Robert Morgenthau Keeps Eye on Manhattan District Attorney Race

Abstract: Robert M. Morgenthau ’s name is not on Tuesday’s election ballot for the Manhattan district attorney’s job. But he is campaigning as if it were. He has called up a former mayor, assemblymen and other officials, urging them to back his chosen successor, Cyrus R. Vance Jr. He has regularly dispensed campaign advice to Mr. Vance and encouraged donors to contribute to him. He has taken issue with those who back other candidates, especially Leslie Crocker Snyder, who earned Mr. Morgenthau’s enmity by daring to run against him four years ago. Mr. Morgenthau’s intense push and the spirited battle among the three candidates vying for the seat have turned the district attorney’s race into a marquee fight in Tuesday’s primary. The mayor’s race has been unusually sleepy so far, despite Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg’s early spending and ubiquitous television advertising. And neither of the other citywide races, for comptroller and public advocate, have captured the public’s imagination. [Articles, Pages A16 and A17.] So the contest to succeed Mr. Morgenthau, 90, who has presided over the office for 35 years, has attracted heightened attention, and taken on a personal texture, especially for the retiring Mr. Morgenthau, who acknowledges making calls for Mr. Vance but denies taking an active role in the campaign. Mr. Vance, Ms. Snyder and a third candidate, Richard M. Aborn, are all Democrats, so the primary vote on Tuesday will essentially decide the election. No Republican is running in the November election. The three — all of whom once worked for Mr. Morgenthau — are seeking to take over an office of 500 lawyers, a budget of about $75 million and responsibility for prosecuting everything from violent street crime to Wall Street malfeasance. For Mr. Morgenthau, the stakes are high, too. His friends say he is consumed with preserving a legacy of tackling complex cases, including white-collar prosecutions that stretch across international and financial jurisdiction, and pride in an office that has spawned careers like that of Sonia Sotomayor and has been run by only three people since 1941. “The emotion there is that his life’s work gets continued by someone he knows can do it the way he did it,” said Elkan Abramowitz, a friend of Mr. Morgenthau’s and a partner at the law firm where Mr. Vance works. “I think this is a bittersweet moment for him in the sense that he sees his long career coming to an end.” As Mr. Morgenthau sat recently in his eighth-floor office, he said he did not spend much time fretting over the campaign. He said his interest stemmed from his concern about the direction of the office after he leaves. “I think it’s important somebody comes in here who will be interested in and pursue the things that I think are important,” Mr. Morgenthau said. And he has not been shy about making his preferences known, especially when it comes to his distaste for Ms. Snyder. During their unusually nasty primary campaign in 2005, the two questioned each other’s ethics and qualifications. So when Mr. Morgenthau heard that Edward I. Koch , a good friend and former New York mayor, was to endorse Ms. Snyder in June, he made a phone call. As Mr. Koch recalled, Mr. Morgenthau’s message was clear: How could you support her after the way she ran against me? “I would follow Morgenthau into the flames of any issue,” said Mr. Koch, who appointed Ms. Snyder to be a judge in 1983. “But he’s not running.” Mr. Morgenthau has bent other ears in recent months. Assemblyman Keith L. T. Wright, for example, recounted a similarly blunt message delivered over several phone calls: “Keith, I need you to endorse Cy Vance.” Mr. Wright has not endorsed a candidate, although he did release a statement on Friday criticizing Ms. Snyder’s literature attacking Mr. Vance’s record as a defense lawyer in Seattle. And at an event several months ago, Mr. Morgenthau told Assemblyman Daniel J. O’Donnell that he wanted to speak with him about the race. Mr. O’Donnell told him he had endorsed Mr. Aborn, but Mr. Morgenthau was undeterred, and made his pitch for Mr. Vance, saying he was best suited to “preserve the team,” according to Mr. O’Donnell. On Monday, Mr. Morgenthau’s pitch will be more direct: He is scheduled to accompany Mr. Vance to senior centers and the Jewish Community Center; at 2 p.m. they will appear at a rally on the courthouse steps. Until now, Mr. Morgenthau’s only public appearance with Mr. Vance was for his endorsement in June. Mr. Vance’s opponents have been particularly critical of Mr. Morgenthau’s endorsement, contending that it masked Mr. Vance’s lack of qualifications. Ms. Snyder declined to comment for this article. But in an interview in August, she suggested that Mr. Vance could avoid the perception of running a negative campaign “because he has everyone else doing his dirty work for him.” Mr. Vance said that Ms. Snyder was wrong. “I’m not asking people to do dirty work for me because I’m not trying to do dirty work,” he said. Mr. Vance said that although Mr. Morgenthau’s endorsement was helpful, he had no official role in the campaign and was just one of many people offering him advice. “I certainly know he has been supportive of my candidacy to a broad range of people in the community, which I appreciate,” Mr. Vance said. “I think that helps. I really leave that to him. It’s not something I’m directing.” Those closest to Mr. Morgenthau said he was thinking about his replacement even before the last election in 2005. Jessica de Grazia, his former chief assistant who remains a confidante, said she believed that Mr. Morgenthau would not have run then if he had a successor lined up whom he had confidence in. Mr. Morgenthau has not contributed any money to Mr. Vance’s campaign. And of the roughly $900,000 in his own campaign war chest, his committee, Friends of Morgenthau, has directed only $10,000 to Mr. Vance. But Mr. Morgenthau’s influence is still being felt: According to campaign finance records, 57 people who have donated money to Mr. Morgenthau in the past four years also have contributed to Mr. Vance, totaling $171,056. And 10 former top assistants in Mr. Morgenthau’s office signed a letter that was sent in March to many former assistant district attorneys, urging them to support Mr. Vance. There are some people, like Mr. Koch, who have thrown their support elsewhere. More than a dozen elected officials who endorsed Mr. Morgenthau four years ago have endorsed Mr. Aborn this year, including Representative Jerrold Nadler and Assemblyman O’Donnell. All of the Democratic clubs that support Mr. Aborn endorsed Mr. Morgenthau four years ago, as did the Working Families Party. Mr. O’Donnell said that Mr. Morgenthau’s focus on Mr. Vance keeping his staff together turned him off. “Preserving the Morgenthau team is not a very compelling argument to get me to support anyone,” he said.

