BP Is Criticized Over Oil Spill, but U.S. Missed Chances to Act

Abstract: NEW ORLEANS — Officials in the Obama administration began for the first time Friday to publicly chastise BP America for its handling of the spreading oil gusher in the Gulf of Mexico, calling the oil company’s current resources inadequate to stop what is unfolding into an environmental catastrophe. As oil edged toward the Louisiana coast, fears continued to grow that the leak from the seabed oil well could spiral out of control. One official at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, in a widely distributed warning on Friday, said the oil flow could grow from the current estimate of 5,000 barrels a day to “an order of magnitude higher than that.” The increased level of concern was reflected in the sharp new criticism by federal officials of BP for not stopping the leak and cleaning up the spill before it reached land, something the company’s officials had said was possible earlier in the week. “It is clear that after several unsuccessful attempts to secure the source of the leak, it is time for BP to supplement their current mobilization as the slick of oil moves toward shore,” Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano said pointedly, as the government announced steps to supplement its response with people and equipment from the Defense Department. Geoffrey S. Morrell, deputy assistant secretary of defense, said in a statement that the government would hold BP accountable for the cost of the department’s deployment, which as of Friday night included the Louisiana National Guard to help clean up coastal areas once the oil comes ashore. BP officials said they did everything possible, and a review of the response suggests it may be too simplistic to place all the blame on the oil company. The federal government also had opportunities to move more quickly, but did not do so while it waited for a resolution to the spreading spill from BP, which was leasing the drilling rig that exploded in flames on April 20 and sank two days later. Eleven workers are missing and presumed dead. The Department of Homeland Security waited until Thursday to declare that the incident was “a spill of national significance,” and then set up a second command center in Mobile . The actions came only after the estimate of the size of the spill was increased fivefold to 5,000 barrels a day. The delay meant that the Homeland Security Department waited until late this week to formally request a more robust response from the Department of Defense, with Ms. Napolitano acknowledging even as late as Thursday afternoon that she did not know if the Defense Department even had equipment that might be helpful. By Friday afternoon, she said, the Defense Department had agreed to send two large military transport planes to spray chemicals that can disperse the oil while it is still in the Gulf. Officials initially seemed to underestimate the threat of a leak, just as BP did last year when it told the government such an event was highly unlikely. Rear Adm. Mary E. Landry, the chief Coast Guard official in charge of the response, said on April 22, after the rig sank, that the oil that was on the surface appeared to be merely residual oil from the fire, though she said it was unclear what was going on underwater. The day after, officials said that it appeared the well’s blowout preventer had kicked in and that there did not seem to be any oil leaking from the well, though they cautioned it was not a guarantee. BP officials, even after the oil leak was confirmed by using remote-controlled robots, expressed confidence that the leak was slow enough, and steps taken out in the Gulf of Mexico aggressive enough, that the oil would never reach the coast. (The NOAA document on a potentially far larger leak, first obtained by The Press-Register in Mobile, Ala. , was described by an agency spokesman as simply a possibility raised by a staff member, not an official prediction.) Some oil industry critics questioned whether the federal government is too reliant on oil companies to manage the response to major spills, leaving the government unable to evaluate if the response is robust enough. “Here you have the company that is responsible for the accident leading the response to the crisis,” said Tyson Slocum, director of Public Citizen ’s Energy Program. “There is a problem here, and the consequence is clear.” But it is still the government, in this case the Coast Guard, that has the final say. A law passed a year after the 1989 Exxon Valdez disaster makes "each responsible party for a vessel or a facility from which oil is discharged" liable for cleaning up a spill. But oversight of the cleanup is designated to the Coast Guard, with advice from other federal agencies. Rear Adm. Robert C. North, retired, who was commander of the Coast Guard’s Eighth District from 1994 to 1996, said that decisions in these situations are made collectively, but that the buck essentially stops with the federal coordinator — in this case, Admiral Landry. “The federal on-scene coordinator is kind of the one individual to say, ‘I think we need to do more’ or ‘That’s adequate,’ ” he said. If the government determines that the responsible party is not up to the job, it can federalize the spill, running the cleanup operations without the private company but billing it for the cost. This is a last resort, however. In this case, Admiral North said, the oil companies have more technology and expertise than the government. “It doesn’t appear that federalizing it would bring in any more resources,” he said. Officials from BP and the federal government have repeatedly said they had prepared for the worst, even though a plan filed last year with the government said it was highly unlikely that a spill or leak would ever result from the Deep Horizon rig. “There are not much additional available resources in the world to fight this thing offshore,” said Doug Suttles, BP’s chief operating officer for exploration and production, in an interview. “We’ve basically thrown everything we have at it.” Mr. Suttles said BP’s efforts did not change after it was disclosed Wednesday night that the leak was estimated at 5,000 barrels a day, five times larger than initial estimates had suggested. He said BP, which is spending roughly $6 million a day and will likely spend far more when oil reaches land, had already been mobilizing for a far larger spill. However, he did not deny that BP initially thought the slick could be stopped before it reached the coastline. “In the early days, the belief was that we probably could have contained it offshore,” Mr. Suttles said. “Unfortunately, since the event began we haven’t had that much good weather.” The first weekend after the sinking of the rig, choppy seas brought the cleanup to a near halt, and made more complicated tactics like controlled burns impossible. But even after the weather cleared — and just a few days before officials began acknowledging the likelihood of landfall — Tony Hayward, BP’s chief executive, expressed confidence the spill could be contained. Adm. Thad W. Allen, the commandant of the Coast Guard, said Friday that he agreed the situation was catastrophic and could continue to unfold for up to three months, but he said he remained satisfied with his team’s response, saying that even if it had initially known that the leak was 5,000 barrels a day, the response would have been the same. “While it may not have been visible to the public, from the very start, we have been working this very hard,” he said. Within a matter of hours of the report of the explosion, the Coast Guard had dispatched three cutters, four helicopters and a plane to the scene, helping to save 90 workers, including three critically injured ones who were sent by helicopter for emergency care. “We have never tried so many different methods for a large spill on the surface as we have during this, and I have been doing oil spill response for 30 years,” Admiral Allen said.

Oil and Gasoline
Offshore drilling
Environment
Gulf of Mexico
BP
Accidents and Safety
Transocean


Andy Murray’s Misfortune: He’s the Same Age as Novak Djokovic

Abstract: PARIS — Andy Murray was born May 15, 1987, in Glasgow, a wee lad destined to resurrect Britain’s fortunes in men’s tennis. But one week later, another boy came into this world in Belgrade in the former Yugoslavia, one who would go on to torment Murray on tennis courts around the world. Such is Murray’s misfortune: to be almost the exact same age as Novak Djokovic, the best player in the world and one of the most dominant of any era. “His performances over the last 18 months to two years have been exceptional,” Murray said Sunday after losing to Djokovic for the fifth time in a major tournament final. “He deserves to be No. 1.” It is the same timing that has plagued other players, such as Andy Roddick, in their rivalries with Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal. Wilt Chamberlain confronted a similar fate playing against Bill Russell and the Boston Celtics all those years in the N.B.A. For a while, the elite group of men’s tennis players known as the Big Four comprised Murray, Federer, Nadal and Djokovic. Perhaps Murray was only on the cusp of acceptance, having won fewer titles, but he was a factor in who won the big tournaments. As injury and age chipped away at the aura of invincibility that Federer and Nadal once enjoyed, Djokovic surged into the top position. Murray may have passed Federer and Nadal to claim No. 2 in the world, but he is still looking up. Murray’s position was confirmed again Sunday when Djokovic stormed from a set down to thrash him, 3-6, 6-1, 6-2, 6-4, in the French Open final. It was the 24th time Djokovic had beaten Murray in 34 career matches, and the eighth time in 10 meetings at major tournaments. Murray has beaten Djokovic twice in a major final — at the United States Open in 2012 and at Wimbledon the following year. But since then, Djokovic has won 13 of 15 matches, including five in a row in the majors. The gap seems to be widening. Sunday’s victory was Djokovic’s fourth major title in a row, something no one had achieved since Rod Laver in 1969. Djokovic joined Federer and Nadal as a part of a select group who have career Grand Slams. Murray still lacks the French and Australian titles, and Djokovic has defeated Murray four times in the final in Australia. “Obviously, the guys I have been around the last few years have made things difficult for me,” Murray said. “I mean, you know, I have been close-ish to winning all of the slams now and, unfortunately, all of them have done it instead.” In order to get past Djokovic, or at least back to his level, Murray may have to make adjustments. One former French Open champion, Billie Jean King, said that Murray had not reached his potential and that if he addressed his on-court demeanor, it could make the difference. Murray is well-known for his midmatch mutterings — his looks of anguish, his self-deprecating explosions after mistakes and his audible complaints directed toward his coaching staff in the stands. “All that is a copout,” King said. “I’ve done that. I’ve done it myself. It means I’m not taking responsibility. If he accepts responsibility, he will be so tough.” She noted that when she and Craig Kardon coached Martina Navratilova, they would fine her every time she looked at them. “Craig and I said, ‘Martina, every time you even look at us, it’s money for Billie and beers for Craig,’ ” she said. “And it worked. It’s a fun way to make your point.” Djokovic has had his own issues with temper, even at this tournament. He may also understand the frustration Murray experiences when playing him. Djokovic endured it, too, when he first came on tour at a time when Federer played as if all the tournaments were his to win. Many times, Djokovic said how important it was to use that challenge and competition to improve. But there was a time when he wondered if he would suffer the fate of players like Roddick, a terrific player but not at the level of the best of his day. “At the beginning, I was not glad to be part of their era,” Djokovic said Sunday with a laugh. Both Djokovic and Murray benefited from being a few years younger than Federer, who will turn 35 on Aug. 8. Nadal turned 30 last week, but his long list of injuries has ravaged his body. Since Murray and Djokovic are only a week apart, though, Murray may never see Djokovic experience the limitations of age before he does. Before Sunday’s final, clay was thought to be an answer. Murray had defeated Djokovic in Rome before coming to Paris. According to Gustavo Kuerten, the three-time French Open champion, Murray has what it takes to win it all, even with Djokovic playing. “His game is close,” Kuerten said. “It’s good enough. It’s just a matter of doing it more consistently.”

