’s in pain, she’s also full of a strange enthusiasm after the accident. It seems a lot has been happening to her lately, not the least of which is this mishap. “I think it means something,” she says to Nate about the accident, which happened while she was crossing a street in Manhattan’s East Village. “I sense a cyclical conversation about to happen,” he replies. “Don’t you think it’s weird, that here I am at an incredibly ‘crossroadish’time in my life, and I get hit by a bicycle, just out of the blue?” she asks. Nate, as usual, is skeptical. “I do not believe that your current life events have any correlation whatsoever to the fact that a heavyset kid hit you with his bike.” Soon Vera had tracked down and contacted that bicyclist, James (Benjamin Puvalowski), and asked to meet him again. That sets in motion a plot that relies on a playwright’s clever twist and the audience’s ability to stick with a setup that feels partly inspired by television sitcoms. If that’s not a wholesale compliment, it’s also not an unforgiving slight against this story, which offers a steady stream of good laughs. About half of those laughs come by way of the script, by Sandy Rustin . The play relies on characters that are fairly stock — a wacky neighbor, a loving yet sarcastic married couple — yet it remains entirely watchable, with some enjoyable back-and-forth dialogue. Script aside, the actors generate just as much of the comedy themselves. Jenny Bacon, as that neighbor, Vicky, gets the largest share of the jokes, then doubles their effectiveness by using crafty gestures and smart timing. She can twist a phrase in just the right way to set off a giggle. “After my second husband, I started a relationship with Buddha,” Vicky says in one of her quirky asides. “He may be out of shape, but he doesn’t drink, so it’s working for me.” Her cheery and foul-mouthed remarks, delivered with a Texas twang, punctuate the play. Ms. Maris and Mr. Bradley also work to increase the humor. The first preview performance, which I attended, found them both a bit overanxious, yet it says something about their skills — and about the production — that I wouldn’t mind attending again later to see how they would settle into their characters. (I well remember Ms. Maris’s wonderful turn in “Love’s Labour’s Lost” by the Shakespeare Theater of New Jersey last summer.) Mr. Puvalowski, too, is a good enough actor to see that he’ll become still better over the play’s run. Matthew Shepard, as Bertrand, a character who figures late in the plot (about which it’s best to reveal little) provides very nice support. The five are directed by Don Stephenson on Jessica Parks’s set design. To be sure, even with a running time of about 75 minutes, “Struck” can feel a tad overwritten, especially in its repetitive opening scene. Ms. Rustin sometimes depends on the cast’s energy rather than on her own talents, and she gets lucky enough with these actors. Still, the play, making its world premiere here, could use more sharpening. The closing scene, which reaches for poignancy, would particularly benefit. Those concerns aside, “Struck” kicks around an idea or two about chance and coincidence, and ends up as a light and agreeable show. Some of its pleasures are attributable to the script, some to the cast and crew, and others to that unseen quality you get when all those pieces fit so well together. I guess that’s what you call charm.

Theater
New Jersey Repertory Company
Long Branch NJ
Sandy Rustin
Don Stephenson
Struck