Morgenthau Robert M
Vance Cyrus R Jr
Elections
New York City
District Attorneys
Endorsements
Democratic Party
Aborn Richard M
Koch Edward I
Wright Keith L T


China’s Communist Party Expels Bo Xilai

Abstract: BEIJING — Several hundred of the Chinese Communist Party’s top leaders decided Sunday on a raft of measures that pave the way for a once-in-a-decade leadership transition scheduled to start this week. Among its decisions, the party’s Central Committee endorsed the expulsion of the disgraced politician Bo Xilai from the party and promoted two military leaders. The decision to expel Mr. Bo signaled that top leaders had reached a consensus on this delicate issue. Mr. Bo had been a contender for one of the party’s highest positions until his spectacular fall this year and still had support among some party members. Among the accusations against him are that he abused his power, took large bribes and hindered a police investigation into the death of a British businessman. Mr. Bo’s wife was convicted of the Briton’s murder in August. Mr. Bo, who has been incommunicado since his detention in March, is expected to stand trial in the coming months. The committee also agreed to expel the former railway minister, Liu Zhijun, from the party. Mr. Liu has been accused of receiving bribes in excess of $100 million during the years he oversaw the expansion of the nation’s high-speed rail system. The 365-member Central Committee met for four days before the start of the 18th Party Congress on Thursday, when President Hu Jintao and Prime Minister Wen Jiabao are to retire. Mr. Hu is to be replaced by Xi Jinping and Mr. Wen by Li Keqiang. The Central Committee also voted to make two generals, Fan Changlong and Xu Qiliang, vice chairmen of the Central Military Commission, which oversees China ’s military. General Fan, formerly the commander of an artillery unit, and General Xu, an air force officer, will serve under Mr. Hu, who also leads the military commission. A crucial question is whether Mr. Hu will resign as chairman of the military commission and give the position to Mr. Xi, who is already a vice chairman, or stay on for two more years. Mr. Hu’s predecessor, Jiang Zemin, waited two years before making Mr. Hu commander in chief, but some analysts in Beijing say Mr. Hu is in a weaker position than Mr. Jiang and may not retain the post. The Central Committee gave no indication of which members would make up the Standing Committee of the 24-member Politburo. The Standing Committee, the body that effectively governs China, has nine members but is expected to shrink to seven . If so, five people will be appointed to the body in addition to Mr. Xi and Mr. Li. Before his downfall, Mr. Bo, the former party chief of Chongqing, in southwest China, was viewed as a contender for the committee. Unsurprisingly, the Central Committee praised the performance of its members, who also received a preview from Mr. Xi of the draft report that will be presented to the 18th Party Congress. Mr. Xi’s role at the meeting suggests that he will be heavily involved in determining the next congress’s direction, but just how much of an immediate impact he will have on the country’s policies is unclear. Some reports suggest that the Standing Committee’s makeup is the subject of jockeying between Mr. Hu and Mr. Jiang, with Mr. Xi possibly having to bide his time and slowly build his influence.

