El Niño Upsets Seasons and Upends Lives Worldwide

Abstract: In rural villages in Africa and Asia, and in urban neighborhoods in South America, millions of lives have been disrupted by weather linked to the strongest El Niño in a generation. In some parts of the world, the problem has been not enough rain; in others, too much. Downpours were so bad in Paraguay’s capital, Asunción, that shantytowns sprouted along city streets, filled with families displaced by floods. But farmers in India had the opposite problem: Reduced monsoon rains forced them off the land and into day-labor jobs. In South Africa, a drought hit farmers so hard that the country, which a few years ago was exporting corn to Asian markets, now will have to buy millions of tons of it from Brazil and other South American countries. “They will actually have to import it, which is rare,” said Rogerio Bonifacio, a climate analyst with the World Food Program, a United Nations agency. “This is a major drought.” The World Health Organization has estimated that worldwide, El Niño-related weather is putting 60 million people at increased risk of malnutrition, water- and mosquito-borne diseases, and other illnesses. Scientists began reporting early signs of El Niño conditions early last year, based on changes in surface-water temperatures and atmospheric pressure in the equatorial Pacific. By midyear, the World Meteorological Organization declared that El Niño was in full swing and that it was on track to be the strongest such event since 1997-98. Video The weather phenomenon known as El Niño can cause dramatic effects around the world. Henry Fountain explains where it comes from. An El Niño occurs on average every two to seven years, when warm Pacific water shifts eastward, creating an immense warm zone in the central and eastern Pacific. This adds heat and moisture to the air, which condenses high in the atmosphere, releasing energy that affects the high-altitude winds known as jet streams that circle the planet. The warmer the ocean, the more energy that can potentially be released. One effect of the energy is that it alters the course of a jet stream. In the Northern Hemisphere, this can bring more winter storms to the southern United States, including Southern California. But adding all that energy to the upper atmosphere can also introduce a ripple in a jet stream that may affect weather halfway around the world. “It’s like waving a paddle back and forth in the stream and generating planetary-scale atmospheric waves,” said Michael McPhaden, a senior scientist with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. That leads to patterns of precipitation, or lack of it, that can pop up in far-flung regions at different times — heavy rains in south-central South America from September to January, increased dryness in Central America for much of the year and a reduced summer monsoon in India, among other effects. Because these patterns often recur in different El Niño years, the effects can be predictable. Nonetheless, they can still test the ability of governments and aid agencies to respond. El Niño often affects parts of Ethiopia , for example, and this time was no exception. It is among the countries worst hit by drought, Dr. Bonifacio said, with as many as 10 million people in need of food assistance. Yet Ethiopia is handling the problems largely on its own. “They made a decided effort to deal with the situation,” he said. But as the lack, so far, of prolonged rains in Southern California this winter shows, the effects of El Niño can still be difficult to forecast. Dr. Bonifacio noted, for instance, that the Sahel in Africa often suffers drought in El Niño summers, but last year, after a dry June, rains picked up. “From July onward, things just flipped over completely,” he said. El Niño does not just affect people. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said this month that the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere — an important climate-change measurement — had the greatest year-to-year increase in 56 years, and that the rise was partly because of the effect of El Niño-related weather on vegetation. More drought, for example, means less growth of plants that absorb carbon dioxide from the air. Here is a closer look at how El Niño has disrupted life in different parts of the world. A Blow to India’s Monsoons MAHOBA DISTRICT, India — For the first time in his life, Jeevan Lal Yadav has been getting his wheat and vegetables from the market five miles away, rather from than his own farm. Mr. Yadav, 43, has not been able to grow anything this past year on the five acres he cultivates here in the heart of northern India, parts of which are experiencing a severe drought. He is one of millions struggling after a strong El Niño led to reduced rain from the southwest monsoons. Image A farmer in 2014 tended to his sugar cane in Uttar Pradesh, India, where last year the rainfall from monsoons was more than 40 percent below average. Credit Anindito Mukherjee/Reuters Rainfall in 2015 from monsoons, which sweep over most of India from June to September, was 14 percent below the average. The reduction was more than 40 percent in some areas, including India’s most populous state, Uttar Pradesh, where Mr. Yadav lives. Because most Indians are farmers, and a majority rely entirely on the monsoon rains, a blow to the rainy season is devastating, rendering lives barely recognizable. Instead of guarding his annual harvest against wild buffalo, as he has done for as long as he can remember, these days Mr. Yadav sits among a crowd outside the door of the village headman, hoping to get picked for a public works program that pays 161 rupees (about $2.40) a day. His name is called every other day at best, he said. “I’ve never seen something like this,” he said, outside his two-room mud hut in Thurat, a village of several hundred homes surrounded by dried ponds and mostly barren fields that in years past were green with a harvest of wheat and lentils at this time of year. “It’s all dry. I didn’t even sow the seeds.” Compounding the effects of the El Niño-induced drought this past year is that much of India also suffered from mild El Niño in 2014 that reduced monsoon rainfall by 12 percent. Two successive years of drought hit farmers so hard that Prime Minister Narendra Modi focused his annual budget message last month on programs to improve crop insurance and credit, build irrigation systems and continue the rural employment program on which Mr. Yadav now relies. These programs have existed to varying degrees for years in rural India but have been inadequate, said Vineet Kumar, a climate change officer at the Center for Science and Environment, a New Delhi nonprofit organization that studies farmers’ problems. He said Mr. Modi’s plans had the potential to help farmers but would be too late for millions like Mr. Yadav. D. S. Pai, the deputy director general of the long-term monsoon forecasting division at the Indian Meteorological Department, said India predicted the blow to the summer monsoon, which had happened in previous El Niño years. (This El Niño was also linked to heavier-than-normal rainfall last fall in the southern tip of India and Sri Lanka.) Dr. Pai said his department worked with district officials to inform farmers by text message of long-term predictions and warned them about more immediate outbreaks of bad weather. Mr. Kumar, of the nonprofit group, said that though the warnings may be issued from the top, there was not enough coordination in many states and districts for the news to reach farmers on time. And so Pratap Singh, 65, in the Kidhari village, also in the Mahoba district, had not been alerted when, after months of dry weather, rain suddenly arrived in October, soaking the small harvest of wheat he had laid out to dry. The heavy rainfall rotted the 220 pounds of grain, which was only 20 percent of his usual harvest, he said. Now, with no harvest at all, Mr. Singh said, he and his two adult sons are working when they can as day laborers at a brick kiln. The days they are not hired, he said, they just sit around “whiling away our time — there’s nothing to do.” Mr. Yadav, the farmer working in the government jobs program, said he prayed for water every morning and evening. He does not pray for anything else, he said, because “if you have water, you have everything.” GEETA ANAND AND SUHASINI RAJ Flooding in Paraguay ASUNCIÓN, Paraguay — The brutal human cost of El Niño is plain to see here in Paraguay’s capital. Downtown plazas and the median strips of thoroughfares are crammed with temporary houses made of plywood, plastic sheets and corrugated steel, thrown together after heavy rains caused the worst flooding in more than three decades. Seated one recent evening beneath black lapacho trees outside the shack that she is calling home for now — opposite this city’s 19th-century cathedral — Esther Falcón, 32, who runs a kiosk in a slum along the Paraguay River, said she had never experienced rains like those in December. “The water came so quickly,” Mrs. Falcón said, adding that her home flooded up to about shoulder height. “We didn’t have time to save everything.” The water has now receded, but Mrs. Falcón’s young family cannot return because the usual rains, which forecasters say should come in April, are expected to cause the still-swollen river to surge again. Image A washing machine was among the detritus last month in the Santa Ana neighborhood of Asunción, Paraguay. Heavy rains, linked to El Niño, caused the worst flooding there in more than three decades, and about 60,000 people are still displaced. Credit Santi Carneri About 145,000 people were forced out of their homes across Paraguay, a nation of 6.5 million, Joaquín Roa, the minister for national emergencies, said. About 60,000 people are still displaced in Asunción, he added. Despite the risk of further flooding, some people have returned home here, tired of living in the squalor of encampments, where families share portable toilets provided by the government and a United States aid agency , use buckets to shower, cook on portable charcoal stoves, and survive on infrequent handouts of rice, pasta and beans. Paraguay is historically susceptible to floods, and since mid-2014 Asunción has had unusually regular bouts of heavy rainfall, displacing thousands of families. Still, the most recent storms fueled by El Niño were the worst, swelling the Paraguay River to its highest level since 1983. In the neighborhood of Santa Ana, Teresa Castro, 51, had just returned home after two months in one of the estimated 140 encampments that the authorities say have cropped up in Asunción, in addition to five government shelters on military grounds. Outside Mrs. Castro’s house, wood canoes still floated on stagnant water; inside, the floods had flaked away walls and destroyed head-high plug sockets. “I have to start from zero,” Mrs. Castro said as she cleaned her electric oven and attended to her young grandchildren. “We wanted to come home,” she added, “even if it is only to rest for a month,” referring to the probability that she will have to leave again when the rains come in a few weeks. Mr. Roa said the government had planned for the flooding. For instance, he said, stocks of hospital equipment were secured, and schools readied mobile buildings for future victims so children would continue to go to class. The government also prepared an aid response with the military and the police that included work to ensure that trucks with emergency supplies could reach riverside slums. But some people stood defiant. Bernardo Olmedo, 40, who reads water meters for a living, moved his furniture upstairs as his house flooded. Refusing to abandon his home, he instead built a temporary staircase that climbed 13 feet from the street to an upstairs window. During the floods, his daily commute to work involved descending the steps, hopping onto a raft made of wood planks and polystyrene wrapped in plastic, and paddling for five minutes, out of the flood zone. Nearby, in the neighborhood of Republicano, María Vera Villalba, 31, a recycler at Cateura — a vast landfill close to the river, where there were fears a giant pool of tainted water might overflow — said she and her family had little choice but to flee when the rains came and a stream by her home broke its banks. Ms. Villalba said the rain had fallen hard for two consecutive mornings. After the water did not recede, as it usually did, it soon gushed into her home. Like tens of thousands of others, the family fled and built a shack in the median strip of a road beneath a willow tree, using an orange truck tarpaulin for extra protection from the elements. Displaced residents like Ms. Villalba said the government had repeatedly offered them houses in safer zones outside the city. But they resist because a move would drive them away from their work and social lives. Still, Ms. Villalba admitted that she may soon be left with no option. “It’s not a safe place anymore,” she said. “Nature is changing things.” JONATHAN GILBERT Obstacles in South Africa SOWETO, South Africa — On a recent evening at Esther Thobagale’s modest four-room house in this township outside Johannesburg, she was preparing pap, the traditional cornmeal porridge that is a staple food of low-income families across South Africa. A few days before, Ms. Thobagale, who lives with her daughter and two grandsons, had learned that she was going to have to pay a much higher price for cornmeal — 80 rand (about $5.20) for a two-week supply, up from 50 rand (about $3.25). That’s a barely affordable increase for Ms. Thobagale, an unemployed grandmother who supports the household on a government pension and other income totaling 1,730 rand (about $112) a month. “I’m now forced to cut down on nonessentials, like treats for my grandkids,” she said. “I’m forced to stick to what is important only.” Image South Africa has had its worst drought in decades, emptying a water supply dam in Senekal there. Credit Kim Ludbrook/European Pressphoto Agency South Africa has suffered through its worst drought in decades. With little rain last fall during the start of the growing season, the country’s biggest crop, corn, has been hit hard. Although rainfall amounts have increased in the last few weeks, the government estimates that the soon-to-be-harvested crop will be 27 percent lower than last year’s. A retail price survey by the Bureau for Food and Agricultural Policy at the University of Pretoria found that cornmeal prices had increased by about 19 percent and were expected to rise an additional 10 percent by the end of March. Those were nationwide averages, however; the price of Ms. Thobagale’s cornmeal increased by 60 percent. Image Bessly Nchoe worked in his garden near Coligny in South Africa. The government estimates that the corn crop there will be 27 percent lower than it was last year. Credit Joao Silva/The New York Times The World Bank estimates that the drought has pushed 50,000 more South Africans below the poverty line of about $32 a month. But even for those who can afford to pay higher prices, there may not be enough corn to meet demand. Wandile Sihlobo, an economist at the corn farmers’ lobby group Grain SA, said current estimates are that South Africa would be forced to import more than four million tons of corn from Mexico and Brazil and other South American countries to meet the demand. Part of the problem, said Shukri Ahmed, an official with the Food and Agriculture Organization, is that corn yields were down in early 2015, too. “Last year there was a 30 percent decline,” Mr. Ahmed said. “So there was already some strain in the market.” South Africa grows far more corn than any other country in southern Africa, and regularly exports to many of its neighbors. Mr. Ahmed said the 2015 crop decline had wiped out any surplus available for export, putting some of these countries’ populations at risk. “This is now one of the biggest worries for us,” he said. Mr. Sihlobo said that of the corn that South Africa will import, about 700,000 tons would be sent on to Botswana, Lesotho, Namibia and Swaziland. But other countries in the region have been badly affected by the drought as well, including Zimbabwe, which probably has a shortfall of about 1.3 million tons, Mr. Sihlobo said. “The question is where is this going to come from,” he said. “This might put added pressure on South Africa.” The drought has caused economic hardship for South Africa’s farmers as well. In North West Province, one of several in which the South African government has declared a disaster, Thean Geldenhuys, a corn farmer, said his income was down by 75 percent because of the drought. Mr. Geldenhuys has had to turn away the seasonal workers who come to his farm every year, he said. “It’s sad because most of these people won’t go away,” he said. “They are outside my farm every day hoping to be employed. There is simply no work and no money to pay them.” XOLI MOLOI

