Obama and Roberts Try the Presidential Oath of Office Again

Abstract: WASHINGTON — In 25 seconds, President Obama became president again. Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. re-administered the oath to Mr. Obama on Wednesday evening, one day after the two men stumbled over each other’s words during the inauguration ceremony at the Capitol. For their do-over, the two men convened in the White House Map Room at 7:35 p.m. for a brief proceeding that was not announced until it was completed successfully. “Are you ready to take the oath?” Chief Justice Roberts said. “I am,” Mr. Obama replied. “And we’re going to do it very slowly.” After a day’s worth of chatter over whether the president had been properly sworn into office — he transposed a couple of words in the oath after being incorrectly prompted by the chief justice — advisers to Mr. Obama decided Wednesday afternoon to try it one more time. Only hours after aides told reporters there was no reason to administer the oath again, they concluded it was easier to do it on the first day, rather than have someone challenge the legitimacy of his presidency. “We believe that the oath of office was administered effectively and that the president was sworn in appropriately yesterday,” Gregory B. Craig, the White House counsel, said. “But the oath appears in the Constitution itself, and out of an abundance of caution, because there was one word out of sequence, Chief Justice Roberts administered the oath a second time.” While about two million people were on hand to watch the first swearing-in, a figure that does not include the hundreds of millions who watched it on television in the United States and around the world, only nine people witnessed the do-over. There were four aides, four reporters and a White House photographer present on Wednesday evening. Mr. Obama raised his right hand and did not use a Bible. All in all, it was a curious end to a chaotic first full day of Mr. Obama’s presidency. The trouble began at the swearing-in ceremony on Tuesday when Chief Justice Roberts misplaced a word in the oath, saying: “That I will execute the office of president to the United States faithfully.” The word “faithfully” is supposed to appear between “will” and “execute.” Mr. Obama, who had been studying his lines, briefly interrupted Chief Justice Roberts initially, which could have thrown the chief justice off course. Then, he paused awkwardly after saying, “that I will execute.” So the chief justice gave it another try, but still did not get it quite right, omitting the word “execute.” There are no rules against a do-over. When questions were raised about whether it was proper for Calvin Coolidge to have been sworn in by his father, a notary public, after the death of Warren G. Harding in 1923, Coolidge took the oath again from a federal judge. At a luncheon after the first swearing-in on Tuesday, Chief Justice Roberts could be seen on camera telling the president that the mistake was “my fault.” So he agreed to travel to the White House — he took along his black robe — for Take 2. “Congratulations again,” Mr. Roberts said after the flawless recitation. “Thank you, sir,” Mr. Obama said before turning to the small group of reporters in the room, called the pool, and saying, “The bad news for the pool is there’s 12 more balls.”

Obama Barack
oath
Roberts John G Jr
Inaugurations
Constitutions


Roadside Bomb Kills Five NATO Soldiers in Afghanistan

Abstract: KABUL, Afghanistan — NATO said a roadside bomb killed five of its service members in eastern Afghanistan on Wednesday, and Afghan officials and the Taliban identified the dead as Polish soldiers. The bombing was one of the deadliest against NATO forces in recent months. If the Afghan reports that the dead were all from Poland prove accurate, the attack would also make Wednesday the deadliest single day for Poland since it first sent forces to Afghanistan in 2003, according to figures from the Web site icasualties.org , an independent database that tracks casualties in Afghanistan and Iraq. The soldiers were headed back to their base in the city of Ghazni Wednesday morning when a bomb ripped through their armored vehicle as they passed an Islamic shrine, said Hazrat Muhammad Ghaznawi, a spokesman for the government of Ghazni province, where the Taliban have long had significant presence. Mr. Ghaznawi said the soldiers were returning from the opening ceremony at a new recreation center built with money from Poland. Another provincial official, Hamidullah Sarwari, who runs Ghazni’s culture department, said the soldiers had been visiting a recently refurbished museum. Mr. Ghaznawi said in a phone interview that three Polish soldiers were killed. NATO later said in a statement that five service members had died without identifying their nationalities. The Taliban, which regularly inflates NATO death tolls, said the attack had killed seven Polish soldiers. Thirty-five Polish soldiers have been killed in Afghanistan since the start of the current conflict a decade ago. Before Wednesday, the deadliest toll came in August 2008, when three Polish soldiers were killed in one day. Wednesday’s deaths served as a sharp reminder of the casualties borne by America’s allies in the Afghan war. Before Wednesday’s bombing, 973 of the coalition’s 2,830 deaths were not American, according to icasualties.org . The United States has about 100,000 service members based in Afghanistan under NATO and a separate American-only command. Other NATO and allied countries have about 40,000 service members in Afghanistan.

Afghanistan War (2001- )
Improvised Explosive Devices
Deaths (Fatalities)
North Atlantic Treaty Organization
Afghanistan


Bombs at 3 Churches in Las Cruces, New Mexico, Confound the Authorities

Abstract: LAS CRUCES, N.M. — Two homemade bombs exploded early this month during busy Sunday services at Roman Catholic and Baptist churches here, while a third, undetonated explosive was discovered on Friday near a leaking sprinkler valve at a Presbyterian church, fueling unease in this placid city in southern New Mexico, the second largest in the state. Still, more than two weeks after the explosions, the local and federal authorities have yet to uncover a plausible motive, a potential suspect or a clear link among the churches other than their shared Christianity. A grainy surveillance video of a young man in shorts and work boots walking along the parking lot of Calvary Baptist Church right before the bomb there exploded has generated some tips but no solid leads. “We’re still connecting the dots,” the police chief in Las Cruces, Jaime Montoya, said in an interview. Image Nuns passed a police officer stationed outside Holy Cross Roman Catholic Church in Las Cruces. Credit Ivan Pierre Aguirre for The New York Times Investigators have cast a broad net, questioning political activists, members and neighbors of the churches, as well as witnesses to the blasts, in search of clues — any clue. They are also on high alert. No one was injured in the explosions, according to the police, but on Sunday, federal agents guided bomb-sniffing dogs through careful perimeter surveys of the targeted churches and several others, leaving no mailbox or trash can unturned or any crevice unexamined. The local police have fielded repeated reports of suspicious packages since the explosions, staging robust responses and hasty evacuations of an apartment complex, convenience store, mall, nursing home and, on Monday, a post office downtown. On Tuesday, bomb threats were called in to the Las Cruces District Courthouse and the city’s adult probation office, rattling already frayed nerves. In the end, the threats and the packages were all found to be harmless. Residents here are bewildered. Las Cruces takes pride in its ethnic heritage and cultural integration, with a mix of Hispanics and Anglos that reflects its colorful history — the area was controlled by Spain and Mexico before becoming part of the United States — and its proximity to the Mexican border, an hour’s drive south. It also has a sizable population of international students at New Mexico State University’s main campus, with many of them enrolled in its popular engineering program. Image The Rev. Norm Story held a newly baptized baby as he spoke to parishioners during a service at First Presbyterian Church in Las Cruces on Sunday. Credit Ivan Pierre Aguirre for The New York Times “We’re not split by railroad tracks, with one group on one side and another group on the other side,” Chief Montoya said. The city is, however, a nascent battleground in the fight over abortion rights; Las Cruces has a single abortion clinic. It is about an hour from the city of El Paso, in Texas, which has one of the most restrictive anti-abortion laws in the country. And investigators have interviewed political activists here, seemingly focused on the possibility that the bombs were planted by abortion zealots of one kind or another. Last week, F.B.I. agents asked one activist, Lucas Herndon, who works for the advocacy group ProgressNOW New Mexico, a defender of abortion rights, for a copy of a video he had recorded at a recent anti-abortion rally. “The agents were interested in extremists from both sides,” Mr. Herndon said in an interview. “But they didn’t seem to have a very clear idea of who did it or why.” Image A service drew the faithful on Sunday at Calvary Baptist Church in Las Cruces. Credit Ivan Pierre Aguirre for The New York Times On Sunday during an 8 a.m. Mass at Holy Cross Roman Catholic Church , where the first bomb went off, Robert M. White Sr., an assistant special agent in charge with the F.B.I. in Albuquerque, urged parishioners to “look back one day, look back one week, for anything out of the ordinary” preceding the explosion. He signaled, however, that investigators still had no idea how many people they were looking for. “It’s our intent to fully identify the individual or individuals, if there is more than one, and bring him to justice,” Mr. White said. Afterward, Craig Bullock, who helps out at the church and runs the religious education program at the elementary school next door, said that agents from the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives had asked him to search his memory for any recollections of unusual visitors to the church over the past year. “What’s unusual?” Mr. Bullock said. “That’s not really a definable or quantifiable thing.” He was operating the sound system from a booth at the back of the sanctuary when the explosion took place Aug. 2. He said he heard a loud bang, followed by the sound of glass crashing to the ground. The monsignor, John Anderson, was at the altar. The pews were half-full, as is customary during 8 a.m. Mass, the first of three morning services offered at Holy Cross on Sundays. Image Damage caused by shrapnel from an Aug. 2 explosion at Holy Cross. Credit Robin Zielinski/Las Cruces Sun-News, via Associated Press “I was saying the words, ‘For this is my body,’ when I heard, ‘Pow!’” Monsignor Anderson recalled. He looked outside and saw papers flying through the air; the bomb had been placed in a garbage can near the church’s front door and shattered a thick glass pane. He finished the consecration. Mr. Bullock called 911 from his cellphone. Twenty minutes later, a second bomb exploded. This one was by a side entrance at Calvary Baptist Church, three miles from Holy Cross. The bomb had been wrapped in newspapers and placed in a mailbox bolted into a cinder block wall. The blast was so powerful that it sent the mailbox flying; the box barely missed a congregant arriving for an 8:30 a.m. service, said David Thatcher, a deacon at the church. The mailbox landed 150 feet from where it had been attached. The bolts ended up across the street. On Friday, a groundskeeper found a device in a plastic sprinkler box, by the main entrance to First Presbyterian Church here, prompting a partial lockdown at nearby Las Cruces High School. The groundskeeper told the Rev. Norm Story, the church’s pastor, that the device looked like a pipe, with batteries and a timer attached, The Las Cruces Sun-News reported . Stephan Marshall, the chief division counsel for the F.B.I. in Albuquerque, said all three bombs were thought to have been placed by the same person or people. But, he added, “at this point, we haven’t gotten anything definitive.” The F.B.I. is offering a $20,000 reward for information that leads to an arrest. There is another reward — $7,500 — available through area Crime Stoppers programs.