Newark Loses Unwanted Landmark as Lincoln Motel Goes

Abstract: NEWARK , Oct. 5 — St. Louis has its swooping arch, San Francisco its bright red bridge and New York that copper-clad lady who stands sentinel in the harbor. Since the 1970s, the northern gateway to this city has been graced by a giant, back-lighted profile of Abraham Lincoln, or at least a rough approximation of the 16th president, imprinted onto plastic. But unlike the landmarks gracing entryways to other great American cities, the yellow sign over Broad Street honoring President Lincoln advertised an establishment best known as a hot-sheet motel and an incubator for prodigious amounts of crime. “A blemished, rat-infested drug-haven eyesore,” is how Marc E. Berson, a local real estate developer, described the building, which sits next to Bears and Eagles Riverfront Stadium, where the minor-league baseball team of which he is a co-owner, the Newark Bears, plays to thin crowds. The motel, which hugs Interstate 280 and the train tracks that connect New York to a strand of leafy suburbs, also faces New Jersey Transit’s Broad Street Station and the terminus of a new light rail line that wends through downtown Newark. On Wednesday, Mr. Berson joined a group of elected officials and neighborhood residents to bid adieu to the Lincoln Motel. Following a rather unflattering eulogy, Mayor Cory A. Booker climbed into the cab of a giant excavating machine and, after a few misses, ripped a crowd-pleasing gash into the motel’s ashy-white brick facade with the machine’s jaws. “One small blow for man, one giant blow for Newark,” the mayor said as a plume of dust drifted toward the Passaic River behind him. Although there are promising signs of revival on the blocks south and west of Broad Street, it remains to be seen whether the demolition of the Lincoln Motel will spark the long-awaited resurgence that officials have been promising for generations. In the decade since city and county officials poured $30 million into the construction of Riverfront Stadium, the sports bars and restaurants conjured up in promotional material and architectural mockups never arrived to replace the parking lots and adult theaters that are there now. In 2000, Miles Berger, the Lincoln Motel’s longtime owner, closed it for good and announced grand development plans for the site. Since then, the only activity at the moldering motel involved junkies and prostitutes who made use of its rooms. This time, however, things may be different. The Tucker Development Corporation of Chicago, a builder of shopping centers, has said it is planning a mixed-use project on the four-acre site. Rutgers University is building a new $83 million home for its business school one block away. And the Westinghouse factory, an asbestos-drenched beauty that looms over the Broad Street train station, is undergoing decontamination. In its place, city planners envision a high-rise offering market-rate apartments that would appeal to those working in New York, a mere 20-minute train ride away. The quad, as the area is sometimes called, is also a brief stroll from the Newark Museum, the New Jersey Performing Arts Center, the Newark Library and Washington Park, a gracious 18th-century greensward that adjoins a stretch of restored brownstones known as the James Street Commons Historic District. “I’ve never understood what’s taken so long,” said Steven J. Diner, the provost of Rutgers University’s Newark campus, which has 10,500 students and 1,100 faculty members. “The assets of the area just strike me as overwhelming.” But in a city whose assets have long been overshadowed by its blemishes, the neighborhood still faces a few hurdles. Besides a jewelry store named Mister Lou’s Gems and a grimly lighted fried chicken joint, there is precious little to eat or buy, although the Cameo Twin Theater, whose cinematic delights appeal to those of all sexual orientations, keeps its doors open day and night. Those who work downtown or study at one of the nearby colleges say they do not relish the walk to the Broad Street Station, especially after dark. Ryan Broadlin, 23, a student at Rutgers Law School, said during one such walk last year he watched in disbelief as a man being pursued by the police was stopped by a gunshot to the leg. More recently he came across a stunningly large pool of blood in the middle of the street. Before it began its decline, the Lincoln Motel provided the younger set with relatively wholesome distractions. In the late 1970s, it was home to Club Zanzibar, New Jersey’s answer to Studio 54. Mr. Berger, the motel’s owner, brought in some of the disco era’s finest D.J.’s, and the club’s opening night drew thousands of revelers, Kool and the Gang and caged lions. It was 1976 when Mr. Berger, a 22-year-old entrepreneur, bought what was then an abandoned Holiday Inn for about $500,000. “I saw an ad in the newspaper, came right out here with my brother one Sunday and said, ‘This is ours,’” he recalled. Mr. Berger, who has since amassed one of the largest real estate portfolios in the city, said he renamed the motel for Lincoln after learning that the president, bound by train for his 1861 inauguration in Washington, had stopped at Broad Street for a quick speech. Despite Mr. Berger’s lofty intentions, it was not long before the motel became a magnet for nefarious activity. For a time, arrests were so common that a motel floor plan graced the wall of the public defender’s office to assist lawyers juggling cases. In the 1980s, Mr. Berger turned its 200 rooms into a haven for welfare recipients, earning about $1,000 a month per person. When the administration of Mayor Edward I. Koch of New York needed a place to send that city’s overflow homeless population, it found Mr. Berger a willing partner. That provoked some anger from state and city officials here who thought it was unseemly for New Jersey to be housing New York’s dispossessed. Clement A. Price, a professor of history at Rutgers, said the Lincoln Motel’s prominent sign stood as a depressing symbol of Newark’s downfall. “I always thought it a shame that it was on New Jersey’s grandest street,” he said. “To me it became a metaphor for Newark’s real and perceived pathologies.” City officials are hopeful that its demolition — and replacement with privately financed housing — will become a different kind of symbol. Stefan Pryor, Newark’s deputy mayor for economic development, said the city was drawing up a master plan for the neighborhood that, over time, would transform the area into a vibrant node for New York-bound commuters, college students and downtown office workers. “It won’t happen overnight, but we think the area has one of the greatest development potentials in the city,” he said. Before taking a whack at the building, Mr. Booker stood before a small crowd and bid the motel good riddance. “We’re going to see an incredible new light shine from this site,” he said. “But right now, I have a lot of built-up energy that I need to unleash on this building.”