El Nino
Drought
Flood
Agriculture
India
Paraguay
South Africa
Malnutrition
Medicine and Health


Teenager Hopes to Skip School, of the Golf Variety

Abstract: HARRISON, N.Y. — The Henderson family experienced failure last week. Before arriving at the Manulife L.P.G.A. Classic a few hours from their home in Ontario, Brooke Henderson and her father, Dave, had talked about the goal they wanted to hit during the week. Dad is the caddie and, knowing his daughter’s game as he does, said that three under par would be ideal. Brooke agreed. Through the first 36 holes of the event, Brooke Henderson shot three under. But last week’s cut was the lowest in tour history, and she missed it by a stroke. “It totally caught us off guard,” Dave Henderson said. “It was one of those things where we were successful — but were we? We took a look at our goals and decided to reassess what was successful.” He was recounting this story Friday while standing on the back-patio area behind Westchester Country Club’s pro shop in the early afternoon. Behind him was a small, hand-operated leaderboard for the Women’s P.G.A. Championship, where the volunteers had just finished putting “Henderson” up in the second position with a two-day score of six under. Brooke is two strokes back in just her third career major championship. She is 17 years old. “I don’t really think age has much to do with it,” she said. “I think it’s more about the experience. Even Lydia Ko has said that before — that it’s experience, not so much the age. I think we don’t have a lot of fear. That’s one of my mottos I try to stick with, is ‘no fear.’ And just try to be aggressive and play my own game.” Henderson is not even a full-time member of the L.P.G.A. Tour, which requires members to be at least 18. She will not celebrate her birthday until Oct. 9. Her family petitioned for a waiver that would have permitted her to try to qualify through the L.P.G.A.’s Q-School, but the Hendersons were rebuffed. The only way she can qualify for full-time status and bypass Q-School is to finish the season in the top 40 on the money list. So far she has earned $184,745, playing in seven events. Last season on tour, the player who finished 40th earned $447,658. For now, Henderson must rely on sponsor exemptions — she has one for this week — or getting into the field through Monday qualifiers. But she can use only six exemptions in a single season, and the Women’s P.G.A. Championship is her fifth. (Her last exemption will be the Canadian Pacific Women’s Open at the end of August.) She has qualified for the United States Women’s Open next month and is working toward an exemption for the Women’s British Open, but that will not count toward her tour number. That means a victory this weekend, when the winner will earn $525,000, would all but cement her status on tour for next season. “We’re being told that she has to win to get on the L.P.G.A.,” her father said. “So we’re going to try and do that. But it’s a major. They’re going to make it tough.” The field will not make Henderson’s task any easier. During a second round in which the friendly scoring conditions from the first day had disappeared, Sei Young Kim shot five under in the afternoon to hold the lead at eight under par. The 40-year-old Karrie Webb — a seven-time major winner — and the event’s two-time defending champion, Inbee Park, both sit at seven under. Stacy Lewis, ranked No. 3, is tied with Jenny Shin at five under. “I just love the variety of people we have on the leaderboard,” Lewis said. “You’ve got Karrie, who is 40, and then you’ve got a bunch of 17-year-olds chasing her, and I’m somewhere in the middle. It’s pretty cool to see just how the game of golf is ageless, really.” It just will not allow a player in through the front door unless she has reached a magic number. For Henderson, a win at Westchester and the tournament’s first-place prize money would go a long way toward making sure she is a fixture on the L.P.G.A. Tour. So Henderson, just as she did after missing the cut last week, is readjusting her goal. “It’s really exciting seeing my name up there with Stacy Lewis and Karrie Webb and all the big names,” she said. “It’s awesome. I think I just have to stay patient, stay consistent and keep working on my game, and I think good things will happen.”


