Judge Is Asked to Clarify Rail Liability

Abstract: LOS ANGELES (AP) — The Southern California Regional Rail Authority has filed a federal lawsuit asking a judge to determine whether its contractor can be held responsible for the deadly collision of one of the rail agency’s Metrolink commuter trains and a freight train. The agency, already facing two lawsuits related to the Sept. 12 crash, sued Connex Railroad after they could not agree on whether their contract protects the other from liability, according to court papers released Friday. Connex provides engineers who run the Metrolink trains, including the engineer blamed for the deadly collision. “An actual controversy has arisen and now exists between S.C.R.R.A. and Connex,” according to the lawsuit, which asks the court to interpret the contract and determine which party could be held liable. Connex is a subsidiary of Veolia Transportation, a private operator of bus, rail, shuttle and other transportation services throughout North America. Metrolink is operated by the Southern California Regional Rail Authority, which has members from five counties’ transportation planning agencies. The agency met in closed session Friday to discuss anticipated and current litigation stemming from the collision. The collision in Chatsworth killed 25 people and injured more than 130.

Metrolink (Southern California Regional Rail Authority)


Senate Confirms Walder as New M.T.A. Chairman

Abstract: Jay H. Walder was easily confirmed by the State Senate on Thursday as the next chairman and chief executive of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority . But he received a taste of the factionalized nature of Albany’s politics from the legislators he must win over if he is to secure financing needed for broad reforms at the authority. In an hourlong debate before the 47-13 vote, some senators said the authority was shortchanging customers and losing credibility with the public. “There is a level of discontent that exists between the M.T.A. and the people in this room, the people who should be your partner,” said Senator Diane J. Savino, a Democrat from Staten Island. Ms. Savino noted Mr. Walder’s résumé and defended his annual salary of $350,000, but she warned, “I am going to hold you accountable for starting to change the relationship between your agency and this body.” Even legislators who opposed the nomination were quick to insist that Mr. Walder, a Queens native who helped lead London’s transit system, was well suited for the job. “My issues have nothing to do with him or his qualifications,” said Senator Stephen M. Saland, who voted no after complaining bitterly that a public hearing on the nomination was not held in his Hudson Valley district . For his part, Mr. Walder, 50, said he looked forward to discussion with Albany legislators, who play a major role in the authority’s finances. “I went in with the expectation there would be a very robust and vigorous confirmation process, and that’s exactly what happened,” Mr. Walder said in an interview after being confirmed. He said the city was a long way from being a world leader in mass transit. “The onus is on us right now,” he said. Mr. Walder met constituents in Long Island and Harlem this month, and was approved by three committees on Thursday before the full vote. He replaces Elliot G. Sander. One senator said he got off easy. “You’re lucky you only had to listen to the Senate,” Ms. Savino said. “After listening to us for the last few weeks, I actually think you should ask for a raise.”

Walder Jay H
Metropolitan Transportation Authority
Transit Systems
Politics and Government


In New York Governor Race, Two Italian Identities

Abstract: Strategy sessions have been held at a restaurant called Sinatra’s. “Sopranos”-style gold chains have shown up in campaign advertisements. Ethnic-tinged terms, like “goumada,” and wisecracks about Sicilian grudges have been bandied about. And television news crews from Italy have descended on the candidates. In the raucous race for governor of New York this year between Andrew M. Cuomo and Carl P. Paladino , an unexpected debate is mesmerizing the Italian-American community and increasingly spilling out into public view: Is the contest shattering long-held ethnic stereotypes or reinforcing them? The tension has recast a milestone election for the state’s largest ethnic group, which has spent decades battling for political might. Along with feelings of pride have come moments of unease and even mortification. A Staten Island lawmaker has scolded Mr. Paladino, a Republican, for comments that “degrade our shared cultural heritage,” comparing him with the makers of the reality television show “Jersey Shore.” And in an interview, Mr. Paladino mischievously questioned whether his opponent was really Italian. An age difference of only a decade separates Mr. Paladino and Mr. Cuomo, who are both expected to march in the city’s huge Columbus Day parade down Fifth Avenue on Monday, and each traces his lineage to southern Italy. But the two men are starkly different in how they view and express their Italian identity. Mr. Cuomo, the Democrat who is the state’s attorney general, prides himself on transcending the image of the unpolished, old-country Italian, and credits his father, Mario M. Cuomo, the former governor of New York, for debunking many of those stereotypes. Even as he embraces his ancestry, Andrew Cuomo is extremely sensitive about the assumptions that surround it and the political liabilities that could attach to it: He once had his pollster question the state’s voters about their views of the television show “The Sopranos,” to glean insight about how they saw Italians. He complained after a reporter described him in an article as a “double espresso of a politician,” suggesting that the term amounted to an anti-Italian slur. Behind the scenes, Mr. Cuomo worked to avoid having the Democratic statewide ticket he leads be excessively dominated by Italians this fall. He privately fretted that if Eric R. Dinallo became the nominee for attorney general and the incumbent Thomas P. DiNapoli for comptroller, voters might find that one Italian too many. “People will think we’re trying to open a pizza parlor,” Mr. Cuomo joked to a friend, according to people familiar with the conversation. (Mr. Dinallo was defeated in a five-way primary last month.) In an interview, Mr. Cuomo, 52, said he had absorbed the lessons of his father and tried to emulate him. Mario Cuomo was a breakthrough figure in American politics who still felt the sting of bias; as a young lawyer, he had been turned down for jobs at Manhattan’s “white shoe” law firms. “He is the model of decorum and civility and grace,” Andrew Cuomo said, “and he was on the stage at the same time that you were watching Italian-Americans depicted in movies and television as thugs and people who were crude.” He recalled the hurt that his father felt shortly after his election in 1982, when Albany reporters performed skits for an annual satirical show that featured gangsters and Mafia-inspired characters. “He was offended by it, and he should be,” Mr. Cuomo recalled of his father, who is the son of immigrants and grew up speaking Italian at home. The younger Mr. Cuomo said that the polling he paid for in 2002, during his first run for governor, showed that the stereotypes remained pervasive. “I can tell you, it’s real,” he said, adding, however, that he thought it was less pronounced and less negative than in the past. By contrast, Mr. Paladino, a Republican real estate developer from Buffalo, seems to relish his reputation as an undiluted, street-smart, up-by-the-bootstraps Italian. He travels to Italy up to a dozen times a year. He sometimes lapses into Italian. And he developed a habit of greeting associates, Italian-style, with a kiss on the cheek. Like Mario M. Cuomo, Mr. Paladino’s father, who immigrated at age 6, endured discrimination. As an adult, to find work he shortened his given name from Belesario to the anglicized Bill. But rather than shrink from an ethnic style and mannerisms, his son Carl, 64, has embraced them. One of Carl Paladino’s proudest accomplishments was gaining admission to the Big Timers, a heavily Italian social club in East Buffalo. “He can’t let go of that. He doesn’t want to let go of that,” his brother Joe said. “He is still connected to that neighborhood.” Guy V. Molinari, the former Staten Island borough president and Republican power broker, who like many of New York’s Italian-Americans is riveted by the governor’s race, said, “As Italians, they are very much the opposite of each other.” To Mr. Molinari, Mr. Paladino fits the mold of a traditional southern Italian: loud and brash, often shooting from the hip. “I know these type of Italians; they are in my family,” Mr. Molinari said. “They all talk at once; nobody listens.” Mr. Cuomo, he said, is a different but equally recognizable kind of Italian: studious and reserved, bent on obsessively thinking everything through before taking action. What is most interesting to many watching the campaign is that the stereotypes are being stirred up in a race between Italian-Americans, or, in the words of Stefano Albertini, a faculty member in the department of Italian studies at New York University, “not when there was an Italian against somebody else, but an Italian against an Italian.” It is not only the candidates giving this election its Italian cast. Central players in both campaigns are Italian: Mr. Cuomo’s closest and most powerful adviser is Joseph Percoco, a pugnacious political enforcer (a term Mr. Cuomo finds ethnically loaded) and Mr. Paladino’s campaign manager and spokesman is Michael R. Caputo, who describes himself as a “junkyard dog.” From the start, the Paladino camp, sensing Mr. Cuomo’s sensitivity to the issue, has deliberately injected ethnicity into the campaign. After Mr. Paladino won the Republican primary, Mr. Caputo commissioned a campaign poster that, by means of an altered photo, depicted Mr. Cuomo shirtless in the shower, trying to wash off the muck of Albany corruption. (“Clean up Albany,” it said. “Start with Cuomo.”) A sly detail was inserted: a gold chain around his neck, prompting howls of protest from those who detected anti-Italian bias. Mr. Caputo scoffed at the complaints at the time, gleefully declaring to reporters, “Carl has his own gold chain he wears very proudly, and so do I.” Mr. Paladino playfully told an interviewer from Italy that perhaps Mr. Cuomo’s claim of Italian ancestry should be viewed skeptically. “I don’t know, he might have been adopted,” Mr. Paladino said impishly. During the same interview, he showed off his mastery of Italian, such as it is. When the reporter complimented his fluency, Mr. Paladino begged to differ. “It’s very broken,” he said. “I can find my way to the bathroom.” Mr. Paladino’s response to Italians upset by his ethnic provocations: Stop being so touchy. He calls himself an equal-opportunity offender: Defending his having forwarded to friends and associates e-mails containing inflammatory images of African-Americans, he used a string of derogatory terms for Italians. That prompted Diane J. Savino, a state senator from Staten Island, which is heavily Italian, to fire off a letter to Mr. Paladino chiding him for “offensive” language. “In an environment where people still believe it is acceptable to degrade our shared cultural heritage, whether it be mob references or the buffoonery of the ‘Jersey Shore,’ ” she wrote, “it is simply unacceptable for you to lower the discourse even further, particularly in a gubernatorial campaign.” On the campaign trail, Mr. Cuomo uses his Italian roots subtly, seeking to connect to voters of all ethnic groups who feel they have not gotten a fair shake. Speaking to black churchgoers in Brooklyn a few days ago, Mr. Cuomo assailed Mr. Paladino for espousing a policy that he said would allow the police to stop people who look like immigrants. “I look like an immigrant,” Mr. Cuomo said, to warm laughter. At times, he sprinkles in Italian phrases and speaks affectionately of his childhood in Queens, where family dinners revolved around animated debates. “Sundays,” he says, “was politics and pasta.” In a recent speech, he joked that his mother, Matilda, still held a grudge against then-Mayor Edward I. Koch for challenging her husband in the 1982 Democratic primary for governor. “My mom is Sicilian,” he told the crowd. “They never forget.” A few weeks later, she had a new affront to simmer over. After Mr. Paladino made unsubstantiated claims that Mr. Cuomo had been unfaithful in his marriage — one Paladino adviser whispered of a goumada, Italian slang for mistress — Mrs. Cuomo was asked about the remarks. She invoked a favorite Italian expression. “Passaci sopra,” she said. “Pass over it. It’s garbage.”