Bombs
church,churches
Las Cruces NM
Abortion
FBI
Catholic Church
New Mexico State University
Christianity
Albuquerque


Bahrain Didn’t Enact Promised Changes, Report Says

Abstract: CAIRO — Bahrain ’s government has failed to put in place changes it promised after cracking down on a popular uprising last year, and it instead has expanded its repression of political opponents, according to a report released Tuesday by Amnesty International . The group said that the human rights situation had “markedly deteriorated” in recent months. It also warned that the government’s failure to follow through on the reforms, recommended almost a year ago by an independent panel, posed a looming threat to the tiny Persian Gulf nation, which remains deeply polarized, racked by nightly protests and reeling from escalating violence. “Bahrain risks sliding into protracted unrest and instability,” the report said. Dozens of people have been killed since the uprising began in February 2011 against the Sunni monarchy with protesters demanding political equity and an end to widespread discrimination against the island’s Shiite majority. In November 2011, a panel of legal and human rights experts who investigated the uprising and its aftermath released a report that found the authorities had used excessive or indiscriminate force, including torture, against the protesters. King Hamad bin Isa al-Khalifa of Bahrain, who commissioned the report, promised to heed its findings. But the report faulted the government for not transparently investigating allegations of torture, or in many cases simply ignoring accusations of abuse. The cases of several political prisoners who said they had been beaten, sexually harassed or subject to other abuses had not been independently investigated, the group said. The government had also failed to hold officers accountable for misconduct, Amnesty said, noting the low number of arrests of officers, and the fact that no high-ranking officers have been sentenced for abuse. “Delivering justice appears to be a slogan for the authorities to pacify the population, and for victims and their families justice and reparation remain elusive,” the report said. The government has repeatedly insisted that it is committed to the changes and is carrying them out, while blaming the violence by some protesters for the country’s increasingly bitter divisions. Bahrain’s rulers have often been unwilling to acknowledge the grievances of the protesters, claiming they have been manipulated by foreign powers. Amnesty also criticized Bahrain’s allies, especially the United States and Britain, for occasionally criticizing the monarchy without withdrawing any real support. The report called on those countries to “match their condemnation with action, instead of satisfying themselves with the narrative of reform while ignoring the reality of repression.” The report comes as tensions are rising in Bahrain, which hosts the United States Navy’s Fifth Fleet. In recent weeks, the government has banned protests, stripped dissidents of citizenship and announced it was taking legal action against Shiite religious figures for delivering “politicized sermons.” On Tuesday, the government said it had arrested a “domestic terror cell” that planted fake bombs in crowded places.

Middle East and North Africa Unrest (2010- )

Human Rights and Human Rights Violations


Japan: New Leak Detected at Crippled Reactor

Abstract: Highly radioactive water found in a reactor building at the destroyed Fukushima nuclear plant offers new evidence that the reactor’s containment vessel was breached during the accident, the plant’s operator said Monday. The operator, the Tokyo Electric Power Company, said a remote-controlled robot had found water on the floor of the heavily contaminated No. 3 reactor building that was even more radioactive than expected. The high radiation level suggests that the water had leaked from inside the reactor itself, where it would have come in contact with the melted-down fuel core. Nearly three years after the accident, the exact condition of the plant’s three damaged reactors remains unclear since high radiation levels and flooding make it impossible for workers to inspect them.

Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Disaster
Radiation
HazMat
Water pollution
Nuclear energy
Tokyo Electric Power
Japan


With Clemency From Obama, Drug Offender Embraces Second Chance

Abstract: MORGANTOWN, W.Va. — Rudolph Norris walked out of Morgantown federal prison two weeks ago carrying a duffel bag like no other. First, he had spent six months hand-stitching it himself from dozens of mottled leather scraps, symbolizing the shards of his life he longed to piece back together. Then he unzipped it and pulled out his invitation to try. “Dear Rudolph,” the letter began, “I wanted to personally inform you that I have granted your application for commutation.” It was signed “ Barack Obama .” Mr. Norris’s 22 years behind bars over with the stroke of the president’s pen, he showed off the letter to his receiving crowd of siblings, in-laws and, mostly, his all-grown-up daughter, Rajean, who had wondered if she would ever again see her father out of an orange jumpsuit. (“That’s my daddy!” she said as he came into view, sounding like the 8-year-old she had been back when he was sentenced.) Mr. Norris hugged and cried and fist-bumped. Then the ex-inmate, a newly minted symbol of second chances, rode the family’s rental van from West Virginia back to Maryland. Mr. Norris, 58, was one of 22 federal prisoners released on July 28 through a continuing bipartisan push to shorten the sentences of nonviolent drug offenders who, during the war-on-drugs fervor of decades ago, received punishments far lengthier than they would have drawn today. The mass incarceration of those days crowded prisons at great expense, and was found to have disproportionately penalized minority crack-cocaine offenders like Mr. Norris, who was convicted of possessing and selling the substance in 1992 and sentenced to 30 years in prison. The commutations, announced on March 31, preserve the conviction but end the sentence. One commutation went to a 65-year-old Kentucky man who had drawn a life sentence for running a huge marijuana farm; six others were freed from life sentences for cocaine-related offenses. President Obama announced another round of 46 commutations on July 13 — prisoners must wait three months for their actual release — and is considering more. Mr. Norris’s winding, six-prison path to freedom followed early resentment over his long sentence, fatalistic acclimation to a middle age lived behind bars, and then 10 years in which he spent dozens of hours a week in prison libraries learning federal drug law and pursuing legal avenues to release. His efforts foundered before Mr. Obama’s clemency initiative saw his case routed to a George Washington University Law School clinic and a student who received it as a class assignment. Their serendipitous work together, culminating in Mr. Norris’s release, led prisoners and wardens alike to call him the Miracle of Morgantown. During his first days of freedom, Mr. Norris delighted in slurping his first chocolate shake and fixing his granddaughter’s Barbie playhouse. He goggled at technology he had never used, from the Internet to hands-free bathroom sinks. But he also recognized the challenges so many recently released prisoners face: finding work despite his record; getting his own home rather than crashing in his brother’s basement indefinitely; and generally convincing a skeptical society that he is a changed man. Not everyone will fly the yellow happy-face balloons that greeted him at his big sister’s welcome-home party the afternoon he arrived. With a Letter From the President, a New Day for Rudolph Norris Mr. Norris, who was granted clemency by President Obama along with several other prisoners, has the potential to turn his life around. He responded to the president with gratitude and a promise, writing that “it feels as if the chains that I have been wearing for a long time have suddenly been released.” “He’s going to be fighting for his life,” said Courtney Stewart, the founder of the Reentry Network for Returning Citizens, a volunteer organization based in Washington that helps recently released prisoners pursue employment, housing and mental health services. “It’s going to be hard as hell, but he has to be willing to do whatever it takes. It’s not going to be up to him what that is. He won’t decide how long he’s going to have to do it. He’ll have to have some faith.” Mr. Norris immediately called his parole officer to learn his responsibilities and pledge to follow them. (His clemency does not vacate the eight years of probation to which he was originally sentenced.) He applied for food stamps and, because all he had was his Morgantown inmate card, pursued a more marketable driver’s license. His commitment to playing by the rules was so strong that he avoided a day-labor landscaping opportunity because it paid in cash, and he wanted to pay taxes like everyone else. “As I navigate my way back to society and begin a productive life,” he wrote to Mr. Obama in April, “one of the first and foremost thoughts on my mind will be my solemn commitment to prove to you that your faith in me was not at all misplaced.” Getting Out Mr. Norris fit the requirements of the Obama administration’s clemency program almost perfectly: He had demonstrated model behavior while serving at least 10 years for a relatively low-level, nonviolent drug crime. The court’s 1993 presentencing report stated flatly, “There was no victim in this offense.” Still, sentencing standards of the time called for 30 years in prison. Not that Mr. Norris’s record had been exemplary before that. A lifelong resident of hardscrabble northern Washington, D.C., he had been convicted of seven crimes since he was a teenager, from possession of marijuana to check forgery to robbery; none involved violence or a weapon. He was in and out of prison until the mid-1980s, when he held legitimate jobs — painting and rustproofing cars, delivering water bed mattresses — but also made $7,000 a month dealing crack cocaine, a drug so pervasive that even Washington’s mayor, Marion S. Barry Jr., was caught smoking it. In 1992, police officers targeting Mr. Norris found 291 small bags of crack totaling 29 grams in his Chrysler LeBaron convertible. “I wasn’t addicted to the drugs,” Mr. Norris said during his van ride back to Maryland, adding that he has not used any illegal substance or alcohol since 1983. “I was addicted to the lifestyle.” Having had discipline issues during several earlier incarcerations — including a fight in which he stabbed an inmate with half a pair of scissors — Mr. Norris, then in his mid-30s, committed himself to clean time and the development of work skills. He took a 4,000-hour course as an electronics inspector, worked jobs like making furniture and packaging recyclables, and had only three minor disciplinary violations in 22 years, according to prison records. His behavior earned him a 2012 transfer to the minimum-security prison in Morgantown. Ribbed by younger inmates there as “Old Gangsta,” Mr. Norris spent several hours a day in the law library, poring over the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure and case law that might suggest some way to shorten his sentence. (He said he received tutoring from a fellow inmate, Matthew Kluger , a corporate lawyer serving 12 years for insider trading.) In April 2014, when the Obama administration announced its clemency initiative, he sensed an opportunity. But federal public defenders were not allowed to handle clemency applications, so the lawyers who had represented Mr. Norris forwarded his case to George Washington University Law School’s Neighborhood Law and Policy Clinic , which allows 10 students per semester to assist inmates for class credit. A third-year student, Courtney Francik, got the assignment last fall. Image Rudolph Norris, 58, with his daughter, Rajean, last month in West Virginia. He had not had orange juice in years and needed help to use a cellphone. Credit Jeff Swensen for The New York Times Ms. Francik, 27, a Harvard graduate from the Baltimore suburb of Cockeysville, had heard from friends who had gone to law school that their most valuable experience came from handling real cases in a clinic, she said in a recent telephone interview. She signed up and soon found herself engrossed, taking the unusual step of staying on for the spring semester as well. “I almost moved into the clinic building for Mr. Norris’s case,” Ms. Francik said. “I couldn’t wait to get to the clinic building in the morning and start working.” Working closely with two lawyers at the clinic, Ms. Francik prepared 182 pages of legal and personal material to support Mr. Norris’s clemency application. Her enthusiasm and confidence during their one face-to-face meeting at Morgantown, in November, along with phone calls and numerous letters, so encouraged Mr. Norris that he began sewing the leather bag he hoped to carry out of prison. His application was submitted in mid-February, joining thousands of others from inmates nationwide. They were evaluated by Department of Justice lawyers, who recommended top candidates for White House officials to cull. Mr. Obama reviewed data on each finalist, a White House spokesman said, before using his constitutional authority to commute their sentences. In the early afternoon of March 31, a White House lawyer called the clinic to say that Mr. Norris had become one of 22 people who would be getting letters of congratulations from Mr. Obama. Ms. Francik received a text and bolted from her class — Professional Responsibility — to join the phone call alerting Mr. Norris, who naturally was in Morgantown’s law library. He burst into tears. “I’m not going to die in prison,” he recalled saying as he cried once more. “I’m on my way home.” Mr. Norris spent the three-month wait for his release making sure he did nothing to jeopardize his good fortune. (Although most inmates were happy for him, a few resented his special treatment and tried to provoke altercations, he said.) On the morning he left for good, he told a crowd of hundreds of inmates seeing him off: “I’m not better than you. I just had to grow up.” Getting Started Walking toward his family in the parking lot, Mr. Norris wore heavy gray sweatpants and heavier gray whiskers, some pounds having migrated from his barrel chest to his belly, but still with the muscular shoulders of his distant youth. (His brother-in-law remarked, “Man, he looks good.”) Mr. Norris’s younger son, Raymond, who could not travel to the reunion from New Mexico, received Mr. Norris’s first phone call and a promise: “It’ll be my last game of basketball — I’m going to show you what Daddy’s got left and then retire.” The five-hour ride home, during which he took 34 calls on six different family cellphones, included crucial stops for a Wendy’s chocolate Frosty and some outlet-mall sneakers. Having never used a cellphone, he officially entered the 21st century when spotty reception on Interstate 68 caused him to inquire, “Can you hear me now?” Family members fought over who would buy him a wallet, a watch and a jersey of his beloved Washington Redskins. “Don’t buy anything for me — wait till I work, I’ll buy it for myself,” Mr. Norris pleaded. “I don’t want to be no burden. I been y’all’s burden for 25 years.” At the welcome-back barbecue among two dozen family members in his older sister’s backyard, Mr. Norris destroyed a crate of hard-shelled crabs brought just for him. He met his daughter’s three children, including 2-year-old Zuri, whom he hoisted on his shoulder and told: “Can I have some sugar? I’ve been waiting to see you. This is all your family. It’s my family, too.” Mr. Norris’s younger brother, Bruce, brought him back to his house in Upper Marlboro, Md., where a new full-size mattress and several sets of clothes awaited in the made-up basement room he will use until he gets on his feet. The next morning, he showed that his playful side had survived prison; he phoned Bruce and said frantically, “I messed up the alarm and the police have me in cuffs outside the house!” only to bellow in laughter afterward. Video In a video released by the White House on Monday, President Obama commuted the sentences of 46 federal prisoners, the majority of whom were nonviolent drug offenders. Credit Credit Doug Mills/The New York Times Mr. Norris then met his probation officer to learn the terms of his supervised release: He may not leave the District of Columbia, Maryland or Virginia for 60 days, must check in with her regularly, and is subject to drug testing. A violation could bring its own punishment, which could include jail, but would not affect his commutation. A growing number of state and federal officials from both parties are supporting measures to decrease the prison population by lightening punishments for some drug-related offenders, who according to federal data make up roughly half of the 1.5 million federal and state prisoners. The Fair Sentencing Act of 2010 eliminated the five-year minimum sentence for first-time possession of crack, and decreased higher mandatory punishments for dealing crack with a prior criminal record. The day after visiting the probation office, Mr. Norris met with a social services agent who briefed him on more than a dozen state assistance programs, including ones that offer free interview clothes and health exams at the Wellmobile, a clinic on wheels that drives around Maryland. Applying for food stamps meant his first attempt at a technology forbidden in prison: the Internet. “I feel like a 5-year-old trying to learn this stuff,” he said, poking hesitantly at a keyboard. As for the critical job hunt, the social services representative told Mr. Norris that he has more skills than many people in his position. Besides his experience painting cars and delivering packages, she said, his electronics-inspection classes and exemplary prison work record would encourage employers willing to look past his incarceration. The question is how many of those there will be. Mr. Stewart, of the association that aids ex-prisoners, said initial job searches typically last between nine months and two years and tend to lead to work that is custodial, or related to the restaurant or lodging industries. One of Mr. Norris’s brothers-in-law is a shuttle-bus driver for a local hotel and will try to get him a job there, while another looks into some gardening work. “I’ll take the lowest honest job out there — I just want to get started,” Mr. Norris said. “Society doesn’t owe me anything. I owe society for dealing drugs.” Getting On A few nights after his release, Mr. Norris phoned the person he credits most for his coming home: Ms. Francik, the student with whom he had not spoken since she delivered news of his clemency three months ago. She graduated in May and just started work as a public defender in Shelby County, Tenn. “Miss Courtney, y’all kept telling me I was a primary person the clemency was about,” Mr. Norris told her. “I kept hearing how confident y’all were. That’s what made me make it. Y’all were the vessels to get me home.” “It was an honor, Mr. Norris — it really was,” she replied. “I believe in you.” “I’m trying to get gainfully employed in a hurry,” he said, “so I can be able to provide and get my own place. I have the freedom to do what I want to do as long as I do it right.” The two spoke for an hour. As the conversation wound down, Ms. Francik told him, “I’m going to be back in a few weeks and the whole clinic team wants to take you out to dinner. Wherever you want.” “I’ll be dressed, pressed and at my best,” he said. Then he paused for drama, as if his story lacked any. “But one thing,” he said. “What?” “I’ll have a job by then,” he vowed. “And I’m paying for you.”