Ben Carson Urges Ending Reliance on Welfare in Bid to Be Housing Chief

Abstract: WASHINGTON — Ben Carson, the nominee for secretary of housing and urban development, presented himself on Thursday as a credible manager for a sprawling federal bureaucracy, navigating an unlikely transition from celebrated neurosurgeon and genial conservative presidential candidate to the steward of American housing policy. At a Senate confirmation hearing, Mr. Carson, 65, strained at times to square his past remarks on the dangers of federal assistance — he once called poverty “really more of a choice than anything else” — with the mission of the Department of Housing and Urban Development, an agency with a $47 billion budget and a mandate to help millions of low-income renters and struggling homeowners. Forgoing many specifics, he laid out a vision of a more “holistic” approach: recruiting private sector dollars and seeking to end what he called a cycle of “generation after generation of people living in dependent situations.” “Safety net programs are important. I would never advocate abolishing them without having an alternative for people to follow,” he said, adding that “some have distorted what I’ve said about government.” Yet Americans had come to view HUD’s mission as “putting roofs over the heads of poor people,” Mr. Carson said. “It has the ability to be so much more than that.” As with his presidential campaign, Mr. Carson leaned heavily on his own compelling biography, straying frequently from his prepared opening remarks as he spoke of life in an impoverished section of Detroit as the son of a single mother with a third-grade education. He waded through several contentious moments, including some aimed at his prospective boss, President-elect Donald J. Trump, and the specter of conflicts over HUD funding and Trump family business ventures. But Mr. Carson, who was prone to fits of spaciness and occasionally bewildering remarks as a candidate, appeared to avoid any major slips on Thursday. The tone of the proceedings diverged sharply from that of hearings this week for Rex W. Tillerson, Mr. Trump’s choice for secretary of state, and Senator Jeff Sessions, Republican of Alabama and the selection for attorney general. Both men faced aggressive questioning from Democrats — and, in Mr. Tillerson’s case, from a Republican, Senator Marco Rubio of Florida. On Thursday, Mr. Rubio introduced Mr. Carson as a leader with “the values, the compassion and the character and the kind of drive that we need.” Senators from both parties made warm reference to Mr. Carson’s granddaughter in attendance, who wore pink headphones during the testimony. They thanked him for his career in medicine. Even some of the more pointed questioners, like Senator Sherrod Brown of Ohio, the ranking Democrat on the Committee on Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs, were disarmed. Image Senator Sherrod Brown of Ohio, right, the ranking Democrat on the Committee on Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs, spoke with Senator Michael D. Crapo, Republican of Idaho and the committee chairman, during Mr. Carson’s hearing. Credit Al Drago/The New York Times “You remind me of Columbo,” Mr. Carson said at one point, to extended laughs. “I’ve actually heard that before,” Mr. Brown said. Still, there were sharp exchanges. Senator Elizabeth Warren, Democrat of Massachusetts, sought to pin Mr. Carson down on a simple question: “Can you assure me that not a single taxpayer dollar that you give out will financially benefit the president-elect or his family?” Mr. Carson said he would be driven by morals. Ms. Warren cut him off, saying her specific concern was whether grants and loans could specifically benefit Mr. Trump. “It will not be my intention to do anything to benefit any American,” Mr. Carson said, becoming flustered for a moment before quickly clarifying that he wanted to use the department to help “all Americans.” Ms. Warren called on Mr. Trump to establish a blind trust, accusing him of “hiding” his assets. Mr. Carson would not commit definitively to avoiding Trump businesses if confirmed. “If there happens to be an extraordinarily good program that’s working for millions of people and it turns out that someone that you’re targeting is going to gain $10 from it, am I going to say no?” Mr. Carson said. Later, he agreed to work with Mr. Brown to construct a system to identify properties tied both to the Trump family and the department. He committed to telling senators about the department’s dealings with any businesses owned by Mr. Trump or his relatives. More often, Mr. Carson sat patiently as lawmakers recited some of the most fraught comments of his public life. In one interaction, Senator Bob Menendez, Democrat of New Jersey, asked if Mr. Carson truly believed in HUD’s mission, given his trail of comments railing against government intervention. “I think the rental assistance program is essential,” Mr. Carson said, when pressed twice, “and what I have said if you’ve been reading my writings: It is cruel and unusual punishment to withdraw those programs before you provide an alternative.” When asked about housing protections for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender citizens, Mr. Carson, a vocal opponent of same-sex marriage, said he would “enforce all the laws of the land” if confirmed. But he expressed his personal opposition to any expression of what he called “extra rights” for certain groups. For Republicans, the hearing supplied an opportunity to pay tribute to a figure revered by the conservative base. Senator Thom Tillis, Republican of North Carolina, asked Mr. Carson what he thought was “the best possible thing we can do for someone on government assistance.” “Get them off it,” Mr. Carson said.

US Politics
HUD
Ben Carson,Benjamin S. Carson
Real Estate
Housing
Appointments and Executive Changes
Donald Trump