Bo Xilai
Communist Party of China
China
Suspensions Dismissals and Resignations
Fan Changlong
Xu Qiliang


A Spray of DNA to Keep the Robbers Away

Abstract: ROTTERDAM, the Netherlands — When the McDonald’s down from City Hall here was burglarized a few years ago, its managers decided they needed a new security system. It was just about that time that local police officers were offering something totally different that they hoped would stem a rising tide of robberies that occur mainly in the immigrant neighborhoods of this rough-and-tumble port city. The new system involved an employee-activated device that sprays a fine, barely visible mist laced with synthetic DNA to cover anyone in its path, including criminals, and simultaneously alerts the police to a crime in progress. The mist — visible only under ultraviolet light — carries DNA markers particular to the location, enabling the police to match the burglar with the place burgled. Now, a sign on the front door of the McDonald’s prominently warns potential thieves of the spray’s presence: “You Steal, You’re Marked.” The police acknowledge that they have yet to make an arrest based on the DNA mist, which was developed in Britain by two brothers, one a policeman and the other a chemist. But they credit its presence — and signs posted prominently warning of its use — for what they call a precipitous decline in crime rates (though they could not provide actual figures to back that up). But the goal is not so much capturing crooks as scaring them away. “The whole thing is prevention, not about recovering stolen goods or capturing criminals,” said Donald van der Laan, whose company, the Rhine Group, distributes the spray. As far as the DNA is concerned, “the material is identical” to human DNA, he said, “though there is a different sequence of components.” Much of the spray’s effectiveness, he said, comes from the mystique surrounding DNA. “No one really knows what it is,” he said. “No one really knows how it works.” At this McDonald’s the DNA liquid is contained in an orange box the size of a large paperback book, mounted over an entrance door. “You don’t smell it; you don’t see it; nobody knows it’s there,” said Jean-Paul Fafie, who has managed the McDonald’s for the last 12 years. The system and the all-important warning sign seem to have successfully warded off any potential robbers. But there were kinks to be worked out. “In the beginning, it went off many times, even when there was no robbery,” Mr. Fafie said. “And the police came every time.” The false alarms were caused by employees who forgot, or never knew, about the protocol for secretly activating the system — removing a 10 euro bill from a special bill clip kept behind the counter. “We didn’t train our counter people properly,” Mr. Fafie said sheepishly. As for a potential thief, he said, “we hope he’ll think twice before coming in.” Across the restaurant, Dilek Gokceli, 30, sipping coffee with her husband, said she had not noticed the sign on the door alerting the public to the presence of the spray. Mrs. Gokceli said she felt reassured. “It’s for my sake, if there’s danger,” she said. “For the police, they don’t have to search a lot.” The city is pushing the use of the spray and sometimes assuming the cost; it is also promoting the use of a kind of DNA crayon with which valuable items like computers or cameras can be marked to facilitate their identification as stolen goods. Already about 4,000 computers at Erasmus University here have been marked. Creative Factory, a former industrial building on the edge of the harbor that is now home to innovative start-up companies, began using the crayons after computers and other electronic equipment were stolen. “We are surrounded by crime-ridden areas,” said Leo van Loon, the executive director of Creative Factory, which stands wedged between the harbor’s water and the tough Charlois neighborhood. There have been instances in which customers have been sprayed inadvertently. But no one has been falsely accused, Mr. van der Laan, the company owner, said. Down along Beijerlandselaan, a shopping street in the south of the center, Jale Sag has owned Gulnar jewelers for the last three years and has seen a wave of robberies peak and then recede. Partly, she says, that is the result of closed-circuit television cameras that were installed all along the street — there are two outside her store and two more inside — but also because the police department and the city paid for a DNA spray system to be installed in her store. She says she has seen a difference. Robberies were “a real problem,” she said. “Nowadays, it’s going better.” Just down the street, Bart Vos, 51, a manager at a barge company, gazed in the window of Jansen, another jeweler outfitted with the DNA spray. “They see that sign,” he said, “they think twice.”