Amnesties Commutations and Pardons
Rudolph Norris
Drug Abuse
Barack Obama
Criminal Sentence
George Washington University
Maryland
West Virginia


Recent Commercial Transactions

Abstract: RECENT SALE $7 MILLION 98 Eighth Avenue (between West 14th and 15th Streets) Manhattan An investor has bought this 2,500-square-foot three-story mixed-use building across the street from Google’s offices. The building has a 1,100-square-foot vacant retail space, with an asking rent of $25,000 a month, and four free-market studio apartments. Buyer: 243 Third Avenue Associates L.L.C. Buyer’s broker: Timothy Melzer, Corcoran Group Seller: Christos Kalliantasis Seller’s broker: Ante Jakic, Halstead Property RECENT LEASE $42 /SQUARE FOOT $126,000 approximate annual rent Image Credit Parisa Azadi for The New York Times 147 West 26th Street (between Avenue of the Americas and Seventh Avenue) Manhattan A provider of technology consulting and support services has signed a 10-year lease for a 3,000-square-foot space with three exposures on the second floor of this six-story building in Chelsea. Tenant: iTeam Technology Associates Tenant’s broker: Nigel Shamash, 5CRE Landlord: Justin Management Landlord’s broker: Adam Justin, Justin Management FOR SALE $16.9 MILLION 780 East 135th Street (along Willow Avenue) Mott Haven, Bronx This six-story 1912 industrial brick building, to be delivered vacant, is a block-through from 134th to 135th Streets, and runs along Willow Avenue, where there is a loading dock and a second entrance. The 84,650-square-foot building, which has been occupied by the Padded Wagon moving company, has 11-foot ceilings and two hot-air gas heaters on each floor. Eleven columns span the length of the building, and three span its width. Owner: 780 East L.L.C. Broker: Ronnie Shaban, Besen & Associates

Real estate broker
Commercial Real Estate
Corcoran Group
Halstead Property Company
Rent
Manhattan
Bronx


$24 Million to Be Paid by Con Ed in Pipe Blast

Abstract: Con Edison has agreed to pay more than $24 million to make up for damage caused by the explosion of one of its steam pipes in Midtown Manhattan last summer, which injured dozens of people and displaced thousands more. The utility promised not to pass those costs on to its customers, and to credit customers who paid their energy bills but did not receive service while they were shut out of their buildings after the blast. It will also pay more than $2 million in additional liability insurance premiums during the next four years without passing those costs on to customers, either. The explosion occurred last July 18 at Lexington Avenue and 41st Street. One person died of a heart attack in the blast. The agreement between the utility and the state’s Department of Public Service and Consumer Protection Board, was signed on Wednesday and reported by The Daily News on Friday. The Public Service Commission, which must vote to approve the settlement, is scheduled to hold public hearings about it on Aug. 21 in New York City. Approval by the commission would end a yearlong fight over whether Con Edison operated its steam network properly. But the commission is still looking at whether Con Edison violated any rules, which could result in up to $5 million in penalties. Con Edison is involved in dozens of private lawsuits over the explosion. In May, it sued one of its contractors, Team Industrial Services, as well as the city itself, contending that they contributed to the debacle. Con Edison alleged that a sealant used by the contractor clogged steam traps designed to remove condensation from steam pipes. The utility wants to recoup $45 million it has already spent on repairs, legal costs and compensation for people whose clothing, cars and other property were damaged in the explosion. But in the deal with the Consumer Protection Board and the Department of Public Service, Con Edison agreed to return to customers anything beyond $24 million that it wins in any legal settlements. “There’s a provision that eliminates the possibility that Con Ed would be enriched as a result of this tragedy,” said Mindy A. Bockstein, the executive director of the Consumer Protection Board. “Ratepayers will not have to pay the cost of cleaning up or replacing the steam network. There is a slight possibility that without this settlement, ratepayers could have had to shoulder some of the costs.” Bob McGee, a spokesman for Con Edison, said the utility is “committed to learning from this experience in order to strengthen the safety and reliability of the steam system and has already implemented measures to enhance its system.” A spokeswoman for the Public Service Commission declined to discuss the agreement. City Councilman Eric N. Gioia, a Queens Democrat who has been a consistent critic of the utility, said that agreeing to cover the cost of the damages makes sense. “Paying for the damages they caused is the least Con Ed can do,” Mr. Gioia said. The utility’s “mistakes and bad management don’t just cost New Yorkers money, they also cost lives,” he added.

