New Data, New Worries and a Down Day for Markets

Abstract: Wall Street’s bulls went running for cover on Thursday after a fusillade of new reports suggested the economy’s initial bounce from the bottom could be leveling off, stirring worry that the recovery would come in fits and starts over the rest of the year. Falling automobile sales, a jump in first-time jobless claims and an unexpected decline in manufacturing activity suggested that Wall Street might have become too optimistic. And an hour before markets closed, economists at Goldman Sachs downgraded their estimates for Friday’s monthly unemployment report, feeding into the pessimism. It was Wall Street’s worst daily performance since July. Stocks had bounded higher for seven months with little pause for breath. But now, as the economy wavers, some investors are concerned that share prices are heading into a red October. The Dow Jones industrial average fell 203 points, or 2.1 percent, to 9,509.28, and the broader Standard & Poor’s 500-stock index was off 27.23 points, or 2.6 percent, at 1,029.85. The Nasdaq sank the most, tumbling 64.94 points, or 3.1 percent, to 2057.48 on losses in software production and for network companies. “It’s been great up to this point, but it can’t go up forever,” said Ryan Larson, senior equity trader at Voyageur Asset Management. “The market wants solid fundamental growth. While we may tick incrementally positive, they were looking for more.” On Thursday, investors got less. Manufacturing activity slipped in September, according to the Institute for Supply Management , even though it continued to expand, though not as rapidly as in August. Businesses said their new orders dipped from a month ago, and that production and prices fell. And in a troubling sign for the job market, the Labor Department said in a separate report that first-time claims for unemployment insurance rose 17,000 to a seasonally adjusted 551,000 last week. “We don’t think we’re going to come out of this unscathed and be back to business as usual,” said Scott Anderson, senior economist at Wells Fargo. “Consumers will continue to be suffering from the headwinds of the financial crisis . Debt levels remain too high.” The day’s reports were only the latest in a string of numbers that have fallen short of expectations. Sales of previously owned homes dipped in August after four months of gains, and orders for manufactured goods like civilian aircraft and computers also fell that month, according to reports released last week. The prospect of slower growth drove investors to safe investments like Treasuries. Yields on the 30-year bond fell below 4 percent for the first time since April, a sign of stronger demand for long-term government securities. The Treasury’s benchmark 10-year note rose 1 3/32, to 103 24/32, and the yield fell to 3.18 percent, from 3.31 percent late Wednesday. A separate report on personal spending showed that consumers would still open their wallets if offered a good enough deal. Consumer spending, which makes up 70 percent of the economy, rose sharply in August as car buyers took advantage of taxpayer-financed rebates under the government’s cash-for-clunkers program, the Commerce Department reported . While the 1.3 percent spike in spending was the largest in nearly eight years, economists said it was not the foundation for any long-term rebound in the consumer sector. The government’s $3 billion clunkers program has ended, and automakers reported sharp declines in September sales from a month earlier. With consumers worried about losing jobs and value in their homes and investments, economists said the surge in spending was probably a one-time event. Still, it was the fourth consecutive month of growth in spending. “I wouldn’t expect it to continue,” said Alan Levenson, chief economist at T. Rowe Price. In its monthly snapshot of spending and wages, the Commerce Department reported that incomes inched up 0.2 percent in August, and private wages and salaries increased slightly. The personal savings rate dipped to 3 percent from as high as 5.9 percent in May as consumers spent more of their disposable income, most likely on new cars and trucks. The decline in savings suggested that consumers were still in a precarious position — faced with slowing income growth and pay freezes, many had to choose between spending or saving. New reports showing a 6.4 percent bounce in pending home sales and a 0.8 percent increase in construction spending heartened economists hoping for a healthy recovery. They argue that a reservoir of demand built up during the recession will unleash itself as businesses rebuild their inventories, factories receive more orders and consumers make purchases put off over the last year. “The potential for significant growth rates is still there when you’ve knocked the economy down this far,” said William Cheney, chief economist at John Hancock Financial Services. “The normal historical behavior of the economy is, the harder you go down, the faster you come out.”

Consumer Behavior
Income
Personal Finances
Unemployment
United States


Bad Dunk Is Good Stuff for Advancing Trojans

Abstract: LOS ANGELES — The text messages arrived before the game was over. Then they came in bunches. The theme was constant — Arizona State had been robbed, and just what is the deal with Pacific-10 officials? Only the color of the language changed. The Sun Devils, needing a victory Thursday over Southern California in the quarterfinals of the Pac-10 tournament to solidify an at-large bid for the N.C.A.A. tournament, trailed by 2 points when James Harden missed a fast-break layup. His teammate Jeff Pendergraph, trailing the play, flew above everyone else and dunked the rebound. A whistle blew. The clock stopped at 16.9 seconds. Pendergraph, to the dismay of the Sun Devils and the surprise of most fans in Staples Center, was called for an over-the-back foul. After two free throws on the other end, U.S.C. had a 59-55 victory. Arizona State had a costly loss. And the Pac-10 had the latest in a series of controversial endings that have diverted attention from the strength of the teams to the weakness of the officiating. “I’m getting a number of text messages from friends around the country already,” Arizona State Coach Herb Sendek said a few minutes after the game. He realized that they hardly represented an unbiased view. “Most of my enemies don’t text me.” The result might have given local fans what they wanted — a U.C.L.A.-U.S.C. semifinal game Friday night. But in the broader view, it may have cost the conference one of its bids to the N.C.A.A. tournament. The Pac-10 hopes that seven teams receive bids. That would entail a pair of borderline teams that finished .500 in conference play, Arizona State and Oregon, being invited. Officiating has been a raw nerve for the Pac-10. Last week, U.C.L.A. clinched the regular-season title after Stanford was called for a questionable foul with 2.5 seconds left, leading to free throws that sent the game to overtime — and, ultimately, a Bruins title. Two days later, U.C.L.A. beat California with a shot from behind the backboard, a violation of rules, with 1.5 seconds left. Pac-10 executives had no comment on the officiating. A spokesman said that Thursday’s call, like the others, was simply a subjective one. Sendek took the high road, both with the call and his team’s prospects for reaching the tournament for only the second time in the last 13 seasons. He calmly said that the tournament committee had a difficult task, and laughed when someone suggested that the Sun Devils (19-12) may get a sympathetic nudge as replays of the crucial call are shown. “I think our team, in fairness, has had a very good run, and I think we’ll get consideration,” Sendek said. “Hopefully, the excellence of the Pac-10 Conference will be recognized and rewarded, because I think anybody who comes to the games night in and night out, and watches the quality of the play, has to say, ‘Wow.’ ” A more impassioned plea came from U.S.C. Coach Tim Floyd, who needed no prompting to campaign for Arizona State. “This team right here should be in the N.C.A.A. tournament, that we just beat,” Floyd said. The game’s ending overshadowed the recent surge of the Trojans, whose only loss in the last seven games came at Arizona State on March 1. The Trojans, starting three freshman and two sophomores, have matured from a borderline tournament team to a potentially dangerous one. O. J. Mayo led the Trojans on Thursday with a game-high 23 points. Forward Taj Gibson added 11 points and 9 rebounds. Daniel Hackett’s tight defense helped hold Arizona State’s all-conference freshman, James Harden, to 16 points and no rebounds. He has averaged 17.7 points and 5.1 rebounds. But Harden had the game in his hands as he charged downcourt with about 20 seconds left. His layup bounced a couple of times on the rim, then was abruptly flushed through the net by Pendergraph. Amid the cheers and the ooohs, a whistle blew. Pendergraph had a look of “not me.” His teammates and his coaches wore exasperated expressions that said “not now.” Conference officials surely felt a sense of “not again.” “I thought it was clean,” Pendergraph said. “It’s not like I pushed anybody out of the way and then jumped. Everybody jumped. I just jumped higher.” U.C.L.A. 88, CALIFORNIA 66 No. 3 U.C.L.A. (29-3) buried California under a flurry of 3-pointers to start the second half on its way to a victory. Darren Collison scored 19 points and Josh Shipp 18. The freshman Kevin Love had 9 of his 11 points in the second half after early foul trouble. (AP) WASHINGTON ST. 75, OREGON 70 Derrick Low scored 18 points, and No. 21 Washington State blew most of a 20-point lead before beating Oregon. Taylor Rochestie scored 16 points, Kyle Weaver had 14 points and 7 assists, and Robbie Cowgill added 12 points and 6 rebounds for the third-seeded Cougars (24-7), who won for the seventh time in nine games after a three-game losing streak. (AP)

Basketball
College Athletics
NCAA Basketball Tournament


Mozambique: 50 Somalis Killed When Ship Sinks

Abstract: The police in Mozambique say 50 illegal Somali migrants and a Tanzanian captain died after their ship sank off the coast. Pedro Cossa, a spokesman for the police, said Wednesday that the boat was full of illegal migrants and traveling to South Africa when it sank on Sunday. Mozambique said it sent 89 Somali and Ethiopian survivors to a refugee camp.

Mozambique
Accidents and Safety
Immigration and Emigration
Somalia


China Praises Pakistan’s Fight Against Terrorism

Abstract: ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — Prime Minister Wen Jiabao of China praised Pakistan ’s efforts to combat terrorism and promised to further advance the two countries’ strategic partnership and economic cooperation in a speech to the Parliament on Sunday. Mr. Wen’s remarks came a day after China and Pakistan signed $15 billion worth of trade deals, bringing the total value of the agreements signed during his three-day trip to $30 billion over the next five years. The Pakistani government said the two countries had agreed to widen the Chinese-built Karakoram Highway to facilitate trade, and China said it would give more support in the energy sector. In a joint communiqué, the two countries pledged to cooperate further on security and military issues, energy, transportation, space technology, banking, infrastructure development, heavy machinery manufacturing, cultural exchange and finance. Addressing the Pakistan-China Business Summit in Islamabad on Saturday, Mr. Wen noted that the two countries had trade worth just $1 billion in 2002, but $6.8 billion in 2009. He expressed the desire to expand trade between the two countries, which signed a free-trade agreement in 2006, to $10 billion as soon as possible. Mr. Wen praised Pakistan’s sacrifices in combating terrorism and extremism, words that were in stark contrast to warnings from Washington that Pakistan needed to act more aggressively against insurgents. “Pakistan has paid a heavy price in combating terrorism,” Mr. Wen said. “The fight against terrorism should not be linked with any religion or ethnic group, and there should be no double standards,” he said as lawmakers burst into applause. “The international community should affirm that and give great support, as well as respect the path of development chosen by Pakistan,” he added. The Chinese prime minister made no mention of India, the estranged neighbor of Pakistan. Pakistan sees China as a counterweight to India in the region, and China’s close ties with Pakistan have become a source of growing discontent in New Delhi. Mr. Wen said the strategic partnership between China and Pakistan was “in conformity with the national interests of the peoples of the two countries. It would help promote peace, stability and prosperity of the region.”

