Donovan Dropped From U.S. World Cup Team

Abstract: Landon Donovan, widely considered the best male player in the history of United States soccer, was cut from the World Cup team on Thursday as Coach Jurgen Klinsmann trimmed his roster to 23 players. Donovan is the career leader for the national team with 57 goals and 58 assists. At 32, with 156 international appearances, he was seeking to play in the World Cup for the fourth time. At his best, Donovan possessed great vision, threatening speed and a flair for the dramatic, as shown by his late goal against Algeria to send the United States to the second round of the 2010 World Cup in South Africa. Still, to anyone following the national team closely, Donovan’s exclusion did not come as a great surprise, whether one agreed or disagreed with the decision. Klinsmann had openly questioned whether Donovan’s desire, commitment and skill had ebbed to the point that less-experienced forwards like Chris Wondolowski and Aron Johannsson deserved instead to be named to the World Cup team along with Jozy Altidore and Clint Dempsey. “I was looking forward to playing in Brazil, and as you can imagine, I am very disappointed with today’s decision,” Donovan said on his Facebook page . “Regardless, I will be cheering on my friends and teammates this summer, and I remain committed to helping grow soccer in the U.S. in the years to come.” In a somewhat surprising move, right back Brad Evans was also cut Thursday, along with forward Terrence Boyd, midfielders Joe Corona and Maurice Edu, and defenders Clarence Goodson and Michael Parkhurst. As the United States opened its training camp recently ahead of next month’s World Cup in Brazil, Klinsmann made clear to reporters that all roster spots would have to be earned and that none would be handed out as career achievement awards. He had also come to view Donovan as a forward, no longer as an attacking midfielder, a role in which Donovan was often menacing as he splayed the middle of a defense or raced down the flank. “I just see some other players slightly ahead of him,” Klinsmann told The Associated Press on Thursday . He added: “He knows I have the highest respect for him. But I have to make the decisions as of today. What is good today for this group going into Brazil.” Image Donovan, 32, center, is the career leader for the United States’ men’s team with 57 goals in 158 international games. Credit Marcio Jose Sanchez/Associated Press Recently, Klinsmann told reporters that “there’s no doubt what he did for U.S. soccer” with the national team and with Los Angeles and San Jose in winning five titles in Major League Soccer. “It’s amazing,” Klinsmann said. “You give him every compliment he deserves. But soccer is about what you do today and what you hopefully do tomorrow. “We’re not building the group based on the past; we’re building the group based on what we go through together and what we believe, as of today, is the right decision.” Donovan did not endear himself to Klinsmann by taking a self-imposed four-month sabbatical from soccer in December 2012. He returned and played superbly in the 2013 Gold Cup last summer, but he was relegated to reserve duty last month for a friendly against Mexico. At the time, Klinsmann said that Donovan lacked speed and insistence in training, hampered by a balky knee. He also appeared heavier than in the past. Donovan did not have an auspicious start to the current M.L.S. season. Klinsmann also appeared concerned that Donovan lacked motivation and was too willing to accept a lesser role on the national team. As Ridge Mahoney of Soccer America has pointed out, Klinsmann, a native of Germany, has also questioned Donovan’s toughness, especially after his inconsequential stints in the Bundesliga. Still, Donovan’s presence has always brought reassurance to the national team, not to mention five goals by him in the World Cup. His absence could add more vulnerability to a fragile team that has historically struggled to score in the tournament. No United States forward has delivered a goal in the World Cup since 2002. Recently, goalkeeper Tim Howard predicted that Donovan would be a key to the United States’ chances in a difficult World Cup group with Ghana, Portugal and Germany. “If Landon is on the field, he’s our top one or two players,” Howard told reporters. Always candid and introspective, Donovan had seemed resigned and excited while speaking to reporters in recent days. While conceding that injury and age had tempered his skill, and that he might have to play as a reserve, he said he remained confident in his ability and thought he deserved to be on the World Cup team. He told reporters, “I have to prove that, and I have to earn it.” Although he did not have the youthful energy and excitement that accompanied his first appearance in the World Cup, in 2002, Donovan said, “I see the game and I see the situation a lot more clearly now, so I’m able to, I think, enjoy it more in that way.” In addition to the four forwards, the United States World Cup roster will include midfielders Kyle Beckerman, Alejandro Bedoya, Michael Bradley, Brad Davis, Mix Diskerud, Julian Green, Jermaine Jones and Graham Zusi; defenders DaMarcus Beasley, Matt Besler, John Brooks, Geoff Cameron, Timmy Chandler, Omar Gonzalez, Fabian Johnson and DeAndre Yedlin; and goalkeepers Brad Guzan, Howard and Nick Rimando.

2014 World Cup
Soccer
Landon Donovan
US Men's Soccer Team
Jurgen Klinsmann


In Cubs’ Luckless Lore, the Story of Ron Santo’s Baseball Life

Abstract: CHICAGO — The feet that he famously clicked together are gone now, and his Cubs are on the verge of completing a century without a World Series victory. But Ron Santo still feels that he is closing in on everything he wants. He can imagine a cure for the diabetes that forced his lower right leg to be amputated in 2001, and the lower left one in 2002. He can picture the championship that has eluded the Cubs since 1908. And he can hear the call that tells him, finally, that he is going to the Hall of Fame. Nobody epitomizes the plight and the wait-till-next-year optimism of the Cubs like Santo, 68. He was a nine-time All-Star as a third baseman for the team from 1960 to 1973, and has spent the last 19 seasons as an emotionally charged color commentator for the team’s radio broadcasts. He has been both witness and participant in the team’s luckless lore. It was Santo, for example, who was in the on-deck circle at Shea Stadium in 1969 when a black cat strolled past. It came to signal the collapse for the talented Cubs and the rise of the Miracle Mets. It is Santo who still calls the Cubs “we” and has been known to moan “noooo” when things do not go well. “If you say Chicago Cubs, you say Ron Santo,” said Billy Williams, the team’s Hall of Fame outfielder from 1959 to 1974. And here were Santo and the Cubs on a cool and hopeful night in October. Fans filled the bleachers for Game 2 of the division series with the Dodgers, the train rattled up the Red Line, and the setting sun cast the Wrigleyville neighborhood in an orange glow. Santo was in his usual seat in the booth behind home plate. Waiting. “I’m hoping this will be it,” Santo said. “This would be a perfect world for me. World Series, No. 1. Well, actually, No. 1 is to find a cure for diabetes. That’s my No. 1 hope. But then the World Series, and the Hall of Fame.” His optimism, again, was about to be severely tested. The team fell behind the Dodgers quickly and lost, 10-3. The Cubs had the best record in the National League but trail the Dodgers by 2-0 in the best-of-five series, which has moved to Los Angeles. Before the game, Santo was buoyant. “I feel like this team is going to get there this year,” he said. “I really do.” By the middle of the sixth inning, with the Cubs losing, 6-0, he was trying to keep a brave face and a firm voice. “I’m a little upset,” Santo said off the air. “I didn’t expect this. I really didn’t expect this. I felt so good about this game.” His stomach was in a knot, and Wrigley Field was a deflated balloon. “I let this bother me too much,” Santo said. Once again, he was speaking as a fan, for the fans. “And I can’t help it.” It is part of what has endeared Santo to Cubs fans for a couple of generations. He hit .277 for his career, with 342 home runs and 1,331 runs batted in in 14 years with the Cubs and a final season with the White Sox. He also won a Gold Glove five times. What fans did not know until a decade into his career was that Santo was found to have juvenile diabetes at age 18. He did not tell the club until he made his first All-Star Game. Fans learned years later. Santo did not want it to affect how he was perceived. He always kept a candy bar and orange juice or Coke in the dugout. And he remembers a game in 1966, standing in the on-deck circle as Williams drew a walk to load the bases. The big green scoreboard in center field was in triplicate. “Bill Singer was the pitcher for the Dodgers and there were three of him — one, two, three,” Santo said. “I’ll never forget this. I just said to myself, I’m swinging at everything, just to get out of there and get some sugar in me. First pitch I hit a grand slam home run. And I’m going around the bases, and Billy Williams is slowing down, and I said, ‘Billy, go, go!’ ” Sunday will mark the 30th Ron Santo Walk to Cure Diabetes, which raised $5.8 million last year for the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation. Santo has had several operations on his eyes. He had quadruple bypass surgery in 1999. Circulation problems led to the amputation of his legs, about 8 inches below the knees. He wears prosthetics and walks with little trouble. He brings a cane to games. “Until adversity hits you, and I had open heart surgery and lost both my legs, you think I can’t get through it,” Santo said. “But really, you do what you have to do. I say that to everybody. You only have one way to go, and that’s a positive way.” His baseball statistics made Santo a borderline Hall of Famer. His next chance for induction comes in the next few months, when the veterans committee holds its biannual vote for players long overlooked. Last time, Santo led the 27 hopefuls with 57 votes, but he needed 72. He was eight votes short two years before. “I’m getting older, and I don’t have that time, and with diabetes — I mean, I’m not worried about it, but, you know, I want to be here when it happens, if it does,” he said. A 17-year career in business (pizza, then oil) bridged his playing and broadcasting careers. The Cubs asked him about becoming a commentator in the late 1980s, and he pursued it after he threw out a pitch during a 1989 night game. “I thought, God, I’d love to be here when they win it,” Santo said. He does not sound like other analysts. His longtime play-by-play partner, Pat Hughes, says Santo remains the Cubs’ biggest fan, and Santo sees that as a good thing. “I think I’ve personally become more popular as a broadcaster because I’m like they are,” Santo said of Cubs fans. “They love it when I let how I feel out, with the emotions. I sometimes don’t even realize what I did.” The same thing happened in 1969, when the Cubs were rolling toward a pennant. After a victory at Wrigley, Santo jumped and clicked his heels. Santo said he did not remember doing it the first time. But Manager Leo Durocher liked it. “He said, ‘Ron, you think you can do that again? With the bleacher bums and all that, why don’t we make that the victory kick at home?’ ” Santo said. He did, until the team collapsed and it did not feel right anymore. Santo is nearly 40 years older now, but more of a Cub than ever. He does not know what he would say if the Cubs won a championship (“It has to happen,” he said), but he knows just what to do. “If we win the World Series, I would go out on the field and click my heels,” he said. “And probably fall on my fanny.”