Governors (US)
Italian-Americans
Cuomo Andrew M
Paladino Carl P
Elections
New York State


Report Defends Media Role of Retired Officers

Abstract: WASHINGTON (AP) — Congressional investigators said Tuesday that the Pentagon had not violated a federal prohibition on propaganda by using retired military officers to promote the Bush administration’s war policies in the news media. But the report, by the Government Accountability Office , said the use of military analysts by the administration had prompted legitimate questions from members of Congress and the news media about whether defense contractors with commercial ties to the retired officers received favorable treatment in procurement decisions. The accountability office’s opinion did not examine whether any companies had received a competitive advantage or whether any Defense Department acquisitions might have been tainted. The finding is the latest installment in a dispute that began in April 2008, when The New York Times reported that Pentagon officials met and spoke frequently with dozens of retired officers to discuss the wars and other national security topics. Many of the retired officers then repeated administration talking points in appearances on television news programs. The Pentagon program has since been terminated. Military officials “are pleased” that the report “found D.O.D. public affairs to be in full compliance with the law,” said a Defense Department spokesman, David Oten. In January, the Defense Department’s inspector general found insufficient evidence to conclude that the so-called Public Affairs Outreach Program was improper. But that report was withdrawn in May because of inaccuracies in the data used by the inspector general. Congress directed the G.A.O. last year to issue a legal opinion on whether the Defense Department broke a federal rule barring it from using tax money for publicity or propaganda purposes not approved by lawmakers.

Defense Department
Propaganda
United States Politics and Government
Government Accountability Office


Ryu Shoots 9-Under 63

Abstract: So Yeon Ryu shot a tournament-record nine-under-par 63 to take the first-round lead in the Swinging Skirts L.P.G.A. Classic in Daly City, Calif. Ryu had seven birdies in an eight-hole stretch on the back nine and added two more on the front nine. Haru Nomura was second after a 65. Xi Yu Lin and Christel Boeljon each shot 67, and the two-time defending champion Lydia Ko fired a 68. ■ Brendan Steele topped the leaderboard at the Texas Open in San Antonio at eight under after 13 holes when the first round was suspended because of darkness. He was unable to finish the opening round because it was delayed by morning rain. Among those who did finish, Charley Hoffman had a six-under 66. ■ Louis Oosthuizen of South Africa will not participate in golf’s return to the Olympics this year, the third major champion to withdraw. Adam Scott of Australia and Vijay Singh of Fiji have also pulled out.


Rural South Koreans’ Global Links Grow, Nourished by a Satellite Crop

Abstract: YEONGJU, South Korea — Lee Si-kap, a shy farmer living in this central South Korean town, holds a record: He owns more satellite dishes than any other South Korean — 85 of them, receiving 1,500 satellite television channels from more than 100 countries, some as far away as South Africa and Canada. To passers-by, Mr. Lee’s home stands like an exclamation mark in the otherwise nondescript countryside dotted with apple orchards and ginseng fields. Satellite dishes cover his roof like giant steel mushrooms. They spread into his front yard and blossom in a field behind his house, some as large as 16 feet in diameter. Once dismissed as a local eccentric, Mr. Lee has more recently emerged as something of a hero of modest fame, featured on national television as “antenna man.” Since late last year, he and thousands of fellow satellite enthusiasts — including the husbands of foreign brides and a few dedicated souls searching for signals from extraterrestrial life forms — have started a campaign to install free satellite dishes for poor foreign brides living in rural South Korea, so they can receive broadcasts from their home countries. “Thanks to Mr. Lee, I now miss my country, my mother and father less than I used to,” said Bui Thi Huang, a 22-year-old bride from Haiphong, Vietnam, who now lives here in Yeongju, about 100 miles southeast of Seoul. In recent years, the South Korean countryside has had an influx of brides from poorer countries like Vietnam, China and the Philippines. Like Ms. Bui, they marry South Korean farmers who have difficulty finding a spouse because so many young Korean women have rejected rural life and migrated to cities. In towns like Yeongju, these young foreign brides have become a bedrock of the local economy. They work alongside their husbands in the fields and have brought back a sound that was fast becoming a distant memory among the aging farm population here: crying babies. In South Korea, which had once prided itself on being a homogeneous society, 4 out of 10 women who married in rural communities last year were foreign born. In Yeongju alone, the number of foreign wives increased by 28 percent in the past year and a half, to 250, half of them from Vietnam. “These women have a hard time fitting in. The local governments, and the husbands, often focus only on making them ‘Korean,’ teaching them the Korean language and computer skills,” said Mr. Lee, 39, who has never married. “They don’t quite understand how isolated these women feel.” When Mr. Lee, who lives with his 80-year-old mother and 97-year-old grandfather, is not toying with his satellite equipment, he tends his pepper and sesame fields or makes the rounds of nearby villages to see if the foreign brides are having any problems with their television reception. Mr. Lee and his friends still encounter objections from husbands who are determined to shield their foreign brides from any reminders of their native lands, for fear these might only magnify their homesickness. But they are encouraged that many families have reported that watching satellite broadcasts from home actually helps the women to overcome their loneliness and better adjust to life here. Mr. Lee says his sympathy for foreign brides stems in part from his own experience of feeling cut off from society. He felt deeply hurt when his father abandoned him and his mother when he was a small boy, and, lacking self-confidence, had trouble making friends in his neighborhood and at school. He rarely ventured outside his village, and said he still feared making phone calls. What saved him, he said, was “music — and satellite television.” “Music was my only friend,” said Mr. Lee, whose dream is to meet his idol, the American heavy metal rock musician Ronnie James Dio . “And because I couldn’t get much rock music on Korean television, I turned to satellite television.” Satellite television introduced him to the wider world — to Japanese baseball, life on Pacific islands, Russian folk music and religions in India and Nepal. He installed his first satellite dish in 1992, when he was 23 and had already returned to farming after receiving a vocational college degree in electronics. Collecting secondhand satellite dishes has since become a hobby that verges on an obsession. When most farmers here look to the sky, they read clouds for weather. When Mr. Lee looks skyward, he says, he imagines satellites in earth orbit. To him, the air is filled with broadcast signals, “like seeds from thistles.” Farmers here at first did not know what to make of their bachelor neighbor, who listened to heavy metal music, often belting out the lyrics in English, sometimes in Japanese. They would see him on the roof under the blazing sun of summer or under the starry winter sky, fiddling for hours with his satellite equipment. Although he does not understand most languages on the broadcasts he receives, Mr. Lee said: “It gets addictive. The more dishes you have, the more channels you can get. “Nothing compares with the joy of catching a new broadcast channel from a faraway country,” he said. “It’s like pulling in a big fish. It’s the excitement of discovering something from outside the boundaries of your usual world.”