Consolidated Edison Inc
Explosions
Accidents and Safety
Manhattan (NYC)


Major League Baseball Set for a Tour of Cuba

Abstract: Joe Torre and Dave Winfield will be leading a baseball goodwill tour of Cuba this month. Major League Baseball and the Players Association said Thursday the trip, which is set to run from Dec. 15-18, will include children’s clinics and a charity event. Torre is the chief baseball officer and Winfield is the union’s special adviser. They will be joined by current players, a group that has not yet been announced. This is M.L.B.’s first visit to Cuba since the Baltimore Orioles played an exhibition game against the Cuban national team in 1999. There is a possibility the Tampa Bay Rays will play a spring training game in Cuba next year. Commissioner Rob Manfred said “baseball represents a pivotal common bond in our cultures, and the impact that Cuban ballplayers have made on our game is undeniable.” Tony Clark, the union’s executive director, said he hoped that the visit would start a “relationship that will only grow stronger.”

Baseball
Cuba
Joe Torre
Dave Winfield
MLB
Rob Manfred


8 Civilians Killed in 2 Disputed Attacks, Iraq Says

Abstract: BAGHDAD — American soldiers fatally shot three Iraqi bank employees Wednesday as their car passed a convoy near Baghdad International Airport, according to an Interior Ministry official and Yarmouk Hospital, where the bodies were brought. The attack was one of two bloody episodes on Wednesday in which the American military and Iraqi officials offered sharply different accounts of what had happened. Iraqi authorities said at least eight civilians had been killed by American soldiers. American military officials said that in each case they opened fire after coming under attack, and that they were unaware of any civilian deaths. The military also reported on Wednesday that four American soldiers had died in unrelated events. They brought the death toll of American service members this month to 26. In the shooting near the Baghdad Airport, one of the most tightly guarded locations in Iraq , the American military said “three criminals” fired at soldiers about 8:40 a.m. while their convoy was stopped on the side of the road. “The soldiers returned fire, which resulted in the vehicle running off the road and striking a wall,” the military said in a written statement. “The vehicle then exploded.” The attack left bullet holes in two of the convoy vehicles, the military said, and a weapon was found in the car, though the statement did not say whether the holes matched the caliber of that weapon. Officials at the hospital identified the charred bodies of the dead as those of Hafed Abdul Mahdi, director of the bank at the airport, and Surur Shadid Ahmed and Maha Adnan Yunis, women who worked at the bank. Hours earlier, an American helicopter fired missiles into a home near Tikrit, killing a family of five, local officials and a relative said. The episode began when Afar Ahmed Zidan thought he heard thieves prowling near his home in the darkness, a cousin, Hussain al-Azawi, said. Mr. Zidan went outside and fired at them, Mr. Azawi said. But the men in the darkness turned out to be American infantrymen conducting a search, Mr. Azawi said. They returned fire, wounding Mr. Zidan, who rushed inside and frantically called his cousin to alert him to what had happened, Mr. Azawi said. Then the Americans called in an airstrike that killed Mr. Zidan, his wife and three children, all under 10 years old, Mr. Azawi said. “The Americans shot two rockets into the house,” he said. The rocket strike also wounded three of Mr. Zidan’s neighbors, who were taken to a hospital, he said. Officials from the local council in Tikrit, about 100 miles north of Baghdad, said Wednesday that they believed five people had been killed in the American airstrike, and that they had sent a representative to attend the funerals. The American military confirmed an airstrike had taken place, but said an “Al Qaeda terrorist” had fired at the service members. Soldiers surrounded the building where the man was hiding and called for him to come out, the military said, but after perceiving “hostile intent,” they called in the airstrike. American soldiers and Iraqi police determined that the man had been killed but did not find other victims, the military said. Four women in a neighboring building “sustained only minor injuries,” the military said. The disputed killings followed a bloody day for American troops elsewhere in Iraq. Three United States soldiers and their interpreter were killed by a roadside bomb in Nineveh Province on Tuesday night, providing more evidence that Sunni Arab guerrillas remain active in Mosul despite recent Iraqi military operations. Few details of the attack were released by the American military, which said that an improvised explosive device killed the soldiers and interpreter about 10:45 p.m. On Wednesday, gunmen assassinated the municipal director of Mosul, Khalid Mahmoud, and his driver, the latest in a string of killings of teachers, lawyers and other professionals in the city. Iraqi troops have fanned out in Mosul to try to quell the insurgency there led by Baathist fighters and Sunni extremist guerrillas. Violence has declined in the city, but officials knowledgeable about the fighting said many of Mosul’s most fearsome guerrillas had been pursued by American Special Operations forces rather than Iraqi soldiers. Another American soldier was killed Wednesday morning in eastern Baghdad by an explosively formed projectile, a powerful form of roadside bomb.

Mosul (Iraq)
United States Armament and Defense
Bombs and Explosives
Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia
Iraq
Sunni Muslims


Canada to Phase Out Rail Cars Tied to Deadly Quebec Fire

Abstract: Canada will require that older rail cars used for carrying crude oil be phased out by May 2017, the government said on Wednesday, moving ahead of the United States to eliminate the cars in light of growing oil-by-rail traffic and a deadly accident last year. The move is a response to recommendations made by the Transportation Safety Board of Canada after a fiery derailment last July in Lac-Mégantic, Quebec, which killed 47 people. The ban was among a series of measures outlined by the government to improve the safety of transporting crude oil by rail, an increasingly common practice in North America, where a shortage of pipeline capacity has forced shippers to find alternatives. Canada’s faster time frame raises the possibility that the older cars will be diverted for use in the United States.

Automobile safety
Oil and Gasoline
Canada
Train wreck


Car Bombing, Claimed by Separatists, Kills 10 in Pakistan

Abstract: ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — A huge car bombing in the restive southwestern city of Quetta killed at least 10 people and wounded 23 people on Friday evening, according to police officials. The Baluchistan Liberation Army, a shadowy banned separatist group, claimed responsibility for the attack and said that the blast was carried out by a suicide bomber, according to the local news media. Police officials disputed the claim and said that about 110 pounds of explosives were planted in a vehicle that was parked outside the home of Shafiq Mengal, the son of a former federal minister and former provincial acting chief minister, Naseer Mengal. The family of Mr. Mengal remained unhurt, the police said. It remained unclear why the Mr. Mengal’s house was a target, but the B.L.A. has in the past targeted soldiers and government officials and buildings. The powerful explosion, heard from several miles away, spread panic in the volatile provincial capital. It damaged over a dozen vehicles and several houses in the neighborhood caught fire. Police officers and paramilitary soldiers cordoned off the area as ambulances ferried the wounded to Civil Hospital. A separatist insurgency led by has simmered for decades in the southwestern Baluchistan Province. Baluch nationalists demand greater autonomy and a bigger share of revenue from the province’s mineral-rich resources. The sense of alienation and economic and political marginalization runs deep in the Baluch people. The insurgency in the province adds to the troubles of the federal government and the military, which has been fighting Taliban militants in the country’s northwest. Human rights activists have condemned the heavy-handed approach of the military’s intelligence and paramilitary troops in quelling the insurgency, accusing them of extra-judicial killings and kidnappings. Military officials deny those allegations. In a speech on Dec. 27, President Asif Ali Zardari urged the Baluch to give up arms and wage a political struggle.

Baluchistan Liberation Army
Terrorism
Baluchistan (Pakistan)
Baluch (Ethnic Group)
Deaths (Fatalities)
Pakistan
Quetta (Pakistan)


Trade Now Could Cost Broker Later

Abstract: Did you ever hear of a broker who would not agree to earn a commission? Even if getting the money required absolutely no work at all? Apparently, some brokers think such a move could be wise. It’s not that they don’t like income, but they may fear that letting some securities trade at low prices could force them to report even larger losses than they are already posting. The Financial Industry Regulatory Authority, or Finra, put out a regulatory notice last week cautioning brokers that if a customer really wants to place a sell order, the broker must execute the trade. “Recently, questions have been raised regarding a firm’s obligations when it receives a customer’s unsolicited instruction to liquidate a position in an illiquid security when the customer is aware of specific buying interest in that security,” the notice states. “There is no Finra rule that would require a firm to refuse to follow the customer’s instruction under these circumstances, even if the firm believes the market or price for the security is not favorable at that time.” Now it is a little unusual for any regulator to put out a statement saying there is no rule about something, unless someone claimed there was. Marc Menchel, Finra’s general counsel for regulation, told me that the evidence of such actions was anecdotal but that the subject came up at every conference he went to, and he wanted to make clear what the rules require. It used to be that the only brokers accused of ignoring sell orders were the penny stock pump-and-dump operators, who did not want to let unfavored customers sell out before the price collapsed. This time it is different. Penny stock firms do not execute trades in things like collateralized debt obligations. It is the major firms that do that — or refuse to do it. I can recall few times when so many on Wall Street have wanted to deny that market prices are justified. In public, they insist they have written down their securities to their best estimates of market value. In private, they argue that virtually all of the mortgage-backed securities that are, or used to be, rated AAA will in the end meet all their obligations, but that panic and a lack of solid information on the details of each deal have led to ridiculously low prices. They may be right, of course. Markets do overshoot. If the firms being asked to execute trades in illiquid securities find the agreed-upon price to be an incredible bargain, they could offer to pay a higher price, and no doubt receive hearty thanks — not to mention enduring loyalty — from the selling customer. But the firms do not want to do that. The customer might tell his friends, producing more sell orders. In any case, Wall Street is busy reducing its leverage by selling assets and raising capital from investors. Bloomberg News calculates that financial institutions around the world have raised $302 billion in capital — but taken $396 billion in losses — since the subprime crisis erupted. Richard S. Fuld Jr., the Lehman Brothers chief executive, assured investors in a conference call this week that the firm’s $2.8 billion quarterly loss came after it wrote down everything to very conservative levels. But he added that having to take a loss that large was “just totally unacceptable,” and he ousted Lehman’s president and chief financial officer. Their successors are not likely to be eager to take on a lot of risks, and neither are their competitors. Financial institutions have long been required to mark many assets to market value, but an accounting rule that took effect this year specifies how to do that. It introduced investors to “Level 3 assets,” those for which there is no liquid market (Level 1), or even a comparable market that can provide guidance on valuations (Level 2). In other words, mark-to-model. You can get a feel for how investors have come to trust Level 3 valuations from this comment by Mr. Fuld: “Level 3 by definition includes those assets with low price transparency. While there is more analysis used in establishing the value of these assets, this certainly by no means implies that these assets have little or no true value.” Still, a good Level 3 valuation beats a bad Level 2 valuation. And a brokerage firm would have a harder time justifying a high mark if it knew of a low trade of a similar security, even though the accounting rule lets firms ignore prices that result from “distress sales.” Is it a distress sale when a customer sells at a price the broker deems too low? What if 10 customers do so? There may be an incentive for firms to arrange to not know about some trades. That there is fear of what a lot of trading would produce was shown this week when Deloitte and Goldman Sachs announced plans to revamp a failed SIV — structured investment vehicle — that owned a lot of dubious mortgage securities. Rather than sell off all the assets, they will auction some of them, and use those prices to set a value for the rest. That will require fewer buyers to step forward, which is good in this market, and Goldman itself is setting up a company to pay the auction price for the remaining securities. There appears to have been some creative legal thinking that suggested that Finra’s requirement for “best execution” of trades would bar executing trades in illiquid markets at prices the broker deemed unreasonable. The new notice shows that argument won’t work. Instead, the regulator made it clear that if both customers understand what they are doing and want to trade even though the broker does not like the price, the trade should take place. Otherwise, Finra said, a firm would risk violating a real rule, one that requires firms “to observe high standards of commercial honor and just and equitable principles of trade when conducting business with their customers.”