Newark (NJ)
Area Planning and Renewal
Hotels and Motels


Queens Kitchen Is Base for Cooks Starting Businesses

Abstract: In New York’s culinary world, with its unending appetite and closet-size kitchens, it is an unimpressive building housing a seven-day-a-week, 24-hour revolving-door operation built on need, ambition and nostalgia. Marisa Angebranndt, who lost her job at a hedge fund when Wall Street collapsed, now makes whoopie pies there. Shefalee Patel, who had a hand in one of the most ambitious construction projects in the Middle East before being laid off, uses the space to turn out Indian sweets . Miguel Urrego, a son of Colombian immigrants who had worked as a bartender’s assistant, waiter and cook all over Manhattan, caters parties with a menu produced there that is as diverse as New Yorkers’ palates: gyoza and mini-falafel; focaccia and soba noodles; bite-size burritos and croquettes. On a block in Long Island City, Queens, shared by car washes, plumbing parts manufacturers and livery-car garages, the three, as well as other cooks, pay by the shift to use a commercial kitchen equipped with 80-quart mixers, deep-frying caldrons and walk-in ovens, churning out food they sell on the Web and at farmers’ markets and coffee shops. The kitchen’s 5,500-square-foot work space is both a refuge for dreamers and a life preserver for the unemployed. “There are a lot of career-changers here, a lot of casual gourmets who channeled their energies into cooking as a way to make money,” said Meg LaBarbara, a former travel consultant who makes dips and spreads at the kitchen, called the Entrepreneur’s Space, on 37th Street near Northern Boulevard. Working at a hedge fund, Ms. Angebranndt, 35, had organized meetings and retreats for high-level executives. After the fund shut down in 2008, she invested her severance pay and savings in whoopie pies, adapting her grandmother’s cookie recipe and her own fillings — no marshmallow, but a dozen flavors of butter cream. “I started out making cakes for my friends, then I asked them to spread the word, and next thing I knew, I was cooking at home until 2 in the morning,” Ms. Angebranndt said. “I figured, there’s less money, but also less stress and more fun.” Ms. Patel, 32, worked as a civil engineer for Bermello Ajamil & Partners, which is based in Miami, and was involved in the development of artificial islands off the coast of Dubai in the United Arab Emirates until she was laid off last year. The idea to make sweets to sell first occurred to her while she was still in Dubai, where she said chocolates are packaged and consumed as if they are luxury goods. Once she lost her job, she put the idea into action, cooking in her mother’s kitchen in Passaic, N.J., before moving to the commercial kitchen in Queens. It is too early to know if whoopie pies or Indian treats will be lucrative, but neither Ms. Angebranndt nor Ms. Patel is worried about that. As Ms. Patel said, “I haven’t looked for a job since I started cooking here.” The kitchen, rare in its approach, solves many problems. It offers cooks space they do not have at home, is fully equipped and complies with the city’s health code. The place has also fostered an informal network, where cooks combine purchasing orders for things like butter and olive oil to save money, or rely on one another as taste testers. But like many of its users, the kitchen suffered when the economy cratered. It used to function as a training ground for unionized workers, available for rental to commercial cooks at night and on weekends. Once grants and donations dried up, though, the Consortium for Worker Education , the union-backed nonprofit group that sustained it, could no longer afford to lease the space. The kitchen was supposed to close at the end of August, but its manager, Kathrine Gregory, hatched a survival plan and enlisted the cooks to help her. One made vegan pâté. Another baked Finnish ruis bread. Ms. LaBarbara made sun-dried tomato hummus, and Ms. Angebranndt, of course, baked whoopie pies. The food was laid out before a small group of officials from the city and nonprofit groups who had gone to the kitchen to hear Ms. Gregory’s pitch. They left extending a bailout package worth more than $250,000 and a $1-a-year lease agreement for the equipment. “The way to a funder’s heart,” Ms. Gregory observed, “is through his stomach.” Seth Bornstein, executive director of the Queens Economic Development Corporation , which invested $100,000 in the venture, described the kitchen as “a laboratory in taking chances.” Had the kitchen closed, it would have displaced 100 small businesses, like Ms. Angebranndt’s WannaHavaCookie, Mr. Urrego’s Creative Concepts, Ms. LaBarbara’s Dinners Almost Finished for You and Ms. Patel’s Sweet Silk. On a recent weekday, Tom Petty crooned from a boombox — “You don’t have to live like a refugee” — as Ilale Gooden squeezed globs of chocolate cake strips and Grand Marnier liqueur to roll into truffles for her cake business, Nana Pearl’s Wooden Spoon . Nearby, Mr. Urrego, 35, shouted orders in Spanish into a cellphone cradled between his ear and shoulder as he traveled from stove to slicer to table, arranging bits of chipotle-glazed chicken and beef with chimichurri sauce onto a party platter. Trays of Gruyère and Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese, red grapes and strawberries, mini-burritos and quesadillas lay on a nearby cart, destined for a car dealership’s office party in Midtown. “Sorry I don’t have a lot of time to talk today, but this is a busy time of the year for us,” said Mr. Urrego, who started his catering company last year in space he leased at a bakery in Ozone Park, Queens. At the kitchen here in Long Island City, space is rented by the shift; the most expensive is from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m., which costs $231, and the cheapest is from 1 a.m. to 7:30 a.m., which costs $154. Mr. Urrego is the most regular client, taking eight or more shifts each week, often overnight. Some of the cooks work alone, but Ms. Patel drafted her mother into the kitchen, and her sister made the packages for her concoctions. Her brother designed the company’s Web site. “It’s a true family business,” she said. Ms. Patel creates variations of an Indian sweet called burfi, a type of fudge flavored with nuts, fruits or spices that she had watched her mother make “a thousand times.” She favors cardamom over curry and chili, combines coconut with dark chocolate ganache, and mixes nutmeg and apple cream or pecan and maple caramel for a distinctly American twist. Her first order, right after she got laid off, was for 100 favor boxes for her best friend’s wedding, each containing two sweets made with dates and coconut. For Diwali, the Indian festival of lights, celebrated in November, she sold 500 gift boxes. “And,” she said several weeks ago, “I already have a bunch of orders for Christmas.”