Baseball
Chicago Cubs
Santo Ron
World Series
Diabetes


Cycling Enters Electronic Age With Gear-Shifting System

Abstract: The bicycle, one of the world’s most resolutely human-powered machines, will join the long list of devices that have switched from the manual to the electronic when a new gear system makes its debut this weekend at the Tour of California. Although the battery-powered derailleur by Shimano promises to bring ease and accuracy to changing gears by enabling riders to shift with a light touch to two electronic switches, traditionalists worry that it may erode the basic tenets of the sport. “People choose bicycles precisely because a bicycle’s motion requires only human effort, and nothing could be more simple, independent and autonomous,” Raymond Henry, a cycling historian in St. Etienne, France, wrote in an e-mail message. “Any source of external energy, however weak, runs counter to this philosophy.” Whether the gear system becomes the next iPod and redefines bicycle technology or ends up as the sport’s version of the eight-track tape will hinge on a number of factors, the most obvious being performance, reliability and cost. Two earlier attempts at electronic gear changing by a French company, Mavic, often malfunctioned in rain. Another company, Campagnolo, has delayed bringing its version to market because of the economic downturn. Shimano’s version, known as the Dura-Ace Di2 7970, is being used by three professional teams competing in California: Columbia High Road, Garmin Slipstream and Rabobank. About 10 riders will race with the system even though they have used it on only one or two training rides after receiving them late this week. Bob Stapleton, the owner and general manager of Columbia, said many of his riders had doubts about using bicycles that could literally run out of power. The Di2 system has no manual override if its battery goes dead. That event can be an irritation or a disaster, depending on the terrain and what gear ratio the bike is stuck in. Shimano estimates the battery will last for about 1,000 miles per charge. “Their careers can be made on the results from one race,” Stapleton said of his riders. “So they prize reliability over everything.” Stapleton, an experienced amateur cyclist, has used the Di2 system extensively and is a convert. “I think every high-end bike within three years will have this, maybe sooner,” he said, adding that the system also eliminates much of the maintenance required by mechanical systems. A full set of components with electronic gears will cost about $1,250 more than the newest mechanical version, which sells for about $2,750. Upgrading an existing Shimano system is expected to cost about $2,200. The system will fit onto nearly all racing bicycles. Later this year, Giant, the largest bicycle manufacturer in the world, will offer a bike designed to use only electronic parts for about $14,000, which includes the cost of Di2. If consumers fancy the device, it will likely follow the pattern of other new electronics and drop significantly in price over time. Electronic gear-shifting technology has spent a long time in development. Prototypes of Mavic’s first system, the Zap, made a cameo appearance at the 1992 Tour de France and the company introduced its second attempt, the Mektronic, in 1999. For much of this decade, both Shimano, which dominates bicycle parts the way Microsoft dominates computer software, and its venerable Italian competitor Campagnolo occasionally tested prototype systems on the bikes of pro riders. More often than not, the prototypes were devoid of trademarks, presumably to limit embarrassment if results proved as unfortunate as the Zap. The Campagnolo and Shimano systems share the basic design of current mechanical derailleurs. That is, a parallelogram that moves the chain back and forth and, in the rear, two spring-loaded wheels to keep the chain taut. Two paddle-shaped electronic switches that sit behind the brake lever allow riders to shift gears. Tapping either paddle lightly in Di2 sends an electronic signal through a wire to a small motor inside the derailleur, moving the body and thus the chain by turning a worm gear. Even Devin Walton, a spokesman for Shimano, acknowledges that when it comes to the rear derailleur, there is little or no difference in shifting between the electronic and comparable mechanical offerings from the company. The gains are more obvious, however, with the front derailleur, which moves the chain between the two large, toothed rings on the bicycle’s crank. That is partly because the electronic front derailleur is able to make constant readjustments to reflect changes in the chain’s position caused by shifting with the more frequently used rear derailleur. That allows the electronic front derailleur to use a more efficient shifting mechanism, one that would drive riders to the point of distraction with fiddly readjustments on a mechanical system. Campagnolo has faith in its electronic system and is waiting for an upturn in the economy before launching. “We’ve got extremely positive feedbacks concerning shifting quickness, precision and user friendliness,” Lerrj Piazza, a spokesman for Campagnolo, said. Because cycling teams rely on sponsorship from companies like Shimano for their financial survival, several riders were reluctant to discuss their concerns about the system, which range from the prospect of battery failures to difficulty shifting gears using the small and very sensitive paddles while wearing gloves. But after a couple of training rides, George Hincapie of Columbia said he agreed with his team owner, Stapleton, about its merits. “The shifting is amazing,” he said. “I was very impressed as soon as I tried it.” The action of the electronic system is so effortless that, compared with mechanical levers, it leaves users feeling almost disconnected from the bike. After trying the system, Jonathan Vaughters, the chief executive of Garmin Slipstream, anticipates that initially it will be most widely used on special bicycles used for time trials, races against the stopwatch, and triathlons. Vaughters, a former professional rider, believes that most of the two-second margin by which Chris Boardman won the opening time trial of the 1997 Tour de France was owed to his electronic Mavic derailleur. The device, which worked for that race’s 7.3 kilometers, allowed Boardman to maintain his aerodynamic position even while shifting. If Di2 does prove to be reliable and is a success in the market, do not expect an automatic transmission next. Walton says that such a system, at least for racing bikes, would need to analyze a rider’s physical state and well as read his mind. “There’s no way for the system to know when you’re about to sprint,” Walton said. “When you’re in competition, you have to be in control.”

Bicycles and Bicycling
Electronics
Tour of California (Bicycle Race)


Leak of C.I.A. Officer Name Is Sign of Rift With Pakistan

Abstract: ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — For the second time in five months, the Pakistani authorities have angered the Central Intelligence Agency by tipping the Pakistani news media to the identity of the C.I.A. station chief in Islamabad, a deliberate effort to complicate the work of the American spy agency in the aftermath of the raid that killed Osama bin Laden , American officials said. The leak demonstrated the tilt toward a near adversarial relationship between the C.I.A. and the Pakistani spy agency, the Inter-Services Intelligence Directorate, or ISI, since the Bin Laden raid. It appeared to be intended to show the leverage the Pakistanis retain over American interests in the country, both sides said. In an address before Parliament on Monday, Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani furthered Pakistan ’s bristling response to the raid, making clear that Pakistani officials at the highest levels accepted little responsibility for the fact that Bin Laden was able to hide in their country for years. Instead, Mr. Gilani condemned the United States for a violation of Pakistan’s sovereignty and called the Qaeda leader’s presence in Pakistan an intelligence failure of the “whole world.” He said it was “disingenuous” for anyone to imply that the ISI or the army was “in cahoots” with Bin Laden, something American officials suspect but say they have no proof of. The prime minister’s statements, along with the leak related to the C.I.A. station chief, signaled the depths of the recriminations and potential for retaliation on both sides as American officials demand greater transparency and cooperation from Pakistan, which has not been forthcoming. The Pakistani spy agency gave the name of the station chief to The Nation, a conservative daily newspaper with a small circulation that is supportive of the ISI, American and Pakistani officials said. The ISI commonly plants stories in the Pakistani news media and is known to keep some journalists on its payroll. The name that appeared in print was misspelled but close enough to send a clear signal, the officials said. Similarly, last December, the cover of the station chief at the time was deliberately revealed by the ISI, again by a close approximation of the name, American officials said. As a result, he was forced to leave the country. In that case, the leak appeared in at least one Pakistani newspaper, including The News, a widely circulated English-language paper. A Pakistani lawyer representing a family of victims of an American drone strike against militants in the tribal region later included the name in a legal complaint sent to the Pakistani police. From that exposure, the station chief received death threats and quickly left the country, Obama administration officials said. The new station chief had no intention of leaving Pakistan, American officials said. The New York Times generally does not identify American intelligence operatives working undercover. Described as one of the agency’s toughest and most experienced officers, the current station chief supervised aspects of the successful raid against Bin Laden, including the C.I.A. safe house used to spy on the compound in Abbottabad where Bin Laden is believed to have lived for five years. The safe house was close enough to the compound for C.I.A. agents to gather details of the daily life of the Qaeda leader that helped the planning for the operation, Obama administration officials said. In Washington, Obama administration officials sought to tamp down tensions over the Navy Seal raid, deflecting questions about Mr. Gilani’s speech and refusing to comment publicly on the leak. “Counterterrorism cooperation with Pakistan is in our national security interests,” said Mark Toner, a State Department spokesman. “It has yielded results, tangible results, over the last decade, and so we believe it’s worthwhile and in our national interests to continue that cooperation. We also believe it’s in Pakistan’s long-term interests.” But Mr. Toner also underscored that the United States expects Mr. Gilani’s government to investigate any Pakistani complicity in sheltering Bin Laden in Abbottabad, about 75 miles by road from Islamabad. “We’ve asked some serious questions of the Pakistan government about what kind of possible support network may have existed,” Mr. Toner said. “And we expect, at some point, answers.” Whether Pakistan will reveal more is far from clear. Washington has asked Pakistan to give American officials access to the women who were at the compound with Bin Laden and who have been questioned by the ISI since the raid a week ago. So far, such access has not been granted, an American official said Monday. The relationship between the new station chief and the head of the ISI, Lt. Gen. Ahmed Shuja Pasha , has been described as particularly acrimonious by officials familiar with their meetings. The two men first clashed over the case of Raymond A. Davis, a C.I.A. contractor who killed two Pakistanis in January as they tried to rob him. He was detained by Pakistan for more than a month, despite arguments from the Obama administration that he was protected by diplomatic immunity . The killing of Bin Laden, and suggestions by the Obama administration that officials in the ISI may have known his whereabouts and provided him with support, have infuriated General Pasha, Pakistani officials said. He and the chief of the Pakistani Army, Gen. Ashfaq Parvez Kayani , were humiliated that the United States had deliberately not alerted Pakistan to the raid, they said. Since the raid, General Kayani and General Pasha have remained behind the scenes, limiting their remarks to a select group of Pakistani journalists last week. According to accounts from two journalists who attended the closed-door session, General Kayani bitterly reproached the Americans for the raid, saying that now they would have “Hollywood movies for the next decade.” Many expected the prime minister to use his speech to give an accounting of what Pakistan knew about Bin Laden’s presence in Pakistan, but instead he focused on the how the raid was a breach of Pakistani sovereignty. He defended the ISI, saying it had done more than any other intelligence agency to take on Al Qaeda . “No other country in the world and no other security agency has done so much to interdict Al Qaeda than the ISI and our armed forces,” he said. Mr. Gilani said that Lt. Gen. Javed Iqbal, a senior army general and close aide to General Kayani, would conduct an inquiry into how Bin Laden managed to hide in Pakistan so long, but provided no time frame. A joint session of Parliament on Friday, to be closed to outsiders, will be given a briefing by the military, he said.

