New Orleans Saints at Tampa Bay Buccaneers Preview

Abstract: Saints (4-8) at Buccaneers (6-6) 1 p.m. Line: Buccaneers by 4 N.F.L. Week 14 scores and highlights For Jameis Winston, who has been improving each week and is looking every bit like the top draft pick, this week may be his Christmas as the atrocious Saints defense rolls into town giving away yards and points the way a drunken Mardi Gras float captain gives away beads. The Santa Claus of this unit is unquestionably Brandon Browner, statistically the league’s worst cornerback in 2015, according to Pro Football Focus . Browner may well finish by having the worst season by any defensive back in N.F.L. history. Quarterbacks have accumulated a 107.9 passer rating when throwing at him, and with four games to play, Browner needs two more penalties to become the most penalized player in a single season since 1999, the year the league first started tracking individual penalty statistics. (The former Houston Texans tackle Chester Pitts holds the record with 22 penalties in 2003.) Improbably, the Buccaneers are seventh in the N.F.C. playoff race, a game behind Seattle for the sixth seed, after starting the season 1-3. PICK: Buccaneers


Andrew Smith, Who Played on Butler’s Final Four Teams, Dies at 25

Abstract: Andrew Smith, who helped put Butler University in the national spotlight as a member of two Final Four teams that twice reached the N.C.A.A. championship game as admired underdogs, died on Tuesday in Indianapolis after a two-year struggle with cancer. He was 25. Barry Collier, Butler’s athletic director, announced Smith’s death in a joint statement with the university president, James Danko. Smith, a 6-foot-11 center, played on Butler’s national runner-up teams in 2010 and 2011 and finished his career with 1,147 points and 648 rebounds. He learned he had an aggressive form of non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma early in 2014. Last November, he had a bone-marrow transplant. Three weeks later, his wife, Samantha, wrote that his body had rejected it. Image Smith in 2011. Credit Mark Humphrey/Associated Press Boston Celtics Coach Brad Stevens, who had coached Smith at Butler, skipped his team’s game in Chicago last week to visit Smith. Smith was born on Sept. 9, 1990, in Washington. He was a star at Covenant Christian High School in Indianapolis, and he led Indiana high school players in rebounding in 2009. At Butler, he started 102 of his final 105 games, including the 2011 title game against Connecticut in Houston. The year before, Butler, led by Gordon Hayward and Shelvin Mack, both of whom went on to play in the N.B.A., became the Final Four’s sentimental favorite, reaching the title game in Indianapolis only to lose to Duke when Hayward’s last-second desperation heave bounced off the rim. Smith had a brief pro career in Europe. Besides his wife, his survivors include his parents, Curt and Debbie Smith; a brother, Stephen; and two sisters, Julie Webster and Kimberly Smith.

Obituary
College basketball
Butler University
NCAA Men's Basketball,March Madness
Andrew Smith


New Summer, and New Face at Top, for the Fresh Air Fund

Abstract: The Fresh Air Fund is preparing for a changing of its top leadership as it sends thousands of children from urban neighborhoods in New York City on vacations in the country this summer. Its executive director, Jenny Morgenthau, will step down next month after 32 years in charge. Her successor will be Fatima A. Shama, a former city commissioner of immigrant affairs who said, “I easily could have been a Fresh Air Fund child.” The fund now serves close to 9,000 children a year. Nearly 4,000 spend one or two weeks with volunteer host families in suburban neighborhoods and rural communities in 13 states from Virginia to Maine, and in Canada. An additional 3,000 children attend the five Fresh Air camps in Fishkill, N.Y. Another 2,000 take part in year-round educational programs in Fishkill and in the city. Like Ms. Shama, Ms. Morgenthau worked in city government before going to the Fresh Air Fund. Ms. Morgenthau had been director of the Office of Program Planning in the city’s child welfare agency. Ms. Shama, who was the commissioner of immigrant affairs for more than five years under Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, has been the vice president for strategic development and external affairs at Maimonides Medical Center in Brooklyn since leaving City Hall last year. Ms. Morgenthau has presided over the fund as it built its newest camp on its 2,300-acre compound in Fishkill, a coeducational camp for children ages 12 to 14 named Camp Mariah for the singer Mariah Carey, who donated $1 million for its construction. But the fund has expanded its offerings beyond summer camps and volunteer host placements, adding a career awareness program that provides tutoring for middle-school students. To help students grasp how academics and work are interrelated, the fund also arranges for job-shadowing days that let the students watch grown-ups in different workplaces. And the fund arranges mentoring that begins before students apply to college and continues after they matriculate. Those new experiences have come as the number of summer host families has declined. Traditionally, host families — volunteers from communities outside the city — welcomed city children who spent a couple of weeks living in their homes. Ms. Morgenthau, 70, said the fund had somewhat fewer host families than in the 1980s — in part because in more homes, the adults work outside the home nowadays, and in part because hosts now undergo a more thorough application and review process, which includes an in-home visit. The fund depends on volunteer regional leaders to interview prospective hosts, and the requirements for interviews and background checks had “cut down on how much volunteers could do,” she said. The process now includes personal references and criminal background checks. She said no prospective hosts had been found to have child-abuse convictions, but a few had been disqualified because they had been convicted of drunken driving or lesser offenses. “They know we’re going to look,” she said, “and if somebody lies, we’re not going to take them.” In the last few years, the fund has also stepped up efforts to draw in children of immigrants. “We noticed we were having difficulty recruiting children” in places that had long been strongholds for the fund, Ms. Morgenthau said. “I had a hypothesis that the children weren’t where we had agencies. Perhaps they weren’t being served by the agencies we worked with.” She said a study confirmed that idea, reflecting the city’s changing demographics. That, in turn, led to new arrangements with agencies that reach immigrants from Central and South America, and from Asia. She said she had been interviewed by a Chinese newspaper and had noted that when the fund was organized in the 19th century, the immigrants it helped were predominantly Irish and Italian. She said the question in the 21st century was, “Who are the immigrants now, and who’s serving them?” That idea resonated with Ms. Shama, 41, who said her parents apparently did not know about the fund, and that raised the possibility of “broadening our contact with community-based organizations.” “I easily could have been a Fresh Air Fund child,” she said, “but I wasn’t.” Ms. Shama grew up in the Soundview section of the Bronx and attended Catholic schools before going to Binghamton University. She also has a master’s degree from Baruch College. She speaks six languages — English, Portuguese, Spanish, Arabic, French and Italian. Her father, who was Palestinian , migrated to Brazil in the late 1940s and met her mother in Rio de Janeiro, where he ran a furniture store. “He tried to overcharge her,” Ms. Shama said. “My mom was like, ‘That’s ridiculous.’ He said, ‘Have coffee with me, I’ll give it to you for half-price.’ They got married and came to the U.S. in 1963.”

The Fresh Air Fund
Fatima A Shama
Jenny Morgenthau
Appointments and Executive Changes


Letters: Mortgage Intervention

Abstract: To the Editor: In “Can Government Rescue Housing?” (Letters, July 1), a reader argued against such intervention to write down mortgages, saying that government laws and rules helped cause the housing mess in the first place. The letter included mention of the Community Reinvestment Act as having required banks to lend to people “of dubious credit quality.” But many of the lenders who made subprime loans were not subject to that legislation, and a bank regulator in the George W. Bush administration has said that the law was not a cause of the crisis. And to needle academics who might support government intervention, the letter suggested that they would clearly oppose reducing the cost of higher education via government-sanctioned write-downs of their “outsize and unaffordable pensions.” I, like many academics, do not have a defined-benefit pension, but rather a retirement plan to which my employer and I each contribute money. It will not be outsize — I wish it were! — but it is affordable. Jeff Sovern Jamaica, Queens, July 1 The writer is a professor of law at St. John’s University and a co-coordinator of the Consumer Law and Policy Blog.

Banking and Financial Institutions
Mortgages
Law and Legislation


Missouri: Highway Shootings Are Linked

Abstract: The police said Wednesday that they have linked some of the apparently random shootings at vehicles on Kansas City-area highways over the past month. The federal authorities are helping to investigate 13 shootings from March 8 to Sunday, three of which injured drivers. Ten of the shootings took place in Kansas City, while the other three were in Blue Springs and Lee’s Summit, Mo., and Leawood, Kan.

Missouri
Kansas
Car Crash
Guns
Assault
Kansas City MO


Abercrombie & Fitch to End On-Call Shifts for Workers

Abstract: Abercrombie & Fitch said on Friday that it would no longer require workers to be on call for shifts that may be canceled with little notice, after a regulator’s inquiry into the practice. The office of the New York State attorney general, Eric T. Schneiderman , said in April that it was investigating 13 large retailers over whether the increasingly unpredictable work schedules adopted by some retailers violated state labor laws. Abercrombie & Fitch said in a statement on Friday that all of its brands would end the practice for workers paid by the hour. As of the end of January, the company ran 799 Abercrombie & Fitch and Hollister stores in the United States. “Over time, we will discontinue the use of call-in shifts throughout the United States and will begin that process in New York this September,” Michael Scheiner, a company spokesman, said in a statement. Retailers often rely on sophisticated software to track the flow of customers, assigning just enough employees to handle ever-changing demand, resulting in far less predictable work hours for much of their part-time work force. Employers in New York, however, are bound by labor laws that require them to pay workers who report for scheduled shifts at least four hours of pay, even if managers send them home. Labor advocates have long criticized the practice, along with low pay, saying it forces workers to grapple with uncertain hours and paychecks. In a letter dated Wednesday and sent to Mr. Schneiderman’s office, Abercrombie said that its store workers would receive schedules a week in advance. Employees can choose to receive email alerts about unexpected scheduling needs, but will not be under obligation to accept any changes, said the letter, which was signed by Robert E. Bostrom, Abercrombie’s general counsel. Mr. Bostrom said that Abercrombie had “at all times been complying with the law relating to call-in shift scheduling” in New York and throughout the United States. Still, he wrote, the new policy was meant to “create as stable and predictable a work environment as possible for our employees.” Other retailers named in Mr. Schneiderman’s investigation include Gap, Target, J. C. Penney and Victoria’s Secret. Victoria’s Secret said in June that it would halt the practice. Target and J. C. Penney have denied that they engaged in on-call scheduling. A spokeswoman for Gap, Laura Wilkinson, said that the company was evaluating its scheduling policy. “Each of our brands have made a commitment to evaluate their practices and determine where we may be able to improve scheduling stability for our employees, while continuing to drive productivity in stores,” Ms. Wilkinson said in an email.