Tennis
Andy Murray
Novak Djokovic
French Open


U.S. Agent Infiltrated Militia, Lawyer Says

Abstract: DETROIT — An undercover federal agent attended training exercises with the Hutaree militia for at least eight months before nine members of the militant Christian group were arrested last weekend and charged with plotting an uprising against the government, prosecutors said Wednesday. The militia’s leader, David B. Stone Sr., asked the agent to provide explosives that could be used to attack police officers and instructed him to make armor-piercing bombs using pieces of road signs as shrapnel, an assistant United States attorney, Ronald Waterstreet, said at a hearing Wednesday. Citing the agent’s reports and audio recordings of militia members, Mr. Waterstreet described the militia as a relatively small group of weapons fanatics planning to wage a war against the government and all law enforcement officers, as well as their spouses and children. Mr. Stone wanted to eventually own his own country and had assembled two nine-member squads, led by himself and his son Joshua, to begin by taking over several southern Michigan counties, Mr. Waterstreet said. The authorities who searched Mr. Stone’s ramshackle trailer, which his lawyer estimated was worth $500, seized 300 pieces of evidence, including explosive materials, bomb-making components and shrapnel, Mr. Waterstreet said. In a recording played during the hearing, Mr. Stone described the government as a “terrorist organization” and told his followers, “Now is the time to strike and take our nation back.” The comments were part of a speech Mr. Stone planned to deliver during a meeting with other militias in Kentucky in February, before a winter storm forced the group to turn back in Indiana, Mr. Waterstreet said. On the way back to Mr. Stone’s home in Clayton, Mich., he spotted a police officer from a nearby town and said, “We’re going to pop him, guaranteed,” Mr. Waterstreet said. Joshua Stone, who was arrested Monday after fleeing to a neighboring county, pleaded not guilty at the hearing. The seven other defendants being held in Michigan stood mute and had not-guilty pleas entered on their behalf. Magistrate Judge Donald Scheer is expected to determine Thursday whether they can be released on bond. A ninth defendant, Thomas Piatek, appeared in an Indiana court Wednesday and was ordered held without bond. Mr. Piatek is scheduled to be transferred to Michigan within about 10 days. The defendants’ lawyers said they were angry Wednesday that prosecutors presented their case without allowing them to cross-examine the undercover agent. They argued that the defendants, most of whom have no criminal records, have a First Amendment right to criticize the government and did not act violently against anyone. “All you’ve got is a lot of talk from people who like to dress up in fatigues and carry around guns in the woods,” said Michael Rataj, the lawyer for Tina Stone, David Stone’s wife. Mr. Waterstreet said the agent won the group’s trust to the point that the agent, whose identity was not released, was present at the weddings of David and Tina Stone in December and Joshua Stone in March. The men wore camouflage to the ceremonies and discussed plans to obtain explosives with the agent at the events, Mr. Waterstreet said.

Hutaree
Fringe Groups and Movements
Bombs and Explosives
Michigan


Nets Dictating Play as the Raptors Rely on a Backup

Abstract: After two games, patterns are emerging in the first-round playoff series between the Nets and the Toronto Raptors. The teams are tied at one victory each, but so far it is the Nets who have forced the Raptors to make adjustments. The Raptors had been hoping to push the pace and use their athleticism to overwhelm the older, slower Nets in the open court. But through two games the Raptors have not relied on high-flying fast breaks, but the steady hand of their slowest guard, the backup point man Greivis Vasquez. Vasquez had eight assists in 25 minutes in Game 2 and figures to get more playing time alongside the starting point guard Kyle Lowry. Vasquez’s extra minutes will probably come at the expense of the starting off guard Terrence Ross, 23, who appeared to be overwhelmed in his first two playoff games. Ross has contributed more turnovers than made shots, and his slight stature makes him an enticing post-up target for the bigger Nets guards. Ross is mostly a catch-and-shoot scorer capable of tremendous fast-break finishes. His dunk over Nuggets forward Kenneth Faried was voted the dunk of the year on NBA.com. By contrast, Vasquez has dunked about as often Nets Coach Jason Kidd has this season, but he knows how to use his 6-foot-6 frame. In the pick-and-roll, Vasquez’s size allows him to peer over the Nets’ coverage and zip passes to the open man. Vasquez is not particularly fast, but he expertly marshals what quickness he has to set up pick-and-rolls, and his feel for passing is world class. This isn’t news to the Nets. As a starter for the New Orleans Hornets last season, Vasquez racked up the most total assists in the N.B.A. Raptors Coach Dwane Casey cannot afford any time without either Vasquez or Lowry on the court, but going forward he may try to play them together more. Pairing his best two playmakers would put additional pressure on the Nets to defend more than one pick-and-roll. Vasquez’s impact goes beyond assists. A better-run pick-and-roll also means more drives to the rim, which forces the Nets into help rotations, which in turn frees up the Raptors’ aggressive big men to go for offensive rebounds. In Game 2, the Raptors handily outrebounded the Nets, grabbing 50 percent of available misses. “We got to do something to keep them off the boards,” Nets guard Deron Williams said. “We’ve talked about it all season. That’s been a plague for us.” Image Joe Johnson and the Nets have forced Toronto guard Terrence Ross into more turnovers than shots in the first two games of their playoff series. Credit Warren Toda/European Pressphoto Agency The Raptors need those extra possessions to make up for all their turnovers. The Nets are third-best in the league at forcing turnovers, and the Raptors’ shoddy ball-handling has played into their hands going into Game 3 in Brooklyn on Friday. Despite surrendering 36 points in the fourth quarter — a total inflated by free throws down the stretch — the Nets are unlikely to alter their defensive strategy. The 30-point performance by the Raptors’ DeMar DeRozan needs to be put in context. DeRozan came to life in the fourth quarter, scoring 17 in the period after scoring just 14 in all of Game 1. But 9 of his 17 points came at the free-throw line and were not the result of his relentlessly attacking the rim. The Nets fouled DeRozan on three consecutive jump shots, breaking a cardinal rule of defense, before DeRozan iced the game with six free throws in the last 20 seconds. It is a great sign for the Raptors that DeRozan settled into his jump shot, but he also coughed up the ball six times and still does not look comfortable driving against the Nets’ defense. DeRozan will need to be productive for the Raptors to have a chance, because on the other end he has no answer for Joe Johnson’s strength and guile. Smooth as can be, Johnson spent the first two games calmly bullying his way into the paint from the left wing, forcing double teams and eventually compelling the Raptors to play the seldom-used forward Landry Fields in an effort to slow him. It worked in Game 2, as Fields forced a crucial deflection near the end of the fourth quarter. But over all, the Nets’ offense is humming along. Now, if they could only get some 3-pointers to drop. The most reliable bellwether of the Nets’ offense is how many open 3-pointers they generate for their power forwards. When Paul Pierce and Mirza Teletovic are left unguarded, it is a sign that the defense is scrambling to deal with the Nets’ practice of spreading the court around one big man inside. By this measure, the Nets have been excellent. Teletovic and Pierce have combined to shoot 18 wide-open 3-pointers through two games. The problem is, they made only five of them. Pierce was 0 for 6 from long range in Game 2. But Kidd said: “He had some great looks. It’s basketball: Sometimes they go in; sometimes they don’t.” The Nets sacrifice rebounding to keep their best shooters on the court and maintain maximum defensive flexibility. In Game 2, their gamble caught up to them. Kidd and the Nets know they missed a chance to take both games in Toronto, but they also have plenty of evidence that their approach is working.

Raptors
Brooklyn Nets
Greivis Vasquez
DeMar DeRozan
Landry Fields
Basketball
Joe Johnson


Major Deal Preserves Ranch Land in California

Abstract: Almost 90 percent of one of Southern California’s best-known ranches — long the property of one of the state’s best-known newspaper families — will be kept permanently free of development under the terms of a deal announced on Thursday between the ranch corporation and five major conservation organizations. “This is the Holy Grail of conservation in California ,” said Joel Reynolds of the Natural Resources Defense Council . Bill Corcoran, the senior regional representative of the Sierra Club , added that the property, known as the Tejon Ranch, which reaches from the firs of the southern Sierra Nevada across the dry Tehachapi Mountains and west to the coastal range, “is the keystone for protecting Southern California’s natural legacy.” In return for the commitment to allow easements on roughly 240,000 acres, the groups, including the Sierra Club, Audubon California and the Natural Resources Defense Council, will give up their opposition to industrial, resort and residential development on another 30,000 acres near Interstate 5. The agreement brings to an end a standoff between Tejon Ranch, a publicly traded company formed after the Chandler family heirs, onetime owners of The Los Angeles Times, sold the land more than a decade ago, and conservation groups that wanted to prevent the ranchland, with its varied ecosystems, from becoming part of the sprawl of greater Los Angeles. “What this agreement does today is it clears the way for us to go ahead” and seek permits for development from local and state environmental and land-use authorities, said Bob Stine, the executive director of the ranch, 60 miles north of Los Angeles. “That process can now go ahead without the environmental groups opposing it.” Pete Bloom, a scientist who worked on California’s program to recover endangered condors in the 1980s, said the land to be conserved would be “ideal foraging and roosting habitat” for the condor. “They would use it as a place to have lunch and dinner,” Mr. Bloom said. The lands to be put under conservation easement would be governed by a new nonprofit entity, the Tejon Ranch Conservancy. This group would ensure the permanent protection of about 178,000 acres “through a combination of dedicated conservation easements and designated project open spaces,” according to a statement released by the ranch and the groups on Thursday. In addition, about 10,000 acres would be set aside for 37 miles of the Pacific Crest Trail, which runs from Mexico to Canada and would be rerouted to the ranch’s land. The conservation groups would have the right to buy — almost certainly with the aid of a state-sponsored bond issue — another 62,000 acres within three years. Tejon Ranch would accept the value set by a state appraiser, according to both Mr. Stine and Mr. Reynolds of the Natural Resources Defense Council. Mr. Reynolds also noted that public access to the ranch, from the grasslands to the gnarled Joshua trees, would be guaranteed, and that a 49,000-acre park would most likely be created out of some of the land where the ranch now runs cattle and harvests pistachios and walnuts.