Satellites
Rural Areas
Women
South Korea


Sides Angle for Leverage, Before a Deal, in N.F.L. Talks

Abstract: INDIANAPOLIS — The N.F.L. players union plans to decertify before the collective bargaining agreement expires at midnight March 4, unless a labor agreement can be agreed to in negotiations this week. The strategy was first reported by ESPN and confirmed by two people who had knowledge of the union’s plans, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the strategy publicly. But one of the people stressed that the union could change its mind, particularly if progress is made in negotiations. The union collected votes approving the strategy from the players during the season. The move would be made to try to prevent owners from locking out players when the labor deal expires this week because individual players would seek a court injunction preventing owners from locking them out. The N.F.L. could also decide not to lock out its players. “Ten thousand things can change between now and then,” one of the people said. The news of the union’s plans could also be viewed as an attempt to get the owners to change their positions when the sides resume negotiations with a federal mediator on Tuesday. The sides could also agree to extend the deadline for expiration of the current deal. But according to the collective bargaining agreement, the union must decertify before the deal expires, or wait six months to make the move. The N.F.L. filed a complaint to the National Labor Relations Board this month stating that the union was failing to negotiate in good faith because it was planning to decertify. The league claimed that the union was engaging in “surface bargaining” and tactics designed to avoid reaching an agreement before the collective bargaining agreement expires so that it could file antitrust litigation against the league to try to block a lockout. In the filing, the league called it the same tactic the union used in 1989, when it decertified, only to later form again. If the union goes through with decertification, the N.F.L.’s labor dispute could end up winding its way through the courts, where most of the players’ gains — including free agency — have come. It is unclear if games would be played during that process. Before the scouting combine began here last week, the uncertainty surrounding the N.F.L.’s future was so acute that general managers were in the odd position of asking reporters what they thought would happen in collective bargaining negotiations, with one even confessing that he was repeatedly hitting the refresh button on his computer, hoping to find a snippet of news. What he finally learned was not promising for those who thrive on rigid adherence to schedule in the most regimented of sports leagues. The N.F.L. heads into its most pivotal week since players were granted free agency in 1993 having made slim substantive progress in negotiations toward a new labor deal, with most people having little idea what will happen by the end of this week and with seemingly little urgency on either side to get a deal done soon. It remains to be seen whether the union’s decertification plan changes that thinking. The people who seemed most alarmed by the bleak circumstances last week were new coaches or those with unproven quarterbacks or rebuilding rosters, who expressed concern about how they would reshape teams with what might be almost no off-season work, and agents, who fear that the implementation of a rookie wage scale in the next deal will severely diminish their role and income. The thirst for information was so intense that when a rumor circulated Friday that draft prospects might not be allowed to have contact with teams at pro days or work out for them in private meetings if the players were locked out, it set off a frenzy that briefly consumed agents. Teams will, in fact, be able to meet with prospects until they are drafted, but the few hours of confusion were a microcosm of the nervous speculation that provided the soundtrack of the combine’s off hours. Owners and union officials were not surprised by the lack of movement, and they seemed prepared for more of the same. The small dose of fan optimism that accompanied the involvement of the federal mediator was misplaced. In the first week of meetings, he accomplished little more than lowering the volume on the public spinning of the issues by imposing a news media blackout. But on the major issue — how to divide the league’s $9 billion in revenue — and on the linked but lesser issues of an 18-game regular season and a rookie wage scale, the mediator proved no more successful at pushing the sides out of their dug-in positions as the parties had been on their own. When the mediator, George Cohen, released a statement Thursday saying that “very strong differences” remained, one owner remarked, “What did you expect?” A long-time agent said: “There is a lot of smoke in negotiations. It is still so early to show a hand.” That is true. On Friday, members of the owners’ labor committee met at the Colts’ practice facility to be briefed on the mediated negotiations, which were conducted without owners. On Tuesday, the sides will meet again with Cohen. On Wednesday, the owners will meet outside Washington to determine their next step, with a work stoppage potentially beginning Friday. What happens after that even the people in the negotiating room may not fully know, as the chess match plays out at the negotiating table, and perhaps in the courts. Meanwhile, the combine went on, the last bit of normalcy in a volatile off-season. For a few minutes Saturday, when Auburn quarterback Cam Newton arrived for his news media session, the worries that clouded the combine were eclipsed by his charisma. Newton lit up the room with his wide grin and seemed ready to become the league’s next big star. Whenever the game resumes. Whenever everybody in the N.F.L. has reason to smile again.

National Football League
Arbitration Conciliation and Mediation
Lockouts
Cohen George
Football


Review: NoiseHush i7 Sound-Canceling Headphones

Abstract: Can an upstart sound-canceling headphone match the performance of the vaunted Bose Quiet Comfort 15 at a third of the price? That was the claim made by makers of the NoiseHush i7 headphones, which cost $100, or about $200 less than the Bose . To test the claim, I took both headphones on a train trip. I tried them out in the quiet car because noise-canceling headphones do a good job with consistent background sounds, like the rush of wind, but do little to shut out chatty travelers or a crying baby. The simple test is to turn the noise canceling on and off without any music playing. Headphones dealt with four distinct sounds there: a whirring ventilation fan, a low rumble, the wind rush and the clatter of the tracks. The Bose handily dispatched the wind rush, clatter and rumble, but the fan noise became more apparent (not louder) in the absence of the other sounds. NoiseHush went two for four. It wiped out the wind and clatter, but the rumble and fan still came through. Music also fared better on the Bose. While the NoiseHush had pleasing sound, it lacked the clarity and detail I could hear with the Bose. The Bose uses a single AAA battery and the NoiseHush uses two. The NoiseHush does have one feature the Boise does not — volume control on the headset itself. Which is really better? It comes down to how much noise reduction you need and how much you want to spend. At a third of the price, you are getting more than a third of the Bose’s performance from the NoiseHush. Personally, I still prefer well-fitted, in-ear buds for travel. They are much easier to carry, and while they let in some hiss and rumble, they reduce the overall volume of all outside sound. And they even help block out smartphone-addicted seatmates. ROY FURCHGOTT


Nets Hold Lead Against More Physical Cavaliers

Abstract: In a convincing win over the Cleveland Cavaliers on Tuesday night, the Nets may have learned more about their team’s weaknesses than its strengths. The Nets rolled to a 114-101 victory, but the ease with which Cleveland’s wild-haired center, Anderson Varejao, was able to dominate Brooklyn’s front line raised a number of questions about how the Nets can compete against teams that have dominant big men. “Everybody is not as excited about the Brooklyn Nets as we are,” Coach Avery Johnson said before the game. “They want to come in and get a win and rain on our parade. For us, there is a responsibility that goes along with that.” His team delivered on the goal of protecting its house, soundly beating a struggling Cleveland team after recovering from a difficult first quarter. For Cleveland, it was the end of a 1-5 trip in which the team visited both coasts. The Nets took advantage, getting a season-high 26 points from Deron Williams and 25 from Joe Johnson, the first time either member of the celebrated backcourt had gone over 20 this season. Brook Lopez added 23 points, 7 rebounds and 4 blocks, with the three Nets stars erasing Varejao’s yeoman effort. Perhaps most encouraging for the Nets was the performance by Johnson, the team’s prized off-season acquisition. All of Johnson’s points came after a scoreless first quarter, and his night included consecutive 3-pointers in the fourth quarter to seal the Nets’ win. Before Johnson’s shots, the Nets had been 0 for 13 from 3-point range, something that Johnson said did not affect his confidence. “It definitely felt like we played better together today,” Williams said of he and Johnson. “Hopefully, we can continue to make improvements.” At times it was hard to comprehend that the Nets had the lead, thanks to Varejao, who scored 35 points and grabbed 18 rebounds, asserting himself from the start. Avery Johnson had expressed concern about Varejao and Tristan Thompson before the game. “Their big guys inside gave us some problems last year with their physicality,” Johnson said. “If we’re not ready to put on our hard hat against Thompson and Varejao, then we’re going to be in trouble. We’ve got to be really physical with those guys.” The offensive outburst was hard to predict, however, as it was only Varejao’s sixth career game of 20 or more points and obliterated his career high of 26. “I was just trying to be active and tried to be aggressive on offense,” Varejao said. “I was just doing what the coach was telling me to do, which was playing hard and playing physical.” Lopez held his own, at least on the offensive end, but he and Kris Humphries were unable to stop Varejao, only getting a reprieve when Cavaliers Coach Byron Scott removed Varejao for a large portion of the second quarter. Once again, things turned around for the Nets when the team switched to its second unit. Brooklyn’s bench, which has dubbed itself the Bench Mob, brought an energy level, and a toughness, that had otherwise been lacking. Reggie Evans and Andray Blatche solidified things defensively, and the Nets flourished offensively. “We are working with Humphries and Lopez to watch them and see how they work defensively on the floor,” Johnson said of Evans and Blatche. “If they start performing like that, we can have four guys playing well defensively.” On Varejao’s big night, Kyrie Irving, Cleveland’s best player, finished with 34 points and 8 assists but came away frustrated by another loss. “They hit us in the mouth on both ends of the floor and we were not executing,” Irving said. “We got in a hole and it is hard to fight back, especially against a great team like Brooklyn.” Scott, who coached the Nets for four seasons, taking the team to the N.B.A. finals twice, was visiting the new arena for the first time and seemed impressed with it compared with the arena the franchise called home in his time with the team. “I’m glad that it finally happened for them,” said Scott, who last coached the Nets in 2003-4. “I thought when it was proposed then that it would happen a lot sooner.” But for the Nets to make anyone forget the Scott-led teams of the early 2000s, they will have to figure out a way to contain opposing centers. REBOUNDS MarShon Brooks and Gerald Wallace continued to sit out with ankle injuries. No return date for either player was announced. ... Having grown up in New Jersey, Kyrie Irving was asked if he was once a Nets fan. He smiled and said, “I was a Net fan until Coach Scott left,” drawing laughs.