China
Pakistan
Defense and Military Forces
Politics and Government
Terrorism


Michel Platini Ends Bid for FIFA Presidency

Abstract: Michel Platini said Thursday that he was ending his bid to become FIFA president, dropping out of a race that technically did not include him and one that he is officially barred from winning. In a series of interviews , Mr. Platini said he would continue his fight to overturn his eight-year suspension from world soccer, imposed last month by FIFA’s ethics committee. But he said pursuing that cause and the presidency before the Feb. 27 FIFA election was unworkable. “I don’t have the means to fight on equal terms with the other candidates,” Mr. Platini told The Associated Press . “I have not been given the chance to play the game.” Mr. Platini, a member of FIFA’s governing executive committee since 2002 and the top official of European soccer since 2007, has harshly criticized his ban, which was imposed in December after the ethics committee deemed his actions in soliciting and accepting a $2 million payment from FIFA in 2011 “did not show commitment to an ethical attitude.” Suggesting a conspiracy to keep him out of the race to replace the similarly suspended Sepp Blatter as FIFA president, Mr. Platini has vowed to appeal the ban to the Court of Arbitration for Sport. “I can’t have any regret in that story because things fell upon my head while I haven’t done anything wrong,” Mr. Platini told The A.P. in an interview in Nyon, Switzerland. “I’m struggling to understand what happened, unless there was a will somewhere to prevent me from bidding.” Once a favorite to win the election, Mr. Platini is barred not only from voting in it but even from attending it. And even if he succeeds in having his suspension overturned, it is unclear if Mr. Platini can pass the new integrity checks required by FIFA to enter the race. On Thursday, he acknowledged that even if he was successful, he would not have enough time to campaign for the support he would need to win. Mr. Platini’s announcement and CAS’s recent rejection of appeals by two other disqualified candidates mean the field of approved challengers bidding to replace Mr. Blatter remains at five . They are: Prince Ali bin al-Hussein of Jordan, who lost a challenge to Mr. Blatter at the FIFA congress last May; Sheikh Salman bin Ebrahim al-Khalifa of Bahrain, the powerful Asian Football Confederation president; the South African businessman Tokyo Sexwale; Jérôme Champagne, a former aide to Mr. Blatter; and the longtime European soccer official Gianni Infantino.

Michel Platini
FIFA
Soccer
Ethics Misconduct Malfeasance


At Year's End, a Final Tennis Showdown for Top Men

Abstract: The four leading men in tennis already have divided up the best of the 2012 loot, but one significant individual prize remains. The Barclays ATP World Tour Finals, which begin Monday in London, are behind only the four Grand Slam tournaments when it comes to clout. A player receives 2,000 ranking points for winning the Australian Open, Roland Garros, Wimbledon or the U.S. Open . An undefeated champion — round-robin phase included — can garner 1,500 points for winning the year-end Tour Finals. The pity for those who like their men’s tennis served with suspense is that not much is left to resolve mathematically now that Novak Djokovic has assured himself of finishing No.1 for the second consecutive year. But at the end of a terrific season, when Andy Murray’s shift into a higher gear transformed the Big Three into a true Big Four, there remains the matter of which man truly deserves to be considered the player of the year. Rafael Nadal , despite winning a record seventh French Open and beating Djokovic in three of their four matches this season, is out of the equation and out of this tournament because of his lingering knee problems. He has not competed since he was shocked in the second round of Wimbledon in June by No.88 Lukas Rosol. That leaves Djokovic, Murray and Roger Federer in the debate, which could be a lively one, or more likely a nasty one, considering how tribal tennis fans have become in this era. Although Londoners have been privy to a surfeit of world-class sports in this Olympic year, they do not appear to have had their fill. Tickets and sponsorship packages have been selling briskly for the tournament at the O2 Arena, back to its customary moniker after being dubbed North Greenwich Arena during the London Games. “A year ago, I was actually a little bit concerned about the event and concerned that the Olympics being in the U.K. would suck out all the air in terms of interest and public support,” said Brad Drewett, the tournament’s former director, who is now executive chairman and president of the ATP. “My concern was, ‘Would Londoners be over sports?’ And I’ve been totally wrong. Ticket sales are actually up from last year, and we’re tracking towards a record year. We remain sold out from a sponsor point of view.” The rise in Murray’s stock after his compelling summer of disappointment and triumph is one of the driving forces in the sustained interest. A year ago, when the year-end event was staged in London, he was still a supporting actor in this epic tennis era. Now, he is both an Olympic and a Grand Slam singles champion after winning the gold medal at the All England Club in August and the U.S. Open in September. He is also now widely viewed in Britain as a less crusty and more sympathetic figure after his frank and emotional speech following the Wimbledon final, which he lost to Federer a few weeks before the Olympics. “Sure, Andy winning the gold and the U.S. Open certainly helps the event,” Drewett said. “It creates a whole new buzz around him and hence any event he plays, especially in the U.K. So we got a little lucky there, but I also think the event is in its fourth year in London now and it’s becoming part of the fabric.” The stitches may soon grow tighter. Despite interest in Brazil and in Asia to stage the event, the ATP is expected to extend London’s contract as host city for at least two more years, adding 2014 and 2015 to a deal that had been set to finish in 2013. If it happens, London would be the longest-running site of the year-end championships and its elite, eight-man field since Frankfurt staged six in a row from 1990 to 1995, with the German star Boris Becker as its primary meal ticket. Drewett declined to confirm the extension with London, but he did address its potential upside. “The level of interest of people who would like to have this event has never been like it is now,” he said. “However, London is obviously one of the most sophisticated and important markets in the world, and we are a major event in that major market. There are lots of good arguments why we should stay here. If you’re a sporting event in a city like London, you’ve got to be good. If not, they’ll wave you goodbye.” It also makes geographic sense to stay in London if the ATP sticks with its current tightly packed year-end schedule, in which a short European indoor season precedes the World Tour Finals. This year and next, the finals come immediately after the Masters 1000 tournament in Paris. That was arranged with the support of the top players and eliminated the one-week gap between the events in order to create a longer, six-week off-season. That sounded reasonable at the time. Paris and London are within easy commuting range, and there are plenty of big tournaments in consecutive weeks on the ATP Tour, including back-to-back Masters 1000 events in Madrid and Rome and, later in the year, in Canada and Cincinnati. But the move has thus far resulted in dilution of the Paris field, with Federer, the reigning champion, withdrawing to let a sore leg heal in time to pursue his seventh year-end championship. Djokovic, Murray, Tomas Berdych, David Ferrer and other Tour Finals qualifiers were playing in Paris, however. “I’m sure that all the participants in the World Tour Finals in London will agree that this is definitely not something that goes in the favor of us preparing for the most important event in the end of the year,” Djokovic said. “Unfortunately, there is no other option at the moment. But we will discuss this matter after we finish this season. Maybe we can try to find some other way.” Still, Djokovic looks a good deal fresher than he did at the end of his magnificent 2011 season, in which he compiled a 70-6 record and won 10 tournaments, including three of the four Grand Slam titles. That, as Djokovic feared, was too good to replicate. He won just one Grand Slam title this year, the Australian Open, while Federer and, above all, Murray generated more compelling story lines as the season evolved. Federer ended a drought of more than two years at the Grand Slam events and made it back to No.1 at age 30, breaking Pete Sampras’s record of 286 weeks atop the rankings. Murray became the first British man since 1936 to win a Grand Slam singles title and, in light of the Olympics’ prestige, was the only man to win two major titles this year. But Djokovic was still the most consistent achiever in the tournaments that mattered most. He reached two other Slam finals, at the French and U.S. Opens, reached the semifinals at Wimbledon and, until Paris, had won three of his six finals in Masters 1000 tournaments this season. He was also in the thick of many of the year’s seminal matches: the five-set, nearly six-hour victory over Nadal in the Australian Open final in January; the two-day, five-set loss to Nadal in the French Open final in June; the grinding five-set loss to Murray in the U.S. Open final; and the comeback victory over Murray in the Shanghai final last month, in which he saved five match points. It was that kind of sweet-and-sour season for the top men, reflected in the fact that, for now, Djokovic, Federer and Murray all have even head-to-head records against each other this year. London should break some of those ties, and the title certainly won’t hurt any of their claims to being the man of the tennis year.

Djokovic Novak
Federer Roger
Nadal Rafael
Tennis
Murray Andy (1987- )


Viacom Board Said to End Salary for Sumner Redstone

Abstract: The ailing media mogul Sumner M. Redstone will no longer draw a salary from Viacom, one of the big media companies he controls, two people briefed on the development said Wednesday. The move follows a drawn-out legal battle in California that highlighted Mr. Redstone’s failing health while challenging his mental capacity. The case was dismissed last week, but the details that emerged prompted Viacom’s board to evaluate his compensation and status. Eliminating his pay is a gesture toward acknowledging that he is no longer involved in operations and deserving pay as a company executive. Mr. Redstone, 92, remains chairman emeritus and controlling shareholder of Viacom and CBS, a $40 billion media empire. He controls about 80 percent of the voting shares in the companies through National Amusements, the private theater chain company started by his father. Control of the two companies will be passed to a trust only after he dies or is declared not competent. Filed in November by a former companion and romantic partner, the lawsuit included embarrassing and salacious claims about Mr. Redstone, who has had minor strokes and has a speech impediment. Those included details about his sexual appetite, incontinence and demands to eat steak while on a feeding tube. Those details prompted investors to raise questions about Mr. Redstone’s pay, his role at his companies and other corporate governance issues. In February, he stepped down as chairman at both companies. In dismissing the case after only one day, the judge relied heavily on videotaped testimony from Mr. Redstone, saying the media mogul had convincingly asserted that he did not want the former companion, Manuela Herzer, to supervise his health care, as she was seeking. “I think he said what he wanted to say,” the judge said. But the same testimony, a transcript of which was released to news organizations, also included halting answers, profanity, forgetfulness and nonresponsiveness — putting renewed focus on the media mogul’s mental capacity. There was also an evaluation by a geriatric psychiatrist. The judge, in his evaluation of the testimony, said, “It is also not in dispute that Redstone suffers from either mild or moderate dementia.” Mr. Redstone’s total compensation was $2 million in the 2015 fiscal year, down from $13 million in 2014. Viacom’s board met on Wednesday. It is not clear whether the board of CBS was making the same considerations. CBS declined to comment. The Viacom development was first reported by The Wall Street Journal.