Tejon Ranch Corporation
Environment
Ranches
Sierra Club
Natural Resources Defense Council
California


Seeking Modern Refuge From Modern Life

Abstract: FORT COLLINS, Colo. — Every time her neighbors treat their lawns with standard chemical herbicides, Caryl Schonbrun fears for her life. Ms. Schonbrun, 52, has multiple chemical sensitivity syndrome, which she says leaves her vulnerable to whiffs of substances that her system can no longer tolerate. She said that she was sensitive to ingredients in herbicides as well as pesticides, and that exposure to the chemicals could put her body into anaphylactic shock. “It’s an illness that you have to depend on the kindness of neighbors and friends and hope for the best,” she said. But Ms. Schonbrun said she had found that was not enough and turned to lobbying the City Council, the mayor, the neighborhood mediator and anyone else she thought might be able to help. Her goal was to get neighbors either to refrain from using such chemicals or to notify her before applying them. Her condition and her campaign have left local officials and neighbors grappling with just how much responsibility they all have in coping with one woman’s ailment. “It’s a pretty complicated situation,” said Diggs Brown, a Fort Collins councilman who has met with Ms. Schonbrun. “How do you balance the rights of one neighbor who is using legal chemicals on their lawn on private property and somebody who apparently has a chemical sensitivity?” Just the mention of chemical sensitivity can be controversial, as there remains widespread doubt in the general medical community about whether it is a real diagnosis. Even the term “multiple chemical sensitivity syndrome” is polarizing in the medical and environmental health communities. Ms. Schonbrun said that she had been classified as “disabled with chemical injury” and that she received disability checks. “The bottom line is that the condition is very much in dispute,” said Dr. Edward B. Holmes, director of the Occupational and Environmental Health Clinic at the University of Utah. “There seems to be, in my experience, a significant number of people that have this kind of conglomeration of symptoms that fit into a pattern strongly with psychiatric conditions.” Dr. Holmes said that in rare cases someone might have a true allergy to a specific chemical. On the other side of the debate are specialists like Dr. Claudia S. Miller, professor of environmental medicine at the University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio, who said practitioners were hearing about more cases of chemical sensitivities. “There is no reliable prevalence data because the illness presents in such varied ways,” Dr. Miller said in an e-mail message. “But estimates of the number of persons who report having multiple intolerances that they recognize and that cause them to rearrange their lives ranges from 3 to 6 percent of the population.” Dr. Miller said chemical sensitivities or intolerances could be caused by a specific exposure to a toxic substance or by a number of exposures. There is no known cure. Often, people with severe chemical sensitivities remove themselves from urban areas completely, but Ms. Schonbrun said she could not face such isolation and did not want to be too far from her family or health care facilities. After her diagnosis six years ago, Ms. Schonbrun left her job as a nurse in San Diego and moved with her husband, Bob, to Tucson, where they stayed for a year. When she became even sicker, the couple moved to Fort Collins, a college town of about 130,000 with strong agrarian roots, to build a “safe” house with features that include an elaborate venting system and a tar-free roof to allow her to live as free of offending chemicals as possible. Ms. Schonbrun has added her name to the Colorado Department of Agriculture’s registry of pesticide-sensitive people so she will be notified and can stay indoors when there is any commercial spraying. Some people question the Schonbruns’ choice to relocate to their tidy and rapidly expanding subdivision with farms and ranches close by. “With a condition like that, they choose to move into a residential area,” said Curt Richards, who lives across the street from the Schonbruns and said that the dispute had escalated to the point that he had obtained a restraining order against Mr. Schonbrun. “The bottom line is, we’re not breaking any laws. We have modified how we take care of our property that requires more of my time and money, but that’s not good enough.” Ms. Schonbrun said she had twice had to call for an ambulance when her neighbors used herbicides she could not tolerate. The Schonbruns bought the first batch of nontoxic herbicides for some neighbors, including Mike Cada, who lives next door. “I’m willing to do it as long as it’s effective,” Mr. Cada said, noting that the nontoxic mixture cost at least 40 percent more than traditional herbicides. No local ordinances require private citizens to notify neighbors when they apply pesticides. According to the National Conference of State Legislatures, six states have laws that address overspraying and improper use of pesticides around humans(especially children); two others are considering such laws. “It’s been said that people with this condition are the new homeless,” Ms. Schonbrun said. “We were lucky enough to build a nontoxic home, but it’s still a never-ending struggle to live in a safe all-around environment.”

Medicine and Health
Hazardous and Toxic Substances


Ireland: Gay-Marriage Vote Is Planned

Abstract: Prime Minister Enda Kenny says the legalization of same-sex marriage will be put to a public referendum in May. Ireland legalized civil partnerships for same-sex couples in 2011, and recent Irish opinion polls indicate about three-fourths of voters support legalizing same-sex marriage. More than a dozen nations have already taken that step.

Ireland
Enda Kenny
Same-Sex Marriage,Gay Marriage
Referendum


Treasury Details Its Plan to Modify Home Loans

Abstract: WASHINGTON — The Obama administration provided details on Wednesday for its program to help homeowners at risk of losing their houses obtain taxpayer-subsidized reductions in their mortgage payments, a program that becomes available immediately. Administration officials said the program could help three million to four million families avoid foreclosure, and it is expected to cost $75 billion over the next several years. Banks that receive additional bailout funds must participate. In addition, the administration has instructed Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the two government-controlled mortgage-finance companies, to refinance homeowners at today’s low market rates even if those people have less than the standard 20 percent equity usually required by lenders. That program, which applies only to people with mortgages owned or guaranteed by Fannie or Freddie, is expected to help as many as five million homeowners who are current on their house payments. “Two weeks ago, the president laid out a clear path forward to helping up to nine million families restructure or refinance their mortgages to a payment that is affordable,” the Treasury secretary, Timothy F. Geithner, said. “It is imperative that we continue to move with speed to help make housing more affordable and help arrest the damaging spiral in our housing markets, just as we work to stabilize our financial system, create jobs and help businesses thrive.” The main elements are the same as administration officials described when President Obama outlined the plan last month. A mortgage lender or mortgage-servicing company would first receive cash incentives to modify a borrower’s loan so that the monthly payment declined to no more than 38 percent of the household’s gross monthly income. At that point, the government would match, dollar for dollar, the lender’s cost in reducing payments to as low as 31 percent of monthly income. That could be achieved by a lower interest rate, a longer mortgage term or a reduction in the outstanding principal. For some borrowers, interest rates could be reduced to as low as 2 percent. A fact sheet with the Treasury announcement states: “To reach the target affordability level of 31 percent, interest payments will first be reduced down to as low as 2 percent. If at that rate the debt to income level is still more than 31 percent, lenders then extend the term or amortization period up to 40 years, and finally forbear principal at no interest until the payment is reduced to the 31 percent target.” Each lender would have to make a calculation of whether its cost from reducing the monthly payments, after accounting for the government’s cost-sharing, would be less than the costs it would incur from foreclosing. If the result of that calculation, known as a “net present value” estimate, shows that the lender’s cost in modifying the loan would be lower than the cost of foreclosing, the lender would be required to offer a borrower the new deal. The decision would be voluntary if the estimated cost of the concessions appeared to be higher than the cost of foreclosure. If the lender decided not to offer the modification, as in the case of a borrower who had become unemployed and whose income had largely disappeared, it would be required to examine alternatives to foreclosure before seizing a house. Among the alternatives mentioned are short sales, in which the house is sold for less than the outstanding mortgage amount but the borrower is not held accountable for the balance; and a “deed in lieu of foreclosure,” which allows owners to turn over their houses to the lender without going through foreclosure, and thus help salvage their credit ratings. Borrowers cannot be charged fees for modifying the loan, the Treasury Department said. Lenders will have to bear the administrative expense of reviewing the loans and making their cost estimates. Treasury officials said they were trying to warn consumers against fraud artists and would-be consultants seeking to collect fees for helping homeowners negotiate with lenders. Housing experts have estimated that lenders lose about half the outstanding loan amount if they pursue foreclosure, and those losses are climbing because the resale value of houses continues to fall. As a result, the program could lead to millions of loan modifications. The program includes important protections that limit how much a person’s mortgage payments might go up. If a lender agrees to reduce a person’s interest rate below the current market rates of just over 5 percent, the lender can start to gradually increase that rate after five years — but only up to the level of market rates at the time of the modification. If a lender reduces the interest rate to a level that is still above today’s market rate — to 6 percent from 8.5 percent, for example — the modified rate remains in place for the life of the loan. There is no ceiling on how much a person can earn and still qualify for help, but the size of the mortgage to be modified cannot be higher than $729,750 for a single-family home, or $1.4 million for the mortgage on a four-unit condo or co-operative. The program is open only to borrowers who live in the homes at issue, and not to investors or to people with mortgages on second or third homes. It is open to people who obtained a mortgage before Jan. 1, 2009. Borrowers can apply for loan modifications until the end of 2012. Not everyone who is behind on their payments, or in danger of falling behind, will get relief. The program will be of little help to a family whose main breadwinner has just lost a job and whose monthly income has plunged drastically. Nor will it rescue people swamped by other big debts on top of their mortgages. To assess the total indebtedness of a person, the guidelines instruct lenders to calculate a “back-end ratio” that adds up total monthly debt obligations and compares them with total income. The back-end ratio would include car payments, credit card debt, second mortgages on the same house and other obligations like child-support payments. Any borrower whose total monthly obligations come to more than 55 percent of monthly income would need to sign up for debt counseling. But even if they did so, many lenders are likely to balk at offering a loan deal even if the government is sharing the cost. In theory, there is no limit on the so-called loan-to-value ratio for a modified mortgage. In other words, people are eligible for help even if the value of their house is far less than the outstanding amount of the mortgage, as is the case for about 14 million people who bought houses at the very peak of the market and often put no money down. Administration officials have said, however, that people who owe more than 150 percent of the current market value of their homes will probably have a harder time persuading their lenders to modify the mortgage. “Some people will not qualify,” one administration official said. “And some people who do qualify will not succeed.”