Europe’s Halting Response to Migrant Crisis Draws Criticism as Toll Mounts

Abstract: LONDON — The daily toll among refugees and migrants desperately trying to reach Europe — 71 suffocated in a truck in Austria and 150 drowned off Libya this week — has dramatically underscored the European Union ’s scattered, halting response to increasing waves of asylum seekers. With tens of thousands of people leaving war-torn or impoverished countries to seek asylum or a better life in Europe, criticism of the bloc’s division and dysfunction is now accelerating, as the number of deaths mounts, crossing 2,500 this year. Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany has said that the migration crisis is a bigger test for the European Union than even the Greek financial meltdown. She said on Friday that European interior ministers meeting this weekend would be looking into “rapid changes to the asylum system,” and that European leaders could hold an emergency summit meeting “if the preliminary work is done.” And none too soon. There is no European Union standard for asylum; no common list of countries regarded as in conflict, and thus more likely to produce refugees; and no collective centers where asylum seekers can be met, housed, fed and screened. Instead, with much of Brussels still on vacation, a kind of free-for-all has set in, with some countries welcoming and others not, some taking legal responsibility for refugees and others flouting international law. “While Europe is squabbling, people are dying,” said Alexander Betts , a professor and director of the Refugee Studies Center at Oxford University. “For the first time in its history, the E.U. is facing a massive influx of refugees from outside the region, and the E.U. asylum and immigration framework is poorly adapted for it.” Front-line states like Greece, Italy and now Austria and Hungary are “overwhelmed and increasingly unwilling to take more responsibility,” Mr. Betts said. “Some European states are failing to keep to international law, and there needs to be a more equitable sharing of responsibility.” In contradiction to the rules of the Dublin Regulation , formerly known as the Dublin Convention, some countries are simply allowing migrants to freely pass through their territory to richer European states without even trying to ascertain whether they are refugees entitled to asylum or economic migrants , who can be deported home. Under the convention, the countries where migrants first enter are supposed to screen them to decide who is a legitimate asylum seeker or refugee, but those countries are overwhelmed. Some countries, like Sweden and Germany, are being generous with their acceptance of refugees, but warn that they cannot be this generous forever. Other countries, like Britain, are strictly applying regulations to dissuade migrants and asylum seekers, while opposing a European Commission proposal in June for mandatory quotas for settlement, to help share the burden. Other countries, like Slovakia and Poland , have said they want only Christian refugees. The question of immigration is a visceral issue in a way the euro is not, dividing European governments from their electorates, member states from one another and the European Union from the values on which it was founded, said François Heisbourg, an analyst with the Foundation for Strategic Research in Paris. More than 100,000 people arrived in the bloc in July alone, but European leaders “have agreed no coherent response,” he said in a commentary in The Financial Times. The divisions among member states “are growing unsustainable,” Mr. Heisbourg said, with Germany taking about 40 percent of new asylum seekers, while France is taking only 8 percent and Britain, 4 percent. Image Migrants slept on a bench at a park in Belgrade, the Serbian capital, on Friday. More than 100,000 migrants arrived in the European Union in July alone. Credit Marko Drobnjakovic/Associated Press One of the European Union’s fundamental principles is freedom of travel, especially within the borderless “Schengen area,” which includes much of Continental Europe. But that achievement is in danger now, said the Austrian foreign minister, Sebastian Kurz, in an interview on Friday, demanding an urgent meeting of heads of state and government. Schengen is also expected to be a subject of the interior ministers’ meeting this weekend after the attempted attack on a Thalys train headed to Paris. On the Greek crisis, “we had one meeting after another at the highest level,” Mr. Kurz said. “Here, weeks, months go by — and nothing! “We need a European response,” he added, sounding a common plaint. “Europe must wake up at long last and recognize that this is a serious problem.” The German foreign minister, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, said on Thursday that “we must reform the Dublin Convention immediately, and find a way of creating binding and objective refugee quotas that take into account the ability of all member states to bear them.” Costanza Hermanin, a senior analyst in migration and equality for the Open Society Foundations, said that tragedies like the discovery of dead migrants in a truck in Austria sometimes produce change, but that “there has been a big political reluctance to deal with the problem.” Countries Under the Most Strain in the European Migration Crisis European Union officials struggle to cope with the growing crisis. The Dublin agreement was negotiated along with Schengen, Ms. Hermanin said, to balance freedom of movement for citizens with protections against migrants. “But after 25 years, it doesn’t work anymore,” she said. Still, she said, the situation is evolving rapidly now. “Six to eight months ago it would have been completely unthinkable that states would call for a complete revision of E.U. asylum policy, as the Germans are doing,” she said. The numbers are large — the United Nations reported that about 310,000 refugees and migrants have crossed the Mediterranean to Europe this year, about 40 percent more than in all of 2014. Around 2,500 people have died trying to reach Europe this year, said Melissa Fleming, spokeswoman for the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, not including those feared to have died when boats capsized off Libya this week . But both Ms. Hermanin and Mr. Betts of Oxford University said that sharing even 310,000 people among the 28 countries of the European Union “should not be unmanageable,” and that the numbers pale when compared with the 3.5 million Syrian refugees that Jordan, Turkey and Lebanon alone are hosting. “Europe needs a comprehensive global refugee policy,” Mr. Betts said, which should include more help to those neighboring countries to conflict that bear the brunt of the problem, so that refugees are better protected closer to home, making it more likely that they can return. A more generous and law-abiding European response would encourage countries like Jordan and Lebanon not to close their own borders, he said. Ms. Hermanin said that tougher refugee policies now in those countries are prompting some refugees to leave and head for Europe. Video Record numbers of people have arrived in Europe this year to seek asylum, many of them fleeing the war in Syria. Some of those refugees described their experiences. Credit Credit Sergey Ponomarev for The New York Times Babar Baloch, the United Nations refugee agency spokesman for Central Europe, said that “Europe’s asylum mechanisms are dysfunctional” without proper reception facilities in most countries. “They need to bring in a system in which wherever these people arrive they’re helped on the spot,” Mr. Baloch said. And given “the lack of legal avenues” for refugees to come to Europe, there is instead a growing network of criminal people smugglers along dangerous routes. In a larger way, the migrant crisis is also a failure of geopolitics and the European Union’s own “neighborhood policy,” designed to stabilize the countries of North Africa and the Balkans with economic aid and advice. The point of the policy is not simply altruistic, but to encourage the people who live there to stay there. The overthrow of Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi, which European nations assisted in, has produced a chaotic Libya. The result has been in essence a failed state very close to Europe, even as the Continent has been reluctant to deal with consequences it helped create. Those effects have included large numbers of migrants and asylum seekers, both Libyan and foreign, who now use the territory as a launching pad, and a major criminal economy built on people smuggling. Similarly, the West’s inability to stanch the long civil war in Syria is generating its own blowback, creating a security nightmare that has sent nearly half the country’s population fleeing for security. That has also complicated arguments in Europe, because fear of migrants has been coupled with likely exaggerated fears that radical Islamic jihadists will mix with the migrant flow and bring terrorism into a borderless Europe. Together with the long and unfinished euro crisis, these concerns are feeding right-wing and populist parties in Europe and undermining the credibility of the European Union, not just in Britain but in crucial member countries like France and Italy.

Middle East and Africa Migrant Crisis,European Migrant Crisis


Across Country, New Challenges to Term Limits

Abstract: A decade after communities around the country adopted term limits to force entrenched politicians from office, at least two dozen local governments are suffering from a case of buyer’s remorse, with legislative bodies from New York City to Tacoma , Wash., trying to overturn or tweak the laws. The campaigns against term limits, should they succeed, would drastically change the process by which millions of Americans elect a variety of their leaders — and how much power those leaders can amass once in office. The elected leaders, some of whom supported term limits when they were imposed, argue that the limits severely hamper government and leave the officials little time to figure out the mechanics of their office. That forces them to gravitate toward small-bore projects that can be done quickly, rather than anything visionary that would take years to achieve. In what could be called the second-term itch, they are pushing to revise the laws so they can serve another term (New York City and Rowlett, Tex.) or to repeal them so they can seek re-election indefinitely (State College, Pa., and Daytona Beach Shores, Fla.). “It has been an unmitigated disaster for the city,” said Phil Hardberger, the departing mayor of San Antonio , who supports a November referendum to lengthen term limits to four two-year terms from two. “The learning curve of how city government works and how to get things done is steep, but when you keep putting people in, and throwing them out, there is very little accountability,” he added. “We do a lot of churning here, but we don’t produce a lot of butter.” The term limits movement swept across the country in the early 1990s at a moment of intense frustration with American politics. In Congress, Republicans like Newt Gingrich made the limits a central theme of their Contract With America, and it soon trickled down to local governments. Advocacy groups, like U.S. Term Limits, sprung up to push cities and states to pass the new laws. The backers of term limits argued that a broken government needed to be fixed with fresh faces, uncorrupted by money and politics; supporters like Ronald S. Lauder , the billionaire cosmetics heir, helped put the term-limit proposals on the ballot, scoring victories in New York City and 11 other municipalities in New York State . Now, “there is definitely a backlash against it,” said John Clayton Thomas, a professor of public administration at Georgia State University who has written extensively about term limits. Some officials pushing the changes say the turnover created by term limits robs an elected body of valuable institutional memory. In Tacoma, four of the city’s nine council members will be forced from office by January 2010 after completion of their second four-year terms. That worries Councilwoman Connie Ladenburg, who has spent years pushing for a $2 million pedestrian and bike trail, among other projects. “That is when I thought, ‘This is crazy.’ If I go away, and it’s not completed, what will happen?” she said. As a result, Ms. Ladenburg shepherded a November referendum to overturn term limits. “The public wonders why we don’t get things done. Well, you have to be there awhile to get things done.” In Rowlett, Tex., a Dallas suburb of 55,000 people, Mayor John E. Harper says that limits of two three-year terms make it difficult for local officials to land coveted positions on national organizations such as the U.S. Conference of Mayors or the National League of Cities. Belonging to such groups mean that “you’re sitting at the table discussing the pros and cons of policy on energy, immigration , health insurance and everything else,” he said. Voters in Rowlett will decide in a November referendum whether to extend the limits to three terms. Term limits also tend to make local officials think constantly about re-election and their next career move, making fund-raising and politicking more of a priority, said Mayor A. C. Wharton of Shelby County, Tenn., which encompasses Memphis . Moreover, Mr. Wharton continued, the measures leave too much power in the hands of civil servants. “We call those folks the We Bees, as in, ‘We be here when he’s gone,’ ” said Mr. Wharton, whose term expires in 2010. “It turns the running of government, to a large degree, to individuals who’ve never been elected by anybody.” It is not just long-serving legislators, fearful they will soon lose a job, who oppose term limits. In State College, Pa., Peter Morris, who was elected to the seven-member Borough Council last year, said he owes his job to term limits because they forced popular incumbents out of office. Nevertheless, his experience in local government has turned him into an outspoken opponent of them. Mr. Morris said he and three other new members of the council lack experience on everything from how to craft an annual budget to the history behind a complex redevelopment project. Most places trying to relax term limits are trying to do so via the ballot box, with several referendums due in November, including one in South Dakota , where a ballot question would abolish the limits for state legislators. Officials in New York City, however, are contemplating the unusual method of changing term limits through the City Council, rather than through popular vote. That may be easier to push through, given that voters would be likely to resist such a change, having supported term limits in 1993 and 1996. But it is also far more controversial. “I like Bloomberg, but he looks like a politician if he does it, as opposed to a guy who came in to reform New York City,” Howard Rich, chairman of U.S. Term Limits, said of New York City’s mayor, Michael R. Bloomberg . “To bypass the will of the people without their permission strikes me as profoundly selfish and undemocratic.” There is precedent for what New York is considering. In 2001, the D.C. Council in Washington overturned a term limits law that had been approved by voters seven years earlier. Despite working around voters, council members experienced no serious repercussions, said Councilman Jack Evans, who led the effort. He pointed to his own re-election two years later. “Nobody ever raised it — and I was the guy who proposed it,” he said. Mr. Evans said it helped to overturn term limits early in a two-year term. “Do it quickly and get it out of the way,” he said. “People have a short-term memory.” That is not a luxury New York City Council members or Mr. Bloomberg have, however. They are considering changing term limits in the third year of a four-year term. To the staunchest supporters of term limits, the misgivings being expressed are predictable, coming from endangered officials who care primarily about their own political futures, not the welfare of the public. Mr. Rich noted that polls have consistently demonstrated that most people still support term limits. Currently, 37 governors, 15 state legislatures and 9 of the country’s 10 most populous cities face term limits, and recent ballot initiatives to alter them, including one in California in February, have failed. One thing supporters and opponents mainly share is an uneasiness with incumbent politicians, like those in New York, trying to change term limits laws in a way that would directly benefit them. San Antonio and Rowlett have stipulated that any changes apply only to future officeholders, or at least be postponed for a couple of years. Asked about New York’s effort, Mr. Harper, the mayor of Rowlett, said: “I would not be in favor of that. We ought not to do end runs around the ground rules.”