A Towering Economic To-Do List for Obama

Abstract: The dismal state of the economy helped decide Tuesday’s presidential election. And it almost certainly will dominate the early days of the Obama administration. Few presidents have entered office with an economy in such turmoil. Reflecting worries that the worst may not be over, the stock market continues to languish, with a 5 percent decline on Wednesday, leaving it 35 percent below its peak last fall. The reasons are myriad: the financial system, though back from the brink, remains deeply troubled. Housing may no longer be in free fall, but plummeting values and rising defaults have impoverished many homeowners and burdened states with widening budget deficits. The once-mighty auto industry is on the verge of implosion. Consumers who piled up credit card debt are pulling back, a major concern because their spending helped power economic growth in recent years. And with unemployment widely expected to increase to 8 percent or higher, from 6.1 percent, consumers are likely to tighten their belts even more. Moreover, with upward of $1 trillion already pledged by the federal government to bail out the banking and housing industries, financing a growing deficit to address the problems could be difficult — and saddle the Treasury Department with high levels of debt for years to come. But even before President-elect Obama takes the oath of office, Democrats are likely to push his agenda with urgency, because the economy otherwise could worsen quickly — complicating the task ahead. “The cost of allowing an economy to flounder is very high in lost output and rising unemployment,” said James Glassman, chief domestic economist at JPMorgan Chase & Company. Here are some of the crucial issues that economists say will test the new administration, and how it might address them. ECONOMIC STIMULUS: Obama Is Likely to Act Quickly Quick passage of an economic stimulus package is high on Mr. Obama’s agenda, even more pressing for the moment than the tax package that he promoted repeatedly during his campaign. Congress could act on the stimulus this month — but only if the president-elect signals that he favors a preinauguration special session, Congressional Democrats said. Legislators would more than likely adopt some relatively inexpensive measures rather than try to pass a much larger outlay that the Bush administration might oppose. After he takes office, Mr. Obama is likely to ask Congress for an additional economic lift, those in his camp say. Before the election, the party leadership in Congress discussed a lame-duck session to take up a bill that would pump $150 billion to $200 billion into the economy. That would follow the $168 billion stimulus, most of it in rebate checks mailed to tens of millions of Americans earlier this year. Those checks lifted spending a bit. But they came before the credit crisis struck in force in early September. “We need a package that matches the problem as it exists today, and in my view that means at least $200 billion a year for a couple of years,” said a senior member of the House Financial Services Committee staff. As private sector spending dries up, the case builds — among Republicans as well as Democrats — for the government to jump-start the economy. “Right now, the economy is in a really deep recession,” said Kevin Hassett, director of economic policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute and a senior economic adviser to John McCain. Like many Republicans, he wants the stimulus — whatever its size — to be a cut in tax rates, not an increase in public spending. The Obama camp also supports a tax cut, possibly front-loaded so that refund checks would go out before tax returns are filed in April. But that would be enacted after the inauguration. As for immediate relief, Obama aides say, a lame-duck session of Congress could pass a $60 billion package of additional outlays for food stamps, extended unemployment benefits and subsidies to the states to minimize their spending cuts. The big question is “should the Democrats risk a Bush veto in a lame-duck session,” said Jared Bernstein, a senior economist at the Economic Policy Institute and an Obama adviser, “or should they wait for Obama to take office in January to get a more effective recovery package.” As a candidate, Mr. Obama said he would extend the Bush tax cuts of 2001 and 2003 for families whose income is under $250,000 a year. He pledged to add new tax breaks for homeowners who did not itemize deductions and more breaks for savings accounts, college costs and farming. He said he would change the alternative minimum tax so it did not affect the middle class. To raise revenue, Mr. Obama said he would repeal the Bush tax cuts for people in the top two marginal tax brackets before their scheduled expiration at the end of 2010, and raise taxes on capital gains and dividends. His tax plans are reminiscent of Clinton administration policies that increased taxes on the affluent but gave targeted breaks to others. He would also repeal corporate loopholes and retain an estate tax. The nonpartisan Tax Policy Center estimated that the Obama plans would reduce revenues by as much as $2.9 trillion over a decade. The center said Mr. Obama’s incentives could strengthen the labor market, while giving further breaks to “an already favored group — seniors.” -- LOUIS UCHITELLE and JACKIE CALMES MORTGAGES: A Pledge to Aid Homeowners Mr. Obama has pledged to help hard-pressed homeowners, but he will have to move quickly to forestall a new wave of foreclosures. Some in Congress favor direct mortgage relief, but others worry that the cost — on top of the bank bailout — will be too expensive. Judging by positions laid out in his campaign, Mr. Obama might seek to change personal bankruptcy laws to help people avoid losing their homes, a step that the Bush administration and the mortgage industry have resisted. Like other Democrats, Mr. Obama wants to empower bankruptcy judges to ease the terms of home loans on primary residences. Under current laws, judges are prohibited from reducing the balance on those mortgages but can change loans backed by commercial property or second homes. The shift, proponents say, would help keep millions of people in their homes and ease the broader housing crisis. Many mortgage companies and Wall Street investors, however, might suffer greater losses on the loans and securities backed by them. The Bush administration and many lenders have argued that changing the bankruptcy law would ultimately drive up mortgage rates, worsening the downturn in the housing market. They also argue that it would violate the sanctity of contracts and drive investors away from the mortgage market. But with more comfortable majorities in both houses of Congress, Democrats could move quickly. Republicans in the Senate could try to block a change through a filibuster. Mr. Obama has generally supported the $700 billion financial rescue package that Congress and the Bush administration negotiated and approved last month. He also endorsed the move by the Treasury secretary, Henry M. Paulson Jr., to redirect $250 billion of that money to recapitalizing the nation’s banks. But Mr. Obama has not specifically said how he would spend the remainder of the money or whether his administration would acquire loans or securities as Congress initially intended. (The Treasury has made no acquisitions yet and it is unclear if it will do so before the Bush administration leaves office in January.) Mr. Obama has said that the government should help homeowners refinance troubled loans that can be saved. -- VIKAS BAJAJ FEDERAL REGULATION: Tighter Reins on Wall Street Mr. Obama called for reorganizing the financial regulatory system months before the housing and credit crises spiraled into a debacle. He outlined six principles, but offered few details. He said one major priority would be to consolidate the financial regulatory system. He promised to streamline the alphabet soup of agencies, from the Federal Reserve to the Securities and Exchange Commission, that have enforcement powers. But he has not said which agencies he would eliminate or merge. Mr. Obama has also pledged to impose stronger liquidity, capital and disclosure requirements on financial institutions, and to subject unregulated financial businesses — like hedge funds, mortgage brokers, derivatives traders and credit-rating agencies — to federal oversight. Mr. Obama promised he would increase penalties for market manipulation and predatory lending, and create a new financial-market oversight commission to review conditions regularly and advise the president and Congress about potential risks. In one of his campaign-ending speeches on Monday, Mr. Obama said, “The last thing we can afford is four more years where no one in Washington is watching anyone on Wall Street because politicians and lobbyists killed common-sense regulations.” He returned to that theme on Tuesday night after he clinched the election, signaling that the financial industry should brace itself for a regulatory crackdown. Some Democratic lawmakers already have held hearings on what a new financial regulatory landscape would look like. -- JACKIE CALMES AUTO INDUSTRY: In Detroit, No Cash, No Credit, No Time General Motors, Ford Motor and Chrysler are rapidly running out of cash in the worst sales market for new vehicles in 15 years. Both G.M. and Ford are expected to announce billions of dollars more in losses for the third quarter on Friday, and the threat of bankruptcy will grow without some form of federal assistance. The Bush administration has so far denied G.M., Ford and Chrysler any aid from the $700 billion financial rescue fund or any other new source of assistance. It will, however, pay out the $25 billion in low-interest loans for cleaner cars sooner than had been promised. The pleas for help from the Big Three are growing louder. “This is really a severe, severe recession for the U.S. auto industry and something we cannot sustain,” said Michael DiGiovanni, G.M.’s chief market analyst. Mr. Obama has promised to meet soon with the chief executives of the Big Three to discuss adding another $25 billion in aid to the loan program for more fuel-efficient vehicles. Democratic leaders in Congress are also considering ways to inject new cash into Detroit as quickly as possible. Michigan’s ranking Democrats, Senators Carl Levin and Representative John D. Dingell, will be instrumental in crafting any proposed legislation. The aid could come in the form of government-backed, low-interest loans, similar to the bailout package for Chrysler in 1979. In addition, the Congress and Mr. Obama could tap the $700 billion financial assistance fund to buy up bad car loans and help automotive lenders get credit flowing to consumers again. One potential hurdle for aid, however, is the proposed merger of G.M. and Chrysler, which is majority-owned by the private equity firm Cerberus Capital Management. The deal, if completed, would cost thousands of jobs and has so far found little support in Washington. -- BILL VLASIC HEALTH CARE: An Overhaul Will Have to Wait Democrats’ campaign rhetoric aside, few health care analysts expect the new president and Congress to undertake a sweeping overhaul of the health care industry any time soon. The more pressing needs of a faltering economy make it unlikely that big changes in health care can quickly make their way to the top of the new agenda. But analysts say the newly empowered Democrats are likely to abandon some of the health care positions staked out by the Bush administration, particularly when it comes to Medicare . Private insurers’ role in Medicare “is target No. 1 for Democrats,” said Robert Laszewski, the president of Health Policy and Strategy Associates, a consulting firm in Alexandria, Va. Under the privatization approach of the Bush White House, commercial insurers now provide coverage to about a quarter of the nation’s 44 million Medicare enrollees — at a cost to the Medicare program of about 15 percent more than when the government provides the benefits directly. With the threat of a Bush veto removed, Congress will now be looking to shrink or end those industry subsidies to save Medicare money, Mr. Laszewski said. The president-elect and the Democratic Congress also are likely to give Medicare the power to directly negotiate with pharmaceutical companies — a change that the Bush administration has resisted — though the impact on prices would depend on the authority Congress grants. Analysts also expect the Democrats to seek closer scrutiny of the drug industry through the Food and Drug Administration, an agency that has been stretched thin in recent years. And many analysts expect Congress to take some steps to address the increasing cost of medical care. High on the list might be covering more children under the federally subsidized State Children’s Health Insurance Program . Congress might also try some relatively inexpensive other changes, like pushing harder for the adoption of electronic health records or requiring hospitals and doctors to report publicly both the cost and the outcomes of their care, to enable patients to comparison-shop. -- REED ABELSON TECHNOLOGY: To Shape Policy, a Cabinet Voice Technology companies have long argued that they need the best and brightest engineers if they are going to compete in the global economy. President-elect Obama has endorsed the industry’s call for raising the number of H-1B temporary work visas, which are available now to only 65,000 skilled foreign engineers each year. (The visas are all claimed within minutes.) But even with a sympathetic ear in the White House, getting Congress to agree to more visas could present a major challenge given the probability that, in a recession, public sentiment will be heightened that foreigners are taking Americans’ jobs. In the meantime, the tech industry — which has grown much more politically active in recent years — will greet the new president with a list of other wishes. One is that he push policies to spread high-speed Internet access, which provides a conduit for e-commerce, online advertising and other Web-centric business models. The industry argues that the United States has fallen to 16th in the world in terms of broadband penetration, frustrating consumers with a lack of services — like the high-speed downloading of movies — and the still-choppy performance of their Internet connections. The industry also hopes Mr. Obama will stand behind his stated support of “net neutrality,” which is a government requirement that telecommunications companies provide Internet content providers equal access to delivery lines. Such tech policy could fall to a chief technology officer, a cabinet position the president-elect has pledged to create. -- MATT RICHTEL ENERGY: An Agenda Faces Possible Delays An Obama presidency could mean a sharp shift in the nation’s energy policies, with particular emphasis on conservation and renewable power. But some of the candidate’s bolder proposals, like a global warming bill, may have to wait for the economy to recover, according to analysts and energy experts. High energy costs and concerns about global warming have heightened the sense of urgency for a broad policy that tackles both the nation’s oil use and its energy-related carbon emissions. As a candidate, Mr. Obama shifted from his initial opposition to expanding offshore drilling , but his core message remained that the United States should reduce its oil consumption, encourage energy conservation and efficiency, and develop low-carbon forms of energy. “There is an opportunity to address energy needs in a way that hasn’t been possible for decades,” said Daniel Yergin, the chairman of Cambridge Energy Research Associates. “It almost feels like we’re picking up from where we were in the 1970s.” But, he added, “resources are going to be constrained, and spending on energy will have to compete for dollars with spending on the financial crisis and two wars.” The Obama energy plan called for investing $150 billion in clean energy technologies over the next 10 years, creating green jobs and ensuring that a growing share of the country’s electricity came from renewable sources. He also proposed an aggressive mandate over the next four decades to cut greenhouse gas emissions, which cause global warming. Given the size of the Democratic majority, an Obama administration is also likely to impose stricter environmental regulations and place higher taxes on oil companies than the Bush administration did. -- JAD MOUAWAD TRADE: Cooperation Fades, Protectionism Rises What consensus there was on international trade seemed to evaporate with the failure of world trade talks this summer. Indeed, with the world on the brink of a global recession, led by the United States and Europe, the fear of a rise in protectionism grows. The first test of sustaining international cooperation will come on Nov. 14 and 15, long before Mr. Obama takes office. Leaders from 20 major countries will gather in Washington with President Bush to embark on an effort to rewrite international financial regulations — an undertaking some liken to a latter-day Bretton Woods conference. Whether or not he attends, Mr. Obama will cast a long shadow. In short order, the recession and a likely spike in unemployment are sure to put him under pressure from union supporters, as well as Congressional Democrats, to take a tougher line on trade. “China is the issue that should be part of Obama’s trade policy right away,” said Thea M. Lee, the chief economist of the A.F.L.-C.I.O. “Part of it is sending a strong message to the Chinese government that the U.S. is not willing to tolerate currency manipulation and violation of workers’ rights.” But China’s economy is slowing, making its leaders even less receptive to demands to allow their currency to rise. The United States will also need the Chinese to buy a good chunk of the debt being run up by the bailout of banks and housing. It is also unclear whether Mr. Obama will pursue a renegotiation of the North American Free Trade Agreement, which he discussed in the hard-fought primaries. “He parsed his answers in a way that suggests he understands the importance of global trade,” said Hank Cox, a spokesman for the National Association of Manufacturers. -- MARK LANDLER

Obama Barack
United States Economy
United States Politics and Government
Economic Stimulus Act (2008)
Presidential Election of 2008
Subprime Mortgage Crisis


A Storied Name in Jewelry Makes a Comeback

Abstract: LONDON — Fabergé, jeweler to the last Russian czar and creator of the legendary Imperial Easter eggs, made a comeback of sorts Wednesday when it presented its first jewelry collection in more than 90 years, even as other luxury goods makers are bracing for a tough year. The collection is the result of a two-year effort by Fabergé’s owners, a group of investors led by the British private-equity firm Pallinghurst Resources, to revive the brand by reuniting it with two heirs of the Fabergé family. The firm also assembled a management and design team that includes Mark Dunhill, former president of Alfred Dunhill, a leather and accessories maker owned by the Swiss luxury goods company Richemont, and Frédéric Zaavy, an avant-garde Parisian jeweler. And in an unusual twist, Fabergé said it would not sell the colorful gemstone earrings, rings and brooches through retail outlets, but through its Web site and 15 sales representatives. “Rather than replicating inventory and investing capital in bricks and mortar, we can invest in making unique jewelry,” Mr. Dunhill said Wednesday. The retail strategy is likely to be watched closely by competitors like Cartier and Chaumet, who are vying for the same high-net-worth customers. The economic downturn did not spare luxury goods, and many high-end jewelers, like Theo Fennell of London, have reported a decline in sales. But a recent increase in the price of oil has given rise to some optimism that customers from resource-rich places like Russia and the Middle East would return. John Guy, an analyst at MF Global in London, said Fabergé had the advantage of a well-known name, especially in Russia. “The Fabergé brand is still highly desirable,” he said. He added that the online retail strategy was a gamble because even though it offered more discretion to the buyer, shoppers would not be able to enjoy the experience in the store. In an effort to reproduce the shopping experience online, Fabergé hired I.B.M. to create a technology that would allow customers to enlarge the image of the product on the screen, look at it from different angles and contact the sales team, which speaks 12 languages, at any time. Potential customers could then either visit Fabergé’s flagship store in Geneva to buy the jewels or get a representative to meet them “anywhere in the world, whether at the top of a mountain or on a private island in the middle of the ocean,” according to a company statement. Created in St. Petersburg in 1842, Fabergé grew to become one of Russia’s largest and most successful producers of jewelry and art works. When Czar Alexander III commissioned Peter Carl Fabergé to make an Easter present for his wife, he created the first Fabergé egg; 49 more followed. The company was nationalized during the Russian Revolution and the founding family fled, scattering to France, Germany and Switzerland. The family sold the brand name in 1951 in a legal settlement with an American perfume manufacturer, Sam Rubin, who had used the name for a decade without the family’s consent. His Fabergé perfume, toiletries and shampoo business was ultimately bought by Unilever. In 2007, Pallinghurst teamed up with the South African financial services firm Investec and other investors to buy the name with the plan to revive its Russian heritage. They invited Tatiana and Sarah Fabergé, Peter Carl Fabergé’s two surviving great granddaughters, to form a Faberge heritage council to advise the management on preserving the family’s legacy. The chairman of Pallinghurst, Brian Gilbertson, knows the allure of Fabergé in Russia. He was president of Sibirsko-Uralskaya Aluminum, a Russian metal producer, in 2004 when the company’s controlling shareholder, a billionaire investor named Viktor F. Vekselberg, bought nine gem-encrusted Imperial Easter eggs and 180 other Fabergé pieces from the heirs of Malcolm Forbes, the American publishing magnate, who died in 1990. The new collection does not include any eggs, but it is strikingly colorful and based on motifs, like flowers and animals, from collections created more than 100 years ago. Prices range from $40,000 for a ring to $7 million for a bracelet inspired by Monet’s “Water Lilies.” The company said it expected to turn a profit within five years. Mr. Dunhill said there were no immediate plans to start producing Fabergé eggs again, but he did not rule it out. “Eggs remain the most potent symbol of the house of Fabergé,” he said. “Sooner or later we’ll embrace that opportunity.”