Norris Floyd
Brokers and Brokerage Firms
Regulation and Deregulation of Industry
Financial Industry Regulatory Authority


Marvin Sylvor, a Designer of Carousels, Dies at 75

Abstract: Marvin Sylvor, the merry-go-round man who dotted parks in New York City with fanciful painted ponies and went on to help populate the rest of the world with galloping steeds, flying manes and sparkly gold trappings on more than 60 carousels, died on Wednesday in Miami. He was 75. The cause was kidney failure, said his brother, Robert. His carousels, in places like Bolivia, Brazil, New Zealand, Saudi Arabia and Singapore, as well as in the United States, are admired for their design, artistry and breathtaking painting effects, all of which are evident in what is perhaps the best-known of his creations, the 2002 Bryant Park carousel in the backyard of the New York Public Library. There, he was challenged to design not an American classic, but a forest green, French-inspired carousel in a French-style park with pebbled Parisian walks. His artists therefore incorporated 10 refined ponies, a whimsical frog, a cat, a deer and a rabbit, using images ranging from puffy white clouds to Audubon birds. The 12,000-pound, 22-foot-wide carousel had 63,000 riders last year, at a top price of $2 a ride. “He brought a rare creativity to the art of the carousel,” said Dan Pisark, a vice president at Bryant Park Corporation. “He had a tremendous knowledge of carousel history and a passion for carousel art.” A child of the Bronx who grew up at 165th Street and Jerome Avenue, near Yankee Stadium, Mr. Sylvor said he suffered a hopeless love for carousels because he was forbidden to ride one. His father, a sign painter, took the family to Rockaway every summer, and every summer they would pass a carousel near the Marine Park Bridge. “And every summer I would ask to ride the carousel, and every summer my father would refuse to stop,” Mr. Sylvor once said. “He was a man on a mission to get to the Rockaways.” A proud graduate of William Howard Taft High School in the South Bronx when it was a premier institution, Mr. Sylvor liked to tell the story of his first professional encounter with the artistic muse, while braced at attention as an Army private in the 1950s at Schofield Barracks in Hawaii. As he recalled it in a 2002 New York Times interview: “An astonishing thing happened. A lieutenant barked, ‘I’m looking for an artist. Is anyone here an artist?’ ” Private after private stepped forward, looking for relief from heatstroke and unpeeled potatoes, Mr. Sylvor remembered. But all were rejected because the lieutenant kept asking, “Do you have your brushes?” When the lieutenant reached Private Sylvor, he, unlike the others, replied with a crisp “Yes sir!” and the officer gave him the job, saying, “If you have your brushes you must be a good artist.” In truth, Mr. Sylvor was utterly untrained in art and had no brushes, and immediately sneaked out to buy some. But he was so successful at decorating an officers’ club for a party that he got a series of Army painting jobs that kept him spud-free until his hitch was up. An art degree from Pratt Institute followed in 1958, and he founded a window-display and decorating business, toiling for Henri Bendel, Bloomingdale’s and even the Vatican Pavilion of the 1964 World’s Fair. There, he liked to say, he did everything except the “Pietà,” since, he said, “Michelangelo did that.” Around that time, he joined the National Carousel Association, traveling to attend conventions across the country; subsequently, one of his clients, at Herald Center, asked Mr. Sylvor if he could build a carousel. Just as Private Sylvor would have done, he answered in the affirmative — then hired experts to help him. Soon, carousel contracts overshadowed the decorating business at his company, Fabricon. In addition to building merry-go-rounds in Bryant Park, the Riverbank State Park in Manhattan and Forest Park in Queens, he created carousels for Chicago; Detroit; Nashville; La Paz, Bolivia; São Paulo, Brazil; Auckland, New Zealand; Riyadh, Saudi Arabia; and Singapore. He relished the role of the little old carousel maker, but at 5 feet 11 inches tall, broad of shoulder and full of beard, he was not all that little. In his factory in East New York, Brooklyn, he delighted in showing visitors his historical inventory of more than 100 horses and “menagerie creatures,” as they are known in the trade. His favorites were “jumpers,” carousel creatures that move up and down, powered by a mechanism that had not been improved upon since 1890. And he especially liked to surprise visitors by showing them horses’ glass eyes from a taxidermy supplier in Woonsocket, S.D. Mr. Sylvor’s first marriage ended in divorce. In addition to his brother, of New York City, he is survived by his wife, Julia, of Miami; a son, Chris, of New York; a daughter, Aimee, of Miami; and two grandchildren. Mr. Sylvor, who retired three years ago, said he loved merry-go-rounds because “they touch some spiritual part of your soul somewhere.” “They make you smile,” he said.

Entertainment and Amusements
New York City
Sylvor Marvin
Deaths (Obituaries)
Carousels
Art


Developer Is Sued Over Access for Disabled

Abstract: The Justice Department filed a federal lawsuit in Manhattan on Wednesday against AvalonBay Communities, one of the largest apartment developers in the United States, accusing the company of illegally discriminating against disabled people by failing to provide them with sufficient access at a 361-unit rental building on the Lower East Side. In a statement, the United States attorney’s office for the Southern District of New York said the case was “the government’s first lawsuit in Manhattan alleging violations of the Fair Housing Act in the design and construction of multifamily housing.” The lawsuit concerns Avalon Chrystie Place, at 229 Chrystie Street, between East Houston and Stanton Streets. Opened in 2005 at a cost of $149 million, it was constructed on a formerly desolate site in what was known as the Cooper Square Urban Renewal Area. A Whole Foods Market is on the ground level of the building, which includes a rooftop deck, a fitness center and a residents’ lounge with a pool table. The seven-page complaint, filed in United States District Court, says the building has common areas that are inaccessible to the disabled. Furthermore, federal prosecutors said in a statement, the building “lacks routes into and through dwellings, reinforcements in bathroom walls to allow the installation of grab bars, and kitchens and bathrooms usable by a person in a wheelchair.” Along with AvalonBay, the complaint names several of the company’s subsidiaries and development partners, including SLCE Architects, a Manhattan-based design firm. The Fair Housing Act of 1968 was expanded in 1991 to require that the design and construction of new housing accommodate people with disabilities. AvalonBay has faced several suits brought by the Equal Rights Center, a fair-housing group based in Washington, asserting that the developer has failed to follow the law. (The Justice Department has filed papers supporting the center in those cases.) In a statement, Fred Harris, senior vice president of AvalonBay, a real estate investment trust based in Alexandria, Va., said, “Contrary to the Department of Justice allegations, Avalon Chrystie Place was designed and constructed, and is operated, with a view to full compliance with all accessibility codes and laws.” He said the project complied with Local Law 58, a New York City statute that he said “has long been understood to satisfy the accessibility requirements of both federal and local law.” James Davidson, a partner at SLCE Architects, said, “We as a firm feel we have been complying with Local Law 58 and the accessibility standards, as we understand them.” The federal complaint seeks a court order barring the developer “from designing or constructing multifamily housing in the future that does not contain the accessibility features required by federal law.” It also seeks monetary damages to compensate victims and a civil penalty. “Housing must be available to all Americans without regard to disability,” Michael J. Garcia, the United States attorney in Manhattan, said in a statement. “We will continue to pursue those who fail to design and construct accessible housing as required by federal law.” Two assistant United States attorneys , Sarah E. Light and Brian M. Feldman, are handling the case for the Justice Department. Michael G. Allen, a lawyer in Washington who works with the National Fair Housing Alliance, an advocacy group that is not involved in the case, said that developers had often flouted the 1991 requirements even though following them would add only a small amount to building costs. “I can only conclude that after 17 years of outreach, education and enforcement that people who make these mistakes make them knowingly,” he said in a phone interview.