Abercrombie
Working Hours
Jobs
Eric T Schneiderman


With Campus Visits, Defense Agency Director Hopes to Renew Ties

Abstract: The new director of the Pentagon’s research arm has started visiting university campuses around the country in an effort to rebuild bridges that were severed under the Bush administration. The director, Regina E. Dugan, who was appointed in July to lead the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency , or Darpa, made visits last week to the University of California, Berkeley; Stanford University; the University of California, Los Angeles; and the California Institute of Technology. She had previously visited Virginia Tech and Texas A&M. She replaced Anthony J. Tether, a Bush administration appointee who had pushed the agency toward more classified research and who had embarked on several controversial research projects, including the Total Information Awareness system proposed by the former national security adviser, John M. Poindexter . Under Dr. Tether, the agency’s relationship with some of the nation’s leading technology universities had become decidedly chilly as basic research financing declined. In 2005, Darpa officials revealed that financing for university researchers fell to $123 million from $214 million, in a relatively steady budget for computer science research that rose from $546 million in 2001 to $583 million in 2005. The agency has not released data on university financing since that time. During the Bush administration, Darpa’s guidelines for financing basic research changed markedly, said Peter Harsha, the director of governmental affairs for the Computing Research Association , a Washington organization that represents academic institutions. The agency shortened the period of research financing and tied it to one year “go, no-go” decisions, undercutting longer-term projects. It enforced classification of research or prepublication review on scientific papers, and it established strict United States citizenship requirements for some financing, Mr. Harsha said. “It sounds like a lot of that is changing now,” he said. “She is attempting to empower her program managers more than under the previous regime, and that makes it more enticing for members of the academic community to engage with the agency.” In her conversations with researchers, Dr. Dugan noted the criticism of the shortened time horizon for Darpa financing and acknowledged that increasing classification of research had lessened the impact of the agency’s technology on both civilian and military infrastructure, according to several people who participated in the discussions. “University-based research is an important component of Darpa’s future activities,” Dr. Dugan said in a statement. “It is our goal to strengthen this partnership, enabling some of the best minds to serve with and in the government in the best interests of the nation and the U.S. Department of Defense .” Dr. Tether, who is now a fellow at the Council on Competitiveness , a Washington-based policy group, said that he had focused some Darpa basic research spending on a series of artificial intelligence challenges and that overall Darpa spending had increased significantly in the eight years that he ran the agency. “There were individuals at these universities that had done great work, and they had been funded handsomely,” Dr. Tether said. “Basically what happened is that as we began funding these other ideas, which were different, they kind of expected to continue to be funded. I think that was the problem.” On her visit to California institutions last week, Dr. Dugan, a mechanical engineer who has done fundamental development work in chemical sensing technologies that can be used to detect explosives, spoke to small groups of faculty members from different departments in both the sciences and engineering. “She came by Berkeley on Wednesday and had a frank chat about the past and the future, and I’m pretty encouraged,” said David Patterson, a computer scientist at the University of California, Berkeley. “She seems to genuinely value academic input into the defense research enterprise and really wants to re-engage the research community in the Darpa mission.” One challenge for the new director may be a potential cut in Darpa’s budget in an appropriation bill now before Congress. The Obama administration has been trying to raise the agency’s budget, but some Congressional opponents have proposed a $500 million cut and there is language in a Senate version of the defense appropriations bill that would prohibit the agency from starting new projects. “I also want to urge Congress to fully fund the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency because since its creation it has been the source of cutting-edge breakthroughs from that early Internet to stealth technology,” said Thomas A. Kalil, the deputy director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy.


Gensler Urges Limits on Speculators to Help Energy Markets

Abstract: WASHINGTON — The chairman of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission said on Wednesday that the agency wanted to impose new restrictions on so-called speculative traders, not to reduce price volatility but to prevent the energy markets from being dominated by a few huge investment funds. “I believe that at the core of promoting market integrity is ensuring markets do not become too concentrated,” said Gary G. Gensler , the commission chairman. “I think we would all agree that if one party controls half the market, that party is more likely to lessen liquidity than enhance it.” The rationale is a distinct departure from the complaints of many Democratic lawmakers in Congress and from large fuel consumers like airlines and big trucking companies. Many of those critics have blamed big banks and investment funds, which have poured money into the energy futures markets, for worsening the roller-coaster ride taken by oil and natural gas prices in the last year. Prices for crude oil shot up more than 50 percent last year, hitting a record above $147 a barrel in July, then crashed to $33 in December. They have recently fluctuated, from $60 to $70 a barrel. Natural gas prices have been even more volatile. Mr. Gensler, who was appointed by President Obama and took office in March, has made it clear he still wants to impose new volume limits on speculative traders — financial investors who bet on the direction of energy prices but typically never buy or sell any oil or natural gas themselves — saying that markets would attract more trading and be more liquid if they were less dominated by a few big institutions. That in itself would be a major departure for the once sleepy commission, which for years took a hands-off approach to regulation and allowed commodity exchanges to relax one rule after another. Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley and Citigroup are major players in the energy markets, trading for their own accounts as well as for the investment funds they manage. Analysts have estimated that Goldman and others have earned their biggest profits this year from commodity trading. Some of the fastest growth, however, has been from exchange-traded index funds, which are essentially mutual funds that allow individual investors to bet on energy prices. Though they are not regarded as traditional speculators, the biggest index funds sometimes account for almost 30 percent of the trading in natural gas futures on the New York Mercantile Exchange, and collectively the funds sometimes account for well over half of such trading. At hearing on Wednesday, several industry critics urged the commission to impose strict limits on both Wall Street firms and exchange-traded index funds. “The futures market is special,” said Paul Cicio, president of the Industrial Energy Consumers of America, which represents energy-consuming companies. “Its creation was not intended to be a substitute for a gambling casino for Wall Street banks, hedge funds, sovereign funds and index funds.” But others argued that neither the index funds nor other financial traders had anything to do with the recent volatility. John Hyland, chief investment officer for United States Commodity Funds, the world’s largest manager of exchange-traded index funds, said his company’s natural gas and oil funds had barely grown as prices soared last year and had actually increased as energy prices fell. “Our company could not possibly have caused the extreme swings in energy prices,” he told the commission, calling claims against index funds “self-serving statistical gibberish.” John Arnold, chief executive of Centaurus Advisors, said limiting big traders would make the markets less liquid and possibly increase price volatility.

Regulation and Deregulation of Industry
Futures and Options Trading
Commodities
Commodity Futures Trading Commission
Gensler Gary G


Barcelona Routs Real Madrid, 5-0

Abstract: LONDON — In the summer, they were friends. But come winter, the seven Barcelona players who won the World Cup with Spain have dealt ruthlessly with the three Real Madrid teammates with whom they shared that triumph. On Monday in the Camp Nou stadium, Barcelona routed Madrid, 5-0. It was, first and foremost, a performance of all that is decent in the global game. It was soccer made simple, but artistry so thrilling, for 98,000 fans in the stadium and hundreds of millions viewing via television around the world. Maybe the game can be played more brilliantly than Barça did it on Monday. But I very much doubt it. To see 11 men as gifted as Barcelona’s dominate 90 minutes as comprehensively as they did against Madrid can leave only one regret: It was so one-sided that Real was reduced to chasing lost causes until, long before the end, they lost the will even to fight for the ball. Real lost composure, too, with seven yellow cards and one red one. And even under teeming skies, it is a fair bet the fan who paid 500 euros, or about $655, for a black-market ticket thought it worth the price. David Villa scored twice in his first Clásico. Xavi Hernández, Pedro Rodríguez and a substitute called Jeffrén Suárez got the others. Suárez is a Venezuelan. But like Lionel Messi , he came through the Barcelona academy, La Masia. Like nine of the starting eleven, he is a product of the Barcelona school that not only imbues a winning way into the boys, but a style of passing and movement and creativity so distinctive you could spot a Barça player in silhouette. Statistics are usually the poor man’s guide to performance, yet on this occasion they spoke volumes. Barcelona attempted 684 passes and were successful in 89 percent of them. Real Madrid tried 331 passes, of which 74 percent found the intended player. Those are bare numbers, but almost incomparable ones given the quality of the opposition and the tenacity of the fray. But there was more to it than accuracy. There was Barcelona’s great desire to work for the openings, to run off the ball, to run intuitively into positions to give it and receive it back. There was also the improvisation. Messi did not score for the first time in 10 matches. He struck a post, and he was creatively involved in three of the five goals. He darted wide, he withdrew himself deep so that others could exploit space. And when others include Andrés Iniesta and Xavi, you might be looking at the best Spain has produced for many a year. They conjured the opening goal between them. Iniesta made the pass, and Xavi, a midfielder moving like a central striker, controlled the ball with his heel, flicked it up, and lobbed it gently beyond the reach of goalie Iker Casillas. Casillas was his World Cup captain, his close ally. But Casillas was a forlorn figure as the shots peppered his net. Others who enjoyed such a rewarding summer together in Johannesburg, Xabi Alonso and Sergio Ramos of Madrid, were guilty of some pretty rough fouls, largely targeting Messi. But neither fair nor foul tactics could stop the tide of Barcelona’s momentum. The imported stars of Real, who cost three times what Barça has spent in transfer payments, had arrived with the rhetoric of champions. They departed somewhat chastised. Madrid’s superstar, Cristiano Ronaldo, barely showed his class, and often showed petulance. He had chosen in the buildup to mock Barcelona, which had won its previous Liga game, 8-0. It didn’t, he said, impress him. If Barça could score eight against Real, that would impress him. Barcelona very nearly did just that. The gulf was wide enough that the home crowd was shouting ‘‘olé’’ with every passing moment. There are two ways of developing a top team: Build it like Barça, or buy it like Real. On Monday’s evidence, Barcelona is way ahead on talent and teamwork. It looked like a humiliation, but Madrid coach José Mourinho would not accept the word. ‘‘Humiliation?’’ he answered back to journalists. ‘‘No. It’s easy to deal with this loss. One team played to their potential tonight and the other played very badly. The championship will still be very close at the end.’’ Mourinho did make some salient points. Barcelona, he said, is the finished article, the result of many years of work. His Madrid was a work in progress. ‘‘There’s nothing more to be done today,’’ he concluded. ‘‘But from tomorrow, we have to do a great deal. We have to show character for Saturday’s match in the Bernabeu against Valencia.’’ And then he, and his chastened team, were gone. What remained, because Catalans never sleep after beating Madrid, was the discussion in all the bars and all the cafes down Las Ramblas. Is this the best Barça ever? The comparison has to be the Dream Team that under Johan Cruyff’s management won four successive Spanish league titles at the start of the 1990s, and the European Cup. That team had Pep Guardiola, today’s coach, in its midfield. It had Gheorghe Hagi, Hristo Stoichkov, Michael Laudrup, Romário and Ronald Koeman. And since Koeman was there, watching on Monday, television announcers could not resist asking him to kick off the debate. How do the boys of 2010 compare to the team of 1994? ‘‘We had in our team very, very good players,’’ replied Koeman. ‘‘You should not compare, because everything is faster today. Incredible speed. But yeah, this Barcelona is better — much better.’’ The aspect the world can admire, and perhaps envy, is that it is all in-house. The Barcelona stars of today were the academy kids of yesterday, and the stars of tomorrow are already in the system. Olé.