Viacom
Sumner M Redstone
CBS
Executive Compensation
Appointments and Executive Changes


Financial Crisis Puts Europe Back in the Slow Lane

Abstract: PARIS — Two years ago, Europe was growing more rapidly than the United States, and the Old Continent finally seemed prepared to tackle longstanding economic challenges like rigid labor markets, runaway government spending and a rapidly aging population. But as Asia and the United States emerge from the global economic crisis, Europe appears likely to be the world’s laggard, threatening a return to the dark days of “Eurosclerosis.” Leaders who once spoke optimistically of fundamental changes aimed at enhancing productivity have turned to the more prosaic tasks of protecting jobs and avoiding painful political choices. “It’s worse than being back to Square 1,” said Gilles Moëc, a senior economist in London for Deutsche Bank. And just when it is needed most, the political will to address Europe’s bigger economic problems seems absent, according to many experts across the region and around the world. When he was elected president of France in 2007, Nicolas Sarkozy spoke of the need for a “rupture,” including the loosening of a highly regulated labor market to better compete in the global economy. But now, “President Sarkozy has gone, if not 180 degrees, then at least 90 degrees in the opposite direction,” said Charles Wyplosz, director of the International Center for Monetary and Banking Studies in Geneva. “The things he talked about then still need to be done if we want to have growth, but the crisis has slowed some of the impetus for change.” In Germany, Angela Merkel, who was elected last month to a second term as chancellor, has also avoided taking on the country’s powerful unions and its regional banks. She has embraced the “social market economy” and has insisted there is no alternative to relying on exports rather than consumers to drive growth. In addition, her government has come under withering attack from elsewhere in Europe for providing billions of euros in aid to keep the automaker Opel at the possible expense of workers in Belgium, Britain and Spain. With Europe plagued by huge manufacturing overcapacity, other automakers are likely to suffer further losses. After surging this year on cash-for-clunkers incentives in many countries, car sales in Western Europe are expected to drop 5 to 6 percent next year, according to Credit Suisse. In Germany, where the automobile industry is as much a symbol as beer at Oktoberfest, Credit Suisse projects that sales to individual buyers will fall 21 percent, in contrast with an expected 18 percent increase in the United States. It is not just the auto sector that is threatened: analysts also contend that recent stress tests applied to the Continent’s banks were not as effective as those used in the United States. Despite losses on both American subprime debt and local loans in boom-to-bust economies in Spain, Ireland and the Baltics, “the banking system has not really been restructured,” said Nicolas Véron, a research fellow at Bruegel, a policy center in Brussels. As a result, Europe runs the risk of repeating Japan’s “lost decade” in the 1990s, when huge losses clogged bank balance sheets and inhibited new lending. The slowdown is an abrupt reversal from the period leading up to the crisis. Ireland’s economy grew 5 percent a year from 1999 to 2007 and became known as the Celtic Tiger, while unemployment fell during sustained growth in Europe’s biggest economies, Germany and France. Underscoring the new pessimism, new statistics released Wednesday showed a 0.2 percent contraction in the euro zone in the second quarter, worse than forecast. “The Europeans are losing out,” said Simon Johnson, a professor at the Sloan School of Management at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. “The Europeans are the biggest losers of the economic crisis, even though the home of subprime madness was the U.S.” To be sure, the American economy is not out of the woods yet, either, with unemployment still on the rise, homeowners still burdened by mortgage debts and Washington offering few details about how it will cure its own huge government deficits. But the euro’s recent surge against the dollar mostly reflects higher interest rates on the Continent rather than optimism about Europe’s prospects, and the stronger currency actually makes European exports less competitive globally. Already, the euro zone’s share of world trade has slipped to 28 percent in 2008 from 31 percent in 2004, according to the World Trade Organization. Economies in Spain, Ireland and Greece are all expected to keep shrinking in 2010, while the region’s economic powerhouse, Germany, ekes out a 0.3 percent gain, according to a bleak new outlook from the International Monetary Fund. And there are signs that Europe’s anemic economic performance will translate into less political power. European countries had an outsize voice in the Group of 7, the world’s principal economic forum since the mid-1970s. But late last month, world leaders said that elite club would soon be eclipsed by the Group of 20, a much more global assembly that includes emerging economic giants like Brazil, China and India. Though symbolic, the shift from the G-7 to the G-20 crystallized fears that the world economy would actually be steered by what C. Fred Bergsten, director of the Peterson Institute for International Economics, calls the G-2 — the United States and China. “Ideally, it would be the G-3, but Europe doesn’t speak with a single voice and they can’t coordinate and function the same way the U.S. and China can,” Mr. Bergsten said. What is more, the economic crisis has also paralyzed European efforts to come to grips with longer-term factors inhibiting growth, like an aging work force and slowing population growth in many countries. Over the next 25 years, Western Europe’s population is expected to increase just 0.7 percent, to 189.8 million, from its current 188.5 million, compared with a 20 percent increase in the United States over the same period, according to the United Nations. At the same time, the overall population is getting older across the region, from the Russian border to the Atlantic. The best way to compensate for an aging population — and therefore fewer workers — is higher productivity. But that indicator, too, has been moving in the wrong direction. After rising smartly in the 1970s and 1980s, productivity in the last decade and a half has inched up 0.9 percent annually in Europe, compared to 1.7 percent in the United States, Mr. Moëc said. “Productivity growth in the U.S. has not been spectacular lately, but it’s been much better than Europe, and the U.S. doesn’t have this massive demographic problem,” he said. “Until now, we thought of the demographic issue as theoretical, but it’s starting to bite.” Over the long term, that is likely to require workers to rethink the generous social benefits, long vacations and early retirement plans they once took for granted. Louise Richardson, 65, had planned to retire now as chief executive of the Older Women’s Network, a charity based in Dublin. She will now have to delay that at least two years because of the toll the financial crisis has taken on her retirement savings. “I can’t retire. I can’t afford to,” said Ms. Richardson, a widow whose savings have dropped to 80,000 euros, or $118,000, from 240,000 euros over the last decade. “My pension’s been completely knocked off its trolley. The money was just swallowed up.”

Subprime Mortgage Crisis
Europe
International Trade and World Market
Economic Conditions and Trends
Labor and Jobs
Population
Productivity
Banks and Banking
France
Germany


Moex to Pay $1.1 Billion to BP for Gulf Spill

Abstract: LONDON — BP said Friday that Moex Offshore, one of its partners in the oil well that leaked into the Gulf of Mexico last year, had agreed to pay $1.1 billion as part of a settlement for any claims related to the oil spill. Moex, which had a 10 percent stake in the well, is the first company aside from BP to make a payment to cover the costs of the disastrous oil spill, BP said in a statement. The agreed payment is about half of a total $2.1 billion BP had sought from Moex in monthly invoices for reimbursement of costs, including interest, according to Mitsui of Japan, which owns Moex. The settlement covers all claims related to the well accident and would immediately go to the $20 billion trust fund that was set up to compensate fishermen and other local residents and businesses that were affected by the oil spill, BP said. “Moex is the first company to join BP in helping to meet our shared responsibilities in the gulf,” the BP chief executive, Robert W. Dudley, said. “This settlement is an important step forward for BP and the gulf communities.” BP set aside $40 billion to cover costs and liabilities linked to the oil spill, the worst ever in the United States. BP, based in London, has already raised $25 billion by selling assets and has been seeking to sell more oil and gas fields in Britain and two refineries in the United States. So far, BP has paid almost $6 billion in claims. Mr. Dudley called “on the other parties involved in the Macondo well to follow the lead.” The explosion of the Deepwater Horizon rig on April 20, 2010, killed 11 workers and resulted in a spill that poured nearly five million barrels of oil into the Gulf of Mexico. Since the accident, the companies involved in the well — BP; Transocean, which operated the rig; and Halliburton, which was responsible for cement work — have engaged in recriminations and lawsuits, with each accusing the others of negligence. BP has filed claims worth tens of billions of dollars against Transocean and other companies. BP said it was in talks with other parties to “contribute appropriately.” Anadarko Petroleum, which owns one-quarter of the Macondo well, has long insisted that it had no responsibility to help pay for the accident’s costs, but the company indicated recently that it was open to a settlement under the right circumstances. Despite such conciliatory talk, BP said Friday, “Anadarko continues to avoid its responsibilities, refusing to pay for any damages, clean-up or restoration.” Moex agreed to the settlement to “reduce the risk and uncertainty for its shareholders,” Mitsui said in a statement. “Doing so will also make it possible for Mitsui to focus on the future growth of its business.” Moex is a subsidiary of Mitsui, a Tokyo-based commodity trading and financing company. The settlement is not an admission of liability by Moex or BP, BP said. BP also agreed to indemnify Moex for claims for compensation arising from the accident, excluding civil, criminal or administrative fines and penalties. Like BP, Moex also recognized the findings by a presidential commission in its investigation into the causes of the oil spill. The commission found that the accident was the result of mistakes by a number of parties and different causes. Moex also acknowledged a study by the United States Coast Guard released in April, which concluded that poor maintenance, inadequate training and a lax safety culture at Transocean contributed to the lethal explosion. Transocean rejected the report’s findings. BP’s American shares rose 2.5 percent Friday to close at $45. Anadarko shares rose more than 4 percent on speculation the company would soon reach a settlement with BP.