Pakistan
ISI
Military
CIA
US Foreign Policy
Politics
Intelligence agency
Al Qaeda
Ahmed Shuja Pasha
Osama bin Laden


Support Grows for Larger European Rescue Fund

Abstract: BRUSSELS — Support was rising Monday for plans to increase the lending power of the rescue fund for the debt-laden euro zone countries, though it remained unclear whether a package of wider changes could be approved next month or would be delayed until March. Meeting in Brussels, European finance ministers discussed ways to increase the financing capacity of the European Financial Stability Facility as well as broadening its role to allow it to buy bonds or extend credit to countries, perhaps to help in future bank restructuring. Last week, the European Commission president, José Manuel Barroso, called for an agreement to increase the lending power and function of the fund on Feb. 4, when European Union leaders will meet. Since then, Finance Minister Wolfgang Schäuble of Germany has said the government in Berlin is aiming for an agreement on a package of measures in March. One prime concern is that any changes should be assembled in a comprehensive package so that national governments do not have to go more than once to their national parliaments to get approval. Almost any measure that is approved is expected to require parliamentary approval, according to European officials. The immediate crisis in the euro zone eased last week when Spanish and Portuguese bond auctions were more successful than expected. Though many analysts believe that the lull may be temporary, pressure for a quick deal has receded. Germany, the dominant economy in the euro zone, has been consistently cautious about bailouts for countries using the euro and appears opposed to the idea of increasing the rescue fund above 440 billion euros (about $585 billion). Arriving at the meeting in Brussels on Monday, Mr. Schäuble said there was no immediate need for change but hinted that he was willing to consider allowing the fund to lend all of the 440 billion euros. To keep its triple-A rating, the fund has to keep a cash buffer and can lend only around 250 billion euros. “In the short term, there is no need; in the medium term, we need solutions,” Mr. Schäuble said Monday. Although Mr. Barroso called for an increase in the lending capacity, he has not proposed an increase in the overall ceiling, suggesting that a consensus on this move is close. The European Union is changing its treaty to create a permanent bailout fund to operate after 2013, and the changes to the current fund could be one part of that more comprehensive overhaul. Ahead of the meeting of the 17 euro zone members, finance ministers from Germany, France and four other countries with triple-A ratings held a meeting on how to discuss the implications of changes for their own borrowing costs. The Irish finance minister, Brian J. Lenihan, said the ministers would also discuss moves to lower the interest rates for Ireland and Greece, which have already received bailouts. Mr. Barroso is still pressing for an agreement in February, calculating that the summit meeting next month, called to debate energy policy, will be dominated by speculation over changes to the euro zone bailout fund.

European Sovereign Debt Crisis (2010- )
European Union
Euro (Currency)
Credit and Debt
European Commission


Challenger Feels He's Advancing in German Vote

Abstract: BERLIN — Frank-Walter Steinmeier, the Social Democrat challenger to Chancellor Angela Merkel in the federal election Sunday, said at a big rally in Berlin on Friday that his party would defy the pollsters now that it had the wind “behind its back.” Mrs. Merkel is widely expected to win the election, but it is unclear whether her party, the Christian Democratic Union, will once again share power with the Social Democrats in a “grand coalition” or with the smaller pro-business Free Democrats, who favor far-reaching tax and economic reforms. Mr. Steinmeier said he was confident his party would do “far better than expected.” The latest opinion polls, published Thursday, gave Mrs. Merkel’s conservative bloc 36 percent and the Free Democrats 13 percent of the vote — just enough for them to establish the next government. But the Social Democrats, who for weeks have been languishing in the polls at around 22 percent, have gained by three percentage points in recent days as party activists sharpen their campaign against a center-right coalition and persuade voters to cast their ballots. The party won 34.2 percent of the vote in the 2005 elections, just one percentage point less than Mrs. Merkel’s conservative bloc of Christian Democrats and the Christian Social Union. Because neither of the two big parties could muster a stable government with smaller parties, they were forced to create the “grand coalition.” Referring to Mrs. Merkel’s Christian Democrat Union party, Mr. Steinmeier, who is also the foreign minister and vice chancellor, told more than 4,000 supporters during an evening rally Thursday in the western city of Trier that the union was becoming “more nervous by the day.” The union’s lead, he said, was “melting like ice in the sun.” A poor result by the Christian Democrats would, say analysts, bode badly for Mrs. Merkel, even if her conservative bloc remained the largest of all the parties. Mrs. Merkel, who on Friday attended the Group of 20 meeting in Pittsburgh, has come under criticism from within her own party for focusing the election too much on herself, avoiding confrontation with her erstwhile coalition partners, and keeping the campaign as low key as possible. If she wins handsomely, her campaign will be vindicated, said Gerd Langguth, political science professor at Bonn University. But if the conservative bloc scores as badly as it did in the 2005 election, when it won 35.2 percent, its lowest since 1949, she could face a challenge to her leadership of the party. The big concern for Mrs. Merkel and Mr. Steinmeier’s Social Democrats is that voter turnout could be low, which would benefit small parties, analysts say.

Voting and Voters
Germany
Berlin (Germany)
Merkel Angela


Sterling Offers Apology in Interview With CNN

Abstract: Donald Sterling, the embattled owner of the Los Angeles Clippers, broke his silence Sunday in an interview with CNN’s Anderson Cooper during which he apologized for making racist remarks. “I’m a good member who made a mistake, and I’m apologizing and I’m asking for forgiveness,” Sterling said during the interview, which was scheduled to air Monday night. “Am I entitled to one mistake — am I, after 35 years? I mean, I love my league, I love my partners. Am I entitled to one mistake? It’s a terrible mistake, and I’ll never do it again.” Last month, Commissioner Adam Silver barred Sterling from the N.B.A. for life and encouraged his fellow owners to vote to force him to sell the franchise. Also Sunday, Rochelle Sterling, his estranged wife, reiterated that she would fight any attempt by the N.B.A. to take away her stake in the team. She also disclosed that she planned to divorce her husband, with whom she partly owns the Clippers through a family trust. “I was shocked by what he said,” she said in an interview with ABC News. “And, well, I guess whatever their decision is, we have to live with it. But I don’t know why I should be punished for what his actions were.” In response, Mike Bass, an N.B.A. spokesman, said that if three-quarters of team owners terminate the interest of a controlling owner, the interests of all other partners are terminated as well. “It doesn’t matter whether the owners are related,” Bass said, adding, “These are the rules to which all N.B.A. owners agreed to as a condition of owning their team.” Meanwhile, the Miami Heat’s LeBron James joined a growing chorus calling for a wholesale change of ownership. “As players, we want what’s right and we don’t feel like no one in his family should be able to own the team,” James told reporters at the team’s practice.