Housing
Suits and Litigation
Handicapped
Lower East Side (NYC)
Justice Department


Waking Up to Recurring ID Nightmares

Abstract: AS members of Congress continue to dither over legislation concerning data security, the data broker industry, consumers' rights and identity theft -- nearly a full year after the ChoicePoint debacle first woke Americans to the problem -- perhaps they should meet Raymond Lorenzo. In the early 1990's, someone ran amok, using Mr. Lorenzo's identity. It was used to rack up tens of thousands of dollars in fraudulent credit card debt. It was given to the police after various traffic violations. And a man even used the name Raymond Lorenzo when he was arrested and indicted in 1991 in Suffolk County, N.Y., for, among other things, burglary, forgery and criminal possession of a weapon. That impostor, Peter Perro (the boyfriend of Mr. Lorenzo's ex-wife, it turned out), was additionally charged with criminal impersonation after Mr. Lorenzo filed a police report and fingerprints revealed the ruse. Mr. Perro was convicted on weapons and burglary charges in addition to criminal mischief. But deep inside the state's Criminal Record Information Management System, it appears that a simple clerical error -- and the digital ripples it unleashed -- may have sealed a dismal future for Mr. Lorenzo. "Lorenzo, Raymond" is listed as the felon, using the alias "Perro, Peter" -- a perfect reversal of the facts. The precise details are still being sorted out, but it seems clear that over the next 15 years, that digital nugget -- like so much else in this age of consumer recordkeeping -- was bought, sold, copied, stored, transmitted and appended to a digital dossier that, along with the erroneous debts and driving records, has haunted Mr. Lorenzo at every turn. From New York to Florida, where he now lives, potential employers, landlords and even schools have pulled up those felonies on background checks of Mr. Lorenzo -- one as recently as September -- despite his many attempts to correct the record. Over the years, he has had to file for bankruptcy and has flirted with depression and debt stemming from $30,000 in purchases he never made. His driver's license was revoked and he fought for two years to get it back -- and five more to get points dropped from his record -- all for violations he never committed. At various turns, data brokers told him he could not see his dossier and that it could not be changed anyway. Bureaucratic court clerks told him there was little they could do. "This whole thing has been worse than any nightmare I could ever have had for myself and my children," Mr. Lorenzo said in an e-mail message. Last week, Mari J. Frank, an attorney in California and identity theft specialist who has been helping Mr. Lorenzo with his case, finally wrested a copy of the conviction record bearing the clerical goof from the Office of Court Administration in New York. She hopes to file a motion to correct the record soon, although it could still take years for that information to make its way out of New York's criminal database and into every commercial silo that has ever compiled the erroneous information on Mr. Lorenzo. "Identity theft is devastating for victims," Ms. Frank said. "Unfortunately, the companies and governmental agencies that facilitate this crime with sloppy information and handling practices have the money and clout to influence Congress to pass laws that protect themselves instead of our citizens." That's assuming that Congress will ever manage to pass anything at all. Since the giant data broker ChoicePoint announced last February that crooks had put information on 145,000 consumers at risk, the Privacy Rights Clearinghouse, an advocacy group in San Diego, has counted about 114 other major data breaches, affecting about 52 million Americans. This includes the disappearance just two weeks ago of backup tapes containing valuable data -- including Social Security numbers and credit card information on more than 200,000 time-share owners -- announced by Marriott International. "There needs to be better legislation," said George Waller, the executive vice president of StrikeForce Technologies, a company based in Edison, N.J. that develops identity verification technologies for governments, businesses and financial institutions. "They say once the horse is out of the barn, why bother closing the door?" Mr. Waller said, referring to the millions of bits of consumer data already leaked into the black market. "But even if someone has your Social Security number, if you can prevent them from using it, that's the solution we should be driving towards." Some states have been moving aggressively in that direction. According to Bankrate.com, which aggregates information on the financial industry, at least 10 states have enacted laws that allow consumers some ability to freeze their credit, which prevents a consumer reporting agency from releasing information without a consumer's direct authorization. Had such a law existed in New York, it might have helped prevent Mr. Lorenzo's impostor from opening lines of credit in his name. A handful of proposals are currently pending in the State Assembly. Indeed, the ChoicePoint scandal seemed to put the scare into the states. Last year, data breach legislation was introduced in at least 35 states and signed into law in at least 22, according to data compiled by the National Conference of State Legislatures. Congress, on the other hand, introduced more than a dozen bills, but managed to reach consensus on none of them. The problem is that data handlers want a narrow bill that would require them simply to notify consumers when a breach occurred and would give them broad discretion to decide when such a step was necessary. They would also prefer that any federal bill pre-empt the growing thicket of tough state laws. Consumer and privacy rights advocates, on the other hand, want to preserve existing state laws while enacting broad federal notification standards, the ability to freeze credit, and new rights for consumers to see and correct information collected on them. There is no question that Mr. Lorenzo -- and perhaps millions of victims like him -- might have been spared years of trouble had at least a few of those proposals been in place over the last decade of his life. Of course, whether those proposals will survive the cold calculus of realpolitik is an open question. What is certain is that the debate on Capitol Hill will continue this year as surely as private information on thousands of consumers will continue to seep into the public sphere. Just last week, H&R Block announced that it had mistakenly shipped some free copies of its tax software that compromised recipients' Social Security numbers: they were printed on the mailing labels.


Motion Picture Academy Seeks to Expand Membership

Abstract: LOS ANGELES — Reversing a policy that has more closely restricted membership in the last decade, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences on Friday invited an unusually large group of film professionals — 276 in total, including the actors Milla Jovovich and Joseph Gordon-Levitt — to join its ranks. The invitation list represents a sharp increase from last year, when 176 new members were invited. That number was roughly calculated to maintain the size of the group, which annually awards the Oscars, and was generally consistent with the practice since 2004, when the Academy moved to tighten its rolls by focusing heavily on credentials, including any recent Oscar nomination, in deciding whether to extend an invitation. This year, however, the Academy — which has been concerned about a lack of diversity within its ranks, and is searching for new connections to emerging aspects of cinema — dropped a system by which each of its branches was held to a quota. It particularly encouraged the expansion of its documentary branch , which had been one of its smallest. That branch has only 173 members, but this year it invited 42 documentarians to join, compared with just 11 last year. Among those invited were Marcel Ophuls, whose work includes “The Sorrow and the Pity,” and both Ricki Stern and Annie Sundberg, who directed “Joan Rivers: A Piece of Work.” Other actors on a list of 22 invitees — actually fewer than the 25 invited last year — include Michael Peña, Lucy Liu, Jennifer Lopez, Charles Grodin and Jason Bateman. Among the 15 directors invited to join, an increase from last year’s 11, were Paul Feig, Benh Zeitlin and Steve McQueen. Kevin Tsujihara, recently named chief executive of Warner Bros., was perhaps the best-known of the 17 executives invited to join. In a twist, Neil Meron, who was a producer of this year’s Oscar telecast and whose film credits include “Hairspray” and “The Bucket List,” was invited to join as a member at large rather than as a producer. Jason Blum, whose credits include “The Purge” and “Paranormal Activity,” was among nine producers invited to join, a decline from the 12 who were invited to join last year. The short films and features animation branch sharply increased its invitations, to 19 from 11. Among those invited this year was Matt Groening, whose feature film credits include “The Simpsons Movie.”


World Bank Says China Will Reach G.D.P. Target for Year

Abstract: SHANGHAI — China should hit its gross domestic product growth target of 7.5 percent this year, the president of the World Bank, Jim Yong Kim, said Sunday. But he warned that rising interest rates in emerging markets, in response to reports that the United States is preparing to scale back its buying of government bonds, show that significant risk remains. “The rise in interest rates as a result of the announcement of the tapering” of bond buying has exposed weaknesses in the economies of emerging markets, he said. “Our message is very strong to those emerging markets: Think about those weaknesses and begin to move.” Several investment banks upgraded near-term forecasts for China’s growth after a run of strong data for August, including factory output and exports, and many now have forecasts of full-year growth above the government’s official target rate of 7.5 percent. UBS, Deutsche Bank, China International Capital Corporation and Nomura were among the banks that upgraded their growth forecasts for 2013 after the recent data release, and now all have the rate at 7.6 percent or higher. Mr. Kim was in Shanghai as part of a four-day tour focusing on expanding collaboration with China on climate change. Power consumption in China, the world’s top energy user, is expected to grow at a rate of more than 9 percent this year, faster than the 5.5 percent rate in 2012, the State Electricity Regulatory Commission said in January. Some of that energy consumption is driven by inefficiently designed and poorly insulated buildings. Meanwhile, the state-run media on Sunday said that China would invest 80 billion renminbi, or $13 billion, in oil and natural gas exploration in 2013, as it tried to bolster energy supplies and reduce its dependence on energy imports. Oil and natural gas investment in China rose to 67.3 billion renminbi in 2011 from 19 billion renminbi in 2002, Xinhua, the state-run news agency, said, citing Ministry of Land and Resources figures. More than five billion tons of petroleum reserves and 2.6 trillion cubic meters of natural gas were discovered between 2008 and 2011, Xinhua said. China has promised to cut its growing dependence on overseas oil and natural gas supplies. Still, some analysts expect China to overtake the United States as the world’s biggest importer of crude oil as soon as 2017. Much of the oil comes from the Middle East and Africa and is transported via vulnerable sea lanes. Natural gas imports are important to China because domestic production is not sufficient to meet growing demand. Imported gas is delivered via pipeline from Central Asia and by ship from, among other countries, Australia, Indonesia and Qatar. China bought 42.5 billion cubic meters of gas from overseas last year. That was up more than 30 percent compared with 2011 and a nearly tenfold increase from 2007.

Interest rate
GDP
China
Economy
World Bank
Jim Yong Kim


Missouri: Prosecutor Chosen in Sexual Assault Inquiry

Abstract: A Kansas City-area prosecutor was appointed Monday to reinvestigate allegations by a 14-year-old girl who said she was sexually assaulted by a Maryville classmate who plied her with alcohol. The case attracted national attention when the girl, Daisy Coleman, now 16, and her mother, Melinda Coleman, went public, saying the Nodaway County prosecutor did not do enough before dropping charges against the boys they said were involved. Local prosecutors maintain that the family stopped cooperating, which the family disputes, but asked for a special prosecutor to take over the case. A Nodaway County judge chose a Jackson County prosecutor, Jean Peters Baker, to take on that role.