Entrepreneurship
Kitchens
Long Island City (NYC)
Cooking and Cookbooks
Renting and Leasing
Entrepreneur's Space


Leaders of Actors’ Union Call Offer Unacceptable

Abstract: LOS ANGELES — Leaders of the Screen Actors Guild declined a final offer for a new labor contract late Thursday, prompting an alliance of Hollywood production companies to demand that the union put the offer before its entire membership for a vote. Any further delay in reaching a reasonable and comprehensive agreement does a disservice to the thousands of working people of our industry who are already being seriously harmed by the ever-worsening de facto strike,” the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers said in a statement. S.A.G., Hollywood’s dominant actors’ union with some 120,000 members, has been embroiled in increasingly rancorous negotiations with television and movie producers over a new contract since spring. Worried about a potential strike, studios have slowed production, particularly on movies, to a near halt until the matter is resolved, leading to what many refer to as a de facto strike. On Tuesday, guild leaders declared what producers called their final contract offer unacceptable and offered a set of counterproposals. The guild agreed to accept some elements of the offer — including modestly higher health and pension contributions — but dug in their heels several larger issues. For instance, S.A.G. remains insistent on higher residual payments for DVD sales. The producers’ alliance, according to people inside the five-hour series of meetings, responded by saying the offer on the table was not subject to negotiation. No new talks are scheduled. The session ended with S.A.G. saying it would hold internal meetings on Friday and contact producers with hopes of keeping talks alive. Alan Rosenberg, the guild’s president, rejected the call for a unionwide vote. “Our negotiating committee to a person, including representatives from across the country, does not believe this deal is acceptable,” he said in an interview. “When we put something in front of members, I want to make sure it’s something they can live with.” Producers gave S.A.G. the offer on June 30, the day before the previous contract expired. The offer, according to producers, was on par with what four other Hollywood unions received and would deliver $250 million in additional compensation to actors over its three-year run. Among the improvements, producers say, is a 2.5 percent increase in salary for guest stars in television and a 10 percent increase in wages over the course of the contract. The offer establishes residual payments for made-for-new-media content and the streaming of television shows and movies. But the offer does not include an increase in DVD residuals. None of the other four unions got such an increase, but S.A.G. leaders say the point is crucial to them. It also does not go as far as S.A.G. wants in preserving actors’ consent over the use of video clips of their work online. Both sides have ratcheted up rhetoric in recent days. In a radio interview on Wednesday, Mr. Rosenberg called the most recent offer from producers “inadequate and frightening.” The producers’ alliance sent a letter to 120 California legislators blaming S.A.G. for bringing Hollywood to a standstill and pointing out the economic damage a strike would cause. The producers’ alliance also increased pressure on S.A.G. to make a deal by making public a timing clause attached to its offer. If S.A.G.’s membership ratified a new agreement by Aug. 15, producers said they would make the improved pay retroactive to July 1, the day the previous contract expired. If the August date passed, wage increases would not go into effect until ratification. Producers do not want actors to keep negotiations plodding into September, when the Emmy Awards could give the guild additional leverage. Last winter, screenwriters’ unions successfully used a boycott of the Golden Globe Awards and a threatened boycott of the Academy Awards in their bid for an improved contract. Members of a smaller, rival actors’ union on Tuesday approved a new contract with Hollywood’s major production companies. Leaders of the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists said 62.4 percent of the voting members were in favor of the deal. It would not reveal the vote tally, citing longstanding practice. That percentage, while a solid win for Aftra, was interpreted by S.A.G. board members in sharply different ways. A more militant group saw the margin — low by historical measures — as an indication that actors backed S.A.G. in its fight for a contract with significantly better terms. Other board members argued that the margin supported the opposite view.