Real Madrid
Soccer
Villa David
Messi Lionel
FC Barcelona


At 40, Meb Keflezighi Shows No Signs of Slowing

Abstract: Meb Keflezighi arrived for his 10th New York City Marathon in the usual fashion, flying on a redeye from San Diego, taking the same room at a Midtown hotel. “Meb’s the only one who asks for the redeye,” David Monti, who helps recruit elite athletes for the race, said, laughing. “He’s a guy that thrives on structure and detail.” Attention to routine has built a glorious running career over 26.2 miles for Keflezighi, the only person who has won the New York City Marathon (2009), the Boston Marathon (2014) and an Olympic marathon medal (silver, 2004 Athens Games). At 40, he enters Sunday’s race among a half-dozen favorites and is expected to qualify for the 2016 Rio Olympics by finishing among the top three at the United States Olympic marathon trials on Feb. 13 in Los Angeles. Frank Shorter is widely considered the greatest male American marathoner, having won gold at the 1972 Munich Olympics, taken silver at the 1976 Montreal Games and finished first for four consecutive years at Japan’s Fukuoka Marathon, a de facto world championship in the 1970s. Yet given the persistence of Keflezighi’s career in an event where the top runners often flare as brightly and briefly as shooting stars, said Amby Burfoot, winner of the 1968 Boston Marathon, “Meb’s longevity on top is without equal, I think.” A thread that stitches Keflezighi’s triumphs is his success not in time-trial races on flat courses like Berlin but on challenging courses without pacesetters in New York and Boston, and in championship races like the Olympics, where strategy and tactics are as important as sheer speed. Image Keflezighi plans to run in the Olympic trials in February. Credit Michael Dwyer/Associated Press In 2014, Keflezighi made an early break and became the first American man to win Boston since 1983, running a personal best 2 hours 8 minutes 37 seconds at age 38. At the 2012 London Olympics, he reeled in a dozen runners in the final half of the marathon on a brutally humid day, came from nowhere and finished fourth, one spot off the medal podium. On Sunday, Keflezighi will not possess the same pure speed as Wilson Kipsang of Kenya, a former world-record holder (2:03:23) and the reigning New York champion and Olympic bronze medalist. Nor will Keflezighi match the fastest time of Lelisa Desisa of Ethiopia (2:04:45), a two-time Boston champion. A stern challenge is also expected from Geoffrey Kamworor of Kenya, the 2014 world half-marathon champion and 2015 world cross-country champion, whose blistering speed on the track brought him a silver medal at 10,000 meters in August at the world championships in Beijing. But if Keflezighi can parry these confrontations, if he correctly decides which surges to ignore and which to counter, if he makes a deft move of his own, if he remains among the leaders as the marathon reaches its final, undulating miles in Central Park, history suggests that anything is possible. “He absolutely rises to the challenge when he’s in a position where he can challenge for a win,” said Burfoot, a longtime editor at Runner’s World magazine . “If he’s close, he will be a factor and possibly a winner. He’s got a wealth of experience, he’s learned more about his body and he has come to know expressly his limits — and lack of limits.” No man has won New York in his 40s. (Miki Gorman of the United States, twice, and Priscilla Welch of Britain have as women’s champions.) Even if Keflezighi does not finish among the top runners on Sunday, a consolation prize seems within reach: the American masters record of 2:13:52, set in 2006 by Mbarak Hussein. “I’m here to compete,” Keflezighi said. “Goal No. 1 is to try to win” or get a high placement. Barring that, his finishing time could be a kind of golden parachute, allowing a gentle, somewhat satisfactory landing. Seven of his nine marathons in New York have finished under the current masters record. What is his secret to staying competitive for so long? There are many theories. Keflezighi has kept the same coach, Bob Larsen, since his college days at U.C.L.A. He remains committed to the mundane routines of stretching and strength work. Training for so many years at altitude in Mammoth Lakes, Calif., much of it on soft surfaces, has perhaps prolonged Keflezighi’s career, Larsen said, forcing him to restrict the intensity of his training while still providing him the cardiovascular benefits. Image Meb Keflezighi winning the Boston Marathon in 2014. Keflezighi, who will be running in his 10th New York City Marathon on Sunday, said, “I’m here to compete.” Credit Katherine Taylor for The New York Times Also, Larsen noted, Keflezighi has seldom run more than 100 or 110 miles per week (though he did reach 130 miles and a long run of 27 miles in training for Sunday’s race and bridging his preparation for the 2016 Olympic trials). And there have been inevitable concessions to age for a man who figures he has logged about 100,000 career miles — four times the circumference of the earth. He no longer feels compelled to run mile repeats in 4:17 to 4:20. On easy days, he once ran each mile at a pace of 6 to 6:15. Now he starts at 7:15, or even 8, and warms up to 6:10. Instead of a second run daily, Keflezighi often trains on an ElliptiGO machine, a combination of an elliptical trainer and bicycle. And Keflezighi said he had cut his daily calorie intake from about 5,000 calories a day as a young runner to 2,500 to 3,000 to maintain a weight of 122 to 123 pounds. “I’m so efficient,” Keflezighi said. “I’ve been running over 25 years. When I’m doing 6:30 miles, I’m not burning anything. I’m burning half a banana.” Perhaps no one should be surprised at the perseverance of Keflezighi, given his family’s history of dogged resolve. In a story well known in running circles, Russom Keflezighi, Meb’s father, walked 150 miles across Eritrea in East Africa, fearing for his safety in the country’s war to gain independence from Ethiopia, making his way to Italy and then to the United States. Of the 11 children in the family, Meb said, nine have earned college degrees. And one has become a champion marathon runner, even if first impressions were unnerving. At his first New York City Marathon, in 2002, he finished ninth in 2:12:35 and grew so chilled that his father tried to massage warmth back into his legs and his mother told him, “No more marathons for you.” He remembers telling himself and others, “I don’t want to ever do that again.” Now he is back in New York for a 10th marathon. And after a break of four days or so, Keflezighi will begin his recovery and buildup toward the Olympic trials in February. He did this successfully before the 2012 London Olympics on an even shorter turnaround. Presumably, his attention to detail will avoid a repeat of what happened during the 2011 New York City Marathon, when Keflezighi forgot to put a breathing strip on his nose, leaving it in his running shoe as he finished sixth. An irritation developed and his foot became infected, costing him three weeks of training. Still, Keflezighi rebounded to win the Olympic trials. “He was a little embarrassed,” said Larsen, Keflezighi’s coach. “He’s very alert and precise at what he does. That was very unusual for him.”