Migrants Who Forded River to Reach Macedonia Are Returned to Greece

Abstract: SKOPJE, Macedonia — A day after they went around a border fence and crossed a river to Macedonia in a desperate effort to escape a tent city where they had been trapped for weeks, about 1,500 migrants were sent back to Greece on Tuesday. The migrants had been gathered overnight by the Macedonian authorities in the village of Moin, near the border, and then returned to the Greek side. Officials on both sides said that the migrants had been misled by unnamed people who had distributed leaflets in Arabic directing them to an unguarded point on the border about three miles west of the tent city, near the Greek village of Idomeni. Through that opening, hundreds of migrants poured across the border, fording the Suva Reka River. Along with those who were turned back, 600 more migrants were stopped at the border, according to the Macedonian Interior Ministry. “It is obvious that there are some smugglers and N.G.O.s that want to profit out of this whole situation,” Nikola Poposki, Macedonia’s foreign affairs minister, said in a televised interview, referring to nongovernmental organizations, including humanitarian groups, that have been helping the migrants. He did not provide evidence for his assertion. The government also said it had detained and fined 72 foreign journalists “for illegally crossing the border,” and had sent them to Greece. Images and videos showing the migrants braving the fast-moving waters have circulated widely online, drawing attention to the widespread suffering that has accompanied Europe’s worst refugee crisis since World War II. Image Macedonian soldiers patrolled in a security corridor by the Greek border on Tuesday. Credit Tomislav Georgiev/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images On Thursday, European leaders will gather in Brussels in an effort to finalize a deal with Turkey to resolve the crisis, at least for now. Under that deal , Turkey will attempt to stop migrants from crossing the Aegean Sea to reach Greek islands, and it will receive financial aid and political concessions — including expanded visa-free travel to Europe for its citizens and renewed discussions on Turkey’s longstanding effort to join the European Union . Any unauthorized migrant arriving in Greece will be automatically sent to Turkey, and for each Syrian sent there, the European Union will resettle a Syrian refugee from Turkey. When the deal with Turkey was announced last week, Macedonia — along with Croatia, Slovenia and Serbia, other countries along the Balkan corridor — sealed its border to most unauthorized migrants, ending a de facto practice of letting migrants pass en route to destinations that have been more welcoming, most notably Germany. An estimated 12,000 to 14,000 migrants have been stuck in increasingly desperate conditions — including an outbreak of hepatitis A — at a camp near Idomeni. Separately, more than 1,000 migrants have been stranded at a transit center in Tabanovce, in northern Macedonia, for several weeks. They were not among those sent back on Tuesday. “E.U. officials must quickly find a solution for these people currently stranded on the route and in Idomeni,” Jasmin Redzepi, president of Legis, a nonprofit that provides support to refugees and migrants, said on Tuesday. “If there was a solution for thousands before, there has to be one for these remaining 12,000 to 15,000.” Mr. Redzepi said the circumstances in which many of the migrants find themselves have left them vulnerable to abuse by smugglers .

Middle East and Africa Migrant Crisis,European Migrant Crisis


Democracy a Double-Edged Sword for Women

Abstract: CAMBRIDGE, Massachusetts — This column was supposed to explore my impressions of the Arab Spring after several months at Harvard as a Nieman Fellow. I had searched my memory when news of the Boston Marathon explosions broke. And although no one knows at this writing who is responsible, thoughts turned inevitably to the terror felt after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, and, for me, to reporting from Afghanistan and Pakistan, and from Spain, Morocco and Britain as they were hit by bomb blasts. The Boston bombings may have no connection to the Islamic world. But writing this column did bring into focus burning questions about the long-term implications of the instability in the Middle East and North Africa. How will this affect security over all, and women’s rights in particular? The economies in post-Arab Spring countries like Tunisia and Egypt are in decline and political and social tensions are increasing. In some regions of Libya, various tribes have taken command and do not heed the leadership in Tripoli. The affected countries have several traits in common: Post-revolt leaders are more religious, women are more bound by tradition and militants with links to Al Qaeda are more visible, most notably perhaps in the civil war raging in Syria. Jessica Stern, a fellow at the Harvard School of Public Health and a former member of the National Security Council, told me that the Arab Spring has been at most a mixed blessing for the people in the region. “Democracy is not the panacea that many Americans imagine it to be,” she said, noting that a transition from autocratic rule toward a system that accommodates a desire for more freedom is especially delicate and dangerous. “Civil strife and terrorism tend to go up and, unless protections are put in place for minorities and women, things often get worse for these groups,” Ms. Stern said. “Women are particularly at risk in Syria, where rape has become a weapon of war and intimidation.” The Office of the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees has reported that rape, or the threat of rape, is often cited as one of the most important reasons prompting families to flee Syria — as more than one million people now have. Fotini Christia, an associate professor of political science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, recently traveled to Syria to interview women, many of them among the millions said to be displaced by two years of war. Ms. Christia said many of the women she interviewed had participated in peaceful demonstrations against the regime of President Bashar al-Assad in 2011. They know that they will probably have to wage another battle for their own freedom and rights, she said, in what they anticipate will be a much more conservative political space when the war finally ends. “They are not naïve or revolutionary romantics,” Ms. Christia said. “They have seen women get sidelined in post-Arab Spring Egypt, Yemen and Libya.” Tawakkol Karman, who shared the 2011 Nobel Peace Prize for her co-leadership of the revolution in Yemen, is now staying out of the so-called national dialogue on the future of her country. In Libya, women have seen the reinstitution of polygamy. In Egypt, women have lost more than 50 seats in Parliament, with just nine female deputies left. Soha Bayoumi, a lecturer on the history of science at the Faculty of Arts and Sciences at Harvard, called the situation of women in Egypt “rather unsettling, with the rampant sexual harassment, sexual assault, and the erosion of women’s rights and status in the Constitution.” She referred to what she called “the removal of historical figures of Egyptian feminism from school curricula.” Mrs. Bayoumi, who has family members still in Egypt, said that she was struck by the sense of solidarity right after the revolution. This changed, she said, with the mismanagement of the transition and the ascendancy of the Muslim Brotherhood to power. “Their perceived incompetence, arrogance, authoritarianism and bullying, combined with the crushing economic situation, has definitely changed the mood,” she said. Her eyes welled up. “The situation in Egypt is not sustainable,” she said. “A moment of explosion is bound to happen. I think sooner rather than later.” One question now much discussed is whether democracy or universal suffrage is necessarily the right path for all societies in the Middle East and North Africa, where in some countries the attachment to tribal or religious leadership outweighs loyalty to political institutions, particularly new or weak ones. “Actually, the question is: Does the West and especially the United States really want democracy in the Middle East, when free elections would lead to winners who hate the United States and Israel?” Noam Chomsky, the linguist and political critic, told me in his office at M.I.T. In countries like Bahrain, which has officially instituted a dialogue between the government and protesters, it is unclear whether the political process can overcome the keenly felt divide between the Shiites and Sunni Muslims. This week, as the Formula One racing circuit was due to return to Bahrain for a Grand Prix, protests that have marked most of the past two years in the country again increased in intensity. A Bahraini woman who is studying for her doctorate in the United States, and who said she did not want to be identified, shuddered at the sight of the Boston explosions, but then noted: “Why is it when car bombs explode in Bahrain, like in the last days, people in the West call it a search for democracy, when it is the same as what has happened in Boston, an act of terrorism.”