DNA (Deoxyribonucleic Acid)
Forensic Science
Crime and Criminals


Vikings’ Jared Allen Pursues Strahan’s N.F.L. Record for Sacks

Abstract: EDEN PRAIRIE, Minn. — After ripping the tape off his hands after practice Wednesday, Minnesota Vikings defensive end Jared Allen paused in conversation just long enough to roll the tape into a ball and flick it like a basketball at a trash receptacle 20 feet away. Plop. Perfect. “That’s a nice shot,” he said. “You saw that, right?” It was hard to miss, just like any of his 17 ½ sacks this season, each of the tackles celebrated with a calf-roping pantomime. Allen’s pursuit of Michael Strahan ’s N.F.L. single-season record for sacks — 22 ½, in 2001 — has been one of the few positives in a dreadful season for the 2-12 Vikings, who must win their final two games to avoid the worst record in franchise history. The chase hit a pothole last Sunday when New Orleans held Allen without a sack in a 42-20 rout. Meanwhile, Philadelphia defensive end Jason Babin posted his second consecutive three-sack game, against the Jets, to slip ahead of Allen for the N.F.L. lead with 18. That, Allen said, gives him additional incentive in chasing Strahan’s record these final two weekends, beginning Saturday at Washington. “I don’t know when I’m going to be this close to it again, so I’m definitely going to go for it,” Allen said. “I’m not going to play out of body to get to it, just shooting up the field and forgetting about my responsibilities. But it’s still attainable. “And I’ve even got motivation. Babin came out of nowhere these last two weeks. So I’ve got to get my lead back.” After a fall-off in production last year — Allen’s 11 sacks were a four-year low, and he did not make the Pro Bowl for the first time since 2006 — Allen entered this season determined to dominate again. That he has been this productive with a team this bad is unprecedented. Since sacks became an official N.F.L. statistic in 1982, 24 players have had 17 ½ or more in a season, according to Pro-Football-Reference.com . Only eight of those players were on losing teams, including Allen and Babin — the Eagles are 6-8. None played for a team with a record as poor as Minnesota’s. The next closest: Strahan, who had 18 ½ sacks for the 4-12 Giants in 2003. And while Babin benefits from having another dynamic pass rusher on the opposite side — Trent Cole, who has nine sacks — Allen, 29, goes it alone. The next most productive Viking, left defensive end Brian Robison, has six sacks, but only one and a half in his last nine games. And Minnesota’s 30th-ranked pass defense affords Allen few opportunities for coverage sacks. “He’s obviously been our best player on defense, and possibly on the team,” linebacker Chad Greenway said. “We as teammates certainly appreciate that effort and appreciate him being there for us, week in and week out. Unfortunately, he’s not getting the credit he deserves this year.” It is not as if Allen, acquired from Kansas City in a 2008 trade, sneaked up on anybody. He has posted double-digit sacks in five consecutive seasons, and he made consecutive Pro Bowls from 2007 to 2009, two as a starter. In a January 2010 interview, Vikings Coach Leslie Frazier, then the team’s defensive coordinator, predicted that Allen would threaten Strahan’s mark at some point. Last season, though, did not go as planned. Coach Brad Childress was fired after 10 games, quarterback Brett Favre was battered into retirement, and the collapse of the Metrodome roof forced the relocation of the final two home games. The Vikings finished 6-10, one season after reaching the N.F.C. championship game. “I thought I played some good ball late in the year, but I kind of let the circumstances that were going on in the facility last year get to me a little more than I wanted to,” Allen said. “It was kind of miserable around here.” Allen vowed to be more positive this season. It has not been easy. The Vikings lost the emerging defensive end Ray Edwards to free agency. The Pro Bowl tackle Kevin Williams sat out the first two games under N.F.L. suspension for using a banned diuretic. The Vikings started 0-4 and squandered double-digit halftime leads in the first three games, an N.F.L. first. Williams’s return in Week 3 helped, and Allen had seven sacks in the next three games. Six of Allen’s sacks, three in each game, have come against the Vikings’ N.F.C. North rival Detroit. But season-long coverage problems, partly because of injuries, dragged down the defense, which has given up 406 points, the second-highest total behind Indianapolis. Minnesota’s six interceptions, none in the last nine games, are a league low. Last Sunday, New Orleans left tackle Jermon Bushrod and the nimble-footed quarterback Drew Brees frustrated Allen, who twice got to Brees an instant too late. Late in the game, center Brian De La Puente chop-blocked Allen to prevent a sack of the backup Chase Daniel. After Minnesota’s fifth consecutive loss, Allen appeared to criticize his younger teammates for being timid, and the coaching staff for taking him out on the final series. “What are they resting me for, the playoffs?” he said. On Wednesday Allen clarified that his point was that inexperience is no excuse for repeated mistakes. “I came in and started as a rookie and was expected to play, as if, and be productive,” he said. “That’s the standard I hold everybody to. If you’re going to be on that field, I consider you a starter. You need to be productive, as if. “The frustration lies in the consistency of the mistakes we make. If you get beat trying to make a play, if you jump routes, I can live with that. It’s the same check-downs, and missing tackles.” Frazier and the defensive line coach Karl Dunbar hinted this week that they might move Allen around to prevent teams from ganging up on him. “We expect people to copy what New Orleans did this past week, chip him and put two or three people on him,” Frazier said, referring to schemes in which a tight end, wideout or running back tried to slow Allen with brief contact. “We’re going to do our very best to see him lead the league in sacks and hopefully break that record.” Teammates like Robison will not be surprised if that happens. “There are so many times that I’ll come around the corner with a clean move, and I think I’ve got the quarterback dead in my sights, and he’s already beaten his guy,” Robison said. “I’m like, I can’t beat my guy any faster, and yet you did it. It’s just amazing to see some of the things he can do.”