Rape
Kansas City MO
Melinda Coleman
Jean Peters Baker
Maryville Missouri
Child Abuse
Missouri


Cleanup Schedule Unchanged at Nuclear Power Plant After Release of Meltdown Details

Abstract: TOKYO — Japan vowed Tuesday to stick to its goal of stabilizing a stricken nuclear power plant in as soon as six months, despite recently acknowledging that damage to the plant’s reactors might be worse than initially estimated. The operator of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, Tokyo Electric Power Company, has in the past week offered a graver account of how the accident unfolded after the facility was ravaged by the tsunami that followed the March 11 earthquake. The company now acknowledges that a fuel meltdown occurred at three of the plant’s six reactors in the early hours of the crisis, something experts had been suggesting for weeks. “Even though we have confirmed that the nuclear core melted soon after the accident, our three- to six-month timeline will not change,” Tokyo Electric’s nuclear chief, Sakae Muto, said at a news conference on Tuesday. Tokyo Electric said it would change some aspects of its plan to bring the reactors to what it called a “cold shutdown,” where temperatures at the core fall below the boiling point. The utility no longer plans to fill up the reactors with water to stabilize them, it said. Instead, the company will now try to keep the reactors cool by building self-circulating cooling systems at the damaged reactors. Workers have been pumping water into the reactors since the first days of the accident, but have allowed contaminated water to seep out, causing dangerous runoff, some of which has spilled into the Pacific Ocean. Tokyo Electric will also drape a large polystyrene cover around the severely damaged outer structure of Reactor 1 in an attempt to reduce radiation emissions, and to shield the building from summer typhoons. To protect the plant from tsunami risks, Tokyo Electric will start placing stone-filled cages as makeshift armor units along the site’s shoreline. Stabilizing the reactors would allow workers to start dismantling and decontaminating the site, a process which experts have said will take at least a decade. About 80,000 people who lived around the plant, 140 miles north of Tokyo, have fled their homes, while thousands of farmers and fishermen risk losing their livelihoods as contamination spreads from the plant. It is unclear whether even six to nine months will be enough to start a cleanup. Tokyo Electric in the past week has released data that show that the fuel rods at the three most damaged reactors started to melt down rapidly after the site was jolted by a quake at 2:46 p.m. on March 11, knocking out its external power supply. Less than an hour later, the plant was overrun by a 50-foot tsunami, which inundated the plant’s backup diesel generators, according to the company. The crisis worsened rapidly after that. At 7:30 p.m. on March 11, less than five hours after the quake, damage began to the nuclear fuel at Reactor 1, the company now says. Twenty minutes later, an uncontrolled meltdown had begun, as fuel started to slump to the bottom of the reactor pressure vessel. By 9 p.m. on the 11th, temperatures had reached 2,800 degrees Celsius, the melting point of the uranium nuclear fuel rods, leading most of the fuel to fall to the bottom of the reactor vessel. The company says meltdown also happened at Reactors No. 2 and 3. Tokyo Electric officials had previously said that the uranium fuel rods in the reactors’ cores were likely to have melted only partly. The high temperatures also caused the fuel rods’ zirconium cladding to react chemically with water, producing hydrogen gas. That hydrogen built up inside the reactor buildings, setting off explosions at two reactors and severely damaging a third. A fourth reactor that was not operating at the time of the accident has also been wrecked. Tokyo Electric has suggested that hydrogen may have traveled there from an adjacent reactor through pipes and vents. The International Atomic Energy Agency will send a fact-finding mission to Japan next week, the government said Tuesday. Japan’s chief cabinet secretary, Yukio Edano, said that the 20-member team will spend about a week in Japan and report its findings in June.

Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant (Japan)


A Boom in Corporate Travel, as Well as Threats to Safety

Abstract: LOS ANGELES — BOOM times are back in corporate travel, but so, too, is the anxiety. For corporate travel managers gathering here at the annual convention of the Global Business Travel Association , two topics were high on the agenda: the surge in international business travel and the complex safety and security issues that arise as companies send more employees to diverse locations around the world. This year’s convention, which has drawn about 6,700 travel managers, suppliers and others in the industry, falls during a tumultuous time for corporate travel. The trade group said that spending on business travel would rise about 7 percent this year, to roughly $1.18 trillion — $292.3 billion of that in the United States, up 3 percent. But as the industry representatives geared up over the weekend for five days of meetings, exhibitions and after-hours parties, there is a lot of sober discussion about travel safety and risk management. “I’ve been at this 28 years — military, U.S. government, different response companies — and this is the greatest concentration of threat that I’ve ever seen, because of the frequency and severity of these incidents, but also because companies and institutions are global now,” said John M. Rose, chief operating officer of iJet , a travel risk management company. On Sunday, executives from iJet and another travel security and emergency response company, International SOS , jointly presented a four-hour training session for a group of travel managers concerned about safety policies and health issues, for both highly experienced travelers and younger, novice travelers, “who tend to believe they are invincible,” said Wendy Stachowiak, director of global travel partnerships for International SOS. Recent events have focused attention on growing corporate responsibilities for their travelers. “With everything that has happened in the last eight days, people are looking at things differently,” Mr. Rose said on Sunday. He asked the group gathered around tables in a conference room what they were hearing right now as main travel safety concerns. The first two responses, he said, were “Malaysian airliner shot down” and “outbreak of Ebola.” In the last two weeks, a concentration of events has forced travel managers to focus more intensely on legal and ethical responsibilities for managing travel risk: the Malaysian airliner shot down by a missile in Ukraine and two other deadly plane crashes elsewhere; the halting of some air routes in the Middle East because of fears about ground combat; and the temporary suspension of some flights to Israel. In addition, the United States evacuated its embassy in Libya; street protests reached a boil in Hong Kong; and, just as disturbing to security managers, an outbreak of the deadly Ebola virus was spreading in West Africa. “The thing that really keeps me awake is Ebola,” Mr. Rose said. That has dire implications, added Dr. Myles Druckman, medical director for International SOS, including a threat posed by returning international travelers who have been exposed to the virus. “These things were simply not on people’s radar in the past,” Dr. Druckman said. Similar themes were sounded on Monday at a panel discussion titled “Get Me Out of Here!” sponsored by the trade association’s risk committee. “How do you plan for these things, and how do you decide what your responsibilities in general are to your traveling population?” said Pablo Weisz, a regional security manager for International SOS. “What kind of travelers do you have? Experienced? A traveler on their first or second international trip? What kind of training do those individuals need?” Many travelers balk at keeping their companies closely apprised of their day-to-day activities and locations. But knowing where people are in a crisis is crucial, security experts say. Mr. Weisz said: “Young travelers might arrive in Beirut and announce that arrival on Facebook, but at the same time they might question why the company wants to know exactly where they are. It’s a matter of getting them used to it: Your company does need to know where you are.” Increasingly, travel management involves legal issues, including potential criminal penalties in some countries for not maintaining adequate so-called duty of care for traveling workers. “There’s a lot of risk associated with not meeting your duty-of-care responsibilities,” Mr. Weisz said. In a lawsuit, for example, a company travel manager might be asked in court, “What did you do to protect your traveler?” he added. With business travel growing around the world (China is likely to surpass the United States in business travel spending by 2016, the trade group says), “today you have a different dynamic in managing business travel,” said Michael W. McCormick, the Global Business Travel Association’s executive director. “In the old days, it was Chicago to New York, New York to Los Angeles,” Mr. McCormick said. “Now, in a sense, every company is global, and they’re sending their travelers all over the world to do business.”

Business travel
Global Business Travel Assn
Plane Crashes and Missing Planes
Malaysia Airlines 17
Arab Spring
Conventions and Trade Shows


11 Years in Prison for Officer Over Drug Role

Abstract: A former New York City police officer who helped a friend and drug dealer distribute cocaine and carried out a fake police seizure to rob a rival drug courier was sentenced Thursday to 11 years in prison. The former officer, Juan Acosta, pleaded guilty in April to conspiring to commit drug, extortion and firearms offenses. He was accused of acting as a sort of soldier for a longtime friend, Yorick Rafael Corneil-Perez, as they and others distributed large amounts of cocaine across the city, the United States attorney’s office in Manhattan said. Mr. Acosta had been a beat cop in the Soundview section of the Bronx — assigned to the 43rd Precinct — from 2000 until his arrest in a sting operation in December 2009. According to the authorities, Mr. Acosta used his badge and a police car in mid-2005 to rob a drug courier who worked for a rival of Mr. Corneil-Perez of several hundred thousand dollars. They said Mr. Acosta also tipped off Mr. Corneil-Perez to which streets were lightly patrolled by officers and agreed to provide protection for a 10-kilogram shipment of cocaine from a Long Island warehouse to the Bronx. But one of Mr. Acosta’s missteps was meeting with someone he believed was a narcotics trafficker from Colombia, who in reality was a government informant. Mr. Acosta was arrested in late 2009 after transporting what he thought was 22 pounds of cocaine, a job for which he was paid $15,000, the authorities said.

Drug Abuse and Traffic
Police
Search and Seizure
Cocaine and Crack Cocaine
Extortion and Blackmail
New York City
Bronx (NYC)