Democracy
Women's rights,Feminism
Islam
War and Revolution


The Trump Show, a Hit for Now, Faces a Test in the Fall

Abstract: It’s time to stop calling Donald J. Trump’s presidential operation “the Trump campaign.” It would be far more accurate to call it “Trump Productions Inc.” Mr. Trump is not running a campaign in the modern sense — or what was the modern sense until about yesterday. Rather, he oversees a prolific content production studio that has accomplished what every major media conglomerate is trying to pull off with mixed success. It has managed to produce a huge amount of inexpensive programming that has consistently dominated the ratings and the conversation across the entire new-media landscape — cable news, broadcast news, radio, Twitter, Facebook and who knows what else. With Mr. Trump as its star, show runner and chief content officer, the operation has taken over the vast media space with multiple running plotlines ( War With Megyn Kelly ; Peace With Megyn Kelly !), shocking comments ( A federal judge can’t be fair to me because he’s of Mexican heritage! ) and personal insults ( Hillary belongs in jail ; that reporter is a sleaze! ) that keep Americans glued to their screens. These plotlines often lead to negative portrayals of Mr. Trump. And the Trumpian content can at times be contradictory or even counterfactual, as in false. But Trump Productions appears to be operating on the premise that as long as the conversation is all about Mr. Trump, he is winning. Content is not only king, it is kingmaker, too. Mr. Trump said that wasn’t quite right when he called me in response to a question I lobbed into his headquarters on Friday, because, well, that’s what he does: provide more content through unrivaled accessibility (though less if his team thinks you’ve crossed him). “I’m a believer in getting good publicity — not necessarily getting bad — but a lot of it,” Mr. Trump told me. “There’s a theory — ‘As long as they’re talking about you’ — but I’ve never felt that way.” Still, “once you get the real word out there, not the false word,” he said, “people really like it and you see what happened: I had 17 people against me and now I’m down to one.” He identified the one as “probably Crooked Hillary.” You can’t argue with the results: Look where it has gotten him. Whether it continues to work in the general election is the 270-Electoral-College-delegates question. Given his against-the-odds success so far, political strategists from both parties are wondering whether the Trump approach represents the future of political media — and, if so, does Hillary Clinton need to transform her traditional (and relatively press-averse) campaign into a rival studio pumping out its own voluminous counterprogramming? “She is fighting a conventional war and he is fighting an asymmetrical war, and I don’t think that bodes well for her,” said Terry Sullivan, a Republican strategist. Mr. Sullivan has a unique perspective on the question, as the former manager of Senator Marco Rubio’s vanquished presidential campaign. Mr. Sullivan; the former Rubio communications adviser Alex Conant; and a lawyer for Mr. Rubio, Will Holley, had reached out to me to discuss their new consulting firm, Firehouse Strategies . It’s based on the premise that Mr. Trump has rewritten the rules of modern communications strategy, and candidates and corporations need to take heed. The primary lesson: “The solution is always more content, not less,” Mr. Sullivan said. The Rubio strategists learned this firsthand during the Republican primaries. Every time they got their hopes up that some new forest fire would incinerate Mr. Trump’s candidacy, he seemed to douse it by pumping out programming for the always-flowing cable and internet news stream. So, if news of violent protests at Trump events appeared to be threatening his campaign, Mr. Trump could force the discussion into a debate over whether one of his protesters was affiliated with ISIS. ( He wasn’t .) And remember how he overwhelmed news of Gov. Nikki Haley’s endorsement of Mr. Rubio ahead of South Carolina’s primary by engaging in a fight with the pope? Image Former aides to Senator Marco Rubio, from left, Will Holley, Terry Sullivan and Alex Conant, at Mr. Sullivan’s Washington apartment. Their plans for a political communications start-up, Firehouse Strategies, has the evolving digital world at center. Credit Allison Shelley for The New York Times Mr. Trump’s willingness to say just about anything, and his merry courting of trouble, was an eye-opening break from the traditional, tightly scripted approach of keeping candidates away from trouble. More important, it made the news all about Mr. Trump, blocking his opponents’ attempts to break through with carefully planned policy speeches, classic endorsement announcements and 30-second commercials. What’s 30 seconds here or there in a constantly churning, 24-hour Trump marathon? What Mr. Trump realized, and Mrs. Clinton should too, Mr. Conant said, is that “there’s just a steady flow of information, and if you don’t try to provide the content, your opponents or your critics will.” Yet Mr. Rubio’s former advisers acknowledged that trying to out-Trump Mr. Trump can prove fatal. Their candidate all but imploded after he tried to match his opponent insult for insult, claiming that Mr. Trump had small hands , which in turn indicated that he had a small — do I really need to finish the analogy? Their point is that modern candidates do not need to light their “hair on fire, and keep it on fire,” as Mr. Trump does. “You just need to deliver more content,” Mr. Sullivan said. Mrs. Clinton is not exactly a “light her hair on fire” kind of candidate, to say the least. So far, she has stuck primarily with scripted events, interviews with local media in swing states — which her campaign says are vital even if they escape national notice — and an arm’s-length approach to the national press. She has not held a news conference in the last six months. Some Democrats have worried that Mrs. Clinton is failing to meet Mr. Trump’s challenge in the new media sphere, as my colleagues Amy Chozick, Alexander Burns and Jonathan Martin recently reported . But Mrs. Clinton’s aides and several of her allies have a different theory: If Mr. Trump’s prodigious content output worked for him through the primaries, it is going to work against him in the general election campaign. That’s when a broader and more diverse electorate tunes in and press scrutiny becomes tougher , especially on big, important policy questions. (To wit: The CBS “Face The Nation” host John Dickerson pushed him Sunday on contradictory statements about Libya.) “He’s saying things that are so shockingly outrageous, of course they’re going to command the attention of the national news media,” Brian Fallon, a spokesman for Mrs. Clinton, told me. “I don’t know that we feel a particular pressure to try to outdo that every day, given that most of those statements are in and of themselves going to repel key voter groups that he needs in a general election.” A major “super PAC” supporting Mrs. Clinton, Priorities USA Action, is already running commercials with several of Mr. Trump’s off-color comments about women. (PolitiFact called the spot false for taking one of the comments terribly out of context.) Geoff Garin, a pollster for the super PAC, said television advertising would prove to be more potent against Mr. Trump in the general election. “People will think more and more whether he’s a good president, not whether he’s a captivating personality,” he said. That is, the content of his content is going to matter in a different way. On Thursday, Mrs. Clinton showed the perils of Mr. Trump’s current programming by using some of his more explosive foreign policy pronouncements against him in her speech in San Diego. It won wide coverage across television, social media and news sites, heartening allies . Then came Mr. Trump’s new comment that the judge presiding over a civil-action lawsuit against Trump University, Gonzalo P. Curiel , had an “inherent conflict of interest” because he is of Mexican heritage and Mr. Trump is “ building a wall .” That hijacked the news feed once again. I asked Mr. Trump if that was his intention and he said no, that it was only about the judge and Mrs. Clinton’s speech was too scripted (“phony”) to have much effect. Whatever the case, it was the latest offering from Trump Productions, which has so far proved that content is king. Now, will that sort of content be kingmaker? Or will it better serve the queen?

Donald Trump
2016 Presidential Election
News media,journalism
Hillary Clinton
Campaign advertising


Data on Fees to Doctors Is Called Hard to Parse

Abstract: Pfizer recently became the latest big drug maker to start disclosing payments to doctors who act as consultants or speakers. But many followers of the pharmaceutical industry are still finding it far too difficult to follow the money. Industry bloggers and advocates for disclosure say the companies’ Web sites are not easy enough to use for patients or others who want to know which doctors are most financially entwined with drug makers. “More translucent than transparent,” is the way John Mack, editor of the Pharma Marketing blog sums up the databases. GlaxoSmithKline , Eli Lilly and Merck are among drug makers that now operate such databases, as a response to critics who say the payments can overly influence how doctors practice medicine and prescribe drugs. In some cases, as with Lilly and Pfizer, the databases were also set up as part of settlements of federal criminal investigations into illegal marketing of drugs to doctors. But those companies say they planned to start making the disclosures anyway. The money disclosed in such databases can be substantial. Pfizer, for instance, listed $35 million in payments to 4,500 doctors and 250 research organizations from June through December 2009. But it can be hard to add up the money for one doctor from several sources, identify the biggest recipients or list them all for a hospital or a city, without laborious work by a computer expert. Starting in 2013, under the new federal health care law, these databases will become mandatory for all drug companies and medical device makers. And they will be subject to stricter disclosure requirements aimed at making them much more transparent. Those new rules, under a subset of the health care law called the Physician Payment Sunshine Act, are also expected to make it easier for the public to track a doctor’s payments. Meanwhile, though, there may be a business opportunity and public interest in Web sites like PharmaShine . The site is operated by a start-up company, Obsidian Healthcare Disclosure Services, founded by a former lawyer for Merck. Obsidian mines all the doctor disclosure data posted in disparate forms. That includes not only five drug makers’ databases, but payment disclosures from six medical device companies and two states that already require such listings, Vermont and Minnesota. Johnson & Johnson and Astra-Zeneca have announced they will begin disclosing physician payments later this year; Obsidian plans to mine their data, too. PharmaShine has more than 21,000 physician listings, said George A. Dunston, who founded Obsidian in 2008 in Jersey City and started the Web site last August. The company has no paying customers yet, but it says it hopes to sell the information from one big, constantly updated database to hospitals and health systems, medical colleges — and even to drug companies eager to cross-check which physicians are taking money from whom. At a price of $799 a month, the service also includes e-mail alerts whenever select doctors are reported. Mr. Dunston said four major medical schools and a number of hospitals have expressed an interest. And for consumers, Mr. Dunston said, individual doctor look-up will be “free for the foreseeable future.” Allan Coukell, director of the Pew Prescription Project , said the government and university officials in charge of disclosure compliance could also use PharmaShine to check whether the proper reports were being made and to monitor their doctors’ outside business activities. “You could do it one by one, but that would be awfully time-consuming,” Mr. Coukell said. The Prescription Project, a consumer interest effort of the nonprofit Pew Charitable Trusts, was a tester of PharmaShine before its official introduction. Senate researchers have found that some prominent doctors at academic medical centers have failed to disclose millions of dollars in drug company payments, despite university requirements that they do so. Federal prosecutors say some payments are really kickbacks for illegal or excessive prescribing. Industry supporters, meanwhile, say they are trying to restore public trust, and they emphasize the importance of collaboration between pharmaceutical companies, academia and physicians to advance medicine. Some of the transparency issues are supposed be resolved when the Physician Payment Sunshine Act begins in 2013 to require fuller, more accessible disclosure of all drug industry payments of more than $10 to doctors. But until then, the disclosures come in a disparate variety of subjects, sites, thresholds and usefulness. Among the four leading drug companies making physician payment disclosures, Mr. Coukell said, Eli Lilly, which was the first to disclose, presents data as an Adobe Flash image , which he said was impossible to download or to sort. “They’ve gone out their way, I think, to present it as a Flash document,” Mr. Coukell said. Mr. Dunston said Obsidian had to retype all the Lilly data. Carole Puls, a Lilly spokeswoman, said the company purposely made its report impossible to download "to protect the integrity of the data." Lilly was concerned someone could change numbers and create a false report outside the company’s Web site, Ms. Puls said. Merck and GlaxoSmithKline display physician fees in Adobe PDF files, which must be laboriously copied if they are to be used in a sortable database. Jim Edwards, a contributor to the BNET blog who tracks the pharmaceutical industry, said all the industry disclosures were good — but limited. “Even though we know who’s receiving money and what they received, we don’t really know in many cases why they received it, or what they did,” he said. Pfizer, which released its first batch of data on doctor payments on March 31, said its Web site made it easy to look up individual physicians. Dr. Freda Lewis-Hall, Pfizer’s chief medical officer, said the company was “committed to ensuring these relationships are transparent to the public and are carefully managed.” But the company declined to identify its top recipient. Only after exporting the Pfizer data to another computer program and analyzing it could The New York Times determine that the largest Pfizer payments had gone to Dr. Gerald M. Sacks, a Santa Monica, Calif., anesthesiologist and pain expert. He was paid $146,500 by Pfizer from June through December 2009 for “expert-led forums.” Dr. Sacks did not return several messages seeking comment.