Lucrative Afghan Oil Deal Was Awarded Fairly, Karzai Says

Abstract: KABUL, Afghanistan — President Hamid Karzai , responding to recent allegations that insiders close to him are plundering the nation’s mineral wealth, said Sunday that the United States and British governments had given their imprimatur as to how a lucrative oil contract was awarded. Mr. Karzai’s office put out a statement saying that he met Saturday with the American and British ambassadors to Kabul to clarify recent reports of bias and that both men had agreed that the concession awarded to a Chinese company and a local Afghan company was done so transparently and fairly. “The U.S. and U.K. ambassadors confirmed the transparency and fairness exercised in the Amu Darya oil tender,” according to the statement , which was accompanied by a photograph of the United States ambassador, Ryan C. Crocker, and other officials meeting with Mr. Karzai and the Afghan mines minister, Wahidullah Shahrani. The statement said experts from the American and British governments had properly audited the process by which the contract was awarded and it was done according to international best practices. Although it is unusual for a foreign government to claim independently the support of outside nations against internal criticism, the United States on Sunday supported Mr. Karzai’s assertion. “We have no problems with the characterizations in the news release and we have nothing more to add,” said Gavin Sundwall, a spokesman for the American Embassy in Kabul. The British Embassy in Kabul offered no comment. In the past few years, vast deposits of untapped mineral wealth worth billions of dollars have been identified in Afghanistan, and the Afghan government hopes these deposits of copper, oil, gold, iron ore and critical industrial metals like lithium could provide valuable revenue for the country as international financial support begins to wind down. It is in the process of negotiating a series of contracts with companies to develop the projects. Afghanistan’s National Security Office asked the country’s attorney general earlier this month to investigate allegations that Gen. Abdul Rashid Dostum, a powerful warlord and political rival of Mr. Karzai’s based in northern Afghanistan, had pressured Chinese engineers who were starting preparatory work on the Amu Darya oil field, demanding illegal payouts. General Dostum and his political bloc, the National Front, denied the allegation and accused Mr. Karzai of trying to protect the interests of the Watan Group, an Afghan company associated with Mr. Karzai’s family that, along with the China National Petroleum Corporation, had won the contract to operate the oil field with a Chinese company. “The main goal of the government and its leadership is not protection of the national wealth but is protection of interests of shareholders of the project who have family relations with the officials in the government,” the party said in a statement. The National Security Office’s allegations against General Dostum prompted a reaction by a Republican congressman from California, Representative Dana Rohrabacher, who has sharply criticized Mr. Karzai and what he has described as the “corrupt little clique” around him. Mr. Rohrabacher, in a letter this month to Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta, said General Dostum believed that “the benefits of such energy development must accrue to the Afghan people and not a corrupt Afghan leader who sees the Afghan government as a family business.” Local Afghan news media reported that on Sunday government ministers attended an opening ceremony to mark the beginning of extraction of oil from the Amu Darya field.

Afghanistan
Karzai Hamid
Oil (Petroleum) and Gasoline
Corruption (Institutional)
United States International Relations
Watan Group
China National Petroleum Corp


Dueling Rallies Between Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert

Abstract: A day after the “Daily Show” star Jon Stewart announced plans to stage an ambitious public rally to counter what he identified as extremists on either side of the political spectrum, specifics were in short supply on Friday, with most of the details still to be worked out. On Thursday night, Mr. Stewart told his television audience that the show had secured the National Mall in Washington for what he called the “Rally to Restore Sanity” on Oct. 30. He later labeled it a “Million Moderate March.” The purpose, he said, is to present an alternative to what he called a minority of 15 percent or 20 percent of the Americans who have dominated the national political discussion with extreme rhetoric. Mr. Stewart tarred both parties with that charge, citing the attacks on the right accusing President Obama of being everything from a socialist to un-American and on the left accusing former President George W. Bush of being a war criminal. But on Friday, as Mr. Stewart traveled to Chicago for an appearance on “The Oprah Winfrey Show,” no one associated with his show had any more information about the rally — like where and how to secure a place, or what time it will be held — other than what the comedian presented on the air. He did describe the rally as “two or three hours one Saturday for some nice people to get together for some fun.” A Web site established for the rally, www.rallytorestoresanity.com , encourages fans to follow the event on Facebook and Twitter and to send a name and e-mail address for further information. The site also says whom the rally is intended to reach: “Ours is a rally for the people who’ve been too busy to go to rallies, who actually have lives and families and jobs (or are looking for jobs) — not so much the ‘silent majority’ as the ‘busy majority.’ ” What was clear from Mr. Stewart’s announcement was that the rally would have some comedy elements (as well as likely guest stars, Mr. Stewart said), and that his partner on the Comedy Central cable channel, Stephen Colbert , would be present in the guise of his conservative blowhard persona. On his own show on Thursday, Mr. Colbert suggested that rather than now being a time for reasonableness, it is actually a time to “freak out for freedom.” He announced his intention to stage a counterrally the same day, and called it the “March to Keep Fear Alive.”

Stewart Jon
Colbert Stephen
Demonstrations Protests and Riots
Comedy Central
Washington (DC)


In Australia, From Apology, a Hit Song Grows

Abstract: SYDNEY, Australia — A song about racial reconciliation with the Aboriginal minority has become the fourth-biggest-selling recording in Australia, even though it is available only as a download from the Web. The song, “From Little Things Big Things Grow,” begins with a recording of the words of Australia’s prime minister, Kevin Rudd, from his February apology for the country’s history of mistreatment of its indigenous peoples. “As prime minister, I am sorry,” Mr. Rudd says on the recording. “On behalf of the government, I am sorry.” From Mr. Rudd’s words the song later moves on to these lyrics: “There are moments in the lives of nations where hope and history rhyme. Now’s one of those times. Let’s close the gap, and if we truly mean it, we can stare down our future and find we can see through those eyes. Let us not stand with those who deny.” The song, which also takes lines from comments made by indigenous leaders after Mr. Rudd’s apology, combines hip-hop rhythms with more conventional instrumentation. It is a remake and rewording of a song written about 20 years ago to celebrate one of the most famous of Australia’s campaigns for racial equality, the drive for equal pay for indigenous farm workers. “This follows a long history of being a significant song, but it has been given a new meaning because of the apology,” said Richard Kingsmill, music director at Triple J, one of Australia’s most popular music radio stations. “This is one of those times when politically conscious music will sell.” The new version of the song was designed by the Internet-based political action group GetUp, along with Paul Kelly and Kev Carmody, who were the original song’s authors, to capitalize on the new mood in Australia since Mr. Rudd’s apology. Mr. Kelly and Mr. Carmody perform on the recording as part of a group called the GetUp Mob. “In the past, every time indigenous affairs hits the front pages, it disappears almost immediately,” said Brett Solomon, the executive director of GetUp, which offers the song on its Web site for download for $1.69 in Australian dollars (about $1.60). The song is also available on the iTunes online music store. “We wanted to magnify the momentum toward a reconciled future,” Mr. Solomon said. Mr. Solomon said that all the profits from the song will go to three charities that help the Aborigines.

Australia
Aborigines
Recordings and Downloads (Audio)


In Stanford Rape Case, Brock Turner Blamed Drinking and Promiscuity

Abstract: Brock Turner, the former Stanford University student convicted of sexually assaulting an unconscious woman behind a Dumpster on campus, described his actions as the product of a culture of drinking, peer pressure and “sexual promiscuity,” according to his courtroom statement. In a letter he submitted before being sentenced to six months in jail by Judge Aaron Persky of the Santa Clara County Superior Court, obtained by The New York Times, Mr. Turner said: “I am the sole proprietor of what happened on the night that changed these people’s lives forever. I would give anything to change what happened.” Brock Turner’s Statement In his letter to the judge, Mr. Turner blamed a “party culture” and drinking at Stanford University for his actions in the sexual assault case. The case has spurred a national uproar because of a sentence criticized as far too lenient and a statement by the defendant’s father complaining that his son’s life had been ruined for “20 minutes of action.” The judge is also facing a recall effort and has received threats of violence to him and his family, an official said. The 23-year-old victim read her own statement in court, recounting the horror of finding out details of her attack on the news (she had been intoxicated and could not remember the assault) and having to break the news to her family. The night the news came out I sat my parents down and told them that I had been assaulted, to not look at the news because it’s upsetting, just know that I’m okay, I’m right here, and I’m okay. But halfway through telling them, my mom had to hold me because I could no longer stand up. I was not okay. Court Statement of Stanford Rape Victim The Santa Clara County government released the more-than-7,000-word statement read by the victim in the courtroom. She detailed the shock of finding out what happened to her after the attack, and the wrenching aftermath. Mr. Turner said the events of that night had left him “a changed person.” In addition to his six-month jail sentence — far less than the 14-year maximum — he will serve three years’ probation and must register as a sex offender. He also lost his swimming scholarship to Stanford. In his letter, he said the woman had consented to the sexual encounter, even as he admitted “imposing trauma and pain” on her. He repeatedly cited an environment of peer pressure, drinking and promiscuity, factors he said he would use his time on probation to advocate against. “I want to demolish the assumption that drinking and partying are what make up a college lifestyle,” he wrote. “I made a mistake, I drank too much, and my decisions hurt someone.” The woman passionately denounced his interpretation — especially his emphasis on alcohol and promiscuity — in her statement “Alcohol is not an excuse,” she wrote. “Regretting drinking is not the same as regretting sexual assault,” she added. “We were both drunk; the difference is I did not take off your pants and underwear, touch you inappropriately and run away.” The victim’s statement went viral after it was published last week by BuzzFeed. It was read live on CNN by the anchor Ashleigh Banfield on Monday. On Wednesday afternoon, Mayor Bill de Blasio of New York said that his wife, Chirlane McCray, and other figures would read the statement from Gracie Mansion in a video posted to his Facebook page . .