Homeowner Affordability and Stability Plan


China: Acres of Exploding Watermelons

Abstract: Watermelons have been bursting by the score in eastern China after farmers gave them overdoses of growth chemicals during wet weather, creating what state news media called fields of “land mines.” About 20 farmers in Jiangsu Province have been affected, losing up to 115 acres of melon, China Central Television reported. High prices over the past year prompted many farmers to enter the watermelon market. All of those with exploding melons apparently were first-time users of the growth stimulator forchlorfenuron, which has been widely available for some time, the report said.


Northern Japan Quake Kills 2 and Injures Dozens

Abstract: TOKYO — A powerful earthquake with a magnitude of 7.0 shook northern Japan on Saturday morning, killing two people and injuring dozens, the Japanese government said. The quake, which struck at 8:43 a.m., caused buildings to collapse, roads to buckle and bullet trains to stop in the area. There were also landslides. The earthquake was concentrated in a relatively shallow area 6.2 miles underground in Iwate, a thinly populated, rural prefecture, according to Japan’s National Meteorological Agency. But the damage did not appear widespread by the standards of earthquake-prone Japan, according to aerial images of the most affected areas taken by NHK, the public broadcaster. The prefectures surrounding Iwate are also not densely populated, compared with Tokyo and western Japan. The earthquake sent tremors down to Tokyo, 190 miles south, where high-rise buildings with the most advanced antiearthquake technology swayed for a couple of minutes. Weaker aftershocks were felt after the initial tremor. A government spokesman, Nobutaka Machimura, said at a news conference that the authorities had identified two men who had died as a result of the earthquake. One man, a 55-year-old in Iwate, ran out of a building when the earthquake hit and was struck by a truck, while a 60-year-old man who had been fishing in nearby Fukushima Prefecture died in a landslide, Mr. Machimura said. The earthquake was powerful enough that some people told NHK that they had difficulty standing. The government said that power had been cut to 29,000 households in the affected area. In Oshu, a city in Iwate, windowpanes shattered at a day care center where some children and a teacher were injured.


Internet Giants Foster, and Threaten, Innovation Economy

Abstract: Jonathan Weber writes a regular column for The Bay Citizen Among the business people gathered in San Francisco last week for the annual Web 2.0 Summit, there was little doubt that the second Internet boom will be just as transformative as the first. The connected pocket computer (otherwise known as a smartphone) and the social Web have created monster new markets, as more than one speaker noted, and the money is flowing accordingly. Much of that money is flowing to the Bay Area, home to what are arguably the four most important companies of today’s consumer Internet: Google, Apple, Facebook and Twitter. Apple and Google are the second and sixth most valuable public companies by market cap in the country, respectively. The other two are commanding private-market valuations in the billions. But the business contours of the industry are still taking shape, and how they evolve over the next couple of years will go a long way toward drawing the new economic geography of Silicon Valley. Will the Internet be dominated by a handful of highly controlling giants, each operating huge technology platforms that dictate the nature and pace of innovation? Or will there be a more decentralized, chaotic environment, in which companies of all sizes rise and fall based on their ability to build great products and create relationships with consumers and business partners? Apple’s iPhone and iPad, Google’s search-and-advertising service and Android mobile operating system, and Facebook and Twitter have all emerged as towering forces commanding verdant landscapes of technical, social and business innovation. For many start-up companies, this creates a moment of great opportunity: iPhone apps, Facebook games and Twitter add-ons have already produced a lot of very successful businesses. Zynga has become one of the fastest-growing company in the history of the Internet economy by building social games on Facebook. You don’t have to walk far in San Francisco’s South of Market district to find engineers who have built highly profitable iPhone apps or are poised to cleverly tap the tens of millions of messages sent daily on Twitter. But the platforms can exert tremendous control if they choose, wiping out entire tiers of upstart companies simply by implementing a new feature. Plan to create a distinctive interface for Twitter? What happens when Twitter decides, as in the case of the Tweetie iPhone app, to buy one of your competitors and make it the “official” product? Evan Williams, the Twitter co-founder, was asked on stage last week what areas were safe for third-party developers, and he wasn’t able to give very clear guidance, noting that the company in its early days had not envisioned itself as a platform for others. Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook was a little more forthcoming — no Facebook-built social games are planned — but not much. Apple, meanwhile, has exercised iron-fisted control over iPhone and iPad apps. As many developers have ruefully discovered, the company may simply refuse to approve your app product for no particular reason. The maneuvering among these giants, and the business opportunities provided by their new platforms, have been very, very good for people with the right skills (or, as The New York Times reported this month , for San Francisco landlords with the right buildings). Google just said it would give everyone in the company a 10 percent raise ; competition for talent is getting more heated by the day. And if this second Internet boom seems less frothy than the first, that’s mainly because it’s not riding atop a strong national economy like the first boom in the late 1990s. Even so, within the industry there is already talk of boom having crossed over into bubble. Whatever you want to call it, there is a huge amount of money and energy pouring into the Internet start-up economy right now. But it’s not hard to envision a day when the platform companies, powered by the enormous amount of highly specific personal information that they collect from their customers every day, begin to mature and show less interest in innovation than in harvesting the fruits of their dominant market positions. (See Microsoft circa 1995, or I.B.M. circa 1980). That will not be a happy moment for the Bay Area’s innovation economy.

Silicon Valley (Calif)
Computers and the Internet
Economic Conditions and Trends


Anger Over Bankers' Pay Obscures More Critical Issues

Abstract: NEW YORK — When the talk turns to changing banking regulation, the American public appears to be fixated on executive pay. Following the British decision to tax bonuses in excess of £25,000, or about $40,000, bankers in the United States are wondering what action Congress may take if payouts this year stoke a burst of public fury. After all, the House of Representatives passed a bill in March that would have taxed employees of American International Group at 90 percent on any amount they earned exceeding $250,000. That died when the Senate did not take it up, but it illustrated the depth of anger against high bonuses at companies that took government bailouts. Yet the arguments over rewards this year in the financial service industry risk overshadowing far more complex regulatory issues. Changes to the U.S. financial system proposed in the House of Representatives and the Senate are far more important than whether a chief executive’s pay package comes in cash or stock. If the proposals have “started from the premise that this is an election year, we’re already taking a step in the wrong direction,” said Peter Iannone, managing director for consulting services at CBIZ MHM, an accounting company. “This is long-term fiscal policy. This is navigating something as large as the QE2 on a river,” Mr. Iannone said, referring to the Queen Elizabeth 2, the retired ocean liner. “You don’t just turn it on a dime.” At the top of the list is systemic risk and the question of how a regulator can stop an institution from growing so large that it could conceivably bring down the economy — the too-big-to-fail conundrum. Many academic experts and analysts within the industry say that any desire to resurrect the Glass-Steagall Act, which separated investment and commercial banks from 1933 to 1999, is misplaced. Glass-Steagall, they argue, would not have prevented the financial collapse. If there is to be any division, it should aim to limit the amount of leverage a financial services firm can take on, said Thomas Cooley, an economics professor and former dean of New York University’s Stern School of Business. It was the hedge funds and proprietary trading desks at these firms that created the biggest risks, he said. More important, though, would be a system to establish an orderly process for too-big-to-fail institutions to go bankrupt. “What is critical is having a good resolution mechanism for failed financial institutions,” Mr. Cooley said. “There’s a very good chance that they’ll get that right, when getting it right means you have a way of unwinding these institutions.” Yet the problem here is that the biggest financial institutions are not only regulated by different and often competing entities in the United States but also are subject to various international jurisdictions. John Coffee, a professor at Columbia University School of Law in New York, pointed to the dissolution of Lehman Brothers as a case study for the need for better solutions. “That litigation will go on for 10 years and make many lawyers very rich, but the problem won’t fully be resolved,” he said. That is because the problem is a cross-border one: How do you get New York and London to agree on the same course of action? In terms of systemic regulation, Mr. Coffee said the most likely scenario is “a college of cardinals” approach, as proposed by Senator Mark R. Warner, Democrat of Virginia. Instead of creating a new superregulator, the eventual melding of elements in the House and Senate bills could produce a committee of regulators. Yet, the risk of a committee approach, as opposed to creating a new bureaucracy, is that it could end up being reactive at best and ineffective at worst. “You’ll need a strong pope or else nothing will happen,” Mr. Coffee said. To get to this, he said that the proposed consumer protection agency was likely to be sacrificed. “Even if that gets dropped out, the Federal Reserve as the regulator bothers people,” he said, noting some of its critics assert it is too cozy with the financial institutions it regulates. The other sticking point will be how compensation is paid. The regulatory push is for bonuses to come mostly in stock, with requirements that the shares not be sold for as long as three years — perhaps accompanied by provisions to take back the pay if something that seemed profitable proves not to be. “Issues like compensation and consumer protection are more window dressing in terms of their importance,” Mr. Cooley said. “The issue that is important is derivatives trading and trying to achieve greater transparency.” The over-the-counter derivatives market, worth about $600 trillion, is relatively opaque. The problem is that since the two parties involved in, for example, a credit-default swap do not have to reveal their arrangement, there is no way of knowing how much each may be at risk of losing. This was the case with American International Group. A regulation proposed by Representative Barney Frank of Massachusetts, the Democrat who is chairman of the House Banking Committee, aimed to increase collateral requirements and institute clearing houses to monitor this risk. However, the proposal, which was struck down, would have applied only to “standardized” derivatives and it would have been simple to create customized deals that would have been exempted. “It was a loophole the size of the Arc de Triomphe,” Mr. Coffee said. Often overlooked in all of this are the credit rating agencies, which assigned investment grade ratings to derivatives that later proved to be nearly worthless; and the role of government-sponsored entities like Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac that have a mandate to buy and securitize mortgages, which put them at the center of the meltdown. This is where concern begins to crop up that new regulation could miss the point or get in the way of useful loan activity. “The regulators are currently wielding their power to keep banks on a less leveraged basis,” Mr. Iannone said. “It’s slowed liquidity. All of the bankers I know, which is a fairly large number, are noncommittal about lending.” Another concern is how regulators will look in future on the Federal Reserve. There have been calls for more auditing and transparency of the central bank, but there have also been less productive attacks on it. A Senate bill introduced at the end of last year sought to curtail the Fed’s powers. For now, it is nearly impossible to predict what Congress may actually do. A year ago, the idea that legislators would let the estate tax expire this year was unthinkable — but that is exactly what has happened. Health care, meanwhile, is taking up congressional time; and while it is certainly possible that legislators could pass sweeping changes to the health care and financial systems early in the year, there is going to be lengthy and partisan debate on both. There are staunch opponents of additional government intervention on the basis that it will only create loopholes and lead to a future crash. “Most people hear regulation and think this will be great,” said Mark Matson, chief executive of Matson Money. “The big problem with all of this is even if this worked we’re going to have Black Swan effects on whatever they do,” he said, referring to rare, unexpected events that cause major disturbances. “What’s going to end up happening is more bubbles and more crashes.” Mr. Cooley said: “If I put my hopeful hat on, I would say that a year from now we’ve put in place mechanisms so the financial system can function without large-scale federal support and intervention and it’s safer because we have mechanisms for letting financial firms fail and mechanisms to limit their systemic risk. “It’s slightly more likely that we’ll see window-dressing regulation and business as usual a year from now, but I hope I’m wrong on that.”