Drugs (Pharmaceuticals)
Doctors
Conflicts of Interest
Prices (Fares Fees and Rates)
Medicine and Health
Pfizer Inc
GlaxoSmithKline PLC


Governor Sets His Sights on Revitalizing Buffalo

Abstract: ALBANY, Oct. 10 — Gov. Eliot Spitzer outlined roughly $850 million of economic development initiatives on Wednesday aimed at revitalizing Buffalo and Niagara Falls, including a plan to redevelop the Buffalo waterfront, which will have a nearly 200,000- square-foot sporting goods store built to resemble an old Erie Canal wharf terminal in the historic inner harbor. The plans, many of which have been considered in various forms for years, were announced in the first of a series of speeches the governor plans to deliver in the coming weeks to detail his strategy for reviving cities in various parts of the state. The degree to which the governor can follow through on his agenda will depend on winning financial support in the Legislature, where he is enmeshed in a bitter feud with Senate Republicans that has waylaid much state business. The deals he discussed on Wednesday will use a combination of state, federal and private money — both cash and debt — with much of the needed state funds already agreed upon and allocated. Perhaps a more fundamental challenge, beyond politics, is that Buffalo is one of the poorest cities in the country, and its problems reflect a deep decline in manufacturing that will be difficult to overcome. Further, the state will have less money to spend next year: The governor’s budget division expects revenue to slump amid weakening profits on Wall Street. The governor outlined three initiatives for Buffalo in his speech, which was delivered here on Wednesday. They included a development deal to turn a vacant building on Delaware Avenue, where more than 2,000 federal employees once worked, into a complex with a hotel, offices and condominium apartments. He also unveiled the latest plan to redevelop Buffalo’s waterfront. A deal years in the making to bring a large Bass Pro Shop store to the inner harbor, where the Erie Canal once met the Great Lakes, appears certain. The redevelopment also includes a 500,000-square-foot complex of buildings in the inner harbor that will be used for a variety of purposes, also including condominiums and office space. The governor also pledged that within two years work should begin on a long delayed expansion of the Peace Bridge, a major thoroughfare for commerce between the United States and Canada. And Mr. Spitzer outlined a plan to redevelop a pedestrian mall in Niagara Falls as part of an effort to make the city more appealing to the millions of tourists who cross the border each year. “Since 1990, upstate’s population has grown slower than all but two states,” the governor said, according to a prepared text of his speech. “During that time, the population right here in Buffalo has actually declined by 14 percent. For the first time, a generation of upstate New Yorkers has had less economic opportunity than their parents — and many have been forced to leave for opportunity elsewhere.” Mr. Spitzer said his strategy was to create what he called “regional blueprints” for different parts of the state rather than a unified strategy. He said that previous strategies had used “a ‘one size fits all’ approach” that “did not recognize the fact that upstate is not one economy, but many diverse economies.” Republicans have long said that the governor has not moved quickly enough to put together a comprehensive plan to boost the sagging upstate economy. At the same time, they have prevented the governor from installing some important aides. His top upstate economic adviser, Daniel Gundersen, is one of scores of nominees that have been held up in the Senate for several months. John E. McArdle, a spokesman for the Senate majority leader, Joseph L. Bruno, called the projects announced by the governor retreads of previously announced deals. “I’m glad to see he is living up to commitments made years ago under previous administrations,” he said. “What’s new?” he added. “Where are the new projects and initiatives that we have been attempting to get done in Buffalo?” Jeffrey Gordon, a spokesman for Mr. Spitzer, said Mr. McArdle was “absolutely correct” in saying “many of these ideas have been around for some time.” “The difference is that this governor is providing the leadership to make them a reality,” he said. Edward Glaeser, a Harvard economist who has studied Buffalo’s problems, said politicians, generally speaking, were focused on the wrong priorities by pouring money into infrastructure instead of education. “It’s crazy to think you can solve the problems of declining cities by building lots of infrastructure,” he said. “While all of the colder, older cities in America looked troubled 30 years ago, the turnaround of some cities has been sharply linked to high levels of human capital, or a higher share of the population having college degrees, and in Buffalo today, one in five of its residents has a college degree as opposed to 27 percent for the U.S. as a whole.” He added, “Think about what you could do for the kids of Buffalo with this money.”

Urban Areas
Spitzer Eliot L
Area Planning and Renewal


Beyond the Boldface Names in the IndyMac Deal

Abstract: ON New Year’s Eve , as investors everywhere celebrated the end of an awful year, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation announced some happy news. A consortium of seven investors had agreed to pay $13.9 billion for IndyMac , the California savings bank and mortgage lender that was seized by the government last July. IMB Management Holdings, as the group is called, said it would invest $1.3 billion in fresh capital in the bank, which has $6.5 billion in deposits, a $16 billion loan portfolio and a loan servicing business overseeing $158 billion in mortgages. The transaction is expected to close before the end of March. The F.D.I.C. said that of the many offers for IndyMac, IMB’s was “the least costly” to its deposit insurance fund (meaning, “taxpayers”). But the agency — and you and I — still stand to absorb a boatload of losses in the deal. To smooth things along, the F.D.I.C. will provide financing on assets transferred to the new bank. IMB Management will assume the first 20 percent of losses on “qualifying” loans in the portfolio, but on the next 10 percent of loan losses, the F.D.I.C. will assume 80 percent while the consortium takes just 20 percent. Beyond that, the government will eat 95 percent of any IndyMac losses. Given the potential for the transaction’s becoming a taxpayer money pit, it’s worth pausing a moment to consider the players in the IndyMac deal. Because IMB is not a bank, the Office of Thrift Supervision, IndyMac’s regulator, must review the investors’ application to operate the institution and see whether they pass muster. When it granted preliminary clearance to the deal on Jan. 2, the O.T.S. said it reviewed the “character, integrity, financial and managerial resources, and general business plan” of IMB before initially approving the deal. A spokesman for the regulator said it was conducting a more intensive vetting process on the controlling parties in the deal and IMB’s top management. There certainly is a throng of boldface Wall Street names in the IMB Management group. Atop the company sits Steven T. Mnuchin, a former Goldman Sachs partner who oversees Dune Capital Management, a private equity firm specializing in real estate. J. C. Flowers & Company, an investment advisory firm run by J. Christopher Flowers, a former mergers-and-acquisitions titan at Goldman Sachs, is also in the deal, as is Paulson & Company, the famous hedge fund that hit the cover off the ball with bets against subprime mortgages. MSD Capital, which manages money for Michael S. Dell, the founder of Dell Inc., is another partner; so is a portfolio run by Soros Fund Management. Noting that the bid has not received final approval, a spokesman for IMB declined to comment on it or say how the company would operate if the deal went through. Perhaps the most obscure member of the group is Silar Advisors, a New York firm founded in 2006 that invests in distressed assets. Its principal is Robert L. Leeds, yet another Goldman Sachs alumnus. Silar’s stake in IndyMac is undisclosed, but it will be a minority interest only, the company’s spokesman said. Silar is not expected to have an operational role at IndyMac if the bid succeeds. SILAR’S Web site says little about its operations. It says it manages risks on loans by tracking and monitoring them. In recent months it has struck deals with several companies that buy troubled mortgages or perform loan servicing. But more details about Silar have emerged in a lawsuit filed against it in United States District Court in Nevada in 2007. The plaintiffs are a group of individual investors who hold loans on commercial properties taken over by Silar. Their average investment in the properties is $150,000, a lawyer assisting in the case said. The portfolio of properties was put together and sold to the investors by the USA Commercial Mortgage Company, a Nevada concern also known as USA Capital, that began operations in 1990 and collapsed in 2006. According to the lawsuit, Silar financed a bid by Compass Partners to take over the loan portfolio in 2007 for $67 million, a big discount to its estimated value of $150 million to $500 million. Silar took over the portfolio last September after Compass, which operates out of the same office building and same floor in Midtown Manhattan, defaulted on its obligations. When asked about the relationship between the two firms, Silar’s lawyers note that their client and Compass “are separate businesses, and their relationship throughout the litigation has been at arm’s length.” They further note that “Silar’s auditors and the receiver appointed by the district court have both concluded that Silar is separate from Compass.” Servicers act as a bridge between lenders and borrowers, taking in mortgage interest payments from borrowers, often paying property taxes and distributing income to the investors who own the real estate. But the USA Commercial investors, many of whom are elderly and depend on income from the loans to augment their Social Security payments, say Compass and Silar have levied large and questionable servicing fees, depriving the investors of payments they are owed. The investors also contend that because real estate taxes are not being paid on many loans in the portfolio, a lot of the properties now carry tax liens, which make them vulnerable to foreclosure and generate increased fees related to default. For example, the lawsuit cited a $10 million property on which the borrower paid off the loan. The plaintiffs say Silar received $859,000 in questionable fees out of the proceeds. On another property, for which there is a buyer willing to pay $29 million, Silar has told investors that it plans to deduct $8.2 million from investor proceeds to cover late charges, an “extension fee” and “exit fee.” Richard Mahony, a spokesman for Silar, said the company has worked diligently to try to resolve the dispute with the investors and has proposed a settlement that would significantly reduce its fees. “While we have sympathy for investors who lost money in the USA Capital bankruptcy of a few years ago, their anger should be directed at the management of USA Capital, not at Silar,” he said. “Silar is doing all it can to help investors gain a recovery from these assets.” Last January, the parties agreed to try to settle the dispute. But settlement talks went nowhere, and the judge overseeing the matter appointed a receiver to try to work out a settlement. Unfortunately there has not been much progress in arriving at a deal. The investors say the terms of the settlement that has been proposed are onerous because they would have to pay all of Silar’s questionable fees if they terminated the company as servicer. The settlement would also allow the investors’ properties to be sold out from under them if servicing and management fees and liens were found to exceed 70 percent of the fair value of the real estate. According to William A. Cohan, a lawyer in Aspen, Colo., who is assisting the USA Commercial investors in the case, 83 percent of those who are not affiliated with Silar opposed the settlement. “These are ongoing efforts to cram a settlement down the throats of the individual lenders that will deprive them of hundreds of millions of dollars,” Mr. Cohan said. “Meanwhile, conditions in the real estate market continue to deteriorate.” A court hearing on the settlement proposal is scheduled for Jan. 20. Because Silar’s IndyMac investment is strictly passive, similar to its role as financier to Compass in its purchase of the USA Commercial loan portfolio, Silar is not likely to come under much scrutiny by regulators. But Mr. Cohan argued that the dispute between USA Commercial investors and Silar should be reviewed, given the taxpayer liability in the IndyMac deal. “What is the process where companies like Silar are selected?” Mr. Cohan asked. “Who is checking and what are they checking for?”