NYC Marathon
Mebrahtom Keflezighi
Bob Larsen
Boston Marathon
Olympics


In Free Agency, Spurs’ David West Sought Meaning, Not Money

Abstract: This is a story about a player’s core values more than it is about a franchise’s valued core, R. C. Buford insisted early Monday night in the bowels of Madison Square Garden. It is about the inner David West more than it is about the inimitable San Antonio Spurs . Buford is the Spurs’ longtime general manager, a stealth operator in the dominion of Gregg Popovich, power coach and team president of the five-time champions. Coming off their 2013-14 N.B.A. title, the Spurs were strong enough to win 55 games last season. But in July, Buford and Popovich added a premier free agent, luring LaMarcus Aldridge to San Antonio, never before a destination for the N.B.A.’s most talented and leveraged. That wasn’t even their most startling summer signing. David West was. Now 35, he walked away from a $12.5 million player option with the Indiana Pacers and — apparently without the inducement of hypnosis or blackmail — signed a San Antonio contract for about $11 million less. He also turned himself into a bench player after years as a power-forward cornerstone. “I thought it was brilliant from his standpoint to be able to say, I’ve done all this, I know my family is secure and I can do what makes me happy,” Buford said. It was about 45 minutes before the Spurs defeated the Knicks, 94-84 , in a spirited early-season game ultimately decided by a San Antonio offense that routinizes poetic motion to the point of near monotony. Buford was reminding us that West had opted out of his Indiana deal before free agency officially commenced — and so it was technically inaccurate to say he repudiated the Pacers’ riches to team with Tim Duncan. Image Tim Duncan, right, and West, against Robin Lopez on Monday. Duncan told West playing for the Spurs would be a “very productive experience, a good choice.” Credit Frank Franklin Ii/Associated Press West, Buford said, could easily have gone elsewhere — Golden State, for instance — in pursuit of his first championship. Phil Jackson, the Knicks’ team president, strolled by, and he could have vouched for Buford’s revisionist modesty. Put it this way: Jackson was determined to bid for the 6-foot-11 Aldridge, who reportedly was not interested in the Knicks’ proposal of playing him at center, alongside the slender rookie Kristaps Porzingis. Then he signed with the Spurs, who have forever listed Duncan as a power forward. When Duncan rested Monday night, Aldridge sure looked like the only Spurs player who could be classified as a center. The upshot is that positional labels mean little on accomplished teams laden with players who understand and embrace the diversity of roles and skills required to win at the highest level. That is why West, having prepared for and reached the age of true career reflection, decided the veteran’s minimum deal of $1.4 million — all the Spurs could offer — was enough, at least for now. His money quote: “For me, in terms of basketball, I needed every night to mean something, in order to keep going,” he said. Did we mention that West — with career averages of 15.5 points and 7.1 rebounds a game — logged only seven minutes against the Knicks, scored a basket, grabbed two rebounds and had three assists? He should not worry about playing time. Still unwrapping his ingredients, Chef Popovich will find plenty for him across the long season as he begins to torment the commissioner’s office by selectively resting his stars. Originally a 2003 first-round draft pick of New Orleans, West spent the last four seasons with the Pacers, the adult in a locker room of younger players muscling up to challenge the supremacy of a dynasty created by decree upon LeBron James’s 2010 signing in Miami. Indiana came close in consecutive years, falling short and then apart. West did not want to play the blame game, did not appreciate management’s scapegoating of the sensitive center Roy Hibbert. “It was a great environment, but I got to the point where I felt it was time to move in a different direction,” he said. West had long admired the Spurs and especially Duncan, four years his senior and a role model in professionalism. He called Duncan, spoke of his interest in the Spurs. Duncan told him it would be a “very productive experience, a good choice.” First, there was a matter of the money, the forfeiture of millions. “You get later in your career, you want to get into the position — and this is me talking to myself — to make decisions based solely on basketball,” West said. “That took a lot of settling down, being very patient, very deliberate with spending, with habits, things like that. “Ultimately, I didn’t want to have to scratch every little penny out of basketball. I never let the illusion of the lifestyle consume me, never got that you’re supposed to live a certain way because you’re in the N.B.A. I knew very early that we have a short window — you might get four years, you might get 10 years, you might be lucky enough to get 15. But you still have the majority of your life to live, so there’s got to be some clarity that allows you to make decisions, figure things that are going to be important to you long after you’re done playing.” In other words, West wanted more to recount in his old age besides “every little penny.” He is known for charity work he does with impoverished youths in his native North Carolina. He drives a 10-year-old Lexus. But while West chatted casually, barefoot in the pregame locker room, let’s not pretend that a player with career earnings of roughly $87 million will ever have to stretch his Social Security check in his golden years. Let’s also try not to make this a directive for all — or even the more tempting superstar cases, whose maximum money has hamstrung their team’s chances to compete — to sacrifice in a business in which the television revenue is soon to explode and the franchise value to the owners has soared. This is a situational story about West, a singular player, and the unique Spurs, whose franchise hub, Duncan, while still a vital performer, is earning $5.2 million this season, or about a quarter of Aldridge’s take. It is about the quality of life, understanding that there is a point when enough is enough, provided, as Buford said of West, “the life planning has been done.” If there is a lesson for the N.B.A.’s young to glean from West, it is not necessarily from the sacrifice he has made to play for the Spurs. It is about the life in perspective he has lived all along.


Suicide Suspected in Death of Indian Auto Chief

Abstract: BANGKOK — The Thai police said on Monday that they suspected the managing director of Tata Motors, India’s biggest automaker, had committed suicide by jumping from a hotel room in Bangkok. The executive, Karl Slym, 51, a British citizen, was in Bangkok to attend a board meeting of the company’s Thailand unit and was staying with his wife on the 22nd floor of the Shangri-La hotel. Hotel workers found his body Sunday morning on the fourth floor, which juts out above lower stories of the complex. “We didn’t find any sign of a struggle,” said Lt. Somyot Boonyakaew, the police official leading the investigation. “We found a window open,” he said. “The window was very small, so it was not possible that he would have slipped. He would have had to climb through the window to fall out because he was a big man. From my initial investigation, we believe he jumped.” Lieutenant Boonyakaew said the police had found a three-page note, written in English to Mr. Slym by his wife. “The wife wrote the note because she wanted her husband to know some personal things,” the lieutenant said after speaking to her. “Yes, they did argue.” The couple, married for about 30 years, had no children. Mr. Slym was leading a turnaround in the company’s domestic operations. Investors, worried about potential delays in the turnaround after his death, sent shares of Tata Motors down about 6 percent. “He had been given a sort of free hand,” said Deepesh Rathore, director of Emerging Markets Automotive Advisors. “For another professional to step in and enjoy the same confidence, with this same management, is difficult; it will take time.” Mr. Slym was hired in 2012 to revive Tata’s flagging sales and market share in India, the world’s sixth-largest auto market. Tata Motors is part of the sprawling software-to-steel Tata conglomerate. Mr. Slym led the automaker’s operations in India and markets including South Korea, Thailand and South Africa, but he was not responsible for the Jaguar and Land Rover luxury unit that Tata Motors acquired in 2008.

Tata Motors
Suicide
Karl Slym
Cars
India


The Garden Needs a Warning Label

Abstract: As the legend goes, it was years ago, aboard a sleek family yacht, when Charles F. Dolan asked his executive crewmates an earnest question: What about Jim? His son needed an occupation. Something to divert his rock-star ambitions. Something to focus him. So he decided to give James L. Dolan what amounted to a skate key to Madison Square Garden, a business irrelevant to the Cable Daddy’s vast bottom line, a playground where his son could do no harm. Except Jim turned his toy into a weapon. Inside the Garden, “Got Hurt?” has become the slogan for vulnerable staffers. For years, he has wounded careers and savaged dissenters while assembling a cult of personality where only his sycophants survive amid a game of Jim-nastics. Bend around his outbursts — or you’ll end up like the employee fired for serving flat cola. Maneuver past Jim’s insecurity — or you’ll be eviscerated like the security guard who didn’t recognize the Garden owner’s face. There are so many hothead tales. But the tawdry, hostile dark side of the Garden remained largely a secret kept through confidentiality agreements and severance payoffs that functioned as hush money. Reality had no voice until Anucha Browne Sanders took the stand. Truth had no visuals until she provided them in court. Against Dolan’s circle of mercenary lawyers, and Isiah Thomas ’s courtroom charisma, she was the one jurors believed. The jury not only found that Thomas sexually harassed Browne Sanders and that the Garden retaliated against her for complaining, but its three-week journey to a verdict also uncovered Dolan as a sort of Seventh Avenue madam behind the World’s Most Infamous Arena. Under Jim’s reign, a perverse office lingo developed, filled with b-words and p-words — the alphabet soup of misogyny — that functioned as daily salutations. Under Jim’s ownership, a rise in superstar entitlement provided Stephon Marbury with a green light to rock his truck during some backseat boogie with a Garden intern after a strip-club escapade. Under Jim’s nose, Thomas added to the Garden’s creepy vibe by dismissively treating Browne Sanders as if she were nothing more than a groupie he once charmed during his playing days. All this, and with a case of Kama Sutra on the way. Soon, a former Rangers City Skater is expected to take the Garden to court for yet another sexual harassment claim in what is expected to be a lewd depiction of her workplace environment. It’s all so Anita Hill and Clarence Thomas, on an endless loop. • How low can the Garden go? There is only one man who can stop this race to the bottom. Papa, can you hear me? Only Charles Dolan has the power to take away the Garden club from his son before one more person gets hurt. But will he? Commissioner David Stern has offered a public silence over yesterday’s verdict in the civil case between Browne Sanders and the Garden, but N.B.A. team officials privately believe he will seek a discussion with Charles Dolan in an effort to diminish Jim’s power at the top. It would not be surprising if N.H.L. Commissioner Gary Bettman, no doubt bracing for the Rangers’ trial fallout, followed Stern to the doorknocker at Daddy Dolan’s office. By all accounts, Charles is a gracious soul, a true gentleman. He would listen to Stern and Bettman like a reasonable man. Charles has always been loath to confront Jim on Garden matters, but this latest episode of “Animal House” isn’t a scandal about firing a coach or buying out contracts or trading for a miscreant. This is about professional decorum, about fair treatment, about a family legacy. Right now, the Garden has one rule: Whatever Jim wants. But there are signs his iron fist has fissures. Two people familiar with the workings at Madison Square Garden said a group of staff members felt uncomfortable with a plan by management to have employees come forward to express their workplace joy yesterday. They refused to take part in the public relations ploy, and the plan never materialized. • Maybe peaceful resistance is a start. But to restore civility, to reclaim team dignity, a restructuring of power is a must. Jim was at his best as a figurehead before 2001, before he pushed aside Dave Checketts as the chief decision maker, before some of the more talented minds in sports began an exodus. If Jim remains as the Richie Rich in charge, you can count on the following: The Garden will bury Browne Sanders in appeals to drive up her legal fees as punishment for her courage. This strategy doesn’t mean Thomas is safe, though. Jim will turn on him at the slightest sign of Knick distress. Jim’s loyalty is limited to his own self-preservation. Everyone else is a fall guy for Jim. Everyone else gets hurt. The Garden is not a toy. In Jim’s hands, it’s a weapon.