Rape
Stanford
Brock Allen Turner
Criminal Sentence
BuzzFeed
Aaron Persky
Santa Clara County CA


Rivera’s a Closer With an Open Heart

Abstract: TAMPA, Fla. — The dollars were staggering, the richest deal for a closer, the reward for a decade of sterling service and the lightning still left in his right arm. But the money was the least important part of Mariano Rivera ’s November. While the Yankees and his agent sketched out the details of his three-year, $45 million contract, Rivera spread his message and mourned his mentor, the man who fostered in him a sense of duty that has made Rivera the sage of the Yankees’ clubhouse. In mid-November, Rivera traveled to the Dominican Republic for an annual Christian-themed baseball clinic. In late November, on his 38th birthday, Rivera was in Panama to bury Chico Heron, who brought him into professional baseball. There were two clinics in the Dominican Republic, one on either side of the country, and they ran at the same time each day for four days. Rivera had lent his name to the event, and with that came responsibility. He would speak to one group at the start of the camp, then hustle some 90 minutes across the country to address the other group. “He was adamant that he make both camps at the same time,” said the Cincinnati Reds’ Andy Phillips, a former Yankee who attended the clinic. “He was running himself into the ground, driving across the country to make it, because he wanted all these kids to get an opportunity to spend time with him and work with him.” It is no different with the Yankees, especially in training camp, where teammates flock to Rivera for guidance. Much of the lessons he imparts are from Heron, the Yankees scout who found Rivera in Panama in 1990. Heron was like his second father, and he saw something special in Rivera, a gangly 20-year-old who threw only 85 miles an hour. It was Heron who recommended that Herb Raybourn sign Rivera for $3,000, and Heron who nurtured Rivera for the next 17 years. “He was twice older than me, but I loved that man,” Rivera said. “He used to tell me to work hard, be committed, be respectful, trust what you have and trust the Lord, be able to do it in tough situations. And he was always, constantly encouraging me to just do it, don’t give up — even before he passed away.” Heron was in his 70s, Rivera said, and he had been sick for a while. Rivera lives in Westchester County year-round now, but he visited Heron in Panama shortly before he died, to see him one last time. “He was one of those men that if I call him any time, anytime that I need something from him, he would have done it on the spot,” Rivera said. “That’s how close he was to me. I respect that man till the day he died. I buried him with honor.” When Rivera speaks of Heron, he mentions his willingness to give advice to anybody who asked. It is trait that has made Rivera as important a leader on the Yankees as Derek Jeter, the team’s designated captain. “He cares about helping people, period,” General Manager Brian Cashman said. “It’s as simple as that.” When reliever Ross Ohlendorf was called to the majors in September, he was startled when Rivera peppered him with questions about the Yankees’ Class AAA team. It was important to Rivera, Ohlendorf noticed, to know how the minor league affiliates were doing. Joba Chamberlain, who had never been a reliever before the Yankees made him the setup man in August, was nervous at first around Rivera. All he knew were Rivera’s accomplishments. Chamberlain tried to learn Rivera’s cutter, but quickly discovered that the pitch was impossible to duplicate. But the more he talked with Rivera, the more he learned how to approach his new job. Pay attention in the early innings, Rivera told him. Watch for the strengths and weaknesses of the hitters. Be alert. And when Rivera struggled, Chamberlain learned from that, too. “To watch his demeanor and watch the way he handled it, every day he put ice on his shoulder and said: ‘I’m only human. Tomorrow, if the game’s close, I’m going to get the ball and do everything I can,’ ” Chamberlain said. “He’s won and lost some of the biggest games in the history of baseball, and he’s no worse for the wear when he gives up a home run. Some people think the world’s going to end.” Perspective is one of Rivera’s great gifts. His first experience as a postseason closer was failure, in the 1997 playoffs against Cleveland. He celebrated on the mound at the end of the next three World Series, but failed again in Arizona in 2001. A savior against Boston in 2003, he was a goat the next fall. Win or lose, Rivera’s demeanor does not change. Conquering the mental side of baseball, he said, is harder than his physical feats. “When you start thinking, a lot of things will happen,” Rivera said. “Emotions take place, and you have to know how to control your emotions. If you don’t control your emotions, your emotions will control your acts, and that’s not good.” Rivera’s extraordinary athleticism lets him repeat his delivery, the most important factor in a pitcher’s success. He also knows his craft well enough to notice flaws in others, the way he did last season with Luis Vizcaíno. “Mo’s the reason Vizcaíno turned his game around last year — Mo’s efforts,” Cashman said. “He wasn’t going to let a teammate struggle.” Now, the young reliever Edwar Ramírez often sits in Rivera’s locker before practice, chatting softly while Rivera gently blows the ink dry on the baseball cards he has carefully signed. A clubhouse attendant waits nearby, sealing the cards in envelopes, returning the prizes to fans. When Ramírez was called to the majors last July, Dave Eiland, then the Class AAA pitching coach, told him, “If you need something, ask Mo.” Ramírez became Rivera’s pregame catch partner, and he eagerly sought Rivera’s counsel. “He told me if you want to stay in the big leagues with the Yankees, you have to stay straight,” Ramírez said. “You don’t have to go to the clubs, you don’t have to drink. That’s what he showed me, because he doesn’t drink and he doesn’t go to the clubs.” Rivera coordinates Bible study, and Ramírez and another reliever, José Veras, are among those who participate. Like Ramírez, Veras is a native of the Dominican Republic. Growing up, he said, his family knew to suspend all activity when Rivera was pitching on television. Over and over, Veras used the word dream to describe how it felt to be teammates and friends with his idol. They talk shop, about Veras’s staying tall in his delivery, or gripping his pitches, or attacking certain lineups. They also talk about life, and the responsibilities of being in the majors. Even now, in his third season with the Yankees, Veras seems amazed that Rivera cares so much. “It’s hard to find people like that,” he said. “That’s why we appreciate everything he does, because if you’re 20-something and he’s 30-something, he doesn’t want to be my baby sitter. But he can say, ‘Don’t do this; that’s bad.’ It just takes a couple of seconds, but some guys think it’s hard to say. So when you find people like that that can teach you the right way, it’s awesome. It’s unbelievable to find people like that.” It would be unbelievable, except that Chico Heron made it real. For the best $3,000 the Yankees ever spent, Heron found an extraordinary talent in Rivera, who learned from him the value of community.

Rivera Mariano
New York Yankees
Baseball
Heron Chico


Afghan Bombing Sends Stark Message to India

Abstract: NEW DELHI — The suicide bombing on Monday outside the Indian Embassy in Kabul was the latest and most audacious attack in recent months on Indian interests in Afghanistan , where New Delhi, since helping to topple the Taliban in 2001, has staked its largest outside aid package ever. India has poured unprecedented amounts of money and people into the reconstruction of Afghanistan, a vital passage into resource-rich Central Asia. It has spent more than $750 million, building a strategic road across the country’s southwest, training teachers and civil servants, and working on erecting a new seat of the national Parliament. That engagement has come at a mounting cost to the 4,000 Indian citizens working in Afghanistan. In the last two and a half years, an Indian driver for the road reconstruction team was found decapitated, an engineer was abducted and killed, and seven members of the paramilitary force guarding Indian reconstruction crews were killed. Last year alone, the Indian Border Roads Organization came under 30 rocket attacks as it built the 124-mile stretch of road across Nimroz Province that will ultimately link landlocked Afghanistan to a seaport in Iran. The embassy bombing on Monday seems to have been the most effective strike: a bomber blew himself up as two Indian diplomats drove into the embassy early in the morning, reducing the compound to rubble and blood. Four Indians, including the two diplomats, were killed. The bulk of the 41 dead were Afghan civilians who had come for embassy services, like visas. To much of the world, the bombing may have appeared to be another in a series of escalating attacks by militants looking to destabilize the American-backed administration of President Hamid Karzai. Here in the Indian capital the message of the bombing was explicit: India, get out of Afghanistan. “It is a notice saying you quit or we are going to hit you,” said Lalit Mansingh, a retired Indian diplomat who served in Kabul in the 1970s. In condemning the attack, the Indian prime minister, Manmohan Singh, sent a plain message that his country would not quit, and that the Indian engagement in Afghanistan would “continue with renewed commitment.” Not surprisingly, Pakistan was swiftly blamed for the bombing, and just as swiftly, denied having a hand in it. But the attack also set off a lively policy debate, first over whether India should complement its reconstruction efforts in Afghanistan with military boots on the ground, and then whether Pakistan, and its backers in Washington, would allow India to play a more robust military role. Pakistan has long been nervous about India’s penetration into Afghanistan, including its five consular missions there, along with an air base in Tajikistan, across Afghanistan’s northern border. C. Raja Mohan, an Indian foreign policy analyst who teaches at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies in Singapore, said the time had come for India and Pakistan to look beyond their traditional rivalries and fuse a joint strategy to confront extremists operating on the Pakistan-Afghanistan border. Such an initiative, he argued, would be to both countries’ advantage. “Whatever problems we had with Pakistan, Pakistan had been a buffer between India and the badlands,” he said. “Now the buffer is falling apart. Afghanistan needs to be stabilized. Pakistan needs to be stabilized. This requires more drastic remedies.” The attack on the embassy in Kabul has also stirred a simmering debate about whether India, as a rising economic power in the world, ought to also flex its muscle in areas of strategic interest. The United States, for instance, long ago leaned on India to send troops to Iraq and to use its influence on Myanmar to push for democracy. India refused both requests. Sri Lanka invited India to mediate in its long-running ethnic war, but India’s intervention there 20 years ago left the Indian military with a bloody nose, and it has since refused to meddle. “I don’t know where is an example of India punching its weight,” said K. Subrahmanyam, a defense analyst. “It is India that is keeping a restrained posture. It goes back to how India became free and what kind of state India is.” Indian newspaper editorials on Tuesday urged the government not to buckle under the new threats in Afghanistan. “As India mourns the murder of its two diplomats in Kabul, it must brace itself up to a new burden that comes with increasing global weight,” The Indian Express wrote. “New Delhi cannot continue to expand its economic and diplomatic activity in Afghanistan while avoiding a commensurate increase in its military presence there.” Afghanistan is in some ways the test case of the extent to which India is willing to use its hard power to advance its strategic and commercial interests. “As India’s influence grows it will become increasingly involved in the local politics of a foreign country,” said Rahul Roy-Chowdhury, a research fellow at the London-based International Institute for Strategic Studies. “It cannot afford to see itself as an innocent bystander anymore.” Gurmeet Kanwal, head of the Center for Land Warfare Studies, said that Indian paramilitary troops were ill prepared to face the insurgents in Afghanistan, and that India’s development aid to that country needed to be secured by a military presence. “I wouldn’t use the expression flex its muscles,” he said. “I would say the time has come to live up to our responsibility. If it involves military intervention, so be it.”