BP Plc
Fines (Penalties)
Gulf of Mexico
Accidents and Safety
Offshore Drilling and Exploration


Cornell Coach Is Fired After Hazing Incident

Abstract: Cornell fired its men’s lacrosse coach, Ben DeLuca, two months after the fall season was canceled because of hazing. An assistant, Matt Kerwick, will serve as the interim coach. An investigation determined that upperclassmen had hazed freshman players. The freshmen were made to drink beer, and some vomited. In three seasons under DeLuca, the team was 37-11.

Hazing
Cornell
Coaches
Lacrosse
Ben DeLuca
College
Matt Kerwick


The Directors' Cut

Abstract: AS the Securities and Exchange Commission proposed new rules this week governing how companies should disclose executive pay, the news media offered accounts of outlandish compensation packages and the various ways companies have obfuscated them in recent years. Given that corporate boards are ultimately responsible for all this, it may come as a surprise that director compensation, while growing appreciably, lags significantly behind that of executives. The Corporate Library, a research firm that monitors corporate-governance issues, surveyed proxy filings of the 2,000 largest public companies for fiscal 2005 (thecorporatelibrary.com). It found that the median compensation for an individual director rose 16.5 percent. A year earlier, the firm reported that compensation for chief executives had risen about 30 percent. The disparity surprised Paul Hodgson, a senior research associate of Board Analyst, an arm of the Corporate Library. It "shows a degree of restraint that might be thought unusual given the controversy that rages about some of their decisions regarding the pay of their executive counterparts," he said on boardanalyst.com. Still, a 16.5 percent raise is nothing to scoff at. Neither is the nearly 20 percent growth -- to $801,500 -- in median total board compensation that the Corporate Library reports. Mr. Hodgson told The Los Angeles Times that much of the increase reflected the amount of time directors were spending in meetings to ensure compliance with new regulations and laws, like the Sarbanes-Oxley Act. There may be one more reason for the increase: what the Corporate Library calls the Google Effect. The search company is offering stock and options worth millions, while Microsoft, for example, pays directors $175,000 a year. Ann Mather, a former executive at Pixar, received $2.36 million when she joined Google's board last year, the Corporate Library says. Another Google director, Paul S. Otellini, the chief executive of Intel, has options worth more than $24 million. IN-FLIGHT READING -- Salon.com tends to bury the work of the airline pilot and writer Patrick Smith under a pile of political diatribes and pop-culture effluvia (as well as a heap of well-reported articles). That's too bad, because more people should see his weekly "Ask the Pilot" column, in which he shares his expertise on the airline industry -- everything from cockpit design to collective bargaining -- with mild snark and delightfully gratuitous references to 80's alt-rock. "My mission," he wrote in November, "has always been to make airplanes, airports and the airlines fascinating in ways that people do not expect -- to uncover the strange beauty of what, to the layperson, appears to be a purely mundane and prosaic industry." His specialty is poking holes in conventional wisdom. For instance, despite cable news coverage in September of the emergency landing of a JetBlue flight at Los Angeles International Airport and overheated coverage of other relatively minor recent aircraft incidents, "as a percentage of total flights, large-scale tragedies are scarcer than ever," Mr. Smith wrote last week. "Of the minor variety, no more are occurring than ought to be expected in an age when two billion people fly globally each year." MINISTRY OF FREEDOM -- Participants in this year's Davos World Economic Forum (weforum.org), which starts next week, are invited to blog about their experiences, using the forum's site. "We want a Weblog that adds value and transparency to the discussions on global issues that affect us all," the site (forumblog.org) says. It also says that opinions will not be censored. Nonetheless, "bloggers' posts need to be manually published by one of our editors." Further, "posts that do not abide by these guidelines will not be published, particularly those that do not conform to the on/off the record policy." "And please do not quote people without their permission -- particularly if they are under the impression that their remarks are private or off the record." Oh, and, "vulgarity, profanity and discriminatory remarks are not allowed and we will delete offending posts." DAN MITCHELL WHAT'S ONLINE E-mail: whatsonline@nytimes.com.


Scores Fall, but Weir Holds His Ground

Abstract: KAPALUA, Hawaii — The rain stopped, the winds calmed and the golfers in the $5.5 million Mercedes-Benz Championship reacted accordingly. Permitted to lift, clean and place their golf balls for the first time all week, they unleashed a full-on assault on the defenseless Plantation Course at Kapalua on Saturday, lowering the field stroke average by one full shot and raising the bar for anyone who hopes to claim the $1.1 million first-place check Sunday. The leader remained Mike Weir , the Canadian left-hander who had gone almost four years between victories at the 2004 Los Angeles Open and last year’s Frys.com Open. He retained his overnight lead by one stroke over Nick Watney with a nearly flawless round of five-under-par 68, recording five birdies to finish at 206, 13 under par on the par-73 course. Watney shot a 67. Tied for third at 11 under were Daniel Chopra, who also shot a 67, and Jonathan Byrd, who shot a 69. Two golfers who were six strokes behind after two rounds, Jim Furyk and Vijay Singh, moved into contention with exceptional rounds. Furyk shot a 66, jumping 11 spots into a tie for sixth at nine-under-par 210. Singh, the defending champion, moved into a tie for 10th with his round of 67. On a spectacular day for scoring, with the sun glistening off the Pacific Ocean and sparkling off Honolua Bay below the cliffs of Maui, Weir was virtually airtight. “I think the key was really just my consistency,” said Weir, the 2003 Masters champion. “I don’t think I missed a fairway today. I missed No. 1 just driving it through there a little bit, but I don’t think I missed a fairway, and that was probably the strength of my game today.” Setting up what promises to be a shootout in the final round, 11 golfers worked their way to within five shots of Weir, who hit 17 greens and took 31 putts. Among the challengers who will try to put the heat on Weir is the 33-year-old Chopra. The Swedish-born and India-reared Chopra, who tied Weir for the lead at No. 15 before recording his only bogey of the day at No. 16, was pleased with his position. “It’s always good to be in contention, you know,” he said. “It’s always fun. I had a streak there a year or so ago, two years ago, where I seemed to be in contention a lot and never really seemed to finish the job off. Now I’m starting to get closer and closer and I’m contending a lot more late on Sundays.” It should come as no surprise to see Chopra in the picture. Before joining the PGA Tour in 2004, he had nine international wins, mostly in Asia. His recent résumé shows three top-3 finishes in his last four events, including his first PGA Tour win at the Ginn sur Mer Classic last month. Thus far he has shown the ability to cope with the tricky winds on Maui’s northwest shore, which alternately howl and halt, testing a golfer’s ability to work the ball and control its trajectory. The roots of his creativity can be traced to his unusual upbringing. He spent his first six years in Sweden, moved to England for a short time and then to India, where he was raised by his grandparents. Depending on the situation, he thinks in Swedish, English or Indian. He explained the difference. “Swedes are very intense, very methodical, very theoretical and analytical,” he said Friday. “The Indians are a lot more laid-back, more touchy-feely, I guess louder, like to have fun.” Chopra said he has a combination of these traits, now tempered by an Americanization of his golf game courtesy of a veteran caddie, Mitch Knox. “He’s great, I mean, he’s fantastic,” Chopra said. “He has lots of experience. He knows what wind does. It’s a comfortable feeling to know the fact that I know the numbers he’s going to give me are going to be accurate, and he’s never going to really make a mental mistake.” Regardless of what the conditions are on Sunday, Chopra has developed a trust in his game and himself, something he has not always had. “Yeah, I was very comfortable today,” he said. “Actually, funnily enough, I noticed it as I was warming up on the driving range, and I was thinking, ‘Wow, you’re only a few shots off the lead and well inside the Top 10.’ “As the year has gone by I’ve been a little bit edgy in the mornings and on the weekends, and today I felt very comfortable, like I belonged, all of a sudden.”

Mercedes-Benz Championship
Golf
Weir Mike
PGA Tour Inc
Kapalua (Hawaii)


Police Department to Start Routinely Testing Officers for Steroid Use

Abstract: For many New York City police officers, a trip to the gym or the station house weight room is as much a part of the day as roll call or making notes in a memo book. Officers pump iron in New York, as they do around the nation. And sometimes, they pump more than that. Prompted by an investigation into a Brooklyn pharmacy that revealed several officers were steroid customers, Police Commissioner Raymond W. Kelly decided last month to add steroids to the list of substances police officers are tested for, beginning sometime after July 1, said Paul J. Browne, the department’s chief spokesman. Under the new policy, reported on Wednesday in The New York Post, officers would be tested on entering the Police Academy and again when their probationary period ended after two years. Steroids would be added to the list of substances for which officers can be randomly tested. Currently, tests are given only when an officer is suspected of using steroids. There is $1 million earmarked in the city budget proposal for the program for the coming fiscal year, Mr. Browne said. “Being a cop is a job that requires considerable strength and agility,” said one police union official, who requested anonymity because of the sensitive nature of the topic. “If you’re going to be wrestling some guy on angel dust, you want to be in shape. That is not in defense of steroids, or human growth hormones, it’s just why cops need to be physically fit.” As investigators looked into the dealings at the Brooklyn pharmacy, Lowen’s, an old-fashioned neighborhood drugstore in Bay Ridge, they said it had expanded into major transactions of steroids and growth hormone. The investigation into Lowen’s uncovered 19 officers who had been prescribed steroids, police officials said. That investigation was part of a larger inquiry into the illegal underground steroid industry. Steroid scandals have touched the sports and entertainment industries, exposing vast distribution networks for the illicit bodybuilding drugs. Of the officers implicated in the Lowen’s raid, six tested positive for steroid use, Mr. Browne said. Five of them have been suspended without pay and are facing departmental trials that could lead to their dismissal, he said. The sixth was put on modified duty. While steroids may not be perceived as being as dangerous as recreational narcotics, Mr. Browne said they are just as problematic for officers who do not have proof of their medical necessity. An internal memo was sent to all police commands on March 26 warning that using steroids for “bodybuilding and/or body enhancement” is not a legitimate medical use. “The demand for anabolic steroids caused by their continued use in bodybuilding and body enhancement activities creates an illegal market for these substances that is supported through organized crime,” the memo said. It said that steroid use can seriously impair a person’s health. The memo reflects the growing concern — among law enforcement agencies and the public — about the use of steroids and human growth hormones, particularly by athletes. The International Association of Chiefs of Police, the nation’s oldest and largest group of law enforcement executives, published a policy review about steroid use among officers in 2005, said Wendy Balazik, a spokeswoman for the association. Police officials in other cities said steroids was a topical issue. “We test for steroids on a pre-employment basis,” said Officer James Kenneally, a spokesman for the Boston Police Department, who said the policy was put in place there in recent years. He said that the department, so far, was not testing randomly for steroids. Albert W. O’Leary, the chief spokesman for the Patrolmen’s Benevolent Association of New York City, declined to comment on the new policy. In the past, it has been how the department has moved to conduct certain types of drug testing — rather than the type of substances for which it tests — that the union has argued is a mandatory subject of collective bargaining. Mr. Browne said that urinalysis would be used to test for steroid use, which is the method used to test for marijuana, cocaine, opiates and other drugs.