Sexual Harassment
Thomas Isiah
Browne Sanders Anucha
Dolan James L
Madison Square Garden


Air India Pilots Question Airline’s Safety

Abstract: NEW DELHI — Air India, India’s unprofitable national carrier, is using “coercion and fear” to compel pilots to fly long hours and while ill, an Indian pilots’ union claims. The Indian Pilots’ Guild, the union that represents Air India’s international pilots, made the claim in a June 14 letter to Star Alliance , a network of 27 airlines. Air India is in the final stages of joining the alliance. The letter is the latest salvo in a feud between Air India’s management and its 1,600 pilots. Short of cash, Air India has delayed paying salaries and other compensation to pilots and tens of thousands of other employees. It has also missed payments to vendors, including fuel and ground transportation suppliers. “There are serious points relating to the passenger and air safety that need to be addressed by Air India,” the letter said. Among other things, it said, “rules and regulations meant to reduce pilot fatigue and the probability of human error related to accidents are routinely being flouted by Air India.” Flight crews are being pushed to work even when ill, because of stiff penalties and strict disciplinary action for taking sick leave, guild members wrote. It is “highly likely that several contagious diseases could spread within the aircraft from ill and infected flight crew,” the letter said. Pilots say Air India is engaging in unsafe practices, including changing schedules so often that some pilots refer to the company’s management style as “schedule by wake-up call.” An Air India spokesman, Kamaljeet Rattan, did not respond to calls or e-mails for comment about the letter or the accusations. Air India has said in the past that pilot scheduling is not computerized, but has denied any safety problems. A Star Alliance executive said the network had received the letter from the Air India pilots. He indicated that he thought it had more to do with a fight between management and unions than actual safety concerns. Entry into Star Alliance , which would allow frequent fliers to claim air miles for using Air India, could add more than 10 percent to Air India’s revenue, the airline’s executives say. The airline lost more than $1 billion in the year that ended March 2010. It is 400 billion rupees ($8.9 billion) in debt, and is appealing to the government for more cash to continue operations this year. Air India has significantly reduced fares in recent weeks to try to woo back customers after a pilots’ strike that led to hundreds of canceled flights this year. Air safety in India has come under a spotlight in recent months. Passenger numbers grew faster than nearly anywhere else in the world in recent years, as a booming economy helped millions of people move from trains to airplanes. At the Paris Air Show last week, Indian carriers placed a third of all new jet orders , a total of $23 billion. So far, however, government oversight of the industry and local training for pilots and safety personnel have lagged far behind the fast growth. Hundreds of positions created in India’s central government to better police the industry remain unfilled, years after they were created. In March, India’s aviation regulatory agency said it had stripped a dozen commercial pilots of their licenses , after uncovering fraudulent training documents and favoritism. Despite the lack of safety infrastructure, India has had only one major air crash in the past decade, the May 2010 crash of an Air India flight to Mangalore that killed nearly 160 people. The aviation agency, the Directorate General of Civil Aviation, says it is toughening flight safety rules. It said Monday that there would be no more exemptions of the kind that had allowed airlines to fly with fewer crew members than recommended because of employee shortages. “These people must have the necessary personnel who are well trained in an emergency,” E. K. Bharat Bhushan, director general of the aviation agency, said in an interview. The agency is also considering whether to increase training requirements for pilots and co-pilots, he said. “We felt that people could use more experience,” he said. In June, three representatives from Star Alliance airlines visited Air India’s facilities for a week, checking training procedures, scheduling, maintenance and other operations. They did not find any serious safety violations or major problems that would endanger the safety of a flight, Jaan Albrecht, the Star Alliance chief executive, said in a telephone interview. Air India has been having other problems, including a long-delayed reorganization, he said, but “regarding safety issues, we have the full satisfaction that the issues were examined, and we came up with a clean report.” Officials from Star Alliance are scheduled to meet with the Indian Ministry of Civil Aviation on July 4 to confirm that the government will honor commitments to allow Air India and other foreign airlines to work together. Star Alliance executives are eager to sign up a second carrier in India, Mr. Albrecht said. “Now that Air India will probably become a member by the 31st of July, we need to formalize the second carrier,” he said. Star Alliance has not formalized any agreement with that airline, Jet Airways .

India
Airlines and Airplanes
Airplane Accidents and Safety
Pilots
Air India
Star Alliance


Supreme Court Hears 2 Cases Over Class Actions

Abstract: WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court on Monday considered a pair of cases about how much evidence courts must demand before allowing plaintiffs to band together in class actions. One case concerned securities fraud, the other antitrust. But both were in a way sequels to the court’s 2011 decision in Wal-Mart Stores v. Dukes , which threw out an enormous employment discrimination class action on the ground that the plaintiffs did not have enough in common to pursue their claims in a single lawsuit. Business groups welcomed the Wal-Mart decision and said its reasoning could be extended to shut down other kinds of class actions at an early stage. Monday’s cases were the first tests of those predictions in the Supreme Court. Justice Antonin Scalia, the author of the majority opinion in the Wal-Mart case, explained on Monday why defendants wanted courts to examine lawsuits closely before they certified them as class actions. The mere certification of a class action, he said, can prompt defendants to settle in light of the sums at stake The question in the securities fraud case, Amgen Inc. v. Connecticut Retirement Plans, No. 11-1085 , was whether plaintiffs should be required to prove that the defendant had made a material misstatement before a class action was certified. Material information, the court has explained , is the sort of thing that reasonable investors would believe significantly alters the total mix of available information. The plaintiffs asserted that Amgen, a drug company, had made materially false statements concerning the safety of two drugs that stimulate red blood cell production, reducing the need for transfusions. Those statements, they said, inflated the company’s stock price. Justice Elena Kagan said the distinctions made in the Wal-Mart case were helpful to the plaintiffs in the Amgen case. “What we said in Wal-Mart recently,” she said, was “that the question is a question of coherence; it’s a question of whether the class wins or loses together. And here, for materiality, the class wins or loses together. If it’s material, it’s material as to everybody. If it’s not material, it’s not material as to everybody.” Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. and Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg made similar points. Seth P. Waxman, a lawyer for Amgen, resisted that argument, saying that whether a statement was material mattered because the plaintiffs had chosen to rely on a legal presumption on a related point. The plaintiffs sought to proceed without proving they had each relied on the asserted misstatement. Instead, they invoked the presumption that the market price had taken account of all relevant information. In such a “fraud on the market” case, Mr. Waxman said, “a market price will reflect a statement if and only if the statement is material.” Justice Scalia appeared to agree. “One way of certifying the class is to show,” he said, that “it’s an efficient market and you can presume that everybody in the class relied on the market. But that’s only true if the statement was material to the market.” The Amgen case seemed likely to produce important guidance from the court. The second case argued Monday, Comcast v. Behrend, No. 11-864 , was a less certain proposition in that regard, with several justices expressing a sort of buyer’s remorse about how the case had reached the court. Well into the argument, Justice Kagan remarked that she was “still in search of a legal question that anybody disagrees about here.” The case was brought by cable customers in the Philadelphia area who said they were made to pay too much for their service because of violations of the antitrust laws by Comcast involving its acquisitions and swaps of cable systems. Comcast had asked the justices to address a broad question about how to apply the Wal-Mart decision in other settings. But the court, as it occasionally does, redrafted the question presented by the petitioner, now focusing on whether a trial judge must insist on “admissible evidence, including expert testimony, to show that the case is susceptible to awarding damages on a classwide basis.” Justice Kagan explained the court’s thinking and how it might have misfired in an exchange with Comcast’s lawyer, Miguel A. Estrada. “We wanted to decide a legal question, rather than a question about who was right as to this particular expert’s report and how strong it was,” she said. “And it turns out that as to that legal question, your clients waived their argument that this was inadmissible evidence.” Mr. Estrada disputed that, but some justices seemed to think the question is at least an open one. Chief Justice Roberts suggested that the court could offer a sort of conditional answer to the redrafted question. “We’re a court of review, not first view,” he said. “So it seems to me that one option for the court, since we did reformulate the question, is to answer the question and then send it back” to the lower courts to decide whether the answer actually mattered in the Comcast case.

Suits and Litigation
Supreme Court
Securities and Commodities Violations
Antitrust Laws and Competition Issues
Decisions and Verdicts
Amgen Inc
Comcast Corporation
Wal-Mart Stores Inc


Apple and Cisco Team Up on iPhone and iPad Sales

Abstract: Apple is looking to Cisco Systems’ expertise in Internet networking gear in its latest effort to sell more iPhones and iPads to corporate customers. On Monday, the two companies announced an alliance to ensure that corporate Internet connections relying on Cisco hardware deliver content quickly and securely to iPhones and iPads. Cisco will also help Apple develop ways for iPhones to interact more easily with workers’ office phones. Financial terms were not disclosed.


After Protests, Brazilian President’s Popularity Plummets

Abstract: RIO DE JANEIRO — The approval rating of Brazil’s president, Dilma Rousseff, plunged in June to 30 percent from 57 percent, reflecting swelling anger against the government since protests spread to more than 100 cities in recent weeks in a broad repudiation of political corruption, deplorable public services and costly stadium projects for the 2014 World Cup. A poll released on Saturday by Datafolha, a leading Brazilian research company, ratchets up pressure on Ms. Rousseff, 65, to respond more energetically to the concerns of protesters, and raises doubts over what might happen in next year’s presidential election. Until the unrest, she enjoyed resiliently high approval ratings, which made her a favorite to win re-election. More than 80 percent of respondents in the Datafolha poll, which had a sampling margin of error of plus or minus two percentage points, expressed support for the protests. The poll also showed that support for Ms. Rousseff — an economist who has been trying to stir Brazil’s sluggish economy with huge stimulus projects — eroded even in bastions of support for the governing Workers Party, like northeast Brazil. Her approval rating there fell to 40 percent from 64 percent at the start of June, when the protests began escalating. Political rivals have been increasing their criticism of her response to the protests, which has included proposals to hire thousands of foreign doctors to strengthen the public health system, channel oil royalties to education projects and hold a nationwide vote on reforming the political system. Ms. Rousseff herself has voiced some support for the protests, while also warning against the violence that has marred demonstrations. “She spoke more than listened,” Marina Silva, a former environment minister who placed third in the 2010 presidential election, said in an interview with the newspaper Estado de São Paulo. “It was obvious that doing a marketing-focused discourse wasn’t going to work.” The Datafolha poll, conducted on June 27 and 28 in a survey of 4,717 people, put Ms. Rousseff’s government on the defensive. “She recognizes there’s a change and thinks that the remedy is to work a lot,” Paulo Bernardo Silva, the communications minister, said after meeting with the president on Saturday. He said that the authorities planned to continue discussions with representatives of the protests, which have criticized a broad range of political leaders, in an effort to identify priorities. Outside the executive branch, other institutions have also been scrambling to react to the protests. In a remarkable development, the federal police on Friday took into custody Natan Donadon, a legislator convicted in 2010 on corruption charges, after the high court ordered his arrest. It is rare for members of Brazil’s Congress to ever serve prison time for corruption convictions, making the legislature a prominent object of ire and derision for protesters. The authorities are bracing for more protests, including a large demonstration planned in Rio de Janeiro for Sunday near Maracanã , the stadium where the national teams of Brazil and Spain are set to play. Brazilian news organizations reported that Ms. Rousseff canceled a plan to appear at Maracanã; she and Joseph S. Blatter, the president of FIFA, soccer’s governing body, were booed this month before a game between Brazil and Japan.