Vladimir Putin’s Annual Year-End News Conference

Abstract: MOSCOW — A relaxed, at times jovial President Vladimir V. Putin brushed aside fears about Russian financial turmoil Thursday, holding court for reporters in a Moscow hotel and answering unscreened questions on topics ranging from his love life to the Ukraine crisis to the campaign against perceived “fifth columnists” in the state-controlled news media. The three-hour news conference provided Mr. Putin with a platform to make his first public remarks since the ruble exchange rate began swinging wildly earlier in the week. He said that Russia ’s current economic tumult could last at most two years, and rather than offer a specific remedy, he suggested that revived global demand for oil would eventually solve the problems. “We are going through a trying period, difficult times at the moment,” said Mr. Putin, answering questions at his annual end-of-year news conference. “I would not call the situation a crisis. You may call it whatever you want.” In his more confrontational moments, the 62-year-old president found a new way to expound on his favorite theme this year: that he was determined to thwart plots by the West in general and the United States in particular against Russia. Using the symbol of the Russian bear, Mr. Putin said he wondered how the creature should behave. “Maybe he should stop chasing pigs and boars around the taiga, but start picking berries and eating honey. Maybe then he will be left alone,” Mr. Putin said, warming to the analogy. “But no, he won’t be! Because someone will always try to chain him up. As soon as he’s chained, they will tear out his teeth and claws.” The latter, he said, was a reference to Russia’s nuclear deterrence. His remarks on the economy held the most interest, given that the price of oil and the Russian ruble plummeted in tandem this week, with the ruble testing historic lows of 80 to the dollar before rallying to closer to 60, though still down about 40 percent on the year. Analysts said the decline reflected not just the drop in oil prices but also investors’ distrust of the government’s ability to cope, or to promote economic growth through something other than oil exports. “Economically, socially and politically, the country will have to go through severe economic tests in the years to come,” said Dmitri Trenin, the head of the Carnegie Moscow Center. “Not having a working, realistic, credible model for economic development, not just muddling through, will become critical.” Mr. Putin acknowledged that many Russians blamed Elvira Nabiullina, the governor of the central bank, for the crisis, but he defended the record of the bank. “I believe that the central bank and the government are taking adequate measures,” he said. He did not present any new policies or a specific plan to address the problems, but rejected predictions that currency controls were in the offing. He also said Russia should try not to waste its $419 billion in currency reserves. The central bank has spent about $75 billion this year defending the ruble. Mr. Putin described the problems as rooted in external factors, including the drop of about 50 percent in oil prices this year and Western sanctions imposed over Russia’s incursion into Ukraine . He said that global demand for oil would recover next year or in two years, and that this would solve the problem. The president, sitting on a small stage in an amphitheater in a Moscow hotel, seemed to be relying on his high popularity to carry the day, noting that Russia had emerged from the 2008 financial crisis relatively unscathed under his leadership. But it remained an open question whether that would be enough to persuade Russians, who are facing a sharp recession next year. “Above all, the goal was to calm people down about the crisis,” Mikhail Vinogradov, head of the St. Petersburg Politics Foundation, said by telephone shortly after the speech. “The question is whether Putin’s calming words will turn into any kind of action.” Image Mr. Putin acknowledged that Russia was “going through a trying period” of financial turmoil, but he called it a temporary problem and not a crisis. Credit Maxim Zmeyev/Reuters Ordinary Russians are worried