Minnesota Vikings
Football
Strahan Michael
National Football League
Records and Achievements
Allen Jared (1982- )


Yankees Get Speech by Dungy but Fall to Red Sox

Abstract: Should Manager Joe Girardi want his Yankees to hear another football pep talk, he might consider that old film of Knute Rockne addressing his Notre Dame players. “We’re gonna go, go, go, go!” Rockne said in the black-and-white newsreel, viewable on the Internet. “They can’t lick us! Fight! Fight! Fight! Fight! Fight!” Certainly the Yankees could use a pickup. Despite a pregame visit from the former Indianapolis Colts coach Tony Dungy on Saturday, the Yankees lost to the Boston Red Sox , 7-3, in front of 49,558 grumbling fans at Yankee Stadium. It was the fourth consecutive defeat for the Yankees and the 13th in their last 19 games. Although likely to qualify for the playoffs, the Yankees are limping to the finish line of the regular season. When a top team slumps, there are bound to be multiple theories as to why, including the manager’s use of personnel and the third-base coach’s decision to send home a runner who is tagged out, as was the case Saturday. But Alex Rodriguez offered a different thought. “It starts with starting pitching,” said Rodriguez, who hit his 28th home run Saturday, a solo shot in the ninth inning. “We have to have someone come in and shut the door and step up. It’s hard to play with an edge when you’re down five or six runs.” Saturday’s starter and loser was Ivan Nova (1-1), who gave up four runs in four and two-thirds innings. He followed recent unsatisfactory outings by Andy Pettitte, A. J. Burnett and C. C. Sabathia. Sunday’s starter will be Dustin Moseley (4-3), replacing Phil Hughes (17-8), who is being rested. Moseley will face Daisuke Matsuzaka (9-6). The Yankees’ loss, coupled with Tampa Bay’s 9-1 victory over Seattle, dropped them a game and a half behind the Rays in the American League East. To clinch a playoff berth, the Yankees need any combination of three victories or Red Sox losses. “We’re still in a good spot,” Girardi said. “You can’t make too much of four games.” Before Saturday’s game, Girardi praised Dungy, who won a Super Bowl with the Colts in February 2007 and is now an N.F.L. commentator for NBC Sports. “I admire tremendously his faith,” Girardi said. “I’ve read his books. I subscribe to his Web site. This is the first time I’ve ever met him. He has a lot of wisdom.” Although Dungy is a professional motivational speaker, he said Saturday’s talk was not a paid appearance but a favor to Girardi, who had hoped to present Dungy during spring training. According to Curtis Granderson, Dungy’s theme was “don’t take anything for granted.” Granderson added, “Even though you may have had success in the past, it’s not always guaranteed.” Pitcher Joba Chamberlain said: “He talked about what he preaches to his team. You see how important his faith and his family are.” Dungy, who played high school baseball in Jackson, Mich., said he thought Saturday’s visit was his first to a professional baseball team. Dungy lives in Tampa, Fla., where the Yankees train, and follows the Rays and the Minnesota Twins. Both are potential Yankees opponents in the postseason, and Dungy went to the University of Minnesota and coached for the Vikings. Boston led, 6-0, until Jon Lester (19-8) left after seven innings and Granderson broke the shutout with a two-run homer off Daniel Bard. It was Granderson’s 23rd home run. Lester retired his first 12 batters until Rodriguez led off the fifth with a walk. The first hit by the Yankees came in the sixth when Francisco Cervelli singled to left on a sinking liner off the glove of Daniel Nava. But Nava made up for it on the next batter. After Derek Jeter singled, Nava threw out