Basketball
Donald Sterling
LeBron James
Clippers
NBA
Apologies
Race and Ethnicity
Discrimination


South Sudan: Government Forces Claim to Recapture Regional Capital

Abstract: The government said Monday that it had regained control of Malakal, the capital of the oil-producing Upper Nile state, though the United Nations said its base there took fire, wounding nearly three dozen people and damaging the hospital. Thousands of people have been killed and an estimated half million people have fled the fighting in South Sudan, which pits the government of President Salva Kiir, an ethnic Dinka, against forces loyal to the former vice president, Riek Machar, an ethnic Nuer. Negotiators for Mr. Kiir and Mr. Machar said over the weekend that a cease-fire was close at hand. But a Twitter feed believed to be controlled by Mr. Machar said Monday that there would not be a cease-fire until Ugandan troops supporting the government left South Sudan and high-level political detainees were released. The government insists that the detainees go through South Sudan’s judicial process, but Mr. Kiir said late Monday that he would pardon Mr. Machar if he surrendered.

Malakal South Sudan
Military
Salva Kiir Mayardit
Riek Machar
South Sudan


GTT

Abstract: Our quirky, discerning picks for the most interesting things to do around the state this week. DALLAS Song Sung Blues The tone for the British Invasion was set in Dallas in 1937 (June 19-20) when Robert Johnson — the Delta bluesman who legend has it sold his soul to the Devil in exchange for his incredible musical talent and inspired the Rolling Stones, Led Zeppelin and Eric Clapton — recorded the final 13 songs in his 29-track oeuvre at Brunswick Records at 508 Park Avenue. “On That Day,” a theatrical production by the historian Alan Govenar and the director Akin Babatunde, re-enacts those two historical days with a cast of musicians, actors and one tap dancer. It’s part of 75th & 508 , a celebration that will also include a Robert Johnson look-alike and sound-alike contest. The event was made possible by the First Presbyterian Church of Dallas, which recently bought the failing Art Deco building and is converting it into a multispace facility. It will be the future home of the Museum of Street Culture, a vehicle for advancing the mission of the Stewpot, the church’s resource center for the homeless and at risk. “The idea,” said Mr. Govenar, the museum’s curator, “is to align the growth of blues, jazz, country and other styles of vernacular music with the living history of tramp and homeless art.” First Presbyterian Church and the Stewpot, June 19, 2 p.m., 508park.org SAN ANTONIO Jiminy Cricket In China, crickets are both lovers and fighters. Their songs, besides being pleasant to listen to, are thought to bring good luck, and their ability to duke it out in the ring is a source of entertainment and income for fans of blood sport. The exhibition “ The Chinese Art of Cricket Keeping ,” which is in its final weekend at the San Antonio Museum of Art, explores this curious subculture, which dates back a millennium. Accouterments like an enameled porcelain cricket bed, a carved ivory cricket carrier and a carved gourd cricket cage attest to the importance of coddling these delicate creatures to maximize their returns. It is an investment, sure, but you might nonetheless be inspired to take up the hobby of collecting crickets, if only to employ them to eat the mosquitoes invading your outdoor entertaining space on hot summer nights. San Antonio Museum of Art, June 15-17, various times, samuseum.org HOUSTON Disrobed Erykah Badu, the Dallas neo-soul singer, likes to expose herself. She once stripped in Dealey Plaza, where President John F. Kennedy was assassinated, for her video “Window Seat.” Recently she posed naked (save for some glitter) in a bathtub for a video with the Flaming Lips, the psych-rock band. Ms. Badu’s provocative approach to her art may mean you either love her or hate her, despite her indisputably great voice. Pamela Davis-Noland, a writer and producer, is in the camp that thinks Ms. Badu is genuinely on to something and not just a news-media hog. “ Badu-izms: A Tribute to Erykah ” is Ms. Davis-Noland’s “music video onstage” about the woman she calls the “queen of neosoulfunkinizms.” The production’s realistic take on this polarizing musician — down to the audience’s candid reactions — might help you determine whether or not she is overexposed. Frenetic Theater, June 15-17, various times, freneticore.net SURFSIDE BEACH Surf’s Up Surfers are generally territorial. They want their waves, and sharing is not an option. That can make it difficult to learn to surf. But International Surfing Day , an event centered on the communal aspects of the sport, could help. Assuming you are not utterly spent after paddling out from Surfside Beach, the experts will try to help you get up on your board and give you a taste for the potential of a wave. Attendance does not require that you beat yourself up in the water. Your participation in the beach cleanup will suffice. Of course, no one is going to bother you if you just want to chill on the beach, soak up some rays and admire the figures gliding on the water. Surfside Beach, June 16, 10 a.m., surfrider.org GALVESTON Land of the Free The emancipation procession at Juneteenth in Galveston , the holiday celebrating the abolition of slavery in certain parts of the South — not in 1863 but in 1865 — ensures that those who lost an additional two years of their freedom are not forgotten. Various locations, June 15-19, various times, galveston.com DALLAS Mixed Up A “neat” drink is a novelty reserved for “Mad Men,” because in the real world the trend is mixology — knowing what goes together and impressing friends with the original drink orders and recipes you learn during Dallas Cocktail Week . The Stoneleigh, Main Street Garden and the Joule, June 15-17, various times, craftcocktailstx .com


Santorum Sticks to a Bare-Bones Style

Abstract: WESTERVILLE, Ohio — On the eve of Super Tuesday, more than two full months into the presidential nominating season, Rick Santorum ’s campaign is still a bare-bones operation, with little of the slickness that many presidential campaigns exhibit by this time in the process. This is a badge of honor for Mr. Santorum. He is fond of saying that his campaign lives off the land — he drove around Iowa before the caucuses with a single aide, or sometimes by himself, and he ended up winning that state, although belatedly, after a botched count initially declared that he had come in second to Mitt Romney. Now Mr. Santorum has three more victories under his belt, and he and Mr. Romney are running neck and neck here in Ohio, the most important prize of the 10 states that vote on Tuesday. And yet, Mr. Santorum’s campaign events still seem to be stuck in the pre-Iowa past. The events are bigger. More people are attending. The number of television cameras and news reporters has multiplied. And the campaign is millions of dollars richer. But the money goes mostly for travel and for commercials, not for a bloated campaign operation or elaborate advance work. And it shows, as the media and even supporters scramble to keep up with schedules that sometimes are made public with little notice. Mr. Romney’s campaign, by contrast, is flush with money and devotes much of it to the meticulous, well-planned staging of events. The settings often reflect Mr. Romney’s message — on Monday, for example, he spoke at a guard-rail factory in Canton where he discussed jobs and the economy. He made a point of referring to the factory and talking about its products — and what taxes it would pay under his polices, compared with those of President Obama. By contrast, Mr. Santorum spoke on Monday morning in the cafeteria of a Christian school outside Dayton. He spoke in the afternoon here in this Columbus suburb at an American Legion Hall. Often, he holds his events in dreary hotel ballrooms with bad lighting, the kinds of places that might be available for a last-minute booking. Only recently have his aides started tacking up a sign (“Made in America”) to serve as a backdrop for Mr. Santorum while he stands at a lectern. It is a chance for a little product placement, but Mr. Santorum has not maximized its potential. As much as Mr. Santorum lauds Ronald Reagan, his aides have not sought to imitate the Reagan campaign’s legendary focus on what are called “the visuals” — how his events looked on television. When his campaign began, his disregard for them could easily have been attributed to lack of money or lack of organization. But now that he has more of both, many of his events are still staged in places that are generic and mundane. They offer few clues that place him in any particular state or region. Some might suggest that the disregard for staging an eye-catching event is the product of a weak organization. The Romney camp has argued that Mr. Santorum’s organization is so weak that it failed to file a full slate of delegates in Ohio. And that, they say, is a warning sign that it would not be able to overcome Mr. Obama in the fall. The Santorum campaign says the minimal staging is intentional. In fact, aides said, that is exactly the message — what you see is what you get. The stripped-down events are meant to convey what they say is the candidate’s authenticity and to show, not just tell, that he would not spend the taxpayers’ money on frippery. “The press oftentimes has seen so many of these candidates and seen so many events, they expect lights and music and a production, a show, a teleprompter, a few well-scripted one-liners — but that isn’t Rick Santorum,” said Hogan Gidley, Mr. Santorum’s spokesman. “It’s not that we can’t or won’t do those things,” he said. “We just don’t do them. He doesn’t want people thinking he’s contrived.” At the American Legion Hall, Mr. Santorum pointed out to the wall-to-wall crowd that he was wearing his signature sweater vest. He said he and his family wore the vests “to remind us where we come from — which is basically out of nowhere.” In recent weeks, his campaign does appear to have printed up more yard signs and has been distributing them to supporters who attend events. But for weeks, people who came to see him lamented that they could not find buttons or bumper stickers. For all of Mr. Santorum’s rejection of the trappings of a traditional campaign, he is clearly pleased to have at least one — the addition of a statewide officeholder as wingman. Mr. Santorum has been joined by Mike DeWine, Ohio’s ubiquitous attorney general; they are old friends from their days in the Senate together. Mr. DeWine has traversed the state with Mr. Santorum, introducing him at events and vouching for him, recalling the days when they worked together in that establishment institution that Mr. Santorum does not often mention, the Senate.