Steroids
Police
New York City
Tests and Testing


Start-Ups Work on Biotech Drugs for Pets

Abstract: Judging by some of the heavy action in the world of biotechnology, one could easily conclude that the industry is going to the dogs. Or cats, maybe. There are start-ups named Nexvet and VetDC, CanFel Therapeutics (as in canine and feline), and even Fetch Pharma. It’s a new example of pack behavior: Entrepreneurs with pedigrees from companies like Genentech and Amgen are now turning their attention to pets. They hope to develop innovative drugs for dogs and cats like those that have revolutionized the treatment of diseases like cancer and arthritis in people. “We’ve been drugging ourselves for a long time and more recently we’ve been drugging our kids,” said Oleg Nodelman, an investor in and director of Kindred Biosciences, one of the new companies. “Why shouldn’t our pets have access to medicine?” They do already, of course. Many of the big pharmaceutical companies have long had veterinary drug divisions. Eli Lilly’s animal division, Elanco, for instance, had sold the company’s Prozac antidepressant under the name Reconcile to treat canine separation anxiety. But the new entrepreneurs say they will be more nimble and do what the big companies are not doing, just as the early human medicine biotech companies did. The big companies focus more on livestock — edible animals as opposed to petable ones, said Steven St. Peter, chief executive of Aratana Therapeutics, a pet biotech company. Their offerings for pets are mainly vaccines and treatments for fleas, ticks and worms. Image Rebecca Smith operates on a dog with a cancerous leg at Blue Pearl, a medical care facility in Overland Park, Kan., that is part of a clinical trial of monoclonal antibodies to treat dogs with lymphoma. Credit Dan Gill for The New York Times The new companies hope instead to treat diseases like cancer and arthritis. Many are trying to develop monoclonal antibodies, which are proteins made in living cells. Such antibodies, like Humira for rheumatoid arthritis and Herceptin for breast cancer, are huge sellers in human medicine but have had almost no role so far in animal health. “I was really a little struck by the fact that the biotechnology industry didn’t really participate in animal health at all,” said Dr. St. Peter, who was a life sciences venture capitalist before co-founding Aratana. “There was this very large industry that was ripe for innovation.” Investors seem to be spurred in part by the interest generated by the huge initial public offering in early 2013 of Pfizer’s animal drug division, now called Zoetis. Since then both Aratana and Kindred have gone public, along with Phibro, which develops drugs for livestock, and Parnell, which sells both livestock and pet drugs. Funds like Adage Capital, Baupost, Fidelity and Wellington are investors in one or more pet drug companies. The new companies say the time is right because people increasingly view pets as members of the family and are willing to spend thousands of dollars to treat a sick animal. Pets already can get chemotherapy, knee surgery and transplants. Americans spend “over $800 million on Valentine’s Day and $400 million on Halloween for their pets,” said Dr. St. Peter. Americans spent nearly $56 billion on pets in 2013, up 45 percent from 2006, according to the American Pet Products Association. Veterinary care, which includes prescription drugs, accounted for $14.4 billion, up more than 50 percent from 2006. Moreover, there are already drugs for people that can be adapted to treat the animal versions of diseases like arthritis, cancer, obesity, diabetes, Alzheimer’s and various psychological problems. Some experts, however, say the new companies, which have yet to commercialize any products, might be overly optimistic. Image Vials of a monoclonal antibody medication being used in a clinical trial at Blue Pearl, a specialty and emergency veterinary care facility in Overland Park, Kan. Credit Dan Gill for The New York Times “There are not a lot of unmet needs that are out there in the veterinary drug field,” said Bob Fountain of Fountain Agricounsel, a consulting firm in animal health. “Those who have tried to apply principles from the human market to animal health have had to have some lessons learned.” One challenge could be cost. Antibodies like Herceptin and Humira cost tens of thousands of dollars a year. The pet drug executives say they can get the cost down to several thousand dollars a year, in part because pets need smaller doses. But even that is likely to be too much for many consumers. Only a few percent of American pet owners have health insurance for their animals. Even a big-selling animal drug might have sales of only about $100 million a year, far less than the billions for a human blockbuster. But animal drugs can also be developed far more cheaply and quickly — for $10 million or less and in only a few years, executives say. Kindred, for instance, hopes to apply for approval of its first drug by the end of the year, barely two years after the company started. The drug is a beef-flavored chewable version of diacerein, a generic drug used in Europe but not the United States to treat arthritis in people. European regulators are moving to restrict use of the drug because of safety, but Kindred says that worrisome side effects, like liver damage, should occur less frequently in dogs. Kindred was founded by Richard Chin, a Genentech alumnus who later ran OneWorld Health, a nonprofit organization developing drugs for neglected diseases in poor countries. In some cases, human drugs can be used directly in animals. But in other cases they cannot. For instance, some pain relievers like ibuprofen cause severe side effects in cats. Image Dr. St. Peter and Flo in a meeting with Aratana researchers. The company has acquired two other veterinary drug start-ups. Credit Dan Gill for The New York Times Monoclonal antibodies developed for people would cause immune reactions if used in animals. Nexvet, a privately held Australian company that recently raised $31.5 million from American investment funds, has a method to “peticize” antibodies, just as antibodies developed in mice are “humanized” for use in people. In some cases the entrepreneurs are motivated by illnesses to their own pets. Jennie P. Mather, for instance, had just sold Raven Biotechnologies, a cancer antibody company she had founded, when her cat, Annie, died from gastric cancer that could not be treated. “Here I was working to make cancer drugs with a process that could turn out dozens of possibilities a year,” she said. “And to go and be told, ‘Sorry, there is nothing we can do,’ it made me go and think hard.” She started CanFel Therapeutics but was not able to raise money from venture capitalists. “I could tell within two minutes if the VC had a pet or not,” she recalled. “If they did, they would listen. If they didn’t, they would look at me as if this person is totally insane.” CanFel turned to crowdfunding but raised only $16,800 out of the desired $87,000. But that was enough to buy lab equipment; the small staff is working without pay for now. Dr. Mather is hoping the reception that Aratana and Kindred have had on Wall Street will make it easier for CanFel to raise money once it has a candidate drug.VetDC was founded to take advantage of another trend: Pharmaceutical companies increasingly are testing their drugs on pets to get an early read on how the drug might work in people. For instance, Gilead Sciences stopped work on a drug it was developing to treat lymphoma in people. But studies had already shown “beautiful data in people’s pets,” said Steven Roy, a former Amgen executive who runs VetDC. So VetDC is now developing that drug for lymphoma in dogs. Some consolidation in the new industry has already begun. Aratana, which means “new” in Japanese, has acquired two other start-ups, Vet Therapeutics, which was developing antibodies, and Okapi, which was developing antiviral drugs. Aratana already has conditional regulatory approval for two antibodies to treat lymphoma in dogs. They have the same mechanisms of action as the human drugs Rituxan and Campath. Aratana plans to start marketing one of them in October. If the start-ups succeed, it might not be too long before established biotech companies form their own animal divisions. At least one company, Sorrento Therapeutics, recently announced it would do this.

Pharmaceuticals
Biotechnology
Pet
Dog
Cat
Veterinary medicine
CanFel
Nexvet
VetDC
Startup


Put That New iPhone 6 Through Its Paces

Abstract: UNLESS you live on Mars, you will have noticed that Apple has introduced new iPhones. And what do these new phones need? Apps, of course. Here is my eclectic mix of recommendations for the owners of shiny new iDevices. One of the first things you will probably want to do with your new phone is show it off. To demonstrate the graphics power of Apple’s new iOS 8, download Epic Zen Garden, free . This app is a showy demo that places you in an astonishingly beautiful, Japanese-themed garden on the grounds of a modern-looking home. You tap on the screen to move around and interact with items. Everything in Zen Garden is rendered inside the phone, rather than being downloaded. The graphics are eye-poppingly gorgeous, from thousands of butterflies that flutter around in reaction to your touch, to koi darting in a pond. Though the number of special effects and interactive locations is limited, this app’s beautiful imagery should be more than enough to wow you and your friends. One of the first iPhone games that caught my imagination years ago was Tower Madness, a crazy alien-and-sheep game in which powerful guns are placed on complex terrain to protect sheep from endless swarms of ravenous aliens. Now there is Tower Madness 2: 3D Alien TD Defense for just $2 . It’s the same idea, but with more zany effects and slicker graphics. Though it is not the highest of high tech, the game is hilarious. Be warned: It’s addictive. Another way to explore your new iPhone is to play with its camera. ProCam2 , which costs $2, is one of the best apps for doing this. This app provides more control over the settings of the iPhone’s built-in camera than your old compact camera probably ever did. With just a few taps you can control the camera exposure, aperture, ISO speed and many other effects. You can even automatically add a time, date and copyright notice onto each frame. These controls mean you can shape images more creatively than with Apple’s own built-in camera app, and you may find yourself taking more interesting photos as a result. The touch-screen settings are easy to understand, but there are so many that it will take you a while to learn to use this app for the best effects. Video The iPhone 6 Plus and iPhone 6 rival the competition in sheer size. But when it comes to taking advantage of those bigger screens, Molly Wood says, Apple’s new phones don’t always measure up. Credit Credit Jim Wilson/The New York Times You don’t want to take boring snaps to share on Instagram (another must-have for iPhone users, free ). The image-manipulating app Fragment, $2 , can help here. Fragment transforms pictures to make them look as if they are being viewed through a set of distorting prisms, adding an unusual visual twist. The app’s simple interface makes it easy to control the distortion effects. Apple improved its touch-screen keyboard a lot for 2014, but you can also use different ones bought from the App Store. My favorite is Swype, $1 , which allows you to slip your finger from one letter key to the next to sort of draw-to-type the text desired. It’s surprisingly powerful. Minuum, $2 , shrinks the keyboard so you can see more of the rest of the screen while typing. Minuum is weird, and you will rely on autocorrect a lot to fix mistyping, but it’s fun to use. For news on your new iPhone, it’s hard to beat Twitter for breaking news shared by users locally and around the world. It’s free , and I find Twitter a much more rewarding social network to interact with than Facebook’s friend-based system. Flipboard is another great news source that collates news articles from across the web into one very graphical magazine-style interface. This makes it easy to flip from one news category to the next, or one news item to the next. Flipboard is great for scanning the headlines and maybe browsing an article while commuting. It is free . Health apps are another big feature on the iPhone, and Run With Map My Run is a good one to try at first. It is meant to be a one-stop shop for measuring all your fitness activity in one place, everything from walking through cycling. It collects data either from the sensors in your iPhone or from connected health devices. Though its interface can be a little confusing, it may help motivate you to exercise. Also, it’s free . A quick mention goes to Sleep Cycle, an app that uses your phone’s sensors to map sleep patterns. The results are often a fascinating insight into your night’s sleep. It’s $1 . Finally, try Leaf on the Wind, which serves as an introduction to the kind of touch-screen games you can play on the iPhone; your touch acts to blow leaves and other items around the landscape to hit a target. It’s beautiful to look at, and both satisfying to play and difficult to master. It’s $3 . Quick Call The popular voice-over-Net app Viber has just undergone a big upgrade, and with Viber 5.0, free on Android and iOS , users can now video-call each other. The app is also useful for text-messaging and can share other files, like photos.