Austin Kearns at home. Kearns was sent by the third-base coach Rob Thomson despite the Red Sox’ 4-0 lead. There were other gaffes. With Chamberlain pitching in relief in the ninth inning and Yamaico Navarro on second base, Chamberlain seemed to forget where the runner was. He started to throw to first, and the ball fell out of his hand. It was neither a balk nor an error because timeout had been called by the home-plate umpire, Chris Guccione. “It’s something that I’ve never seen before,” Girardi said. Chamberlain added: “We lost the game. Nobody really cares about that.” INSIDE PITCH Phil Hughes, the Yankees’ starting pitcher for Wednesday’s game at Toronto, said Saturday that he did not feel passed over for his scheduled start against the Red Sox on Sunday. “I just look at is as being pushed back,” Hughes said. Joe Girardi has tried to limit Hughes’s innings to keep him fresh for the playoffs. Hughes (17-8) has worked 169 1/3 innings in his first full season as a starter. He is likely to be the Yankees’ fourth starter in the postseason. ... Tony Dungy refused to go into detail about his visit earlier Saturday with Jets Coach Rex Ryan. A few weeks ago, Dungy criticized Ryan’s cursing in the HBO series “Hard Knocks.”

New York Yankees
Boston Red Sox
Baseball
Dungy Tony


Army Reprimanded a Top General Involved in ISIS Fight

Abstract: WASHINGTON — The Army has reprimanded a once highly regarded general involved in the war against the Islamic State because he guided a defense contract to a company run by his former classmates at West Point, a move that effectively ends his military career, military officials said Monday. Maj. Gen. Dana J. H. Pittard, the Army ’s former deputy commander for operations in the Middle East, was formally reprimanded in February after an investigation, “which called into question his suitability for continued services and resulted in his request for retirement,” Cynthia Smith, an Army spokeswoman, said in an email. An Army review board is considering whether he will be stripped of his rank as a two-star general before he is allowed to retire, Ms. Smith said. The reprimand is a huge dent in the career of a general once believed to represent the future of the Army. A former military assistant to President Bill Clinton, General Pittard had years of combat experience in Iraq and was long viewed as someone who could rise to the level of Army chief of staff. Image Maj. Gen. Dana J. H. Pittard speaking to troops in 2012. Credit Tony Gutierrez/Associated Press From July 2013 to April 2015, General Pittard was the deputy commanding general for Army Central, based in the Middle East. He returned to the United States in April after the reprimand, which was first reported by The Washington Post . The Post, citing documents obtained under the Freedom of Information Act, said the investigation into General Pittard began in 2011 after an anonymous whistle-blower alleged that he had abused his authority by awarding lucrative renewable-energy contracts to his friends while serving as the commander of Fort Bliss in Texas. One of General Pittard’s former West Point classmates was convicted on wire-fraud charges in September, and while General Pittard was not accused of financial gain, he was reprimanded for his “excessive involvement” in awarding the $492,000 contract. Ms. Smith, the Army spokeswoman, said General Pittard had been removed from his position in the Middle East as part of a normal rotation and not because of the misconduct. General Pittard is now serving as special assistant to the commanding general at the United States Army Training and Doctrine Command, where he will remain until the secretary of the Army decides on his retirement request and whether to strip him of his rank.