Santorum Rick
Presidential Election of 2012
United States Politics and Government


Deal Follows All-Nighters in Minnesota

Abstract: As Sunday turned into Monday, lawmakers in Minnesota were still at their desks, rumpled and bleary-eyed, dozing off at times. The cause of the all-nighter was all too familiar in state legislatures in a time of shrunken revenues: a budget deficit to fill to keep the state’s business going. But there was an added ingredient keeping this Democratic-led Legislature awake: a standoff with Gov. Tim Pawlenty , a Republican, who is in his final year as governor and is widely viewed as a presidential possibility. On Saturday, Mr. Pawlenty departed early from the state’s traditional opening events of the fishing season up north (he first caught four fish) and returned to St. Paul, the capital, where negotiations went on and on and some lawmakers and aides said they had not slept in days. Some Democrats had once hoped for a tax increase. Then, a few weeks ago, the projected budget gap worsened to about $3 billion, when the State Supreme Court ruled that Mr. Pawlenty had overstepped his bounds in making earlier, unilateral cuts (known in St. Paul as “unallotment”) to a nutrition program. In the end, lawmakers missed an official deadline of Sunday midnight and talked on into a special session on Monday. When all was said and done, the Legislature approved most of Mr. Pawlenty’s earlier cuts and delayed a question of significant payments to school districts. On one central and divisive question of health care coverage, lawmakers agreed to let Mr. Pawlenty — and later his successor — decide whether to extend Medicaid coverage to more poor Minnesotans, a notion that some Republicans have mocked as Obamacare and that Mr. Pawlenty has indicated he considers a bad idea. So, in a way, despite all of the hours of talk, some of the largest questions were pushed off to next year, after Minnesotans choose a new governor and the politics simmer down. Before anyone went home to bed, the candidates for governor, including some of the sleepy lawmakers, were issuing promises for and against the Medicaid plan. And some analysts were estimating that the deficit lawmakers might face when they began considering a new budget, come January 2011, would be about $5 billion.

Minnesota
Budgets and Budgeting
Pawlenty Tim
United States Politics and Government
Medicaid


A Student Loan System Stacked Against the Borrower

Abstract: “It feels like I’m being set up to fail.” That’s how Patrick Wittwer, 31, described his experience trying to repay his roughly $50,000 in student loans. Between misdirected payments by one of the companies servicing his loan and the abusive collection tactics he encountered when he fell behind, Mr. Wittwer said the repayment process simply seemed stacked against him. A 2008 graduate of Temple University with a degree in media arts, Mr. Wittwer is not alone in his experience. Consumer advocates say student-loan servicers often make an already heavy debt load even more burdensome for borrowers. A report issued late last month by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau supports this view. Even though the economy and labor market have improved, student loan borrowers are experiencing high distress levels compared with borrowers with other types of consumer debt, the government report found. More than one in four student loan borrowers are delinquent or in default on their obligations. In the aftermath of the financial crisis, we learned repeatedly about dubious practices among mortgage servicing companies that made it harder for homeowners trying to repay or renegotiate their loans. Now, similar horror stories are emerging about the companies servicing student loans. Some 41 million Americans owe $1.2 trillion in student loan debt. The median debt burden among borrowers was $20,000 in 2014, up from $13,000 in 2007. Companies servicing these loans manage borrowers’ accounts, process their payments and enroll them in alternative repayment plans, including those based on a fixed share of the borrowers’ income. Among the biggest companies are Navient, Great Lakes and Discover Bank. The Education Department has contracts with 11 loan servicers. But with no federal standards governing these activities, student-loan servicers have great leeway in their practices. Making matters worse, borrowers are not allowed to choose their servicers, so if they encounter problems, they cannot take their business elsewhere. “Good loan servicing is expensive,” Maura Dundon, senior policy counsel at the Center for Responsible Lending , said in a recent interview. “It requires reaching out and talking to people, and servicers don’t do it because they don’t get compensated for that. This is the fault of servicers, but it’s also the fault of the Department of Education for not writing this into their contracts.” Denise Horn, a spokeswoman for the Education Department, said the agency continues to strengthen the federal direct loan program “to ensure all students and families receive the highest quality support from their federal loan servicers.” She added: “Everyone needs to do more to protect student loan borrowers — including servicers — and we’ll continue to take steps to strengthen the program and enhance oversight.” A recent questionnaire by Young Invincibles , a research and advocacy organization focused on advancing economic opportunity for young adults, points to some of the weaknesses in student loan servicing. One common borrower complaint among the roughly 1,200 people who responded to the survey was that servicers simply fail to follow instructions. Borrowers hoping to reduce both the cost and the length of their repayment period, for example, often ask servicers to steer payments toward higher-cost loans first. In a number of cases, recipients said, the companies ignored these requests. “For servicers to ignore or do the opposite thing that a borrower would request is indicative of something very negative going on in the industry,” said Jennifer Wang, policy director at Young Invincibles. Improper levying of late fees was another practice cited by those shouldering student loans. So were losing paperwork and making repeated requests for documentation. Perhaps the biggest problem cited by borrowers and their advocates was the failure of student loan servicers to advise their customers of the full array of repayment plans available to them. In many cases, this means borrowers do not know they are eligible for loan relief and do not receive it. Such relief includes repayment plans for federal loans based on a borrower’s income and family size, or debt forgiveness programs for borrowers who work in public service. Military service members also have a right to a lower interest rate while they are on active duty. But many eligible borrowers don’t hear about these options, advocates say. An August report from the Government Accountability Office estimated that 51 percent of student loan borrowers nationwide are eligible for income-based repayment plans, but only 15 percent are enrolled. Rather than offer one of these programs, servicers often suggest loan forbearance, in which the borrower stops making payments temporarily. But because interest keeps piling up on the loan during the forbearance period, this is an expensive alternative. And some private student loan servicers charge a $150 fee to put an account into forbearance. Servicers say the complexity of federal student loan arrangements creates problems both for their workers who must try to explain these deals and for borrowers who need to understand them. But servicers receive $600 million a year for their work, and explaining loan terms is surely one of the jobs they are being paid to perform. “For a servicer to see a student loan borrower struggle and not help them get into the right repayment plan is a huge customer service failure,” Ms. Wang said. It is also a taxpayer risk, given that such practices raise a borrower’s potential to default. Mr. Wittwer, who lives in Philadelphia, said he had encountered difficulties with some of his loan payments even though he arranged for them to be deducted automatically from his bank account last year. “After six or seven months, I get a late notice for my federal loans and I go in to my bank and double-check that the loan was being paid,” he said. “My loans had been transferred to another office, but the original office had kept collecting it.” It took about a month to fix the problem, Mr. Wittwer said. “You have to be hypervigilant about it because student loans are constantly being sold and moved.” Ms. Dundon of the Center for Responsible Lending said that the Education Department had fixed some of the problems in its servicing contracts but that financial incentives were still misaligned in certain areas. For example, service companies receive more money if the loans they oversee are being paid off, and less if borrowers stop paying. While this system encourages servicers to keep borrowers current — a good thing — it discourages them from working with borrowers who fall behind. Mr. Wittwer said he is currently paying $756 a month on his student loans, the minimum amount. He acknowledged that he did not understand the consequences of the sky-high interest rates on his loans when he took them on. But his credit score is rising and he has a job. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is talking about rules to standardize student loan servicing practices. In the meantime, its enforcement unit has student loan servicing companies under the microscope. It brought a case against Discover Bank last summer, saying it inflated the amounts it said borrowers owed on their loans. Discover Bank paid $18.5 million without admitting or denying wrongdoing. Repaying a student loan is challenging enough without servicers adding to the burden with incompetence or dubious practices. Borrowers and taxpayers deserve better.

Student loan
Consumer protection
Consumer Financial Protection Bureau
Customer service
Personal finance