The Market Is Bumpy, but Liquor Is Quicker

Abstract: Just as a storm of change has been rattling the New York Stock Exchange of late, so has there been a change in the weather at the New York Wine Exchange, a well-stocked shop on Broadway near Battery Place, just a few blocks from its namesake. On a chilly evening last week, a marketing analyst named Effie Philippakos seemed to embody these fluctuations after she hurried into the store and headed straight for the spirits. “I’ve bought the wine here before,” said Ms. Philippakos, wrapped in a dress-length sweater, “but this is the first time I’ve bought the vodka.” As it turned out, she purchased the vodka for a party. But it might have been one more example of a recent trend at the store. According to Paul Couto, the owner, sales of hard liquor have risen several percentage points since Aug. 16, the day the major stock indexes plunged to more than 10 percentage points below their July peaks. Are the gods of finance smiling down on Mr. Couto even as they chuck lightning bolts at the financial companies that employ many of his customers? More than a decade’s experience selling wine has taught him otherwise. He has found that when finance workers go for the hard stuff, it’s not because they want to drown their sorrows, but because liquor is a better bargain than wine. “You open a bottle of Scotch,” he lamented, “it lasts you a week.” In 1995, when Mr. Couto decided to open a store so near Wall Street, he essentially became a player in the stock market without buying any stock. Over the next several years, as the technology bubble swelled, he reaped the dividends, and his store began to fill with ornately decorated bottles of cashew wine and other souvenirs of the vacations he had begun taking to the Indian state of Goa, his homeland. Then came Sept. 11. In the days after the attacks, Mr. Couto allowed people who had been forced out of their apartments to keep their pets in his shop temporarily. His local fame increased as a result, but business never returned to its previous levels. “I will never see those figures again,” he said. Mr. Couto said that he wouldn’t be able to fully gauge the effects of the recent financial turbulence until next month, when many of his regular customers return from vacation. But even if they don’t all switch to hard liquor, he worries that some of them may soon exit the neighborhood. “I have had a couple of brokers who told me that they’re in trouble,” he said. “If this continues, it will cost them their jobs.”

Alcoholic Beverages
Retail Stores and Trade
Stocks and Bonds


To Save Itself, Detroit Is Razing Itself

Abstract: DETROIT — For generations, residents of this hollowed-out city hoped that somehow Detroit could be reborn — its population would return and its crumbling core would be rebuilt. No idea was more heretical than widespread demolition of thousands of derelict buildings. But a new momentum has taken hold here that embraces just that: shrinking the city in order to save it. “There’s nothing you can do with a lot of the buildings now but do away with them,” said Mae Reeder, a homeowner of 35 years on the southeast side, where her bungalow is surrounded by blocks that are being reclaimed by nature, complete with pheasants nesting in vacant spaces where people once lived. The residential vacancy rate in Detroit is 27.8 percent. This is up from the 10.3 percent rate found in 2000 by the United States census. “People are deciding we can’t live like this anymore,” said Steven A. Ogden, executive director of a nonprofit group, Next Detroit Neighborhood Initiative , which works to help stabilize communities. “It is my contention that we can’t afford to wait a single day without a strategy.” Strategies are now coming from every corner, with community groups and nonprofit organization and trade groups producing frameworks. The burst of creativity is partly a function of desperation. For the sixth decade in a row, this year’s census will bring bad news: the population, already sparsely distributed over a vast 139 square miles, has declined again, to an estimated 790,000 residents, down from 951,000 people in 2000 and a high of almost 2 million in 1950. Population loss was hastened in the last few years, experts said, by the twin blows of the foreclosure crisis and jobs lost to the recession. Detroit has already struggled through 55,000 foreclosures since 2005 and is expecting another wave to hit soon as temporary moratoriums, meant to stabilize the nation’s housing markets, are lifted. That will mean even more vacancy, emptiness and blight. After decades of mostly ignoring its hemorrhaging population, the city government earlier this year began using federal money to demolish 10,000 empty residential buildings, with a goal of bringing down the first 3,000 structures by the end of the year. But only 784 demolitions have been completed so far, and Mayor Dave Bing, whose predecessors were chastised at the mere mention of large-scale demolition, has been criticized not for embracing the idea but for failing to articulate a long-term vision. “They haven’t really thought this through,” said Kurt R. Metzger, an urban affairs expert and demographer who directs an independent agency, Data Driven Detroit , which is given money by foundations to create a demographic, real estate and infrastructure database about the city. “You don’t have any real direction given by anybody.” The group released a lot-by-lot survey in February showing that, on average, 20 to 30 percent of the city’s lots were vacant. In February, Community Development Advocates of Detroit , a nonprofit trade group of local development organizations, offered a framework developed after 15 months of study that suggests classifying each part of the city into one of 11 neighborhood types like green zones, homestead sectors, village hubs and traditional residential sectors, to name a few. High-density neighborhood hubs and downtown business and civic centers would be connected by green thoroughfares — low-maintenance, naturally landscaped traveling corridors that could help Detroit handle one of its main challenges: that its strongest areas are on the fringes, with weaker patches scattered throughout the core. An urban homestead — one of the more popular parts of the plan — would be tantamount to country living in the city, the plan says, with homeowners enjoying an agricultural environment and lower taxes in exchange for disconnecting from some city services like water. Another community group, Detroit Declaration , has developed a land-use policy that proposes setting up urban farming and reducing the size of lots for building to encourage housing development known as in-fill. Yet another proposal has come from Mr. Ogden’s group, Next Detroit Neighborhood Initiative, which calls for an intensive intervention to prop up the city’s strongest areas, the city’s tax base and community anchors, which are just starting to suffer after weathering decades of storms. “It’s really about reorganizing our land to make a more livable city,” said Tom Goddeeris , an architect who lives in the vibrant northwest part of the city and is a longtime advocate of rethinking Detroit. “I don’t know that it’s ever been done before on our scale, but we’ve got to get started.” Despite the energy poured into rethinking the city by a half dozen groups, there are limits to how much those outside government can accomplish. There are both political and financial obstacles to putting any of the plans into effect. For instance, though many of the plans presented to the city for consideration aim to create density in viable neighborhoods by consolidating and relocating residents from dying or dead neighborhoods, most do not go so far as to say which areas they would choose for destruction. Those decisions, group leaders said, are for the city to make. “What we believe is that it should be data driven, in collaboration with residents,” said Anita Lane, director of programs at Community Development Advocates of Detroit. Any process for redesigning the city, she said, “needs to have all the stakeholders coming together to take ownership for this.” Her organization’s idea to designate 11 types of neighborhood does not have a price tag yet, and it is hard to gauge how much the total remodeling of a city would cost, especially on the scale of Detroit, which is already on life support from the federal government and philanthropic organizations. As a point of reference for the cost of a larger project, the city is expected to spend $20 million on demolitions alone this year. “This is by far the biggest city that has faced this challenge in this country,” said Frank Popper, a professor of planning and public policy at Rutgers University. “Some of the thinking has been that Detroit would be the model.” That hope has taken a hit. “My sense is while there may be plans on the ground, the situation is so fluid that everybody’s winging it,” Dr. Popper said. “I’m trying to follow it day to day, and I get the feeling of improvising all the way. But doing nothing is a prescription for dwindling away, if not dying.” There are skeptics of large-scale change, to be sure. The Michigan Citizen , a local alternative newspaper, has likened neighborhood change and possible resident relocation to “a modern-day ‘Trail of Tears’ for Detroiters.” Adele Nieves, a public relations specialist who moved to Detroit from New Jersey three years ago, said she suspected something akin to a land grab in the works. “It’s in the government’s interest to continue the perception that everything is abandoned and destroyed, or that Detroit needs to be flattened,” she said. “The reality is a different story,” Ms. Nieves said as she extolled the virtues of her neighborhood in the Cass Corridor, where she grows her own food in a garden and has access to an increasing number of stores and restaurants. No official strategy exists, beyond a nascent planning process. City officials said it was likely to take 18 to 24 months to develop a framework for moving forward, perhaps incorporating ideas from existing proposals. So far, members of the so-called land use summit have met once, in early May. Public-participation sessions are scheduled next month. Under the city’s demolition plan, 2,216 buildings have to be taken down by Dec. 31. What comes next is anyone’s guess. Mayor Bing declined several requests to be interviewed for this article. “We have a lot of history of things being promised, land being taken,” said Janet Jones, a bookstore owner in the Cass Corridor, who is skeptical about the new proposals. “We have to be vigilant about everything. We have to be on guard.” Many residents agree, however, that doing nothing is a recipe for continued, unplanned shrinkage and misery in the housing market. “Those dreams of going back to two million — no one believes that anymore,” said Mr. Goddeeris, the architect. “We’ve had a tumultuous couple of years.”