about the ruble’s collapse and rising inflation, which is expected to climb 10 percent by the end of the year and even higher early next year. They have flooded car dealerships, appliance stores and malls to spend savings before their rubles lose any more value. The popular discount Swedish furniture chain Ikea has been mobbed for the last week. On Thursday, the company announced that it was suspending all sales of kitchen furniture and appliances for two days to catch up with the orders. It also announced that it would raise prices — a common step by importers trying to keep up with the lower value of the ruble. Russia depends on imports for about 30 percent of its consumer goods. Mr. Putin accused the West of trying to build a virtual wall around Russia by moving NATO forces closer to its border, and noted that the $50 billion that Russia plans to spend on its military next year is much less than the Pentagon’s budget. He also conceded that Russia had contributed to a recent rise in global tensions by resuming long-range military surveillance flights across Europe and along the edges of North America. “The only thing we have done is to protect our interests in a tougher way,” he said. That theme plays well at home, where political analysts estimate as much as 40 percent of the population wants Russia to regain its superpower status. Mr. Putin slipped in some criticism of the C.I.A. torture report in response to a question about the legality of burning the homes of suspected terrorists in Chechnya. “After 9/11, torture was legalized. How could you explain that?” he asked, a reference to the waterboarding of terror suspects by the C.I.A. during the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Mr. Putin estimated that 25 to 30 percent of the economic distress was rooted in the sanctions over Ukraine, but conceded that Russia had not done enough to diversify an economy in which energy resources constitute 60 percent of the country’s exports. Even while Mr. Putin was speaking, the European Union imposed an array of new sanctions involving investment, services and trade linked to Russia’s annexation of Crimea. Russian corporations owe approximately $650 billion to Western banks, but sanctions have eliminated any chance of refinancing that debt. The foreign reserves should cover that for the time being, Mr. Putin suggested, though some analysts say as much as half of that — around $200 billion — is tied up in other obligations, like pensions. Mr. Putin stressed that Russia wanted to solve the crisis in Ukraine, and said he thought that President Petro O. Poroshenko of Ukraine did, too, but that some nationalists there did not. In response to a question from a Ukrainian reporter about how many Russian soldiers had been dispatched into eastern Ukraine and how many had died there, Mr. Putin again called Russian fighters volunteers. He did not say how many had died. Still, Russia has toned down its rhetoric on Ukraine in the last month. The news conference is an annual ritual, with Mr. Putin picking questions at random from 1,200 or so reporters ranging from the mainstream Russian press to the BBC. In one awkward moment, a Russian reporter suggested in slurred speech that Mr. Putin support the sale of kvass, a mildly alcoholic beverage, in international chain stores. Mr. Putin suggested that the man might have been sipping a little. The Russian media soon reported that the reporter was not drunk, but that his speech had been slurred by two strokes. Several journalists asked why the state media had been unleashed to attack government critics as fifth columnists, to which Mr. Putin said it was sometimes hard to tell where “the opposition ends and the fifth column starts.” A fifth column is a group that tries to undermine a larger group. One reporter asked about Mr. Putin’s personal life. The president answered by saying that recently a European dignitary had asked him whether he had any love in his life. Mr. Putin said he had assured the unidentified visitor that he did, that he saw his former wife periodically as well as his two grown daughters. “Everything is fine,” he said.

Russia
Ruble
Vladimir Putin
Oil and Gasoline
Ukraine
International relations
Economy