Brooke Astor’s Yards of Wills and Her Lawyer, Henry Christensen

Abstract: The putty-colored, tri-level cart stood next to the witness box, its 3-foot-long shelves filled with black binders the size of telephone books. The collection of paperwork represented the sometimes whimsical, sometimes meticulous nature of Brooke Astor . The binders contained more than 30 different wills and amendments to the wills that she executed over half a century. And as prosecutors rolled the cart into State Supreme Court in Manhattan on Tuesday, it signaled a new chapter in the trial of Mrs. Astor’s son, Anthony D. Marshall . After four weeks of testimony that focused mostly on Mrs. Astor’s general mental condition, the case homed in on the period and documents most crucial to the prosecution’s case. Mr. Marshall, 84, and Francis X. Morrissey Jr., 66, a lawyer who did estate planning for Mrs. Astor before she died in 2007 at 105, are accused of taking advantage of her dementia to manipulate her into changing her will in early 2004, funneling millions of dollars their way. Mrs. Astor’s wills and amendments, or codicils, were entered into evidence as Henry Christensen III, Mrs. Astor’s longtime lawyer, took the stand. Mr. Christensen is a central figure for both sides in the case. He drafted a codicil that Mrs. Astor executed on Dec. 18, 2003, that gave Mr. Marshall the authority to decide which charities could receive up to 49 percent of one of her trust funds. Although prosecutors did not include the 2003 codicil in the indictment, they said Mr. Christensen allowed it to go through because his loyalties were divided between Mrs. Astor and Mr. Marshall, both his employers. Prosecutors have said he made his views of the change known by titling it “First and Final Codicil.” Mr. Marshall and Mr. Morrissey fired Mr. Christensen weeks after the first codicil, prosecutors have argued, because he would not agree to more changes. The defense is relying on Mr. Christensen to testify that Mrs. Astor was competent when she signed the first codicil. If she was competent then, the defense believes, it would be difficult for prosecutors to show that she was incompetent less than a month later when she executed a second codicil. That change gave Mr. Marshall full control of the cash and bonds in her estate after bequests were paid, and prosecutors have said it was made through fraud. Before Mr. Christensen took the stand, the defense asked the judge to bar Mr. Christensen from testifying that he was torn between representing Mrs. Astor and Mr. Marshall. John Cuti, one of Mr. Marshall’s lawyers, argued that in doing so, prosecutors would be asking the jury to find Mr. Christensen credible about that but not about Mrs. Astor’s competency when she signed the first codicil. The judge, Justice A. Kirke Bartley Jr., ruled in favor of the prosecution, saying the testimony would not destroy the witness’s credibility. Under questioning by Elizabeth Loewy, an assistant district attorney, Mr. Christensen, 64, testified that he became Mrs. Astor’s primary lawyer in 1991. He worked for the law firm Sullivan & Cromwell, which had represented Mrs. Astor since the 1950s, he said. Mr. Christensen testified that in the 1990s Mrs. Astor told him that her son had asked for information about her will, but that she gave Mr. Marshall no details. Mrs. Astor was grateful that her son was managing her financial affairs, Mr. Christensen testified. “As she became older and more frail, she was more dependent on Mr. Marshall,” he said. Mr. Christensen is scheduled to continue testifying on Wednesday.

Astor Brooke
Marshall Anthony D
Morrissey Francis X Jr
Wills and Estates
Suits and Litigation
Manhattan (NYC)


In Tennessee, Building a Bat Cave to Battle a Plague

Abstract: CLARKSVILLE, Tenn. — For about six years, Cory Holliday, the Nature Conservancy ’s cave specialist in Tennessee, has feared that white nose syndrome, a devastating fungal disease that kills hibernating bats by the millions, would come to Bellamy Cave. Last winter it did. A few bats were found with the telltale fuzzy white growth on the muzzle, and Mr. Holliday (a distant relative of the original Doc Holliday of O.K. Corral fame, or infamy ) knew it was time to act. The disease, for which there is no treatment and no cure, was first spotted in New York in 2006. It spread to New England and has steadily moved south and west, crossing the Mississippi and just recently reaching Alabama. More than five million bats have died. The disease does not affect humans. But bats eat prodigious numbers of insects, and one study estimated that if the death toll continued to rise, the cost to farmers in increased use of pesticides would be in the billions. In Tennessee, a state with 10,000 caves and 16 species of bats, about half of them hibernating, Bellamy is something special. It is the winter home, or hibernaculum, to 270,000 gray bats, listed as endangered partly because the entire species hibernates in only nine caves, three of those in Tennessee. “This is a species that could wink out in a few years,” Mr. Holliday said. So he and the Nature Conservancy decided it was time to dig in, literally. They built an artificial cave, roughly 80 feet long and 16 feet wide, with 11-foot ceilings. Completed this month, and buried under four feet of earth, it lies on a slope about 100 yards from Bellamy Cave’s entrance. The conservancy is betting $300,000 in private funds (some still to be raised) on the cave, a concrete bunker equipped with cameras and a temperature monitor. Most important, it can be scoured each spring after the bats leave, something that cannot be done in the complex ecosystem of a natural cave. The fungus takes a while to infect a whole colony. “White nose finds its way into a cave,” Mr. Holliday said, “and by Year 3 you’ve got mass mortality.” He hopes that disinfecting the bunker will stop the fungus in its tracks. “But there’s no guarantee,” he said. First, the bats have to come. Second, the cleaning has to work. Even at best, the bunker or others like it would be a holding action, a refuge for some thousands of bats, while scientists scramble to find another way to fight the disease or surviving bats develop some resistance to the fungus. The University of Tennessee and Southern Illinois University are collaborating with the Nature Conservancy in collecting data on bat behavior in the cave using video cameras and temperature sensors. “What they’re doing is a fantastic project in many ways,” said Jeremy Coleman, the national white nose coordinator for the United States Fish and Wildlife Service. “But it’s a crapshoot.” Although Mr. Holliday has consulted bat experts on every aspect of the cave — from temperature to airflow to varying the texture of walls and hanging fabric with three different sizes of mesh so that bats have something to hang on to — he believes the effort is a first. If it works, the technique could be applied to abandoned mines and other built structures where bats hibernate. And whatever happens, the bunker is equipped with cameras and temperature sensors to study bats’ behavior and see if their choice of microclimate affects their susceptibility to the fungus. The lack of weapons to fight the disease is not surprising, since it was only in 2006 that it was first noticed. Government agencies, research scientists and conservation groups quickly turned their attention to the problem. The first step was determining the cause of the syndrome, which appears as a fuzzy white growth on the muzzles of sick and dying bats. David Blehert and his colleagues at the United States Geological Survey identified the culprit as a previously unknown species of fungus that they called Geomyces destructans. It is a soil fungus that thrives in the cold temperatures of caves where bats hibernate. Fungi rarely pose a problem for healthy mammals, so there are few treatments. It’s easy enough to kill a fungus with bleach , but not when it has infected an animal. Amphibians have suffered major losses recently from another fungus. But climate change and habitat loss may have contributed stress. For bats, it seems the problem is simply that the fungus was new to the United States. The many species of bats that do not hibernate were not affected. Hibernating bats not only have a lower metabolism and body temperature, but they are also densely packed together, so the fungus can spread easily. It eats holes in the delicate, translucent tissue of their wings, and drains the bats’ energy reserves. Sometimes bats fly in middle of winter when they should be hibernating. If the damage is severe enough, they cannot survive. After the fungus was identified, it was found in Europe, where it seemed to have been living in soil in caves and infecting bats for a long time, without the terrible mortality seen here. The evidence, said Jeff Foster, a wildlife disease ecologist at Northern Arizona University, is that there is “a lot of genetic diversity in Europe” among strains of the fungus and very little in the United States — strongly suggesting that it has been in Europe “for a very long time” and somehow made its way across the Atlantic. Dr. Foster, who, with colleagues, has sequenced the genomes of about 30 samples of the fungus, said that while this explanation is likely, he will not consider it nailed down until the origin of the fungus in Europe is identified, which he thinks should occur in a year or so. But, he said, the major importance of full genome studies is to track how the fungus spreads in the United States. Because strains here are so similar, tracing the spread can be done only by using the tiny genetic differences that show up in comparing entire genomes. Bat experts suspect that people who explore caves unwittingly carried the fungus to the United States from Europe, but they don’t know for sure. Many caves in the eastern part of the country — all those on public land in Tennessee, for instance — have been closed to humans, but the fungus still spreads. The pattern, says Dr. Foster, is “consistent” with bats carrying it. Although the fungus infects European bats, it does not cause the level of damage that it does to American bats, and one hope scientists have is to learn the nature of resistance to the fungus. Do European bats have different behaviors? Are there physiological changes? To answer some of these questions, researchers around the country are catching, inspecting and banding bats, both to learn what is going on with the populations in general and to see if survivors are breeding and producing resistant offspring. Nets or other traps are placed at cave entrances or other places where bats are roosting. This summer, Nate Fuller of Boston University captured little brown and big brown bats as they exited a barn in Massachusetts, where they had moved after hibernation to give birth and raise their pups. He measured them, took samples of oily material on their wings, and noted scarring on wings of survivors of white nose. In Europe, Natalia Martinkova at the Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic is studying how bats there respond to infection from the fungus. By studying what proteins genes produce during hibernation, she hopes to understand “what genes that might be involved in the immune response .” In the United States, researchers are pursuing many routes of study, including a project being undertaken by DeeAnn Reeder and Ken Field at Bucknell University that involves 150 little brown bats they are infecting with different doses of the fungus. Dr. Reeder and Dr. Field will watch the progress of disease in different conditions and track immune activity with blood tests. “We don’t fully understand the nature of immunity in hibernation,” Dr. Field said. For now, the finishing touches are being put on the Tennessee bat bunker. The mass of concrete and earth was under a baking late-summer sun during construction, and air-conditioners are needed to get the cave down to between 41 and 50 degrees by next week, when it is scheduled to be closed to humans. Recorded calls of bats will be used to attract them to the cave. Gray bats could begin to gather in the area in prehibernation mode any time now; most will be hibernating by mid-November. Win, lose or draw, the bet has been laid. And one cannot help think that the original Doc Holliday, known to gamble on occasion, and not one to avoid a showdown, would have approved.