Leaders Urge Zimbabwe Summit

Abstract: JOHANNESBURG — Fifteen heads of state from across southern Africa will soon try again to resolve Zimbabwe ’s festering political crisis, now dragging into its seventh month since disputed elections, as hunger spreads among millions of people cross the country. After a negotiating marathon that began Monday, leaders from four countries in the region acknowledged early Tuesday that they had failed to break the deadlock between President Robert Mugabe and Prime Minister-designate Morgan Tsvangirai over control of the Home Ministry that would oversee the police in a future power-sharing government. Their decision to refer the dispute to a meeting of all 15 member nations of the Southern African Development Community, known as SADC, was a modest victory for Mr. Tsvangirai, leader of the opposition Movement for Democratic Change. Mr. Mugabe, in power since 1980, won a presidential runoff widely denounced as fraudulent after Mr. Tsvangirai dropped out because of violence against his supporters. But the communiqué issued by the regional officials also suggested Mr. Tsvangirai was moving toward acceptance of a solution — “cooperative management” of the Home Ministry — that officials from his party said he had rejected. “There’s no such agreement and it’s not practical,” said Mr. Tsvangirai’s spokesman, George Sibotshiwe. The opposition has pushed for a full summit meeting in large measure because of its dissatisfaction with the mediation of Thabo Mbeki, the former president of South Africa, opposition officials said. As the power struggle between Mr. Tsvangirai and Mr. Mugabe plays out, the number of Zimbabweans who are hungry has risen to almost four million, according to United Nations estimates, and will exceed five million by January. The United Nations World Food Program appealed almost three weeks ago for $140 million to feed them, but the agency’s spokesman, Richard Lee, said Tuesday that no donor nations had yet responded. The money needs to start flowing soon or the WFP will run out of food in January. “We haven’t received a single dollar, euro or pound,” he said. “The window is closing very fast.”

Zimbabwe
Mugabe Robert
Tsvangirai Morgan
Movement for Democratic Change


Clinton Says Khmer Rouge Trials Should Continue

Abstract: BANGKOK — Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton visited a former Khmer Rouge torture house in Cambodia on Monday and urged the nation to proceed with trials of the former regime’s surviving leaders in order to “confront its past.” On a visit to Cambodia’s capital, Phnom Penh, during a seven-country tour through Asia that has already taken her to Vietnam and China, Mrs. Clinton called for the strengthening of democratic institutions and for greater tolerance of opposition views. “It’s a very disturbing experience,” she said after a visit to Cambodia’s Tuol Sleng prison, where more than 14,000 people were held before being sent to their deaths in a killing field. “And the pictures — both the pictures of the young Cambodians who were killed and the young Cambodians who were doing the killing — were so painful.” The commandant of that prison, Kaing Guek Eav, was sentenced to 19 years in prison last July in the first part of a United Nations-backed trial of leading figures of the Khmer Rouge regime, which was responsible for the deaths of 1.7 million people between 1975 and 1979. A second trial involving the four most senior surviving leaders has been expected to follow, after they were formally indicted in September. But Prime Minister Hun Sen, who once said that Cambodia should “dig a hole and bury the past,” has said that he would not allow any additional prosecutions beyond those four. Mrs. Clinton repeated an argument that has been used by proponents of the trials, saying that “a country that is able to confront its past is a country that can overcome it.” “Countries that are held prisoner to their past can never break those chains and build the kind of future that their children deserve,” she said. “Although I am well aware the work of the tribunal is painful, it is necessary to ensure a lasting peace.” She also urged Mr. Hun Sen not to follow through on a threat to close the United Nations human rights office in Cambodia, which has been critical of the country. “We think the office is important,” Mrs. Clinton said, “and we would like to see it continue.” Speaking to a group of students, she said, “We hope that democratic institutions become stronger in Cambodia and that the space for political expression is big and that people have the right to be critical of the government.” Mrs. Clinton also said that the United States would send a team to Cambodia to seek repayment of a $445 million debt to the United States owed by the government that preceded the Khmer Rouge. Mr. Hun Sen has asked America to forgive the debt, but Mrs. Clinton said the debt could be settled in various ways. “You could have some repayment; you could have debt for nature; you could have debt for education,” she said. “There are things that the government of Cambodia could do that would satisfy the need to demonstrate some level of accountability, but more importantly to invest those funds in the needs of the people of Cambodia.”

Clinton Hillary Rodham
Cambodia
Khmer Rouge


Back to the Garden: A Woodstock Museum

Abstract: BETHEL, N.Y. A funny thing happened on the magic bus trip back to the tie-dyed land of peace, love and music. Yes, there were Jimi and Janis and Joe Cocker twitching around in film clips from the famous concert 39 years ago on the rolling meadow that was Max Yasgur’s alfalfa field. There was a real-life hippie bus in psychedelic colors, and displays of a stars-and-stripes suede jacket and love beads next to a minidress and go-go boots ensemble, the latter getup presumably not worn at Woodstock. John Sebastian and Richie Havens were there to reminisce. They played Canned Heat’s “Going Up the Country” and “The Times They Are a-Changin’” by Bob Dylan. But somehow “then” kept looping back to “now” at the unveiling Wednesday of the Museum at Bethel Woods, which will open to the public on Monday. So there was Duke Devlin, famous as the hippie from the Texas Panhandle who came to Woodstock and never left, standing in the bright sun giving his spiel yet again for a German television crew as they waited for two squadrons of reporters in Peter Pan buses to descend on the field where the concert took place. Stout and tattooed, with long gray hair and beard, Mr. Devlin is the embodiment of the transition of the Woodstock generation into the AARP generation. But he figures that if Woodstock is about nostalgia, it’s about more than nostalgia, too. “Is it over yet?” he asked. “We’re still here talking. We’ve now got this wonderful museum, but I don’t call it a museum, I call it a time capsule. And without me getting too political, a lot of the same ingredients are still the same — we’ve got a war, we have civil rights, we have women’s issues. Back then, we got sick and tired of being sick and tired. I don’t know if this can be recreated, but something like it can happen again. We’re back in the ’50s, man. The reason we’re all here is because we’re not all there.” Which is not to say that the museum, housed in a lovely laminated wood structure built by a company that long ago built Mr. Yasgur’s silos, tries to be the personification of the Woodstock ethos, whatever that was. Centered on a 6,728-square-foot permanent gallery, it’s part of Alan Gerry’s re-creation of Woodstock not as a vehicle for peace and love but as a vehicle for Sullivan County’s economic development. The site has become a $100 million arts center with a 15,000-seat outdoor performance space. And along with voices marveling about how much fun they had in the mud or how Woodstock changed the world, we get to hear old Nixon-era stalwarts lambasting all that Woodstock has come to stand for. “The ’60s were just a terrible time for the country,” says former Attorney General Edwin Meese III, the biggest downer in a chorus of voices, yea and nay, that museumgoers hear after a 21-minute film of music from the concert. “It was the age of selfishness. It was the age of self-indulgence. It was the age of anti-authority, an age in which people did all kind of wrong things. That was the start, really, of the drug problem in the United States.” But yea or nay, and it’s mostly yea, the most striking thing about the museum is the way that in the end, it’s less about the famous concert and yoga in the mud than about the era that the concert has come to represent. “When I came to this project, there was this idea to memorialize the concert, which was about as far as it had gone,” said Patrick Gallagher, president of the firm that designed the museum. “And I said, ‘If it’s just a celebration of a celebration, what’s the purpose?’ And the more we peeled back the onion the more it was clear that the idea wanted to be Woodstock as the culminating moment, the capstone of the 1960s. We had to look back to look forward.” So about 60 percent of the museum is about the politics and culture and music of the ’60s: pillbox hats, Elvis, the Bay of Pigs, the Beatles, civil rights, the assassinations of John and Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr., and Neil Armstrong walking on the moon. And the rest is a quite vivid re-creation of the chaotic and unlikely process that led to 500,000 people shouting, “No rain, no rain, no rain,” during the summer downpours, Jimi Hendrix’s legendary performance of “The Star-Spangled Banner,” and all the rest. As for the music, Mr. Sebastian said that in the end, some was revelatory and a lot was something of a mess. “No matter what we say after the fact, most of us disliked our performances at Woodstock,” he said. “I can find you a quick dozen people who would look back on that performance and say, ‘Oh, man, I bit the big one.’ ” But as for the event, he said, he went home knowing that he had been a part of history. He wonders why, if people love Woodstock so much, they don’t find ways to act on the things about it that matter. “It evaporated so fast,” he said. “One minute we were there and the next we were in Reagan-land.” Still, he said, as one of the voices in the exhibit: “I guess it did give you the illusion of infinite possibilities. And maybe that’s the part that we have to say bye-bye to. Because that can’t be for your whole life or for every moment in history that you might happen to live through.” As for saying bye-bye to Woodstock, not a chance. The museum opens a year before the 40th anniversary, probably the last big milestone at which most of the musicians will be able to perform without walkers. They’re just beginning to draw up plans, but Mr. Meese notwithstanding, don’t expect it to come and go quietly.