Detroit (Mich)
Demolition
Foreclosures
Housing and Real Estate
Layoffs and Job Reductions
Population
Census


F.B.I. Confirms a Sharp Rise in Mass Shootings Since 2000

Abstract: WASHINGTON — A report released by the F.B.I. on Wednesday confirmed what many Americans had feared but law enforcement officials had never documented: Mass shootings have risen drastically in the past half-dozen years. There were, on average, 16.4 such shootings a year from 2007 to 2013, compared with an average of 6.4 shootings annually from 2000 to 2006. In the past 13 years, 486 people have been killed in such shootings, with 366 of the deaths in the past seven years. In all, the study looked at 160 shootings since 2000. (Shootings tied to domestic violence and gangs were not included.) Many of the sprees ended before the police arrived, the report said. In 44 of the 64 cases in which the F.B.I. was able to determine the length of the shooting, the gunfire lasted less than five minutes. Twenty-three shootings ended in less than two minutes. In 64 of the 160 total cases, the gunmen committed suicide. The report was prompted by the spate of mass shootings in recent years, like those at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Connecticut and at a movie theater in Aurora, Colo. It measured “active” shootings, which the F.B.I defined as committed by “an individual actively engaged in killing or attempting to kill people in a confined and populated area.” After the Sandy Hook massacre, in which 20 children were killed, President Obama announced that administration and law enforcement officials would study how the country could stop the shootings from occurring. There was a widespread belief that the number of shootings had risen significantly, but the federal government had no uniform way of tracking them. As part of the administration’s efforts, the F.B.I., which keeps track of national crime statistics, was asked to determine whether the shootings had increased. The report was the first time that the federal government had determined the number of active shootings over a significant period of time, according to the F.B.I. Academics had previously tried to quantify active shootings by using news media reports. In the new study, the F.B.I. relied on court documents, reports from all of its 56 field offices, and news media reports. The team of agents and analysts who worked on the study said they would use the numbers as a baseline in studying other shooting trends. The report raised questions about the effect the active shootings are having on law enforcement officers who respond to the grisly scenes. It also reinforced one of the recommendations from the administration’s study: that local officers need to be better trained and equipped to stop gunmen intent on slaughter. In 21 of 45 shootings in which officers confronted the gunmen, nine officers were killed and 28 were wounded. Four officers were killed in ambushes, and in three cases, armed security guards who were not law enforcement officers were killed. In two other shootings, two unarmed security officers were killed and two were wounded. Image An angel for each of the Sandy Hook victims who died in Connecticut. Credit Michael Appleton for The New York Times Officers killed the gunmen at the scene in 21 of the cases. Nine gunmen who exchanged fire with the police committed suicide, and two surrendered. Just two of the 160 shootings involved more than one gunman, and six of the killers were women. Two of the twelve shootings that occurred at colleges or universities were by women. Roughly 45 percent of the shootings occurred in offices or stores, and about 25 percent at schools or universities. Other sites included military bases, government offices, homes, places of worship and medical facilities. In 24 of the 160 shootings, the gunmen attacked more than one location. Active shootings occurred in all but 10 states. The most deadly shooting occurred at Virginia Tech in 2007. In that shooting, 32 people were killed and 17 were wounded. The most injuries — 58 of them — resulted from the shooting at the Aurora, Colo., movie theater , where 12 people were killed. F.B.I. analysts said that many of the gunmen had studied high-profile shootings, like the one at Columbine High School in Colorado in 1999 , before going on their own killing sprees. The analysts said the gunmen had been attracted to the attention that mass killers received. They were often motivated by a sense that they had no other way to resolve the issues they faced other than violently lashing out, the analysts said.

Murders
Aurora Shooting
Sandy Hook Elementary Shooting
School shooting
FBI


A Hobbyist Challenges Papers on Growth of Dinosaurs

Abstract: A dinosaur hobbyist who made his name as a Microsoft multimillionaire published a scientific paper on Monday alleging “serious errors and irregularities” in dinosaur research involving some of the world’s top paleontologists. The research, some of it dating to the 1990s, analyzed skeletons of different ages to estimate how quickly dinosaurs grew. For example, a 2001 paper, published in the journal Nature , estimates that the giant dinosaur Apatosaurus had a growth spurt of 12,000 pounds in a year. The papers, particularly a 2004 paper in Nature on the growth of Tyrannosaurus Rex , were influential in offering an explanation for why some dinosaurs were much larger than their relatives and slashed decades off the estimated life span of the creatures. The accuser is Nathan P. Myhrvold , a former chief technology officer at Microsoft who is well known in the worlds of avant-garde cuisine and patent law. The lead author of the papers in question is Gregory M. Erickson , a professor of anatomy and paleobiology at Florida State University. Dr. Myhrvold ’s article , published by the journal PLoS One, says Dr. Erickson’s papers contain major mistakes, including graphs that do not match the data and curves that do not match the reported equations. And Dr. Myhrvold’s revised estimates put the maximum growth rate of Apatosaurus at about a tenth of what Dr. Erickson and his colleagues had reported. Dr. Erickson declined to be interviewed, but issued an email statement noting that the papers had been the work of teams of scientists and had been peer-reviewed. Dr. Myhrvold’s “reinterpretation of our data, although reaching moderately different conclusions on a species by species basis, strongly supports the cardinal conclusions that we reached regarding how dinosaurs grew,” the statement said. “The bottom line is that the empirical findings of our research group stand, and we stand behind them.” Dr. Myhrvold, a physicist, said he was not accusing Dr. Erickson or his collaborators of deliberately falsifying or manipulating data, because he could not know how the errors occurred. But in a letter to Nature, Science, PLOS One and other journals that published Dr. Erickson’s work, he raised the possibility. “At the very least these problems are serious errors that merit correction in the literature,” he wrote. “The problems also appear to be consistent with scientific misconduct, which may factor into any resulting investigation.” Last week, Dr. Myhrvold emailed the scientists who had collaborated with Dr. Erickson on the papers to alert them. “I tried very hard to reproduce the results of these papers,” he told them, “and I failed to do so.” In exhaustively describing what he thought were mistakes in the papers, Dr. Myhrvold wrote, “This includes cases where the data set appears to have been altered or fabricated.” Image Nathan P. Myhrvold, formerly of Microsoft, says he found discrepancies in papers on the growth rates of dinosaurs. Credit Kevork Djansezian/Getty Images Some of Dr. Erickson’s co-authors agree that the papers have errors that should be corrected. “I’ll be interested to see how Greg responds scientifically to Nathan’s claims,” said Kristina A. Curry Rogers , a professor of geology at Macalester College in St. Paul, who was a co-author of the 2001 paper in Nature. “If he has data to the contrary, then he can present that. If he does not, then he can explain that.” Dr. Curry Rogers said Dr. Myhrvold had provided ample information and explanation backing up his assertions. “All his methods are laid bare,” she said. “Anyone who wants to challenge him can do it.” Other co-authors of Dr. Erickson’s include Mark A. Norell , chairman of paleontology at the American Museum of Natural History; Philip J. Currie , a professor of dinosaur paleobiology at the University of Alberta; and Peter J. Makovicky , associate curator of paleontology at the Field Museum in Chicago. Dr. Myhrvold said he had raised some of the issues a year ago with Dr. Makovicky, who promptly acknowledged the errors and was amenable to correcting them. In an interview, Dr. Makovicky confirmed that “There is some kind of mismatch in our paper,” adding that another team member had done the statistical analysis. “He’s right on that point. I didn’t produce those numbers. I can’t tell you why.” He added, “I’m happy to ’fess up.” After leaving Microsoft, Dr. Myhrvold founded Intellectual Ventures , a company that buys patents from inventors . It has been praised for defending the patents, but also derided as a “patent troll” for using them to extract lucrative fees from technology companies. He also created “Modernist Cuisine,” a six-volume opus on the science of cooking , and he has published papers on a range of academic topics including climate change , terrorism and dinosaurs. In 1997, his computer models suggested that giant sauropod dinosaurs could have flicked their tails at supersonic speeds . About two and half years ago, Dr. Myhrvold came across a 2009 paper by Dr. Erickson as he was trying to answer the question, “Why were dinosaurs big?” He said data in two of the graphs, one plotting the length of the thigh bone versus age, the other mass versus age, conflicted with each other. “I instantly knew that this couldn’t be correct,” Dr. Myhrvold said. Dr. Myhrvold said he contacted Dr. Erickson, asking for the original data. While Dr. Erickson answered some questions, he said the data was on a computer he had gotten rid of and later that he did not have time to answer more questions, Dr. Myhrvold said. Dr. Myhrvold was able to obtain some of the data from other researchers and thought he could do a better statistical analysis. Last year, he submitted a paper with his calculations — a fairly esoteric scientific disagreement about how best to extract reasonable generalizations from a limited number of fossils. Dr. Erickson was one of the reviewers and argued strongly against publication. While praising Dr. Myhrvold’s accomplishments and saying the calculations appeared to be numerically correct, Dr. Erickson said the paper would not advance scientific understanding. “In fact it will hurt our field by producing inherently flawed growth curves, misrepresenting the work of others, and stands to drive a wedge between labs that are currently cordial with one another,” he wrote.