India
International Relations
Afghanistan
Pakistan
Bombs and Explosives
Terrorism


Scones, Finger Sandwiches and Tea

Abstract: Raising one’s pinkie finger may be a faux pas — “Nobody does that,” according to Susan Peterson, co-owner of Teaberry’s Tea Room in downtown Flemington. However, the rest of the mystique pertaining to traditional British afternoon tea, including finger sandwiches and floral-patterned china, is very much in evidence at tearooms around New Jersey. And reservations at such places can be hard to come by, especially at this time of year. Mother’s Day (May 11 this year) is “the biggest, busiest holiday for us,” said Ms. Peterson, 60, of Lebanon Township, who opened Teaberry’s with her husband, Andrew, a decade ago. They moved it four years ago to its current location in a large Victorian house — where it has 100 seats, six dining rooms and a gift boutique — from a smaller Victorian in town. Bridal and baby showers and a general enthusiasm for spring add to the reservation books in April and May, Ms. Peterson said. Afternoon tea at Teaberry’s ranges from Lady Astor’s Cream Tea, a pot of tea and two scones with lemon curd, clotted cream and preserves ($15), to the Queen’s Royal Tea, which includes six small courses ($44). The season aside, another enticement is the civility and permission to linger afforded by a tearoom. “The motivation, really, is to balance out the hectic pace of life and relax a bit,” said Mary Ann Bassett, owner of Harmony Tea Room , in Westwood, which also recently moved to a new, larger location in town that accommodates 45. Image At the Cosy Cupboard in Convent Station, Vincent Howard is the manager and his father, James Howard, is a co-owner. Credit Matt Rainey for The New York Times Ms. Bassett, 56, of Westwood, opened Harmony six years ago. Harmony’s tables, like Teaberry’s, are set with an eclectic assortment of china, and teapots arrive at the table in tea cozies. Teas are loose leaf (not in bags) and steeped according to the variety. Teaberry’s offers 120 types, including black, oolong, green, white, decaf and herbal; Harmony has more than 30 flavors, including “wine-inspired teas,” like green tea sauvignon. Afternoon tea options at Harmony range from Simplici-tea ($9.50, including a pot of tea and two freshly baked scones) to Hospitali-tea ($24.95, including a pot of tea, soup and salad, a scone, assorted finger sandwiches and a selection of sweets). “I look at it this way,” Ms. Bassett said. “You can get a turkey sandwich anywhere. I want people to come here and have an experience. I want them to read about the teas, to look at the china and say, ‘Oh, my grandmother had this dish or this cup.’ That actually happens a lot.” Kathleen Hippeli, the owner of One Steep at a Thyme , a tearoom in Jamesburg, may be even more determined that her afternoon tea customers have an experience: the two-room, 20-seat Victorian tearoom she opened in 2013 welcomes visitors for two afternoon tea seatings on Saturdays and Sundays only. Reservations are required for the seven-course service, and Ms. Hippeli, 50, of Spotswood, requests that guests plan to stay two hours “to savor the experience,” she said. Image The Cosy Cupboard has 26 tea flavors on the menu. Credit Matt Rainey for The New York Times On a recent Sunday, One Steep at a Thyme’s afternoon tea service, $29.95 a person, included a refillable pot of loose-leaf tea (60 flavors are offered), a teacup of soup, a small green salad, a wedge of homemade strata or quiche, two scones served with cream, tea sandwiches, a selection of desserts and lemon sorbet. Ms. Hippeli also holds tea tastings two Tuesday evenings a month and special events on weekday nights. At Sally Lunn’s Tea Room and Restaurant in Chester and Chatham, the proprietors are English, but they do not hew to all the traditions, according to Theresa Gaffney, co-owner with her mother, Jean Gaffney. “Most tea shops in England do things like beans on toast or mushrooms on toast,” said Ms. Gaffney, 57, of Bedminster. “It’s very basic, not as upscale as what my mum created for the American market.” Her mother opened her first tearoom in Florida 33 years ago. The Chester tearoom opened in 1990, and the one in Chatham in 2010; both offer 74 types of tea. Offerings include Sally’s Cream Tea, a scone with clotted cream and preserves, a fruit-filled shortbread tart and a pot of tea ($13.50); and Victorian high tea, which includes finger sandwiches, a scone with clotted cream, a selection of mini-desserts and a pot of tea ($25.50). Though women and girls (including girls’ birthday parties) make up most of the clientele at tearooms, Vincent Howard, 24, the manager of the Cosy Cupboard , a tearoom in Convent Station, said he hoped his presence and enthusiasm set an example for male customers. Image The Cosy Cupboard opened in 2010 and can seat 81 guests in its two formal dining rooms. Credit Matt Rainey for The New York Times “When men come in, I try to help them realize it’s not as feminine as it looks. It’s about the aesthetics and the social experience,” he said. Afternoon tea at the Cosy Cupboard ranges from $16 for Olivia’s Tea, including unlimited pots of tea and two scones with cream and preserves, to $29.50 for Prince Edward Island/Grand Tea, a five-course tea that includes soup, salad, tea sandwiches, a scone and dessert. Cosy Cupboard opened in 2010 and can seat 81 guests in its two formal dining rooms; 26 tea flavors are on the menu. Mr. Howard was “kind of drawn into the business,” he said, by his parents, James and Doris Howard of Dover, who own the shop. In Westfield, Ana Beall’s Tea Room offers “more like a modern Victorian experience,” said Laura Tavares, 27, the catering director. “It’s not like we have lacy curtains everywhere.” There is no chintz at Ana Beall’s, and the five tables in the tiny downstairs cafe — upstairs are two rooms that are often used for parties of up to 45 — are not draped with cloths. Ana Beall’s was opened in 2010 by Nancy Baker and Kush Wadhwa. Options range from the Cream Tea, a homemade scone with cream, butter and jam served with a personal size, refillable pot of tea ($9.95), to the Queen’s Tea, including a choice of salad or soup, a scone with clotted cream or butter and jam, a selection of tea sandwiches, miniature desserts, a full-size dessert and a glass of sparkling white jasmine tea ($26.95). More than 50 loose-leaf tea flavors are steeped in open “sacks” that flop over the sides of the individual pots. “Tea is a theme that people love, because it’s quaint and cute and cozy,” Ms. Tavares said. “It’s a little different, too. A nice way to relax and connect.”

New Jersey
Tea
Restaurant
Harmony Tea Room
One Steep at a Thyme
Teaberry's Tea Room
Cosy Cupboard
Sally Lunn's Tea Room and Restaurant
Ana Beall's