Bethel Woods Center for the Arts
Museums
Woodstock Music Festivals


The Last (and Most Expensive) Night of the Year

Abstract: Vegas Dave knows what it costs to ring in the new year, Vegas Dave-style. For more than a decade, the 39-year-old professional sports bettor (real name: Dave Oancea) has routinely spent $20,000 to $30,000 — by his own estimate — on pricey Champagne, the best tables and limo service for the dozen or so friends he parties with in Las Vegas at year’s end. The most desirable tables at his favorite clubs might go for $5,000 any other night of the year, but he knows what happens on New Year’s Eve: Prices triple. “You can sit in a terrible area for, like, $5,000 on New Year’s — like by the bathroom,” he said. This year, Mr. Oancea stayed in — he has a girlfriend now — but across the country, countless people paid a premium to not be home when the ball dropped. Call it surge pricing on bar stools, breadsticks and everything in between. As businesses across the country pick up the confetti from their floors, recycle their wine bottles and perhaps tidy up the back of their cabs, everyone from nightclub owners to Uber drivers will be tallying up their earnings from one of night life’s most lucrative days of the year. “New Year’s Eve is pretty much going to determine for some venues whether you’re going to be in the red or in the black,” said J.C. Diaz, executive director of the Nightlife Association, a trade group of bars, restaurants, night clubs and rave festivals, and also the founder of the Nightlife Hall of Fame. “I would say it’s financially imperative that they close out the year with a bang.” Of all the businesses that look to cash in on New Year’s Eve, clubs and bars are among the most aggressive, of course. Nightclubs, which already double, triple or even quadruple the price of a bottle of alcohol, often send their prices even higher on Dec. 31. On a typical night at the nightclub TAO in Las Vegas, for example, partygoers must agree to spend a minimum of $550 to $5,000 to get a table. On New Year’s Eve, that minimum ranges from $1,500 to $15,000, according to a spokeswoman, Maggie Rubenstein. Tickets to TAO and its sister venue, Marquee Nightclub and Dayclub, were set starting at $100 on New Year’s Eve, compared to a typical cover charge that starts at $15 for TAO and $25 at Marquee, Ms. Rubenstein said. “New Year’s Eve is the biggest night of the year for nightclubs and promoters,” said Barak Schurr, the founder and president of Wantickets, an online ticket vendor focused on night life and clubs. Nightclubs and promoters, he said, “try and cast the widest and biggest net they can.” For instance, poolside cabanas at the Fontainebleau in Miami, for the Weeknd and Kygo concert sold out for Thursday night on Mr. Schurr’s website — for about $28,000 each. On a normal night, Wantickets might sell those spots for about a quarter of that price, he said. The $28,000 also got a party of 15 six bottles of Champagne and liquor and “Red Bull party favors,” according to Wantickets.com . Night clubs are not the only businesses with dollar signs in their eyes. Airbnb said it expected to break records for bookings in a single day. At the Olive Garden in Times Square, where entrees typically run $20 to $30, revelers could buy a $400 dinner with a full buffet, multiple open bars and a D.J. (A year ago, the chain charged $350.) A spokeswoman for Olive Garden, Jessica Dinon, said the New Year’s Eve buffet also included unlimited breadsticks. The Uber ride-hailing service, which has been criticized for charging more during peak periods, earlier this week began bracing customers for surge pricing on the big day. New Year’s Eve is the ride service’s busiest night of the year, according to a spokeswoman, Molly Spaeth. Image This New Year's Eve, Vegas Dave has decided to stay home. Credit Brandon Magnus for The New York Times “Surge pricing shouldn’t be a surprise,” the company said on its website as of Thursday afternoon. “Let’s toast to you running a fare estimate in the app before you ride.” Uber has its own unique justification for charging a higher price when demand rises: It helps to attract drivers to offer their services when they are most needed. On an ordinary day, it remains unclear whether surge pricing really entices more drivers to offer rides, according to Chris Nosko, an assistant professor of marketing at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business and co-author of a recent study on Uber’s pricing. New Year’s Eve might be an exception, though, since drivers might themselves prefer to hang out with friends instead of chauffeuring tipsy, sloppy passengers — unless the price is right. “I think New Year’s is, anecdotally, probably one of the best arguments for surge pricing bringing drivers online,” he said. In fact, Mr. Nosko said he had been watching as drivers discussed their New Year’s Eve plans in online forums. “I have rubber floors and vinyl-covered seats to deal with people who do manage to smuggle in a drink then spill it,” wrote one poster to uberpeople.net , one of the sites Mr. Nosko monitors. Others lamented that the surge pricing on Thursday might not be lucrative enough. “I made $650 last year,” wrote one Reddit user who claimed to be a driver in a comment thread about Uber on New Year’s Eve. “Don’t expect a repeat of those fantastic results, necessarily, but I’ll be chasing that dream again tonight for sure!” Another poster wrote that a year ago, New Year’s Day was more lucrative than New Year’s Eve because most of the passengers were “nicely low-key cause they were all hung over.” This year, the driver planned to give New Year’s Eve a pass, and instead “go enjoy the eve. with pals.” Mr. Oancea — Vegas Dave, that is — has long done just that, making him a club promoter’s dream. New Year’s Eve typically followed a pattern: dinner at a nice steakhouse, then a limo to the club, where Vegas Dave said he drank only the finest tequila and Champagne. By 3 or 4 a.m., he and his friends would usually head to an after-hours club, where they would spend another $5,000 to $10,000 before finally growing weary enough to head home around 7 or 8 a.m. “When I go out,” he said, “I go out to go big.” Not everyone can party like Vegas Dave, although some try. The research firm IBISWorld expects Americans to have spent $26 billion on night life in 2015, and says total revenue has been growing modestly since 2010. Still, the industry has been hampered by shaky consumer confidence after the recession. Much of the revenue growth can be attributed to higher alcohol prices, rather than higher volume, according to IBISWorld’s report . The various pressures on the industry have pushed club owners to outdo each other, whether it’s an indoor waterfall or live acrobats flying above the dance floor. “You can no longer be a big black box with a D.J. inside,” said Mr. Diaz of the night life association. “Especially during the holidays, it’s all about being over the top.”

New Year
bars,nightclubs
Restaurant
Price


NATO Summit in Lisbon Helps Obama

Abstract: WASHINGTON — As administration officials said farewell to one another upon returning from a two-day summit in Lisbon on Saturday night, they all but exchanged high-fives. The sense of success went to the top: President Obama , shirt-sleeved and smiling, made a rare, brief visit to the press cabin as Air Force One headed home. “No more summits!” he said jokingly, having only recently returned from a 10-day diplomatic tour across Asia. Yet while that Asia trip had mixed results, forcing Mr. Obama to leave without the South Korean trade deal he had expected, the consensus with Europeans and Russians at the NATO summit in Lisbon about how to handle Afghanistan and missile defense gave him a more successful sheen — even if ultimate success, particularly in Afghanistan, remains problematic. Mr. Obama was able to lead on a world stage in a way that he has not been able to do lately at home. He did so with public and private assistance from his European and Russian counterparts, many of whom called the summit meeting historic. Acutely aware of his problems at home after the drubbing Democrats took in the midterm elections — most manifest in Senate Republicans’ resistance to the New Start nuclear arms reduction treaty with Russia — the other leaders seemed almost to go out of their way to buoy Mr. Obama. Their help was not merely volunteered; administration officials actively sought it. “Throughout the summit, there was intense lobbying by the administration to win support for the ratification process,” said the Czech defense minister, Alexandr Vondra. And while a two-hour gathering with the European Union was a footnote to the weekend NATO summit meeting that preceded it, the leaders there likewise hailed their exchanges over economic and security concerns. “I have been to many summits,” the European Commission president, José Manuel Barroso, said afterward, but Lisbon was more “intimate, informal” and “a real exchange about the priorities” instead of mere note-reading — and he gave credit to Mr. Obama. In the end, then, the more common diplomatic dynamic was flipped: Instead of foreign leaders taking advantage of a weakened counterpart, they rallied to his aid — for their own interests as much as Mr. Obama’s, given the economic and military stakes. In particular, they gave Mr. Obama ammunition in his Senate battle for the New Start treaty. He collected a series of supportive statements from European leaders — from Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany to leaders of former Soviet bloc nations, who remain deeply suspicious of Russia and wary of Mr. Obama’s “reset” policy for warmer relations with Russia. At a news conference after the NATO session, Mr. Obama said, “Unprompted, I have received overwhelming support from our allies here that Start — the New Start treaty — is a critical component to U.S. and European security.” The endorsers, he added, include “those who live right next to Russia, who used to live behind the Iron Curtain, who have the most cause for concern with respect to Russian intentions and who have uniformly said that they will feel safer and more secure if this treaty gets ratified.” Like the Eastern Europeans, NATO leaders more broadly agreed, in effect, that the Mr. Obama’s “reset” relationship with Russia had enabled a parallel reset of their own ties with the former Communist bloc leader. The NATO-Russia Council meeting was the first since Russia went to war with Georgia to its south in 2008. Mr. Obama also made progress drawing Russia into cooperating with, rather than opposing, a new missile defense network in Europe aimed at countering any future threat from Iran. The White House hopes that Russian cooperation could undercut the argument of conservative critics of New Start that the treaty would crimp missile defense plans. As some Europeans saw it, President Dmitri A. Medvedev of Russia also seemed to respond to Mr. Obama’s tenuous position at home. Administration officials said that as recently as three weeks ago it was not clear Mr. Medvedev would come, and that days before Lisbon, there was no agreement on a joint statement to issue. When Mr. Obama had to leave the NATO-Russia meeting for a separately scheduled meeting with President Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan, he had advisers set up a private talk with Mr. Medvedev — no aides, just one translator. An official to whom Mr. Obama described their conversation afterward, and who would speak only on the condition of anonymity under White House rules, said it was “very cordial” though Mr. Obama raised their differences over Georgia. As for New Start’s ratification, Mr. Medvedev expressed confidence “in the president getting it done,” the official said. At the summit meeting, Mr. Medvedev also agreed to pursue cooperation with the European-based missile shield under NATO, starting with a study by next summer of the overlap between the technologies of the two sides and how they might be linked. Whether that leads to a joint system remains unclear. President George W. Bush and then-President Vladimir V. Putin, now Russia’s prime minister and still its paramount leader, talked for years about the possibility of cooperating on a missile defense system without tangible result. Mr. Obama reformulated Mr. Bush’s version of missile defense last year in a way that the Russians perceived as less threatening to their nuclear deterrent. They still harbor reservations, however, and have threatened to withdraw from New Start if they perceive a danger to Russia. Some Republicans have accused Mr. Obama of undercutting the missile defense plan and point to the Russian threat as evidence that the treaty could lead to limitations. Russia and NATO agreed to resume theater missile defense exercises that were suspended after the Georgia war. And Russia agreed to allow the NATO-led coalition in Afghanistan to ship more nonlethal supplies through its territory, and to help maintain helicopters used there. Given Russian commitments, including its support for sanctions against Iran and its cancellation of anti-aircraft missile sales to Tehran, Mr. Obama argued that the United States must reciprocate. Mr. Medvedev “has made every effort to move Russia in the right direction,” Mr. Obama said at his news conference. “And so if you agree with me on that front, then it’s also important that we don’t leave a partner hanging after having negotiated an agreement like this that’s good for both countries.” The administration kept up the pressure on Republicans on Sunday. Mr. Obama sent out messages on his Twitter account promoting the treaty while officials fanned out to the talk shows. Adm. Mike Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said on “This Week” on ABC that he was “completely comfortable with where we are militarily — myself, the rest of the uniformed leadership, as well as the secretary of defense. The verification regime that exists in this is in ways better than the one that has existed in the past.”