Randolph Thrower, I.R.S. Chief Who Resisted Nixon, Dies at 100

Abstract: Randolph W. Thrower, a Republican lawyer who headed the Internal Revenue Service under President Richard M. Nixon from 1969 to 1971 before losing his job for resisting White House efforts to punish its enemies through tax audits, died March 8 at his home in Atlanta. He was 100. A daughter, Patricia Barmeyer, confirmed the death. Mr. Thrower’s unusual legal background — as a federal tax law expert and a lawyer for death row inmates in Georgia, most of them black, in the Jim Crow era — helped garner wide support from lawyers’ groups and lawmakers when Nixon nominated him for I.R.S. commissioner. And though his tenure was short, he was instrumental in two historic overhauls of American tax policy: revoking the tax-exempt status of private schools that excluded blacks, and passage of the Tax Reform Act of 1969, which he helped draft. The legislation eliminated some loopholes for the rich and exempted many poor people from federal taxes altogether. The end came in January 1971, after Mr. Thrower requested a meeting with the president, hoping to warn him personally about the pressure White House staff members had been placing on the I.R.S. to audit the tax returns of certain individuals. Beginning with antiwar leaders and civil rights figures, the list had grown to include journalists and members of Congress, among them every Democratic senator up for re-election in 1970, Mr. Thrower told investigators years later. He was certain the president was unaware of this and would agree that “any suggestion of the introduction of political influence into the I.R.S.” could damage his presidency, he said. Mr. Thrower received two responses. The first was a memo from the president’s appointments secretary saying a meeting would not be possible; the second was a phone call from John D. Ehrlichman, the president’s domestic affairs adviser, telling him he was fired. He agreed to stay on until a replacement could be found, did not voice his concerns publicly about the administration’s growing appetite for prosecuting its putative enemies, and never disputed the White House explanation for his departure — that he had resigned “for personal reasons.” In White House tapes and memos released in later years, Nixon described the situation differently. “May I simply reiterate for the record that I wish Randolph Thrower, commissioner of the Internal Revenue Service, removed at the earliest feasible opportunity,” he wrote on Jan. 21, 1971, five days before the White House announced that Mr. Thrower was stepping down. That May, as the administration continued to look for a successor to Mr. Thrower, Nixon made clear what kind of I.R.S. commissioner he wanted. “I want to be sure he is a ruthless son of a bitch,” he was recorded as saying, “that he will do what he is told, that every income tax return I want to see I see” and “that he will go after our enemies and not go after our friends.” Mr. Thrower, who had long been involved in Republican politics in Atlanta, had not worked in Nixon’s election campaign in 1968. He met Nixon for the first time, he said, when he was appointed I.R.S. commissioner. Seeing Nixon as a shrewd politician who viewed tax overhaul as a winning issue, he took the job, he said, hoping to bring a progressive approach to federal tax policy. But, he added, he “did not like him from the first.” Randolph William Thrower was born in Tampa, Fla., on Sept. 5, 1913, the youngest of three children of Benjamin Thrower Jr. and Ora Hammond Thrower. His father was working in real estate when he died in 1915. The children were raised by grandparents. Besides Ms. Barmeyer, Mr. Thrower is survived by three daughters, Margaret MacCary, Laura Harris and Mary Wickham; a son, Randy; 11 grandchildren; and nine great-grandchildren. His wife, Margaret Logan Munroe Thrower, died in 2009. Mr. Thrower, who received his bachelor’s degree in 1934 and his law degree in 1936 from Emory University in Atlanta, began practicing law in 1937, served in the Marine Corps during World War II and afterward practiced law in Atlanta. Mr. Thrower encountered several White House operatives while he was I.R.S. commissioner who would later play roles in the Watergate scandal. The one who alarmed him the most, he told interviewers, was G. Gordon Liddy, the former F.B.I. agent who helped plan the break-in of the offices of the Democratic National Committee at the Watergate complex in 1972. Mr. Liddy was sent to him in 1970 as the White House candidate to head the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, then a branch of the I.R.S. “He was a gun nut,” Mr. Thrower said. “They wanted me to put a gun nut in charge of guns.” Mr. Liddy did not get the job. But it was not Watergate that haunted Mr. Thrower; it was the case of Will Coxson, a black teenager convicted in the late 1930s of raping a white woman in Marietta, Ga., and sentenced to die. Mr. Thrower took the case on appeal in 1940 and discovered that Mr. Coxson’s alibi was solid and that the victim’s initial description of her attacker as “a light-skinned black man” had changed significantly when the prosecution brought the case to trial. Mr. Coxson was dark-skinned. The Georgia Supreme Court ordered a hearing on whether Mr. Coxson had received adequate representation, and Mr. Thrower was preparing for that when he left to join the Marines. Turning the case over to another lawyer, he said, he felt sure that the evidence would sustain an appeal all the way to the United States Supreme Court if necessary and win Mr. Coxson’s freedom. But the case “withered on the vine,” he said, and while Mr. Thrower was serving in the Pacific, Mr. Coxson was executed. “For the past 60 years, no case has kept me awake at night as much as this,” he said in a 2001 lecture, “wondering what else I might have done to save the life of this young man. His life should not have been taken.”

Randolph W Thrower
IRS
Obituary
President Nixon


Financial Rewards of N.C.A.A.’s Sponsorship Deals Aren’t Shared With Players

Abstract: ARLINGTON, Tex. — The new champions of men’s college basketball, whoever they may be, will cut down a net here Monday night. And when they do, they will climb to the basket on a blue-and-yellow Werner ladder , and they will clip the cords with a pair of orange Fiskars scissors. They will also probably wear Nike hats and T-shirts, and they might sip from Powerade cups as they cheer on their teammates. In a tournament that has been packed with upsets and surprises, one of the few mainstays has been the prominence of the logos of corporate sponsors alongside the N.C.A.A.’s. In total, some 19 major partners and corporate supporters are listed in the official fan guide of the Final Four. The rabid commercialization is hardly new to March Madness and the Final Four — and it is not uncommon in professional sports and at the Olympics. But the N.C.A.A.’s opponents are using it as fresh ammunition with the model for college athletics increasingly under siege. The N.C.A.A. is facing lawsuits that seek to give players a bigger slice of the billions of dollars in revenue generated by men’s basketball and football. The athletic association is also facing a unionization movement, emboldened by a recent ruling that the Northwestern football team could organize and collectively bargain with the university. Among the biggest complaints about the N.C.A.A. is that it has aggressively monetized nearly every aspect of its championships while it forbids players to negotiate paid endorsement deals. Critics like Wisconsin forward Zach Bohannon say the double standard is on full display at the Final Four. “With all of the corporate sponsors, it’s like a professional league, only the student-athletes are amateurs, and we don’t have any say in the process,” said Bohannon, who is involved with the College Athletes Players Association, which has been behind the organizing effort at Northwestern. The N.C.A.A., for its part, says the branding in the tournament is not much different from that seen at universities around the country in the football and basketball seasons. The association also disputes the notion that the athletes are forced to pitch products. “We don’t force anybody to do anything,” said Mark Lewis, the N.C.A.A.’s executive vice president for championships and alliances. “There is no requirement that anybody drink anything or hold anything of any kind.” Image Powerade, through its parent, Coca-Cola, is the official drink of the N.C.A.A., which is why its logo is so prominent courtside. Credit David J. Phillip/Associated Press On Friday, as players from the Final Four teams — Florida, Wisconsin, Connecticut and Kentucky — worked out and held news conferences, the tournament branding was omnipresent. The day’s events were sponsored by Reese’s, the official candy partner of the N.C.A.A. The company’s mascot, an oversize Reese’s peanut butter cup, took the court at AT&T Stadium to rev up the fans between practices. Off-court activities presented another branding opportunity. When five Wisconsin players met journalists in separate rooms, each had at least one Powerade sports-drink cup on the table in front of him, regardless of whether he actually drank from it. One of the N.C.A.A.’s chief critics, Michael D. Hausfeld, a lawyer representing players in a lawsuit against the organization, said he had been monitoring the sponsorships during the N.C.A.A. tournament. He took note of the proximity of the Powerade cups to the players during news conferences, saying the N.C.A.A. would violate its own rules “all the time, as long as they make money, not the athlete.” “They are out there to sell every piece of merchandise in any way they can, and to maximize their revenue,” Hausfeld said. Lewis of the N.C.A.A. countered, “There’s not a requirement that anyone advertise or promote a product in any way, shape or form.” In a crowded field of sponsors during the tournament, Powerade has been among the most visible. Through its parent, Coca-Cola, Powerade is the official drink of the N.C.A.A., a status that puts its logo on any beverages that can come in range of the television cameras. It means that no matter what players, coaches and even journalists on press row are drinking, they should use a Powerade-branded cup. Some athletes, like Bohannon, have taken offense. On March 27, before Wisconsin’s game against Baylor, Bohannon said he was walking onto the court of the Badgers’ closed shootaround with a bottle of Nestlé Pure Life water. He was stopped by a security guard, he said, and told that he could not take that bottle onto the court because it was against N.C.A.A. rules. The issue was resolved by tearing the label off the bottle. “It’s just one of those things that’s mind-boggling,” said Bohannon, who mentioned the incident on Twitter. Coca-Cola issued a statement about its long connection to universities “from scholarships to support for sports teams.” “For decades, our partnership with the N.C.A.A. has been about fusing education opportunities with the excitement of collegiate sports,” the statement said. It is difficult to determine exactly how much revenue the N.C.A.A. derives from specific tournament sponsorships because the marketing arrangements are tied to the N.C.A.A.’s broadcast agreements. In 2010, the N.C.A.A. announced a 14-year, $10.8 billion agreement with CBS Sports and Turner Broadcasting for the rights to the men’s basketball tournament. As a result, sponsors typically have financial arrangements with the broadcasters, although the N.C.A.A. signs off on any deal. Image After Florida’s regional final win over Dayton, Scottie Wilbekin’s cap and shirt bore Nike’s logo. Credit John Bazemore/Associated Press Each year, the N.C.A.A. distributes hundreds of millions of dollars to universities, which use the money for scholarships and other expenses related to sports, Lewis said. The tournament is an expensive undertaking when team travel, hotels and meals are accounted for, he said. “Where the money goes is certainly the topic that is being discussed a lot right now,” Lewis said. “We have to generate money to operate this tournament.” During the past year, the N.C.A.A. has backed away from some moneymaking opportunities amid public scrutiny and litigation. The N.C.A.A. has vigorously defended itself, but at the same time it decided to stop participating in a football video game series and announced that it would stop selling player jerseys through its website. In announcing the jersey move in August, Mark Emmert, the N.C.A.A.’s president, said that the organization “probably never should have been in that business.” A high-profile lawsuit filed against the N.C.A.A. by the former U.C.L.A. basketball player Ed O’Bannon, in which college athletes are seeking to be paid for the use of their likenesses in video games and broadcasts, is scheduled to go to trial in June. For many years, the N.C.A.A.’s membership has been debating the boundaries of corporate sponsorship and rules on amateurism. Elizabeth M. Altmaier, a professor at Iowa who served on a number of N.C.A.A. panels on commercialism as a faculty athletics representative, said the corporate branding had gone too far, particularly when college sports face legal threats. “It simply underlines students’ claims and others’ concerns that the increased amount of commercialism is generating more money — none of which is going to meet students’ needs,” she said. Even two coaches who are leading Final Four teams, Florida’s Billy Donovan and Connecticut’s Kevin Ollie, said at a news conference Thursday that college athletics needed to find a way to share more with the players, although they did not suggest specific ways to do so. Donovan said: “The idea that a kid can’t get a free hamburger somewhere, it doesn’t make sense to me. What’s the big deal? How is that hurting anybody?” Other coaches, like Mercer’s Bob Hoffman, were measuring their words as they spoke with reporters. After Mercer upset Duke in the tournament’s first round, Hoffman spoke about scouting the next opponent, Tennessee, from the stands while eating a hot dog and drinking a Coke. “I guess I can say that,” he said, “since they’re a sponsor.”

NCAA Men's Basketball,March Madness
College basketball
advertising,marketing
NCAA