Mobile Apps
Apple
iPhone
Nuance Communications
Flipboard
Instagram


Freed From Prison, Long Island Man Takes to Pulpit

Abstract: CORAM, N.Y. — A Long Island man whose prison sentence in the fatal shooting a 17-year-old in front of his home was commuted by Gov. David A. Paterson said Friday that he was haunted by what he had done. “I remember that family,” the man, John H. White, said in an interview after delivering an emotional speech at his church in which he described the horrors of prison. “I remember what they’ve lost. I remember their son. I will remember them the rest of their days. And I will ask God to forgive me all the rest of my days.” It was Mr. White’s first full day at home after Mr. Paterson commuted his prison sentence after he had served five months of a 20-month to 4-year term. Mr. White, 57, had been convicted of second-degree manslaughter and criminal possession of a weapon in the racially charged case: his is one of the few African-American families in the upscale Suffolk County hamlet of Miller Place, and the teenager he shot, Daniel Cicciaro, was white, one of a group of young men who were demanding to fight Mr. White’s son Aaron one night in August 2006. On Friday night, Mr. White, a construction foreman who is also a deacon at Faith Baptist Church in Coram, a less affluent town, spoke forcefully but cryptically about the time he served at the Mount McGregor Correctional Facility in upstate Saratoga County. “There is another side to men that not even men know,” Mr. White said, standing before a congregation of about 40 on Christmas Eve. In a speech lasting about eight minutes and in an interview afterward, he described prison as an “upside-down kingdom” where “what’s right is sometimes wrong, what’s wrong is right.” Mr. White, 57, wore a dark suit and red tie and began his speech with singing. His words were met with volleys of hallelujahs as the congregation celebrated his return. Church members had sent several hundred letters in support of him, part of an effort spearheaded by the N.A.A.C.P., said the Rev. Beresford Adams, Faith Baptist’s longtime leader. “He’s an exceptional person,” he said of Mr. White. “He’s very devoted.” “We are not gloating; I want to make that clear,” he added. “We are happy for the White family; our hearts go out to the Cicciaro family.” On Friday morning at his home, Mr. White said that all he wanted was “to take a hot bath, to shave, to go to church.” “Hope is eternal,” he said before shutting the front door decorated with a red-ribboned wreath. At his trial, Mr. White described his actions as protecting his family from what he perceived as a lynch mob, saying Mr. Cicciaro and his friends yelled racial slurs as they stood in his driveway. “There is no racial divide as far as the church is concerned,” Mr. Adams said. “We live on Christian principles that demand that everybody is the same in the eyes of God.” Chief among those principles, he said, “is forgiveness.” Mr. Cicciaro’s mother, Joanne, declined to comment on the case on Friday. Dano’s Auto Clinic in Port Jefferson Station, which is run by the victim’s father, was closed on Friday, but a decoration, the face of an African-American Santa Claus, was taped to the outside of the front door. It was unclear who had put it there. At a news conference in Manhattan, Governor Paterson said he wished he had spoken with the dead teenager’s family before making his decision. He said he ended up speaking with the family on Friday for nearly an hour, but declined to provide details. The governor said that although he would not have changed his decision, “there were some points that Ms. Cicciaro made that were rather compelling.” He added, “There were some issues that were raised by Ms. Cicciaro that I will think about over the holidays.”

White John H
Cicciaro Daniel Jr
Paterson David A
Race and Ethnicity
Sentences (Criminal)
Prisons and Prisoners
Long Island (NY)


Tennessee Reaches Finals

Abstract: Lauren Gibson hit a solo home run in the first inning, the sisters Ivy and Ellen Renfroe combined on a five-hitter, and Tennessee reached the Women’s College World Series finals by defeating Texas, 2-1, in Oklahoma City. Earlier, Kimberlee Souza’s infield single in the sixth inning ended up bringing in the go-ahead run when it was misplayed by Michigan, and Washington beat the Wolverines, 4-1, in an elimination game.

Baseball
College Sports
College World Series
Softball


German and British Teams Grouped Together in Champions League

Abstract: The four German teams in the UEFA Champions League all were matched against English Premier League opponents on Thursday in the draw for the competition’s group stage in Monaco. Bayern Munich, the defending champion, was placed in a group with Manchester City. Manchester United will play Bayer Leverkusen, and Chelsea will meet Schalke, Switzerland’s F.C. Basel and Steaua Bucharest in one of the weakest groups. Arsenal got one of the toughest draws, matched against last year’s beaten finalist, Borussia Dortmund; the powerful Italian contender Napoli; and Olympique Marseille of France in the so-called Group of Death. Barcelona is in what amounts to a Group of Champions with A.C. Milan, Ajax Amsterdam and Glasgow Celtic; those four clubs have combined for 16 European championships. Barcelona’s Spanish rival, Real Madrid, will play Juventus, Turkey’s Galatasaray and F.C. Copenhagen of Denmark. The groups: Group A: Manchester United; Shakhtar Donetsk (Ukraine); Bayer Leverkusen; Real Sociedad Group B: Real Madrid; Juventus; Galatasaray; F.C. Copenhagen Group C: Benfica; Paris St. Germain; Olympiakos; Anderlecht Group D: Bayern Munich; CSKA Moscow; Manchester City; Viktoria Plzen (Czech Republic) Group E: Chelsea; Schalke; F.C. Basel; Steaua Bucharest Group F: Arsenal, Dortmund; Marseille; Napoli Group G: Porto, Zenit St. Petersburg; Atlético Madrid; F.C. Austria Vienna Group H: Barcelona; A.C. Milan; Ajax; Glasgow Celtic The group stage begins Sept. 17 and ends Dec. 11. The 32 teams in the group stage were placed on four pots for the draw after being assigned coefficients based on their success in European competition the past five years and the relative success of their national leagues in the tournament. Because of that, the Champions League has become more of an exclusive club in recent years; 14 of the 32 teams have won the title, and more than a third of the field hails from three leagues: Germany’s Bundesliga, England’s Premier League and Spain’s each have four entries. Despite that concentration at the top, it remains as tough to win as ever. No English teams reached the quarterfinals last year, and no club has repeated as European champion since A.C. Milan in 1990.

UEFA Champions League
Soccer
UEFA Champions League
Euro 2016 UEFA European Championship