Arms Control and Limitation and Disarmament


Officer Backs Account of Police Subway Attack

Abstract: A police officer told a grand jury this week that he saw a fellow officer jab a baton into the buttocks of a man being subdued at a Brooklyn subway station, a law enforcement official said on Friday. The testimony supports elements of the man’s accusation that he was assaulted by officers during the October confrontation. Officer Kevin Maloney testified that Officer Richard Kern “dragged the Asp across the guy’s buttocks,” using the brand name of the retractable police baton, “and then when he got to the middle of the buttocks he jabbed it into him,” the law enforcement official said. Another person with knowledge of Officer Maloney’s account characterized his statement about Officer Kern’s actions with the baton differently, saying that he had “pushed” or “placed” it against Mr. Mineo’s buttocks. Officer Maloney is the first police witness to speak to a special grand jury about what happened on Oct. 15, the day on which Michael Mineo , a 24-year-old body piercer in a tattoo parlor, claims the police assaulted him at the Prospect Park station. Mr. Mineo has said through his lawyers that four police officers chased him, tackled him and beat him, and that one shoved a piece of equipment into his rectum. He was hospitalized after the encounter. While the case has drawn comparisons to that of Abner Louima, who was sodomized and critically injured with a broomstick in a station house bathroom in 1997, the episode as described by Officer Maloney does not mirror, in either its length or severity, that assault. Officer Maloney’s account, as retold by those familiar with it, does not make clear whether Officer Kern intended to harm Mr. Mineo nor whether he actually caused injury. The police have said that officers approached Mr. Mineo believing he was smoking marijuana, and tackled him after he ran. Finding no drugs, the police said, Officer Kern issued Mr. Mineo a disorderly conduct summons. While the department initially said that witness accounts did not support the assault accusation, Commissioner Raymond W. Kelly has said he welcomed the grand jury investigation as a way to establish what did occur. If it accepts Officer Maloney’s account, the grand jury, which heard from Mr. Mineo on Thursday, will have to weigh Officer Kern’s motivations and to judge whether his reported actions with the baton were an effort to inflict pain on a man who had run from the police. Officer Maloney did not come forward for more than a week after the encounter. It was “not that he didn’t find it unusual,” said his lawyer, Paul P. Martin, but that he was unaware of the “severity of the situation” until he heard of news reports about Mr. Mineo’s accusations. Officer Kern’s lawyer, John D. Patten, did not respond to phone messages on Friday. But he told The Associated Press that his client “absolutely denies that anything like that happened.” Chief among the tasks before the grand jury is to gauge the severity of Mr. Mineo’s internal injuries, which appear to have caused two hospitalizations but have not been made clear publicly. While his lawyers have said that his medical records talk of an “anal assault,” they have declined to release those records. One of Mr. Mineo’s lawyers, Stephen C. Jackson, said on Friday that the account by Officer Maloney, 26, a two-year veteran in the Transit Bureau, “was completely supportive of the facts.” Officer Maloney has told prosecutors that he was on duty in the Prospect Park station when he saw Mr. Mineo trying to evade a group of officers, the official said. Officer Maloney said that he joined the chase and that he was helping to make the arrest when he saw Officer Kern, 25, jab at Mr. Mineo’s buttocks with the baton, the official said. As Officer Kern wielded the baton, Officer Maloney told prosecutors, he heard Mr. Mineo yell that the officers were sticking a radio antenna into his rectum, the law enforcement official said. Officer Maloney told the grand jury that Officer Kern handcuffed Mr. Mineo, the official said. Mr. Mineo initially identified another officer, Alex Cruz, as his assailant, but Officer Maloney had a clearer view than Mr. Mineo, who was face down, the official said. The Police Department initially did not remove any of the officers from active duty, but after Officer Maloney came forward, Officers Cruz and Kern and two others — Officers Andrew Morales and Noel Jugraj — were placed on modified assignment, without their guns.

Mineo Michael
Police Brutality and Misconduct
Police Department (NYC)
Police


Dylann Roof Photos and a Manifesto Are Posted on Website

Abstract: COLUMBIA, S.C. — Dylann Roof spat on and burned the American flag, but waved the Confederate. He posed for pictures wearing a No. 88 T-shirt, had 88 Facebook friends and wrote that number — white supremacist code for “Heil Hitler”— in the South Carolina sand. A website discovered Saturday appears to offer the first serious look at Mr. Roof’s thinking, including how the case of Trayvon Martin, the black Florida teenager shot to death in 2012 by George Zimmerman, a neighborhood watch volunteer, triggered his racist rage. The site shows a stash of 60 photographs, many of them of Mr. Roof at Confederate heritage sites or slavery museums, and includes a nearly 2,500-word manifesto in which the author criticized blacks as being inferior while lamenting the cowardice of white flight. “I have no choice,” it reads. “I am not in the position to, alone, go into the ghetto and fight. I chose Charleston because it is most historic city in my state, and at one time had the highest ratio of blacks to Whites in the country. We have no skinheads, no real KKK, no one doing anything but talking on the internet. Well someone has to have the bravery to take it to the real world, and I guess that has to be me.” The website was first registered on Feb. 9 in the name of Dylann Roof, the 21-year-old man charged with entering the historically black Emanuel A.M.E. Church in Charleston on Wednesday night, attending a prayer meeting for an hour and then murdering nine parishioners. The day after the site was registered, the registration information was intentionally masked. It is not clear whether the manifesto was written by Mr. Roof or if he had control of it. Nor is it clear whether he took the pictures with a timer, or if someone else took them. In a joint statement Saturday night, the Charleston Police Department and the F.B.I. said they were aware of the website and were “taking steps to verify the authenticity of these postings.” If it is genuine, as his friends seem to think, the tourist sites he visited, the pictures that were posted and the hate-filled words on the site offered a chilling glimpse into the interests of an unemployed former landscaper said to have a fixation on race. “This whole racist thing came into him within the past five years,” said Caleb Brown, a childhood friend of Mr. Roof’s who is half black. “He was never really popular; he accepted that. He wasn’t like: ‘When I grow up I am going to show all these kids.’ He accepted who he was, and who he was changed, obviously.” Mr. Roof has been charged with nine counts of murder in the killings. Victims included the Rev. Clementa C. Pinckney, who was both the church pastor and a state senator. Video Family members of those killed Wednesday at Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, S.C., addressed the shooting suspect, Dylann Roof, in court. Credit Credit Pool photo Mr. Roof’s friends say that he only spoke of his murderous plans once — when he recently warned that he planned to do something crazy with the gun he had purchased with the money he got from his parents for his 21st birthday. But they say his sense of racial grievance began with the Trayvon Martin case. The website, the lastrhodesian.com, which was not working by Saturday afternoon, featured a photo of a bloodied dead white man on the floor. The picture appears to be an image from “Romper Stomper,” an Australian movie about neo-Nazis. The domain name is a reference to the white minority of what is now Zimbabwe, where whites fought blacks for 15 years and enlisted white supremacists as mercenaries. The site was first discovered by a blogger who goes by the pen name Emma Quangel, who paid $49 for a reverse domain search that turned up the site. According to web server logs, the manifesto was last modified at 4:44 p.m. Eastern time on Wednesday, the day of the Charleston shootings, and the essay notes, “at the time of writing I am in a great hurry.” Violent History: Attacks on Black Churches The killing of nine people at the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, S.C., is among a long list of attacks targeting predominantly black churches in the United States. In the manifesto, Mr. Roof writes: “The event that truly awakened me was the Trayvon Martin case. I kept hearing and seeing his name, and eventually I decided to look him up. I read the Wikipedia article and right away I was unable to understand what the big deal was. It was obvious that Zimmerman was in the right. But more importantly this prompted me to type in the words ‘black on White crime’ into Google, and I have never been the same since that day.” The manifesto also says he learned from the website of the far-right Council of Conservative Citizens. The council is an offshoot of a 1950s-era organization that fought school desegregation. A message on its website says the group is “deeply saddened by the Charleston killing spree.” A friend of Mr. Roof’s, Jacob Meek, 15, said the references to the Trayvon Martin case made it clear that Mr. Roof had written the essay. “That’s his website,” he said. “He wrote it, and I just can tell.” Watchdog groups that track right-wing extremism say the manifesto reflects the language found in white supremacist forums online and dovetails with what has been said about Mr. Roof thus far — that he had self-radicalized, and that he did not belong to a particular hate group. “It’s clear that he was extremely receptive to those ideas,” said Mark Pitcavage, the director of the Anti-Defamation League’s Center on Extremism. “At the same time, he does not have a sophisticated knowledge of white supremacy.” The icon for the browser tab on Mr. Roof’s website is an Othala rune, an ancient symbol appropriated by the Nazis that remains common among neo-Nazi groups. Mr. Roof was the latest in what watchdog groups say is a growing group of lone-wolf extremists. According to a study released in February by the Southern Poverty Law Center, about 70 percent of the 60 recent domestic terrorism attacks reviewed were conducted by people acting alone. The writings on Mr. Roof’s website show a fixation with black-on-white crime, which is common on white supremacy sites, said Heidi Beirich, the director of the Southern Poverty Law Center’s Intelligence Project. “They demonize blacks to position themselves as victims, and offer that as proof of why they need their own state,” she said. In one photograph posted on the website, Mr. Roof is shown posing with wax figures of slaves. In others, he posed with a handgun that appears to be a .45-caliber Glock. He had a .45-caliber Glock in his car when he was arrested Thursday, the police said. The website’s links contain several passages of long racist rants, in which he said Hispanics are enemies, and “Negroes” have lower I.Q.s and low impulse control. The manifesto praises segregation and says the author’s reading of “hundreds” of slave narratives indicates that almost all slaves gave positive accounts of their lives. The manifesto uses defamatory terms for blacks, whom he accused of being “stupid and violent” with “the capacity to be very slick.” It laments white flight, and suggested that the whites should instead stay behind in cities and fight. Criticisms are also levied at Jews, but Asians are praised for being racists and potential allies. Mr. Brown said his friend’s transformation appeared to have occurred after he left Columbia, S.C., for nearby Lexington. Records show he switched schools in 2007. “He wasn’t putting on Facebook ‘I hate black people. I am going to shoot up a church,’ ” Mr. Brown said.