Bats
Fungi
White Nose Syndrome
Caves and Caverns
Nature Conservancy
Tennessee


Global Climate Pact Gains Momentum as China, U.S. and Brazil Detail Plans

Abstract: WASHINGTON — Five months before a United Nations summit meeting aimed at forging a historic global accord to cut climate-warming emissions, significant signs of progress toward an agreement are emerging. China, the world’s largest greenhouse gas polluter, submitted a 16-page plan to the United Nations on Tuesday detailing how it plans to shift its economy to reduce fossil fuel emissions by 2030. On the same day, President Dilma Rousseff of Brazil, which is among the top 10 carbon emitters, and President Obama announced in Washington that their nations had agreed to sharply expand electricity generation from renewable sources. But it is increasingly evident that the policy actions by these countries and others will not be enough to stave off a rise in the atmospheric temperature of 2 degrees Celsius, or 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit. At that point, scientists say, the planet will be locked into a future of extreme storms, droughts, food and water shortages, and rising sea levels. Under a United Nations accord reached in Peru last December, every nation is to submit a plan for cutting carbon emissions well ahead of the December summit meeting in Paris. The plans by the individual nations will form the core of the new agreement. South Korea, Serbia and Iceland also submitted their plans for cutting emissions on Tuesday, joining the 40 or so countries that had already done so, including Canada, Mexico, Russia and the United States, along with the European Union. And in the joint announcement by Brazil and the United States, the two nations committed to increasing the use of wind, solar and geothermal energy to make up 20 percent of each country’s electricity production by 2030, which would double power generation from renewable sources in Brazil and triple it in the United States. Brazil also pledged to restore about 30 million acres of Amazon rain forest, an area about the size of Pennsylvania. Video President Obama and the Brazilian president Dilma Rousseff laid out their plans to increase the countries’ use of renewable energy. Credit Credit Doug Mills/The New York Times “Following progress during my trips to China and India, this shows that the world’s major economies can begin to transcend some of the old divides and work together to confront the common challenge that we face — something that we have to work on for future generations,” said Mr. Obama, who has pushed other countries to sign on to a climate change deal. Christiana Figueres, the top United Nations climate change official, said, “Over the past 24 hours, we’ve seen a very nice example of the diversity of countries engaging on the climate solution.” But she added, “The sum total of these does not get us to 2 degrees.” Climate policy experts pointed to the significance of China’s plan in particular. The United States and China, the world’s top greenhouse gas polluters, have long been viewed as the biggest obstacles to reaching a meaningful global warming deal. That changed last November when Mr. Obama and President Xi Jinping jointly announced that the United States would lower its emissions up to 28 percent from 2005 levels by 2025, while China’s emissions would peak and then decline no later than 2030. In March, Mr. Obama submitted a plan to the United Nations detailing how the United States would meet its target. It said it would do so chiefly through enactment of Environmental Protection Agency regulations on emissions from cars, trucks and power plants. China’s plan included a broad commitment to decouple economic growth from the use of fossil fuels, and a move to lower its carbon intensity, or the amount of the pollutant generated by each point of economic growth, by 60 to 65 percent from 2005 levels by 2030. It also laid out plans to develop a national cap-and-trade system, a market-based program for reducing emissions in which companies must pay for permits to pollute, and can buy and sell those permits among themselves. “It demonstrates the depth of climate policy architecture,” said David Sandalow, a fellow at the Center on Global Energy Policy at Columbia University and a former top Energy Department official in the Obama administration. “It’s very detailed and suggests the seriousness with which China takes its climate policy goals.” In his first term, Mr. Obama tried unsuccessfully to push a similar cap-and-trade system through Congress. “There is a lot of irony that the U.S., which invented free-market approaches to stopping climate change, is using command-and-control regulations while Communist China will use a carbon market,” said Paul Bledsoe, a top climate change official in the administration of former President Bill Clinton. Image Smog engulfed a building under construction in Liaoning Province, China, in November. On Tuesday, China submitted a climate plan to the United Nations. Credit Jacky Chen/Reuters But Brazil, despite its announcement on Tuesday, has not yet submitted its climate plan to the United Nations, and several other major polluting economies, including India and Japan, also have not. In any event, climate policy experts say it is almost certain that their plans will not add up to strong enough action to curb the harmful effects of climate change. Ms. Figueres and other United Nations negotiators say they now see a Paris accord as a first step in a multiyear process in which countries will put forth domestic climate policies and reconvene regularly to make their plans more stringent. “It’s not a one-shot deal,” she said. “It’s like a highway, with each country going in the lane with the speed that they can go. Some will start out slowly and speed up later. It will be a progressive process over time.” One hurdle to a pact is Republican lawmakers’ longstanding opposition to participation in a global climate change deal. They say that such a plan could hurt the American economy, while allowing other countries to continue to pollute at higher levels. Senator James M. Inhofe, Republican of Oklahoma, who is the chairman of the Senate Environment Committee, said he was deeply skeptical of China’s plan. “China’s commitment to reduce carbon emissions is unattainable and unrealistic,” Mr. Inhofe said in a statement. “China’s commitment will allow the country to continue increasing its emissions for the next 15 years.” Money is another major obstacle. In 2009, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton pledged that by 2020, developed economies would send $100 billion annually, from both public and private sources, to developing economies to help them adapt to the ravages of climate change. This year, the United Nations has sought to establish a $10 billion “Green Climate Fund” to help begin that fund-raising effort. Although Mr. Obama has pledged $3 billion — more than any other nation has offered — Republicans in Congress have blocked efforts to appropriate the money. Climate policy experts say that without the money from rich countries, developing economies will not be able to follow through on their pledges.

Climate Change
Global Warming
Greenhouse gas
China
Brazil
US
Barack Obama
Dilma Rousseff


2 Radio Show Hosts Who Preached Tenacity Kill Themselves

Abstract: They were hosts of a self-help radio show, motivational speakers on happiness and life coaches from Park Slope, Brooklyn. They called their business Why Not Now, and featured inspirational quotations. “It’s a funny thing about life,” reads one, from a British playwright. “If you refuse to accept anything but the very best, you very often get it.” On Monday, the police found the show hosts, John Littig and Lynne Rosen, a couple who lived and worked together in Brooklyn, dead in their President Street apartment with plastic bags over their heads, the authorities said Wednesday. Two notes — written by both Mr. Littig, 48, and Ms. Rosen, 46 — were left near the bodies. The police characterized them as apparent suicide notes, but declined to reveal their contents. It was not immediately clear what led the couple to take their own lives, or the precise method they employed. The police said there were indications that helium gas had been used. Their suicides stood in stark contrast to the messages they had posted online and shared with listeners of their radio show, a conversational back-and-forth that aired once a month on WBAI-FM. “ So much of life is about impulse, it’s about doing it right now,” Mr. Littig said during a recent show. “Go with your gut.” Ms. Rosen agreed. “I’m an intuition person in certain ways. What’s the Einstein quote, John?” “ Imagination is more important than knowledge ,” he said. Ms. Rosen also posted videos to YouTube including one, in June 2011, in which she faced the camera and exhorted listeners not to despair and instead “to follow your true inner voice.” “That part of you that says, ‘I need to take a giant leap into the glorious unknown where magical things can happen,’ ” she said.