Dinosaur
PLoS One Journal
Paleontology
Nature Journal
Gregory M Erickson
Nathan Myhrvold


Marc Hauser May Have Fabricated Data at Harvard Lab

Abstract: Harvard authorities have made available information suggesting that Marc Hauser, a star researcher who was put on leave this month, may have fabricated data in a 2002 paper. “Given the published design of the experiment, my conclusion is that the control condition was fabricated,” said Gerry Altmann, the editor of the journal Cognition, in which the experiment was published. Dr. Hauser said he expected to have a statement about the Cognition paper available soon. He issued a statement last week saying he was “deeply sorry” and acknowledged having made “significant mistakes” but did not admit to any scientific misconduct. Dr. Hauser is a leading expert in comparing animal and human mental processes and recently wrote a well-received book, “Moral Minds,” in which he explored the evolutionary basis of morality. An inquiry into his Harvard lab was opened in 2007 after students felt they were being pushed to reach a particular conclusion that they thought was incorrect. Though the inquiry was completed in January this year, Harvard announced only last week that Dr. Hauser had been required to retract the Cognition article, and it supplied no details about the episode. On Friday, Dr. Altmann said Michael D. Smith, dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, had given him a summary of the part of the confidential faculty inquiry related to the 2002 experiment, a test of whether monkeys could distinguish algebraic rules. The summary included a description of a videotape recording the monkeys’ reaction to a test stimulus. Standard practice is to alternate a stimulus with a control condition, but no tests of the control condition are present on the videotape. Dr. Altmann, a psychologist at the University of York in England, said it seemed that the control experiments reported in the article were not performed. Some forms of scientific error, like poor record keeping or even mistaken results, are forgivable, but fabrication of data, if such a charge were to be proved against Dr. Hauser, is usually followed by expulsion from the scientific community. “There is a difference between breaking the rules and breaking the most sacred of all rules,” said Jonathan Haidt, a moral psychologist at the University of Virginia . The failure to have performed a reported control experiment would be “a very serious and perhaps unforgivable offense,” Dr. Haidt said. Dr. Hauser’s case is unusual, however, because of his substantial contributions to the fields of animal cognition and the basis of morality. Dr. Altmann held out the possibility of redemption. “If he were to give a full and frank account of the errors he made, then the process can start of repatriating him into the community in some form,” he said. Dr. Hauser’s fall from grace, if it occurs, could cast a shadow over several fields of research until Harvard makes clear the exact nature of the problems found in his lab. Last week, Dr. Smith, the Harvard dean, wrote in a letter to the faculty that he had found Dr. Hauser responsible for eight counts of scientific misconduct. He described these in general terms but did not specify fabrication. An oblique sentence in his letter said that the Cognition paper had been retracted because “the data produced in the published experiments did not support the published findings.” Scientists trying to assess Dr. Hauser’s oeuvre are likely to take into account another issue besides the eight counts of misconduct. In 1995, Dr. Hauser published that cotton-top tamarins, the monkey species he worked with, could recognize themselves in a mirror. The finding was challenged by the psychologist Gordon Gallup, who asked for the videotapes and has said that he could see no evidence in the monkey’s reactions for what Dr. Hauser had reported. Dr. Hauser later wrote in another paper that he could not repeat the finding. The small size of the field in which Dr. Hauser worked has contributed to the uncertainty. Only a handful of laboratories have primate colonies available for studying cognition, so few if any researchers could check Dr. Hauser’s claims. “Marc was the only person working on cotton-top tamarins so far as I know,” said Alison Gopnik, a psychologist who studies infant cognition at the University of California, Berkeley. “It’s always a problem in science when we have to depend on one person.” Many of Dr. Hauser’s experiments involved taking methods used to explore what infants are thinking and applying them to monkeys. In general, he found that the monkeys could do many of the same things as infants. If a substantial part of his work is challenged or doubted, monkeys may turn out to be less smart than recently portrayed. But his work on morality involved humans and is therefore easier for others to repeat. And much of Dr. Hauser’s morality research has checked out just fine, Dr. Haidt said. “Hauser has been particularly creative in studying moral psychology in diverse populations, including small-scale societies, patients with brain damage, psychopaths and people with rare genetic disorders that affect their judgments,” he said.

Monkeys and Apes
Science and Technology
Ethics
University of Virginia
Hauser Marc D


In Surprise Finish (All Upright), France Sweeps Men’s Ski Cross

Abstract: KRASNAYA POLYANA, Russia — Skiers do not have to jump through a ring of fire during the obstacle course that is known as the ski cross competition. But do not be too surprised if they add flames for the next Olympics. The ski cross is a mad dash over clifflike jumps, around hairpin turns, through gullies and down steep slopes. Four racers fly down the course together, jostling for position at highway speeds. At least one of them usually ends up with a face full of snow. If Wile E. Coyote and the Road Runner were winter athletes, this would surely be their race. The French swept Thursday’s competition in what felt like a surprise even to them. All of the favorites botched their runs, some more dramatically than others, allowing France to complete its first-ever sweep at the Winter Games. Image From left, Jonas Devouassoux of France, his teammate Jean-Frédéric Chapuis, Andreas Matt of Austria and Jonathan Midol of France soar during a ski cross heat on Thursday. Credit Mike Ehrmann/Getty Images Jean-Frédéric Chapuis, a relatively untested ski cross racer, won gold, followed by his teammates Arnaud Bovolenta and Jonathan Midol. Brady Leman of Canada finished fourth after falling in the final race. The three French skiers managed to finish upright, which itself seemed worthy of a medal. The course designers gave Russian names to the twists and turns, so that the day’s final tally read like a political massacre. Some fell at the Bolshoi, others at Gorky Park. Red Square defeated a few, but then there was the Kremlin, a steep, sharp turn that would make even President Vladimir V. Putin blanch. The designers saved the biggest jump for last — it was called Yours, and came right after Hot and Cool. (“Hot. Cool. Yours.” is the slogan of the Sochi Games and is plastered everywhere, from coffee cups to, well, ski cross courses.) Yours looms right in front of the grandstands, so the crowd got its first glimpse of the racers when they were soaring at airplane height. Of course, that gave the fans a front-row seat to the sport’s biggest wipeouts — a point of steady delight for Thursday’s raucous audience. The giant jump at the end made for drama and comedy in equal measure — “Yours” would be a smash hit on Broadway. (Though there were plenty of crashes on Thursday, no one was injured. Last week, a Russian skier, Maria Komissarova, crashed while training on the ski cross course and broke her spine.) The crowd’s favorite moment was the quarterfinal race that ended in a photo finish with an only-in-ski-cross twist: three of the racers slid together past the finish line on their bellies. Image Victor Oehling Norberg of Sweden, left, and Egor Korotkov of Russia crashed in the quarterfinals of the ski cross. Credit Alexander Klein/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images Jouni Pellinen of Finland was part of the scrum. He was flying off the final jump, the finish line thankfully in sight, when he saw bodies strewn at the bottom. “It was mayhem in front of me,” he said. “I was distracted. It was all happening so fast.” He joined a Russian and a Swedish skier on the ground in a jumble of skis, poles and goggles. Only Armin Niederer of Switzerland, who had been trailing for much of the race but placed first in the heat, finished upright. After the race, Pellinen cursed himself — not for falling, but for how he fell. He wished he had stuck out his arms midtumble, as Egor Korotkov of Russia had, so that at least part of him could have crossed the finish line one somersault sooner. “The Russian was the only guy who knew we would be sliding into the finish line,” Pellinen said. Image In a quarterfinal race that ended in a photo finish, three of the racers slid together past the finish line. Credit Omega/International Olympic Committee Some racers blamed all the crashes on the springlike temperatures, which they said made the course slushier than they were expecting. But most just said crashes are part of the sport. “To stay up through the whole course is the hardest thing,” said Florian Eigler, a German skier. More than anything, the race felt like a bucking bronco competition — with a really surly bronco. Hold on to your hat, cowboy. “You never have a break,” said Christopher Del Bosco of Canada, who lost before the quarterfinals. “You have to be on it the whole way down.” Some athletes got bucked earlier than others. Filip Flisar of Slovenia was down practically as soon as the race began. John Teller of the United States was unable to finish the course, as was Anton Grimus of Australia. After the race, Grimus was asked about his fall, which played over and over on the outdoor big screen. “I am all in one piece,” he said.