Senators Call for More Funding to Improve Safety at Rail Crossings

Abstract: Senators Charles E. Schumer of New York and Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut on Sunday called for more federal funding for safety measures at rail crossings after a deadly crash at a Metro-North Railroad crossing this month. The two lawmakers, both Democrats, said they planned to introduce a bill to allocate an additional $50 million a year to a federal program for gates, lights and other safety improvements to rail crossings. The proposal would also provide more than $100 million a year for state grants and for a federal program that helps pay to relocate crossings. “Many of New York’s metropolitan-area rail crossings are truly accidents waiting to happen,” Mr. Schumer said at a news conference at Grand Central Terminal on Sunday. “It’s critical that the federal government do more to make engineering safety upgrades, particularly at accident-prone crossings.” Six people were killed on Feb. 3 when a Metro-North train struck a sport utility vehicle stopped on the tracks at a crossing in Valhalla, N.Y. The driver of the S.U.V. and five train passengers were killed in the crash, which was the deadliest in the railroad’s history. The crash has brought renewed attention to safety at grade crossings, where roadways intersect with rail tracks at street level. There are hundreds of accidents each year at grade crossings across the country. Mr. Schumer cited an analysis last week by The New York Times that found several crossings in the New York City region that were rated among the nation’s most hazardous by the Federal Railroad Administration. The National Transportation Safety Board is planning to release a preliminary report next week on its investigation into the Valhalla crash. One of the questions investigators are trying to answer is how pieces of the electrified third rail were ripped from the track bed and pierced the train’s cars. Video When the trains approach and the barriers descend, motorists sometimes have little time to reverse to safety at one rail crossing in Elmwood Park, N.J. Credit Credit Nicole Bengiveno/The New York Times While the cause of the crash is still under investigation, Mr. Schumer said it was clear that the crossing played a role. The layout of the crossing, on a curved road, he said, coupled with the traffic light at a nearby intersection may have confused the driver of the S.U.V., Ellen Brody, especially if she was not familiar with the crossing. Experts say that building a bridge over a single crossing can cost as much as $40 million, and Mr. Schumer said it would be too expensive to replace all grade crossings with bridges. The bill, he said, “will go a long way to making us safer at rail crossings, but at the same time not break the bank.” The senators plan to introduce the bill, called the Highway-Rail Grade Crossing Safety Act of 2015, when Congress reconvenes this month. It would increase funding for the Federal Highway Administration program that distributes money to states for safety improvements. The additional $50 million would increase the annual funding for the program, known as Section 130, to $270 million. Mr. Schumer’s office said the proposal and funding was likely to be included as part of a broader transportation reauthorization bill expected to be considered by Congress this year. On Friday, Representative Bill Pascrell Jr., a New Jersey Democrat, called on the state’s Department of Transportation to improve safety at a crossing in Elmwood Park, N.J., which was identified by The Times as the most hazardous in the region. In a letter to the department’s commissioner, Mr. Pascrell, whose district includes Elmwood Park, asked for information about the crossing’s history and any plans to address safety concerns. “I would like to work with your department,” he wrote, “to find a permanent solution to this grave public safety issue.”

Train wreck
Metro North
Richard Blumenthal
Chuck Schumer
Connecticut
New York
Valhalla NY
Legislation
Federal Railroad Administration
NYC


News From the Advertising Industry

Abstract: Accounts ■ Bridgestone Americas Tire Operations, Nashville, part of the Bridgestone Corporation, named Publicis Dallas — part of the Publicis in the USA unit of Publicis Worldwide, owned by the Publicis Groupe — as its lead creative and strategic agency. Spending was estimated at more than $40 million. The account had been handled by the Richards Group, Dallas, which will continue to handle sports marketing assignments through its sports marketing unit. The move came 15 months after Bridgestone Americas shifted the creative duties for its Firestone brands from Richards to Leo Burnett, Chicago, part of the Publicis Groupe. ■ Proximo Spirits, Jersey City, selected agencies to handle the creative and media duties for Jose Cuervo tequila as Proximo assumes the duties of distributing the brand in the United States from Diageo. Spending last year by Diageo was estimated at more than $11 million. The creative account was awarded to McCann Erickson New York, part of the McCann Erickson Worldwide division of the McCann Worldgroup, which is owned by the Interpublic Group of Companies. The media account was awarded to Gotham Direct, New York. ■ Motorola Mobility, now a part of Google, named Droga5, New York, as creative agency of record, working with Digitas, part of the Publicis Groupe, which will assist with creative and strategic duties, the agency said. Spending was not disclosed. The initial campaign from Droga5, which was introduced last week, promoted the next Motorola smartphone, Moto X , as the first to be “designed, engineered and assembled in the USA.” People ■ Carlos Bayala, founding partner and executive creative director of Madre — the Buenos Aires office of Mother — was named to assume new duties at Mother, taking on a lead worldwide creative role as a global creative partner, working with the founders of Mother, Robert Saville and Mark Waites, as well as with Paul Malmstrom, partner at Mother New York. Mr. Bayala will also work on expanding Madre into other markets in Latin America. Miscellany ■ Two agencies that have been affiliated for several years, Muse Communications and Quantasy, Culver City, Calif., are combining operations. Shelley Yamane, president of Muse, and Will Campbell, chief executive of Quantasy, will run day-to-day operations as co-presidents. Jo Muse continues as chairman and chief executive of Muse. ■ Publicis Groupe, Paris, acquired Bosz Digital, San José, Costa Rica, and, subject to approval by the local authorities, Bosz Digital Colombia, Bogota. Financial terms were not disclosed.

Appointments and Executive Changes
advertising,marketing


Leaders Plan Buffer Zone at Sudan Border

Abstract: KHARTOUM, Sudan — The presidents of Sudan and South Sudan agreed on Saturday to set up a demilitarized zone along their disputed border, said an African Union mediator and Sudan’s state news agency. Presidents Omar Hassan al-Bashir of Sudan and Salva Kiir of South Sudan agreed in September to withdraw their armies from the border area between their countries. But neither side has done so. Instead, each accuses the other of supporting rebels in and near the border region. Tensions have boiled, and war nearly erupted in April. On Saturday, at a meeting arranged by the African Union in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, the two leaders agreed to carry out the terms of the September accord on issues related to borders, security and oil, according to the official Sudanese news agency, SUNA, and the African Union mediator, former President Thabo Mbeki of South Africa. Mr. Mbeki said that Mr. Bashir and Mr. Kiir had agreed to “create the safe demilitarized border zone” and carry out “the existing agreements unconditionally,” according to Reuters. The establishment of the roughly six-mile-wide buffer zone is seen as crucial to resuming the mutually needed flow of oil in South Sudan, which shut down production last year after a dispute with Sudan, which controls the pipelines, over transit fees. Sayed el-Khatib, a member of Sudan’s delegation, emphasized that Saturday’s meeting would speed up the activation of previous agreements, SUNA reported. SUNA also reported that Mr. Kiir said he had delinked his party, the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement, from a wing of rebels operating in Sudan along the border. Sudan has accused South Sudan of supporting the northern group’s armed branch, which South Sudan has denied. South Sudan gained independence from Sudan in 2011, but questions related to the sharing of oil wealth, the demarcation of borders and the disputed district of Abyei were left unresolved. On Saturday, the two sides reaffirmed plans to set up a joint committee to oversee Abyei and the establishment of a legislative council and police force there.

Sudan
South Sudan
Military
African Union
Sudan People's Liberation Army
Omar Hassan Al- Bashir
Salva Kiir Mayardit


Debate Over Delaying of Miranda Warning

Abstract: WASHINGTON — The Obama administration’s announcement that it planned to question the Boston Marathon bombing suspect for a period without first reading him the Miranda warning of his right to remain silent and have a lawyer present has revived a constitutionally charged debate over the handling of terrorism cases in the criminal justice system. The suspect, Dzhokhar A. Tsarnaev, 19, a naturalized American citizen, remained hospitalized on Saturday for treatment of injuries sustained when he was captured by the police on Friday night, and it was not clear whether he had been questioned yet. But the administration’s effort to stretch a gap in the Miranda rule for questioning about immediate threats to public safety in this and other terrorism cases has alarmed advocates of individual rights. Anthony D. Romero, the executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union, said it would be acceptable for the Federal Bureau of Investigation to ask Mr. Tsarnaev about “imminent” threats, like whether other bombs are hidden around Boston. But he said that for broader questioning, the F.B.I. must not “cut corners.” “The public safety exception to Miranda should be a narrow and limited one, and it would be wholly inappropriate and unconstitutional to use it to create the case against the suspect,” Mr. Romero said. “The public safety exception would be meaningless if interrogations are given an open-ended time horizon.” The Miranda warning comes from a 1966 case in which the Supreme Court held that, to protect against involuntary self-incrimination, if prosecutors want to use statements at a trial that a defendant made in custody, the police must first have advised him of his rights. The court later created an exception, allowing prosecutors to use statements made before any warning in response to questions about immediate threats to public safety, like where a gun is hidden. The question applying those rules in terrorism cases arose after a Nigerian named Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab tried to blow up a Detroit-bound airliner on Dec. 25, 2009. After landing in Michigan, he was given painkillers for burns and confessed to a nurse. He also spoke freely to F.B.I. agents for 50 minutes before going into surgery. After he awoke, the F.B.I. read Mr. Abdulmutallab the Miranda warning, and he stopped cooperating for several weeks. Republicans portrayed the Obama administration’s handling of the case in the criminal justice system as endangering national security, setting the template for a recurring debate. In late January 2010, Mr. Abdulmutallab’s family and lawyer persuaded him to start talking again, and he provided a wealth of further information about Al Qaeda’s branch in Yemen. Later, during pretrial hearings, his lawyers asked a federal judge, Nancy G. Edmunds, to suppress the early statements. But Judge Edmunds ruled that the statement to the nurse had been voluntary and lucid despite the painkillers, and that the 50-minute questioning was a “fully justified” use of the public safety exception. She declined to suppress the statements, and Mr. Abdulmutallab pleaded guilty and was sentenced to life in prison. By then, the Justice Department had sent the F.B.I. a policy memo urging agents, when questioning “operational terrorists,” to use a broad interpretation of the public safety exception. The memo asserted that giving the “magnitude and complexity” of terrorism cases, a lengthier delay is permissible, unlike ordinary criminal cases. “Depending on the facts, such interrogation might include, for example, questions about possible impending or coordinated terrorist attacks; the location, nature and threat posed by weapons that might post an imminent danger to the public; and the identities, locations and activities or intentions of accomplices who may be plotting additional imminent attacks,” it said. Judge Edmunds’s ruling was seen by the administration as confirmation that its new policy was constitutional — and that it was neither necessary nor appropriate to put domestic cases in military hands. Stephen Vladeck, an American University law professor, said the middle ground sought by the administration has put both the civil libertarian and national security conservative factions in a bind. “This is the paradox of progressive national security law, which is how do you at once advocate for the ability of the civilian courts without accepting that some of that includes compromises that are problematic from a civil liberties perspective?” he said. “The paradox is just as true for the right, because they are ardent supporters of things like the public-safety exception, but its existence actually undermines the case for military commissions.”

Dzhokhar A Tsarnaev
Miranda v. Arizona
Boston Marathon Bombings
Terrorism
Detainees