The Garden to Citi Field: Dysfunction Loves Company

Abstract: Three people converged on a shallow pop fly Friday evening and the ball outwitted them all. It dived gently into the right-field grass, untouched, and suddenly the game-tying run was on second base. The stadium groaned. Perfect. This is what I came for — a Mets meltdown. I went to Citi Field to sift through the remains of a rancid season, to kick the infield dirt and inhale the misery. I had heard the horror stories. The Mets were hapless, prone to botching routine plays and skipping over bases. The franchise spent $139 million on players. The players spent a lot of time in surgery. The owner lost a fortune in the Bernard Madoff scandal. The general manager seemed detached from reality. So I went to Flushing in search of dysfunction. Perhaps I should introduce myself, support-group style: My name is Howard Beck, and I have been a dysfunction addict for five years. As the Knicks ’ beat writer for The New York Times since 2004, I have witnessed four coaching changes, a front-office purge, a sexual harassment trial , fan protests, coach-player feuds, G.M.-coach feuds, player-player feuds and more bizarre Stephon Marbury monologues than I care to recall. Overpaying for talent? The Knicks practically invented the concept. They lead the N.B.A. in spending nearly every season but have not had a winning record since 2001. On the Knicks beat, absurdity is the norm. While Larry Brown waited to be fired in 2006, he resorted to conducting roadside interviews from his car because the team had forbidden him to talk to reporters. I cannot quote the infield-fly rule, but I have a doctorate in dysfunction. And this much is clear: the Mets may soon take the mantle as New York’s screwiest franchise, but they have a long way to go to match the Knicks of 2004 to 2008. So Tony Bernazard, the former Mets vice president, reportedly threatened to beat up a bunch of minor leaguers? Isiah Thomas, the former Knicks president, once implored his players to break the feet of San Antonio’s Bruce Bowen. He appeared to incite a brawl with the Denver Nuggets. He once argued with a season-ticket holder — in the middle of a game. So the Mets have lost a few games on dropped fly balls? I once watched Steve Francis, a former All-Star, dribble in a circle, fall down and injure his knee. Or check YouTube for the classic Zach Randolph sequence in which he dribbles at the 3-point arc, loses the ball behind him, gets it back and shoots a 23-foot air ball . So Omar Minaya, the Mets’ general manager, stumbled through a recent interview, saying he didn’t remember that Johan Santana, his ace starter, had an elbow issue in spring training? Thomas, who was both the coach and team president for two years, routinely claimed not to know anything about any injuries to any of his players. He talked about winning championships on the day his team fell to 8-22, and insisted he would be there for the parade. This is not to minimize the Mets’ distress. They have the second-highest payroll in baseball and were picked by Sports Illustrated to win the World Series but are 14 games below .500. They have 12 players on the disabled list, including three of their top starting pitchers and three of their top hitters. The raft of injuries has raised suspicions about medical care, much as it did with the Knicks a few years ago. That’s what happens to losing teams with feckless leadership: everyone is blamed. “One thing we have to do is take care of ourselves and try to stay healthy, for sure,” said Santana, who had elbow surgery last week, “because when we came up to this season we had all the right pieces to make it happen.” The Knicks frequently insisted they had the right pieces, too, after acquiring Marbury, then Jamal Crawford, then Eddy Curry, then Francis, then Randolph. But here, the franchises truly diverge. For all of their anguish, the Mets had enough talent to contend for the past three years. Their greatest burden is two September collapses, in 2007 and 2008. The Knicks, by contrast, generally start the season with their best record and work their way down. “I don’t think in any way it’s a dysfunctional organization,” said David Wright, the Mets’ third baseman. September at Citi Field felt a lot like April at the Garden. But the mayhem gap was evident immediately. No one booed during pregame introductions. No one started a “Fire Omar” chant. The parking lot was devoid of petitions, oversize pink slips or clever T-shirts. By New York standards, the crowd was downright passive. Even the relations between the news media and team officials seemed more pleasant. No one eavesdropped when I spoke to Wright in the clubhouse. Santana spoke freely, without a team chaperon in sight. Where was the swarm of public-relations officials wielding BlackBerrys? In July, Minaya started an uproar when he accused a reporter of lobbying for a job — but the incident at least implied that a reporter liked the team enough to want a job. That would be hard to imagine on the Knicks beat, where one of my colleagues once (facetiously) accused the organization of wiring his car with explosives. Despite their late-game gaffe Friday, the Mets did pull out a 6-2 win. Manager Jerry Manuel tried to explain it all, but his microphone cut out during his news conference. Manuel laughed. Somehow, things didn’t seem so bad.

New York Mets
Baseball
Basketball
Citi Field (NYC)
New York Knicks


Politics Shelter China's Economy

Abstract: BEIJING — The politics of China’s need for a smooth leadership succession this year provide the best protection against a hard economic landing, regardless of stuttering exports, faltering capital flows, local government debts and lingering inflation risks. By the time President Hu Jintao and Prime Minister Wen Jiabao hand over power in late autumn, China should be well on course for its slowest full year of growth since the two took office a decade ago — and that is without any economic shocks. It is not an auspicious bequest in a system that relies on stability to justify unopposed Communist Party rule, and it is precisely why any significant threats to the economy will be met with an unmistakable policy response. “That is the only line of thinking,” said Paul Markowski, president of MES Advisers, based in New York and a longtime investment adviser to China’s monetary authorities. “While financial risks abound, the composition of debt ownership means the government can brush off hard hits for now,” he said. Government debt is 26.9 percent of gross domestic product, according to International Monetary Fund data, well below the 60 percent seen as the international threshold for stable state finances, and 2011 fiscal revenue was a record-breaking 10.37 trillion renminbi, or $1.64 trillion, while the budget deficit for the year was a tiny 1.1 percent of G.D.P. Even allowing for bad debts in the 10.71 trillion renminbi owed by local governments, the 1.26 trillion renminbi or so of nonperforming loans that analysts believe the big state-backed banks are nursing, and any other miscellaneous restructuring costs, the most gloomy forecasts barely show debt as a percentage of G.D.P. above 60 percent. That said, there are few signs of willingness to repeat the 4 trillion-renminbi stimulus unveiled in 2008-9 at the height of the global financial crisis, as international trade, on which much of China’s growth and employment depends, froze. The government’s mantra has been about “fine-tuning” economic policies: tweaking taxes, cutting red tape and gently easing the required ratio of reserves, or R.R.R., that banks must maintain to keep money supply growth steady against a backdrop of fluctuating international capital flows. Ting Lu, a Bank of America/Merrill Lynch China economist, says flow risks are overstated, as analysts misread monthly foreign exchange transaction data and fail to take into account the effect on currency purchases of China’s concerted efforts to expand the use of the renminbi for international trade settlement. Mr. Lu says there is no need for aggressive R.R.R. moves, and he forecasts two cuts of 50 hundredths of a percentage point apiece by the end of the year. But the political implications of an R.R.R. cut of 50 hundredths of a percentage point to 20.5 percent on Feb. 18, two weeks before the annual meeting of Parliament, at which the next budget will be announced, should not be underestimated, said Yao Wei, a China economist with Société Générale in Hong Kong. “The timing of the move may signal more fiscal easing measures at the annual National People’s Congress in early March, which is also in line with our initial expectations,” Ms. Yao wrote in a client note. Exactly what the government might unveil is anybody’s guess. “The complication surrounding China’s economic policy stems from the fact that the Chinese government still controls many aspects of the economy. You would not find so many policy parameters that can be constantly tuned to influence the trajectory of economic growth in advanced economies,” she wrote. Already 2 trillion renminbi is earmarked to build millions of affordable homes to offset risks from a policy-induced cooling in the private-sector real estate market, in which the 2008-9 stimulus set off a frenzy of speculation. Fraser Howie, chief executive of the brokerage CLSA Singapore, said the last stimulus plan highlighted Beijing’s willingness to act and the risks that breeds. “There are no miracles in China. They haven’t beaten the laws of economics,” Mr. Howie said. “What they did was take a problem that even today is still insoluble for them — which was 20 million unemployed workers — and they substituted that for a bad debt problem somewhere down the road.” It also helps explain why fears of a hard landing linger. Exports were a net drag on economic growth in 2011, which hit a 2›-year low of 8.9 percent for the year in the fourth quarter as the European Union — China’s biggest export market — fought debt crisis demons. But some analysts say export anxiety is misplaced. “Although nearly half of all Chinese exports are destined for the euro area, fully a quarter of that goes to Germany — the strongest economy in the region,” analysts at Lloyds Bank Corporate Markets in London wrote in a note to clients. Official trade data show China’s combined exports to the troubled economies of Portugal, Ireland, Italy, Greece and Spain were $62.3 billion in 2011, less than 1 percent of G.D.P. Exports to Germany were $76.4 billion. Meanwhile, there is solid demand from developing economies, which the World Bank estimates have contributed as much as 70 percent of the growth in global imports in the last five years. Capital flight arguments do not make sense to Carl Weinberg, chief economist at the consulting firm High Frequency Economics, based in New York, who cannot understand why foreign investors would flee China, given still-steady renminbi appreciation and risks elsewhere. “Even if China’s G.D.P. slows this year — which we doubt — it will still grow faster than any other major economy in the world,” he wrote in a note to clients. “Huge real rates of return on capital are all but assured. China remains a safe haven from euro land’s woes. We doubt investors will abandon it.”

China
Economic Conditions and Trends
Communist Party of China


Women's World Cup: Advancing Slowly on a Daunting Road

Abstract: FRANKFURT The Women’s World Cup proved to be an engaging showcase of just how far women’s soccer has come and a sober reminder of how far it has to go. Japan’s victory provided encouragement for a wounded nation at home and for a soccer world that came to embrace the team’s rhythmic passing and clever movement. France, too, elevated the sport to something elegant and stylish. “There’s something to be said about the way Japan plays,” said Pia Sundhage, the United States coach. “They are comfortable with the ball. That’s good for women’s football going forward.” The Americans will undoubtedly lament their missed opportunities and rare unease during penalty kicks in Sunday’s final. But Japan’s penalty-kick triumph confirmed that women’s soccer is growing more globalized and competitive and no longer remains the private dominion of the United States, Germany and Scandinavia. Colombia qualified for the first time at this World Cup. So did Equatorial Guinea. France was a first-time semifinalist, Japan a first-time champion. The worst blowout was 4-0, far closer than the 11-0 defeat that Germany handed to Argentina in 2007. Eighty percent of the available tickets were sold. Crowds were supportive and well-behaved. Goalkeeping was often stalwart, goal scoring frequently inspired. For mesmerizing competition, it would be difficult to top Japan’s stunning quarterfinal victory over Germany and the United States’ thrilling comeback against Brazil. Twelve years ago, the stirring American victory over China in penalty kicks in the Women’s World Cup final was viewed as revolution as much as sport. It was a sports-bra-baring celebration of possibility, a confirmation of the heights that women could scale if given the full opportunity to participate as promised by the gender-equity legislation known as Title IX. Freed from the burden and responsibility of being pioneers, the current American players could simply perform and be appreciated for what they were: terrific athletes who persevered with speed, grit, depth and a steadfast belief that victory could be summoned with unyielding tenacity. “In ’99, there was a clear consciousness that it was important for women’s soccer and all girls and women in sports,” said Brandi Chastain, who scored the winning penalty kick in the final and led the jersey-waving celebration in that tournament. “This team I think now is being seen as more mainstream. There’s still some of that ‘they’re beautiful and they’re good,’ which is fine. But I’ve heard more comments about the actual soccer than previously, which is a great evolution.” Or as Julie Foudy, a former American captain, put it: “Now, it’s less about, ‘Oh it’s great that women have this opportunity.’ It’s ‘Look how this game has spread.’ ” And yet, this was only the sixth World Cup held for women. The tournament began in 1991, six decades after the first men’s World Cup. It was only seven years ago that Sepp Blatter, the president of FIFA, said that women could enhance their game by wearing tighter shorts. There is still much catching up to do. Eucharia Uche, the Nigerian coach, tarnished her team’s appearance with homophobic remarks, saying that she had attempted to rid the squad of lesbian behavior, calling homosexuality “a dirty issue” and “spiritually, morally very wrong.” It was a clear violation of FIFA rules against discrimination, but, as usual when charged with policing itself, FIFA did nothing but issue empty words. Players from Germany and France posed nude in desperate attempts to draw attention for the World Cup. The BBC had to be pressured into showing England’s quarterfinal match against France. The match drew 1.8 million viewers in England, the country where modern soccer was invented, but the women’s game remains largely dismissed there. “If I’m honest, my professional colleagues and friends looked at me with some pity that I was going to have to cover the Women’s World Cup,” said Ian Darke, a British commentator for ESPN. “Like it was a punishment. What had I done wrong?” At least England qualified for the World Cup, unlike China, a finalist in 1999, a no-show in 2011. Foudy said she had spoken to a former club teammate from China and was told that parents there had grown reluctant to put their daughters in sports schools, fearing the education level was subpar. As more economic prosperity comes to China, Foudy said, “Parents don’t want their kids left behind.” Brazil played a paltry number of warm-up matches and did not look particularly sharp. The country’s soccer federation has never fully embraced the women’s game. This reflects the continuing difficulty that women will face in countries where men’s soccer is powerful, said Andrei Markovits, a Michigan professor and a co-author of “Offside: Soccer and American Exceptionalism.” In Latin America and Europe, with the exception of Germany, Markovits said, women from dominant male soccer cultures “will have it very hard, because men see it as their domain and will not accept them and will constantly put them down and see them as lesser achievers.” “They see these women as intruders, pure and simple,” he said. At this World Cup, the United States took a step backward in terms of diversity. All its players were white, while England, France and Germany fielded more multicultural lineups and Mexico featured Mexican-American players. Perhaps this symbolized the stagnation in youth development that a number of coaches say has tempered the American women’s game. “There’s been no direction,” said Tony DiCicco, who coached the United States to the 1999 World Cup title. “We lost ground because of that.” At the senior level, the United States is now confronted with the unassailable truth that it must add technical sophistication to athleticism and resolve to remain among the best in the world. “Absolutely, no doubt about that,” Sundhage said. “Look at Japan and France.”