IndyMac Bancorp
Mergers Acquisitions and Divestitures
Silar Advisors
Banks and Banking
Subprime Mortgage Crisis


At Remote Outposts, Border Agents Sift for Clues

Abstract: ALONG THE MEXICO-NEW MEXICO BORDER — A white pickup truck rumbled along the barbed-wire fence that divides the United States and Mexico, toward a crude gate nicknamed Mingas, carved by drug smugglers to bring their loads across the border. On American soil, Daniel Algarate Martínez, a Border Patrol agent, gripped his rifle, staring at the truck that approached on the other side of the divide. A coyote howled in the distance. The truck, loaded with logs, raced past him, past Mingas, and kept on going. “I wonder what he has under that wood,” Agent Algarate Martínez mumbled. The path to the Mingas gate is a circuitous and sorry dirt trail of unpredictable dangers brought by the desert, the remoteness and the illicit drug trade. It is on the eastern edge of the Bootheel in New Mexico’s southwest corner, in Hidalgo County, where the border juts down and Mexico stands briefly to America’s east, one of the most remote spots in the roughly 2,000 miles where the countries meet. Image Daniel Algarate Martínez, a Border Patrol agent, trying to get a radio signal while standing at the Mexican border. Credit Todd Heisler/The New York Times The closest Border Patrol station is about 60 miles away, an eternity in a region where most roads were cut by ranchers’ tractors and cattle hooves. The closest agents are much closer these days, though, stationed for days in outposts deep in the Chihuahuan desert, so close to Mexico that the lights of its farms are the often the only noticeable sign of human life. The agents sleep in bunk beds, sharing meals in a communal kitchen next to lounges where TV sets are tuned to ESPN. Water comes from wells. Diesel tanks hold fuel for the vehicles. Dormitories, command centers and holding cells occupy modular buildings encircled by floodlights and chain-link fences, a setup modeled after the military’s forward operating bases in Afghanistan. Ramiro E. Cordero, a special operations supervisor for the Border Patrol’s El Paso sector, which is responsible for 268 miles of borderland, including the Bootheel, said the bases were an essential element in the agency’s quasi-military strategy of “gaining, maintaining and expanding.” They provide a presence in isolated areas where building brick-and-mortar stations would have been impractical. Image The Border Patrol has two field bases in the Bootheel. Credit The New York Times There are two of them in New Mexico, on the eastern and western flanks of the Bootheel. Camp Ramsey, where Agent Algarate Martínez is sometimes stationed, opened in 2009. Camp Garza opened in November — the ripple effect of a rancher’s killing in Arizona, most likely by a drug smuggler. Though the number of apprehensions of illegal border crossers has continued its steady decline, the number of drug seizures has remained constant all along the American Southwest, according to a report by the Government Accountability Office, justifying the Border Patrol’s expansion into such remote areas. Arizona already has five such forward-operating bases, with three more to open this year. In the El Paso sector, the number of detained illegal immigrants fell to roughly 10,400 last year from 122,000 in 2006. Agent Cordero said that half of them were captured in the Bootheel region, where, unless a migrant got lost while trying to sneak into the United States through Arizona, those who get caught are likely to be carrying bundles of marijuana. Image Agent Luis Colón Díaz, 32, of the Border Patrol loading shells into his shotgun in southern New Mexico. He often patrols alone, often on foot. Credit Todd Heisler/The New York Times Dispassionately, Agent Algarate Martínez, 37, who is from Zaragoza, Spain, said, “This is dope country.” There are four to six agents assigned to each shift at Camp Ramsey: morning, swing and midnight. They each stay there for five days and five nights, and they each patrol alone, looking for signs of people where people are not expected to be. It seems like an exercise in futility — agents scanning the rocky, dusty ground for human footprints amid the footprints of cows, bobcats, wild pigs and mountain lions from inside their Ford Raptors, but mostly by foot. Agent Algarate Martínez drove to Mingas to check on sensors that had been tripped in sequence, following the type of northward pattern typically traveled by smugglers. He found no one and figured it must have been a false alarm, which is not uncommon. Image The sun rises behind trailers at a remote outpost set up by the Border Patrol in New Mexico, in a remote area deep in the Chihuahuan desert a few miles from the Mexican border. Credit Todd Heisler/The New York Times Dinner at Camp Ramsey that night was burgers cooked on the grill by an agent; he dropped a plate of them on the communal table, and then shuffled to his bed to catch some sleep before his shift began at midnight. The agents bring their own food — Doritos chips, chocolate-chip granola bars, spicy kung pao noodles (“just add hot water”) and Lean Cuisine. Aaron Dozal, 25, who is from El Paso, seasoned his burger with a pungent green-chili sauce his wife had made. An agent working overnight captured two drug mules somewhere between the Mingas gate and Monument 40, an obelisk-shaped border marker so white it glows in the dark when the full moon is out. The shift’s supervisor told the five agents reporting to work in the morning that two other mules had gotten away. Image The agents, who are stationed for five-day shifts, sleep in bunk beds, sharing meals in a communal kitchen. Credit Todd Heisler/The New York Times One of those agents, Luis Colón Díaz, who is 32 and from Puerto Rico, decided he would carry out his search on foot, on the hills behind an abandoned yellow house in the Victorio Ranch, a rambling property speckled by hide-outs used by spotters for the drug gangs. The trek consisted of roughly four miles in a circular pattern across a succession of hills. It had rained hard overnight, which was at once bad and good: bad because it might have washed away footprints, and good because new footprints would be easy to spot on the moist ground. The first out-of-place thing he found was a water bottle, which still had beads of water inside. “Fresh,” Agent Colón Díaz said. He adjusted the strap that held his shotgun over his shoulder, as if to make sure the weapon was still there. He has a degree in anthropology from the University of Colorado Denver, where he once wrote a paper comparing the digestive systems of cows and howler monkeys. Image Agent Daniel Algarate Martínez of the Border Patrol, on watch in southern New Mexico, about four miles from the Mexican border. 1 / 7 On top of some rocks at the crest of a hill, he found a blue toothbrush. There was a bit of shade from a bush and a clear view of the American side of the border, as far as Interstate 10. Undeniably, he said, “a spotter’s hangout.” The radio crackled. Another agent moving in the area said, “Looks like there’s one on one side of the water tank by the ravine and another guy on the other side.” Agent Colón Díaz took his shotgun off his shoulder and aimed it forward as he made his way down the hill, following an arroyo that he knew led to the water tank. “Animals,” said the voice on the radio. Distant sights are deceiving in the desert. Cows can seem like humans moving slowly through thorny brush. Back at his truck, Agent Colón Díaz unloaded his shotgun and drove to Camp Ramsey, the end of another shift. In a busy urban area, he said, “an agent has minutes” to figure out where an illegal border-crosser is going and catch him before he gets away. The Bootheel is so far from everything, he went on, “it’s going to be hours, days, until these guys get anywhere.” “I’ve got time.”

US Border Patrol
Illegal immigration
Smuggling
Drug Abuse
New Mexico
Mexico