Suicide
Park Slope Brooklyn
Radio
WBAI-FM
John Littig
Lynne Rosen


Father’s Tough Life an Inspiration for Biden

Abstract: WILMINGTON, Del. — Senator Joseph R. Biden Jr. has worked with titans of the Senate and met countless heads of state. None of them have left as deep an impression on him as his father, Joseph Robinette Biden Sr., a prideful man. Though life had dealt Joe Sr. a tough hand early in life in drunken, faithless bosses and a thieving partner, he never bemoaned his fate. Joe Sr. had it all in his 20s, sailing yachts off the New England coast, riding to the hounds, driving fast cars, flying airplanes. A decade later, he found himself with a wife and four children living in a two-bedroom apartment in a dreary, treeless suburb of Wilmington, selling used cars. His children saw hints of his former life in his wardrobe — he was always impeccably dressed with a perfect pocket square — and in the back of his closet, where he kept his riding pinks, his polished boots and his polo mallet. His son the senator said the old man preached one lesson that had been the guiding principle in his own life, which has seen its share of defeats, some dealt by cruel fate, some self-inflicted. It is what has kept him going when he has faced tragedy and humiliation, the leitmotifs of the Biden story. “My dad always said, ‘Champ, the measure of a man is not how often he is knocked down, but how quickly he gets up,’ ” Senator Biden said of his father, who died in 2002 at age 86. This is the recurring theme of his speeches as running mate to Senator Barack Obama and the coda to many of Mr. Biden’s appearances on the stump. “I’ve never seen a time in my career when so many Americans have been knocked down,” Mr. Biden said last week at a campaign appearance in Rochester, N.H., his voice rising, his face reddening beneath a thin crown of white hair. “As my father used to say, when you get knocked down, GET UP!” He is almost screaming now, and the crowd is on its feet. “So GET UP! Get up and win in New Hampshire! Bring back the promise of this country!” In his autobiography, interviews and speeches, Joe Biden paints an idyllic boyhood in postwar Scranton, Pa., a mythic place called Middle America where the children — three boys and a girl — went to school scrubbed for the nuns, dropped in for a matinee double feature at the Roosevelt Theater on Saturday and faithfully attended Mass on Sunday. But life in Scranton was not always so easy for Joe Jr., who was born there on Nov. 20, 1942, the first child to Joe Sr. and Catherine Eugenia Finnegan, known to all as Jean. Joey was a popular kid, if a bit quick with a punch, especially if someone teased him about his stutter, which he struggled mightily to conquer. While Mr. Biden has described his early youth as stable and relatively carefree, his father suffered a number of business reversals, and for several years when Joe Jr. was young the Bidens were forced to move in with his mother’s parents, the Finnegans, in their modest home on North Washington Avenue in Scranton. Though Scranton was sharing in the postwar economic boom, Joe Sr. had trouble finding steady work, and nothing that measured up to his previous success. For a time, he commuted to Wilmington to clean boilers for a heating and cooling company. In 1953, he moved the family there. Though Joe Sr. was not a heavy drinker, alcohol flowed freely in the Finnegan house and in the neighborhood. Joe Jr. saw the toll it took on his family, his neighbors and, later, on his little brother Frankie. “Every family had it,” said Tom Bell, one of Senator Biden’s childhood friends from Scranton who remains close to him. “But the Finnegans had more than their share.” Senator Biden does not drink at all, and he is frank about the reason. “There are enough alcoholics in my family,” he said last month as he sipped cranberry juice on a train ride from Washington to Wilmington. Joe Jr. learned a number of lessons during his father’s lean years that he regularly cites in speeches and interviews. In his autobiography, he tells the story of his father quitting a job as sales manager for an auto dealership because the owner, who liked to reward his employees and customers with silver dollars, decided to amuse himself at the dealership’s Christmas party by spilling out a bucket of silver dollars on the dance floor to watch his workers scramble to scoop up the coins. Joe Sr. gathered up his wife and walked out, never to return. He would stoop if he had to, to support his family, but not that low. “That’s how you come to believe, to the very core of your being, that work is more than a paycheck,” Senator Biden said in his speech accepting the Democratic vice-presidential nomination. “It’s dignity. It’s respect.” These are bywords he returns to in virtually every political speech and part of his pitch to the working-class voters that are his target as Mr. Obama’s running mate. After a few years in a drab apartment in Claymont, Del., the Bidens moved to a nondescript split-level home on Wilson Road in Wilmington, where they stayed until the children were grown. The Bidens scraped together the tuition for Joe Jr. and his brothers to attend the prestigious Archmere Academy. Joe Jr. called the school “the object of my deepest desire, my Oz.” There, through an effort of will, he managed to conquer his stutter by reciting memorized passages over and over before a mirror. He was an undistinguished student, but a standout athlete, particularly after a growth spurt in his midteens. “He was a skinny kid,” said E. John Walsh, his football coach at Archmere, “but he was one of the best pass receivers I had in 16 years as a coach.” In those years the Bidens were neither rich nor poor. Mr. Biden’s younger sister, Valerie Biden Owens, said she always had as fine a dress for school dances as her wealthier classmates at Ursuline Academy, the Catholic girls’ school she attended. The difference, she said, was that her parents bought them on layaway. At the University of Delaware, Mr. Biden was more interested in football, girls and late-night gab sessions than in his studies. During his junior year, he took a spring break trip to the Bahamas, where he encountered Neilia Hunter, a Syracuse University student from a well-to-do family in Skaneateles, N.Y., lounging on the beach. “I fell ass over tin cup in love — at first sight,” he said, and set about pursuing her with a single-mindedness he has shown in his political pursuits. To be closer to Neilia and her family, he set off after graduation for Syracuse Law School, where he flunked a class in his first year for failing to properly cite a reference to a law review article. He claimed the borrowing was inadvertent, and the school let him retake the course and put a letter attesting to his honesty in his file. Still, he finished near the bottom of his class. (The misstep came back to haunt him when a plagiarism charge ended his 1987 presidential campaign.) He returned to Wilmington after law school with his bride, Neilia, whom he married in 1966, determined to burnish the Biden name. Corporate practice did not appeal to him, and he found that criminal defense work was not terribly lucrative. But politics offered him a ticket to fame, if not fortune. In 1970, he won a seat on the New Castle County Council. Two years later, local Democratic politicians asked him to serve as the sacrificial lamb in the United States Senate race against the popular two-term incumbent, J. Caleb Boggs. Mr. Biden was virtually unknown, had no money and, at 29, shy of the constitutional age to take the seat (his 30th birthday fell between the election and the beginning of the new Congress in January). His friend, and later longtime chief of staff, Ted Kaufman, who worked at the DuPont Company and was active in Democratic politics, told him he did not have a chance of beating Mr. Boggs. But Mr. Biden, with Ms. Owens serving as his campaign manager and his entire family playing key parts, dived in. Mr. Biden’s father appeared onstage at rallies with his son and went door-to-door for him. With his senatorial bearing and his creased suits, many voters mistook him for the candidate, who looked barely old enough to vote. Joe Jr. won that 1972 race and was preparing to be sworn in when, just before Christmas, Neilia and their 13-month-old daughter, Naomi, were killed in a car crash that left his boys, Beau and Hunter, severely injured. Mr. Biden was inconsolable, but he decided to hold on to his Senate seat. His sister Valerie moved in to look after the boys, and his brother Jimmy helped with the driving back and forth to Washington. Joe Sr. took a step that year to lift his son’s spirits and bring an added measure of dignity and respect to the high office his son now held. “After 1972, he gave up car sales and went into real estate,” Ms. Owens said in a recent interview. “He didn’t want a United States senator to have a used-car salesman for a dad.”

Biden Joseph R Jr
Families and Family Life
Presidential Election of 2008
Biden Joseph R Sr


Husband of Scarsdale Doctor Is Charged in Her Fatal Stabbing

Abstract: SCARSDALE, N.Y. — Robin Goldman was a doctor who made a career caring for children, and a teacher who showed young doctors how to do the same. But her own children said it was her role as mother that she seemed to covet most. Hundreds of people gathered on Thursday at Young Israel of Scarsdale synagogue for a funeral service for Dr. Goldman, a pediatrician who was fatally stabbed at her home on Wednesday. Her three children shared stories of how she doted on them, even after they were grown. She made sure the refrigerator was stocked with the different kinds of milk each of them liked, they said, and kept files stuffed with mementos from their lives. “Family, community and religion were the pillars you instilled in us,” her daughter Alyssa said, “and that you lived by every day.” But the children did not mention their father, Jules Reich, Dr. Goldman’s husband. He was not at the funeral, but miles away, at the Westchester County jail, charged in her killing. On Wednesday, just after 10 a.m., Mr. Reich, a partner in a financial services company, called 911 to say that his wife had been seriously injured, the authorities said. Three minutes later, Scarsdale police officers arrived at the couple’s home, a large white contemporary at 50 Lincoln Road, where they found Dr. Goldman, 58, lying in a shower with multiple stab wounds. She died at the scene, and her death became the first homicide in nearly four decades in this quiet and affluent Westchester County enclave, which is about 20 miles from Manhattan and known for its sprawling homes and high-achieving schools. “It’s unthinkable,” Robin Roth, a guidance counselor who has lived in Scarsdale for 33 years, said in an interview. “Anything can happen anywhere, but Scarsdale is so safe. I raised three kids here.” Police officers took Mr. Reich, who had bruises on his face and a wound on his hand, into custody at the scene, the authorities said. He was arraigned late Wednesday in a village court on a charge of second-degree murder. A judge ordered that he be held in jail without bail. Mr. Reich filed for divorce from Dr. Goldman in August, and the couple were scheduled to appear in court next Monday, according to public records. No previous episodes of domestic violence had been reported at their home, the police said. Image Mr. Reich is charged with second-degree murder in the killing of his wife, Dr. Goldman. Credit Left, Scarsdale Police Department; right, Montefiore Medical Center Friends, though, said they knew of discord in the marriage. Susan Schneider, a friend of Dr. Goldman’s who attends the same synagogue and was in a book club with her, drove to the scene on Wednesday, even before the police released the names of those involved. “I was so scared when I heard it was Lincoln Road,” Ms. Schneider said in an interview, “because I knew they were having marital issues.” Mr. Reich, a lawyer and accountant, has worked for about two years in the Manhattan office of WeiserMazars, an accounting, tax and advisory services firm. He spent the bulk of his career, more than 20 years, as a partner at the accounting firm PricewaterhouseCoopers. He said in a Twitter biography that he was also a stand-up comedian. Dr. Goldman practiced for 10 years at Montefiore Medical Group’s Comprehensive Family Care Center in the Bronx and was an assistant professor at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine. She was “a positive and compassionate presence,” the medical group said in a statement. “Her passion for medicine was an inspiration to those who worked with her.” At the funeral service, which was hastily arranged to meet Jewish burial traditions, Dr. Goldman’s children said she had limited her work to three days a week to carve out time for her family, particularly her four grandchildren. Her son, Adam, choked back tears as he spoke about the son he and his wife had had just 31 days ago. Dr. Goldman was highly organized, but she held on to everything she could, Adam Reich said. “She felt a personal mission to rescue Jewish things, no joke,” he said, referring to his mother’s habit of hunting tag sales for Judaica. He figured he had a closet full of paintings “nobody was interested in putting on their wall” that she had accumulated. “I think she saved my grandmother’s last batch of meatballs for 15 years — something like that — in the freezer,” he said. “They were only thrown out because of a power outage.” Dr. Goldman’s children acknowledged the struggle they faced without her. “Mom, I’m so scared right now,” a second daughter, Jenna, who is studying medicine, said. But she also said she was grateful for the time she did have with her mother. “Through all this, I’m trying to remember that I’m blessed,” she said. “I’m trying to remember that I had the best mom and the best, best friend. Even with all this pain, I would not trade my life for anyone else’s.”

Murders and Homicides
Funerals
Robin Goldman
Jules Reich
Domestic violence
Scarsdale NY