Freestyle skiing
2014 Winter Olympics
Jean Frederic Chapuis
France
Arnaud Bovolenta
Jonathan Midol


Karl-Anthony Towns Pursues Perfection From Atop the N.B.A. Draft Class

Abstract: METUCHEN, N.J. — Two days before his only visit with the Minnesota Timberwolves, who are expected to select him No. 1 in Thursday’s N.B.A. draft, Karl-Anthony Towns dripped sweat in a shallow corner of the 3-point arc at St. Joseph’s High School. “I need some adversity!” he shouted. “I need some adversity!” The gym was quiet, empty and cool. It was locked from the inside, restricting any visitors. Two workers silently entered to begin summer repairs, hoisting a banner onto the northern wall, using a nail gun that sporadically pierced the percussion of dribbling. Towns continued heaving long 3-pointers that whipped through the rim with startling ferocity. And consistency. He was battling two longtime buddies, former high school teammates, Raven Owen and Marques Townes, in a 3-point shooting competition. Not surprisingly, Towns was winning. He was shooting from N.B.A. range, with the heels of his size-20 sneakers positioned well out of bounds. But there was little challenging Towns, in the quiet comfort of his hometown, one week before the night that carries his future. The draft is considered loaded with the most franchise-shaping prospects in years and, as usual, lush speculation abounds about the futures for the center from Duke (Jahlil Okafor), the point guard from China (Emmanuel Mudiay), the skinny shooter from Latvia (Kristaps Porzingis) and so on. But lately a consensus has emerged about Towns, the 19-year-old 7-footer from Kentucky, who never even scheduled a visit with the Los Angeles Lakers, who hold the No. 2 pick. He has kept the news media at arm’s length — a considerable distance for someone with a 7-foot-4-inch wingspan — and his schedule relatively uncluttered. His father, Karl, said the number of requests the family had received in recent weeks had surpassed even the height of Towns’s college recruitment period. But the coupon-collecting, Frisbee-loving Towns — who once said he would live at home with his parents if the Knicks or the Philadelphia 76ers drafted him — permitted a visitor to observe one of his recent workouts. It seemed that on this drizzly morning, after landing four hours earlier on a flight from Los Angeles, he only wanted to get back inside the high school gym where he had burnished his name, with the few people he trusted and adored. “Raven, show him how it’s done,” his former coach, Dave Turco, said, chastising Towns for messing up a drill. “I gave him 20 and 15 a night,” Towns muttered. “And he’s still going to act like that.” It certainly did not surprise Turco to hear that as recently as last Thursday, when Towns’s father told him he needed to get things done before next week, Towns had responded, “What’s next week?” The months since his season ended with a loss to Wisconsin in the Final Four semifinals have been a whirlwind, Towns said, by way of excusing himself for not realizing the date of the draft. But really, this is who he is — wholly in the present, unburdened by the future, focused solely on improvement. “I haven’t had a feeling like this since about eighth grade,” Towns said. “Just worrying about becoming the best player you can be.” Image Karl-Anthony Towns, a former star at Kentucky, dribbled three balls during a practice at St. Joseph’s High School in Metuchen, N.J. Credit Bryan Anselm for The New York Times Towns knew at least one thing on his calendar: On Tuesday, he was enrolling in online summer classes at Kentucky, where he planned to continue working toward two degrees, in kinesiology and business. While Towns sits in front of a computer screen picking courses, basketball executives in Minnesota, Los Angeles, Philadelphia and New York will be analyzing footage from his season with the Wildcats, where he was the centerpiece of the juggernaut that started 38-0. Towns has worked out for only one franchise, Minnesota, so his potential might still be hard for some teams to gauge. At Kentucky, Towns spent the vast majority of his time in the lane, pressuring defenses from the low block or positioning himself for lob passes or offensive rebounds. His preferred style, though, involves stretching defenses, using a shockingly pure stroke he honed by shooting hundreds of long-range jumpers a day with his father while growing up. “I was always competitive, and I always wanted to be the best at everything,” Towns said. “I made sure when I worked out, I wanted to be the best at everything I could possibly be. I want to be the best dribbler, the best shooter, the best post-up player, best defender. If you need me one game to be a traditional big man, I can do that. If you need me to be more of a stretch 4 or 5, I can do that. Or if you need me to be in the game and be both, I can do that.” He added: “I want to give my coach as many options as possible.” At Kentucky, those options were admittedly underused. “He has more ball skills than I would let him show,” Coach John Calipari said last week in a teleconference. “I told him, ‘You’re catching that ball four feet out and scoring, or you won’t be in the game.’ I forced him. He had no choice. All of the sudden, he became an unstoppable force late in the year.” Towns has slimmed down to just 5 percent body fat, according to his father, and has worked out with athletes like Chris Paul of the Clippers and Clay Matthews, the Green Bay Packers linebacker, whom he would try to match pull-up for pull-up. Towns also took up boxing — he was charmed by the Mayweather-Pacquiao boxing match — and has tried to do yoga once a day. “I feel way more explosive,” Towns said. “I feel much faster, quicker. But I also feel sharper. My game feels sharper.” His drills last week with Townes, Owen and a trainer, Bryce Stanhope, involved almost exclusively pick-and-pops around the 3-point arc, catch-and-shoots and quick dribbling. Towns maneuvered around the perimeter as deftly as the 5-foot-10 Owen and the 6-foot-4 Townes, both guards in Division I. But when he messed up, Turco was there, reminding him that he was not perfect in high school, either, knowing that is precisely what Towns does not want to hear, precisely the sort of challenge he has been craving since April. “Every coach will tell you you’re never going to be perfect,” Towns said. “But I’m striving to be the first person to be perfect.”

Basketball
Karl-Anthony Towns
Sports Drafts and Recruits
University of Kentucky
NBA
Timberwolves


Bulger Witness Recalls Strangulation of Girlfriend’s Daughter

Abstract: BOSTON — Stephen Flemmi, in his third day of testimony in the trial of his former partner in crime, James (Whitey) Bulger, was having a bad day on the witness stand. He started off on Monday by naming the wrong brother of one of his victims as someone who was a drug addict and a government informer, prompting an expletive-laced outburst from the brother, who was seated in the courtroom; Mr. Flemmi appeared somewhat shaken and immediately apologized. He then responded to friendly questions from the prosecution with incomplete answers and had to be prodded again and again to answer more fully and to name the person he kept referring to only as “he,” who was Mr. Bulger. But that was minor compared with what happened when prosecutors finished their questioning and turned the witness over to Mr. Bulger’s defense lawyers. Less than five minutes into the cross-examination, Mr. Flemmi got tangled up in whether he had told the truth in previous testimony about his relationship with Deborah Hussey, the daughter of his longtime girlfriend, Marion Hussey. The defense lawyer, Hank Brennan, quickly portrayed Mr. Flemmi as a philanderer who sexually abused the girl when she was barely a teenager and participated in her 1985 murder when she was 26. The whole point of putting the much-compromised Mr. Flemmi on the stand was to provide jurors with an eyewitness account of how Mr. Bulger, 83, controlled the South Boston underworld in the 1970s and ’80s. In that respect, Mr. Flemmi, 79, known as the Rifleman, did not disappoint as he cast Mr. Bulger as a coldblooded killer, dispensing with anyone who interfered with his illicit activities. Mr. Bulger is on trial now on 32 criminal counts, including playing a role in 19 murders. But relying on Mr. Flemmi, who is serving the rest of his life in prison for 10 murders, may have been a risky strategy for the prosecution. He admitted to the prosecution that, among other things, he had perjured himself in previous court testimony; under gentle coaxing Monday, he even uttered a public apology to the judge in that case. In Mr. Flemmi’s telling, Mr. Bulger killed Deborah Hussey with his bare hands, just as he had killed another woman . Ms. Hussey had become a drug addict and was inappropriately flaunting Mr. Bulger’s and Mr. Flemmi’s names around town. Asked if he had a sexual relationship with her, Mr. Flemmi drew a fine distinction, saying: “Intercourse? No.” Mr. Bulger, he said, concluded that she had to be killed because she was too reckless, and Mr. Flemmi reluctantly agreed. Mr. Flemmi lured her to a house where they had committed other murders. As she walked into the kitchen, he said, Mr. Bulger “grabbed her by the throat and kept strangling her.” In an awkward moment, “he lost his balance,” Mr. Flemmi said, “and they both ended up on the floor.” But choking her to death did not take long, he added, because “she was a very fragile woman.” Once she was dead, Mr. Flemmi said he assumed his usual role, taking the corpse to the basement and removing her clothes and teeth while Mr. Bulger took a nap. Mr. Brennan began his cross-examination by establishing that Mr. Flemmi fathered various children more or less simultaneously with two different women. When it came to Marion Hussey’s daughter Debbie, he asked, did Mr. Flemmi help feed her and change her diapers? “No,” Mr. Flemmi said, “I wasn’t a very domestic person.” Mr. Brennan pressed him. Wouldn’t she sit in your lap while you read to her? “No, of course not,” Mr. Flemmi said. “I didn’t do that with my own children.” And yet in previous testimony he had said under oath that she had, Mr. Brennan noted. Was he telling the truth then or now? Mr. Flemmi became irritated. He said he had been asked questions that he considered boring and insignificant “and I went, ‘Yes, yes, yes.’ ” Mr. Brennan asked him why he wanted to “distance” himself from holding a little girl on his knee, adding, “Is it hard for you to accept the fact that you strangled someone who sat on your knee as a little girl?” Mr. Flemmi said he did not strangle her. Mr. Brennan asked him if he was a good father. He said he was a “good provider” and had protected her so that “nobody would hurt her.” “Except you,” Mr. Brennan shot back. Mr. Brennan went on, “This little girl who called you Daddy was the same girl you abused sexually a decade later?” He asked Mr. Flemmi, “What kind of abuse did you inflict on her?” Mr. Flemmi seemed wounded. “I never inflicted any abuse on her,” he said. “It was consensual.” He said her “lifestyle” had changed when she got older. Still, he said he regretted the sexual involvement with her, saying it had happened in “a moment of weakness.” The defense will continue to cross-examine Mr. Flemmi on Tuesday.

Murders
Whitey Bulger
Stephen J Flemmi
Deborah Hussey
Organized crime
Boston