International Federation of Association Football (FIFA)


Trump Renews Vow for Jerusalem Embassy, a Gift of Uncertain Value

Abstract: JERUSALEM — It started, as it has in American presidential races for decades, as a campaign line, one that weary Israelis and Palestinians hear but rarely take seriously: Donald J. Trump promised to move his nation’s embassy to Jerusalem from Tel Aviv. But by Thursday, the eve of Mr. Trump’s inauguration, those decades of promises seemed very real — with reverberations far beyond stone and cement. Mr. Trump himself made perhaps his strongest statement on the issue on Thursday, telling a conservative Israeli news outlet, “You know I’m not a person who breaks promises.” Palestinians protested around the West Bank on Thursday, and many Israeli Jews wondered if this was a gift that could be politely pushed away. Moving the embassy is not even close to the top of the list of concerns for even right-leaning Israelis who oppose the establishment of a Palestinian state. Many worry it would only set off new fighting with the Palestinians as well as the rest of the Arab world, a big price tag for a symbolic change that would hardly move the ball on the broader conflict. “I don’t know what’s in it for Trump,” said Akiva Eldar, a longtime Israeli columnist and co-author of a book on the issue of moving the embassy . Mr. Eldar’s thesis was that this was largely a concern for American politicians, not Israelis or Palestinians — and even within the United States, it was not generally advocated by those with experience on the ground. “If you talk to serious people, if you ask the secret service, they say don’t do it,” Mr. Eldar noted. “They don’t think it’s worth it. Everything is so fragile right now.” Amid the West Bank protests on Thursday, Saeb Erekat, the chief Palestinian negotiator, said that moving the embassy would be a “red line” that, if crossed, could kill a two-state solution, reduce American influence in the peace process, and possibly set off a new round of violence. “Why would a president-elect decide to begin his presidency by playing with the blood of Palestinians and Israelis?” Mr. Erekat asked in an interview. “Why? For whose sake?” He said that if Mr. Trump were to follow through, the Palestine Liberation Organization would repeal its recognition of Israel, considered a baseline condition for peace talks. “I hope he does not do it,” Mr. Erekat added. Jerusalem is the seat of Israel’s government, but it is not home to any foreign embassies. American policy, like that of many other nations, has long been that the future of the holy city can be determined only as part of a broader peace agreement and that putting the embassy there would prejudge the outcome. The Israeli leadership considers Jerusalem, including territory captured from Jordan in the 1967 war, its united and eternal capital. But Palestinians see Jerusalem as the capital of their future state. If Mr. Trump does in some way move the embassy to Jerusalem — and there are various situations, including having his ambassador simply set up shop in the existing United States Consulate — it would be seen as a victory for Israel’s right wing, which has been gaining political dominance over many years (and power in Washington: The leaders of two Israeli settlements, condemned by past administrations, are attending Mr. Trump’s inauguration). It would also be considered a rebuke to the Obama administration’s refusal last month to veto a United Nations resolution condemning settlement building in the occupied West Bank as it warned of the slow strangling of a two-state peace. “It is hard for me to imagine any Israeli on the right or even on the left who thinks Jerusalem is not the capital of Israel and would not welcome in their heart recognition of that by the U.S.,” said Moshe Arens, a former defense and foreign minister from the Likud, the governing party led by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. But even some on the right have questioned the move’s value and timing. In December, Avigdor Lieberman, the hard-line defense minister, appeared to say it was not a priority. “We saw in all the American election campaigns that they say they will move the embassy to Jerusalem,” Mr. Lieberman said at a forum in Washington. “We have enough challenges around us, and I think it would be a mistake to turn the matter of the embassy into a central one.” Privately, other conservatives have questioned whether the symbolic value of an embassy move is worth the risks in terms of a potential Palestinian uprising and deterioration in Israel’s relationship with other Arab neighbors like Egypt and Jordan. But as Mr. Trump’s promise seems more inevitable, some have publicly cheered it. “We welcome it,” Danny Danon, the Israeli ambassador to the United Nations — who opposes a Palestinian state — said in an interview on Thursday. “Jerusalem was the capital of the Jewish people 3,000 years ago.” There is as much discussion of whether a new Trump administration would move the embassy as exactly how, and some believe that could either soften the blow or make it harder for Palestinians and Arab states to accept the change quietly. The United States Embassy, and its hundreds of employees, are in Tel Aviv, as are those of nearly all other countries. The United States Consulate General’s home and office, which handles relations with Palestinians, is in West Jerusalem, and a United States consular office is close to the line that divides East and West Jerusalem and provides visas and similar services. Experts agree that neither of these locations could house a modern, secure American embassy immediately. So a range of options are being discussed. One could be as simple as changing the sign on the consulate in West Jerusalem, which processes the visas for Israelis, as the State Department looked for and built a more permanent embassy — something that would take years. In another, Mr. Trump’s nominee as ambassador, David Friedman, who is aligned with the Israeli far right, supports the settlements and has a residence in Jerusalem, would work out of the West Jerusalem consulate — without an immediate declaration of it as the embassy. Neither of those options is acceptable to the Palestinians, Mr. Erekat said. The symbolism remains too strong, favoring Israeli claims against those of Palestinians. The question of capitals, he said, is not for other nations to decide, but something to be negotiated between the two principals. “This will destroy us as Palestinian moderates,” he said. “This will bring extremism to the region.”

Jerusalem
Diplomats Embassies and Consulates
Palestinians
Donald Trump
US Foreign Policy
Israeli settlement
State Department


Helping Foreign Students Thrive on U.S. Campuses

Abstract: WASHINGTON — In recent years, the discussion on international students in the United States has largely been about how to best recruit talented students from overseas. That may be changing. Now that foreign students are on American campuses in large numbers, the conversation is shifting from recruitment strategies to questions about serving their needs. National data on international-student retention and satisfaction is scarce. But two studies presented at last month’s annual meeting of the Association of International Education Administrators may shed some light on those issues. One study, by C.K. Kwai, director of international programs at the University of Maine at Orono, examined what factors contributed to the retention of foreign undergraduates in two Midwestern university systems. Mr. Kwai looked at several factors, including academic performance, integration into campus life and students’ schooling and experience before reaching the United States. Just three of the factors that Mr. Kwai tested had a statistically significant and positive effect on student retention: grade-point average in the spring semester of the freshman year, the number of credit hours attempted (students who took heavier course loads, up to a point, were more likely to continue in their degree programs) and on-campus employment. That two of the factors were academic is significant, Mr. Kwai said, since it suggests that good early academic advising could improve international student success. As for why campus employment would matter, Mr. Kwai hypothesized that having a job could make a student feel more a part of the institution. Notably, however, Mr. Kwai’s results indicated that English-language skill was not a significant factor in foreign-student retention, at least as measured by performance on standardized English-proficiency examinations. That finding seemed to contradict recent concerns that poor language skills, particularly among undergraduates from countries like China, were hampering students’ ability to succeed academically and culturally on American campuses. But after the session Mr. Kwai cautioned that educators ought not to read too much into the seeming lack of connection between performance on English-language exams and retention. He noted a complaint by both international administrators and classroom teachers that such exams were often a better measure of test-taking ability than English skill, especially in countries with traditions of strong test preparation. Nafsa: Association of International Educators, a nonprofit organization for international education professionals, is working with World Education Services, another nonprofit group that researches international student issues, to conduct a national study on the factors that contribute to foreign-student retention and success. The findings will be released this year. Mr. Kwai’s co-presenter, David L. Di Maria, director of international programs and services at Kent State University, explored the attitudes toward foreign students of staff members in student-affairs offices at five Ohio public universities. Staff members in offices like residence life, student counseling and career services often are asked to work closely with international students but do not have specific training to meet their needs. In fact, half of the respondents to Mr. Di Maria’s survey said they felt unprepared to work with this growing group of students and 90 percent said they wanted more training. As many as 64 percent said their offices were not doing anything specifically to accommodate the foreign student population. The message, Mr. Di Maria said, is: “Yes, international students have unique needs, but we’re not prepared to provide unique services.” At Kent State, Mr. Di Maria has set up an international-students advisory committee to catch issues “before they snowball.” His office also is trying to provide better training for both faculty and staff members in working with international students. As the foreign-student market begins to mature, the conversation among international educators is naturally shifting from recruitment strategies to retention, Mr. Di Maria said. Ensuring that international students enjoy their time on American campuses and succeed academically is important to continuing recruitment, he noted, adding: “The best recruitment strategy is a good retention strategy.”

Foreign students in the US
College
US
Education