Dana J. H. Pittard
US Military
Defense contractor
US Army
Ethics Misconduct Malfeasance
ISIS,ISIL,Islamic State
Middle East
Bill Clinton


South African Horse Gets His Star Turn

Abstract: Arranging a typical racehorse’s schedule may seem to be a straightforward task, but 6-year-old Variety Club, the two-time South African horse of the year, is not your typical racehorse. When he leaves the gate in the Group 2 Godolphin Mile on Saturday, he will have completed a circuitous and, for his human backers at least, frustrating 12-month journey. In January 2013, after his victory in South Africa’s prestigious Queen’s Plate, Variety Club’s owners, Markus and Ingrid Jooste, petitioned the Dubai Racing Club for special dispensation from quarantine rules so the horse could ship directly to Dubai for the Godolphin Mile or the Dubai Duty Free. But the request was denied. So Variety Club had to stay in South Africa. Attempts to travel to the United States were also abandoned, with the four-time Group 1 winner racing two more times at home — he won both events — and embarking in June on a now well-worn path for South African horses that leave the country: a nearly six-month trip that includes a three-week quarantine in Cape Town, three months in Mauritius, one month in England, and, finally, additional restrictions at Meydan Racecourse in Dubai. But Variety Club’s long-anticipated arrival on the international scene was sensational. Without a race since June 8, in Durban, South Africa, he blitzed the Grade 3 Firebreak Stakes on Feb. 13 over 1,600 meters. He went straight to the front and laid down the fastest time of the season at that distance. “It was an exceptional performance from him,” said Derek Brugman, racing manager for the Joostes. “To come back with a little over a month’s preparation and do that was a testament to his ability and talent.” In the Burj Nahaar three weeks later, he was denied by the filly Shuruq, a performance Brugman chalked up to a mild regression after his previous exertion. Still, Variety Club remains a model of consistency: He has won 15 of 21 races, and only once has he finished outside the money. The chestnut son of Var, he was bred by Anton and Dominique Shepherd’s Beaumont Stud, the ninth and last foal of his dam La Massine. Last year, Brugman tried arranging for him to run in the Breeders’ Cup in the United States. But the horse would have been required to stand in a box at a New York airport for 60 days, Brugman said, with no exercise or sunlight. Brugman said he had asked the U.S. Department of Agriculture for a treadmill, but the request was denied. “The quarantine rules have actually gotten worse rather than better, which is frightening, considering how bad it was,” Brugman said. “There’s no light at the end of the tunnel at the moment.” In 2011, the European Union began requiring South African horses to undergo the quarantine — across four countries and two hemispheres — in response to African horse sickness, a vector-born disease, similar to malaria in humans, that is not contagious. It comes and goes seasonally, and is found only in the south of Africa in the wet summer months. The South African racing industry has long maintained tight rules to prevent an outbreak. It keeps a so-called free zone in Cape Town, from which horses are shipped overseas, and next to it an observation area that safeguards the free zone. No case of African horse sickness has ever been exported. In 2011, there was a breach of the observation area, which led to the European Union restrictions. Last fall, the European Union decided to continue the ban. Yet despite these barriers, South African horses have shown that they are on a par with the world’s best gathered in Dubai. There are major South African contenders in most of the races on Saturday: Sanshaawes in the Dubai World Cup, Soft Falling Rain and Variety Club in the Godolphin Mile, Shea Shea in the Al Quoz Sprint, Vercingetorix in the Dubai Duty Free, Star Empire in the Gold Cup. Shea Shea and Soft Falling Rain won their races last year. All are trained by Mike de Kock, South Africa’s leading trainer and historically one of the most successful at the Dubai races, except for Variety Club, who is trained by Joey Ramsden. De Kock has been the loudest proponent for overturning the quarantine restrictions, and he believes South Africa’s success at this meet further supports his case. “If the racing world doesn’t wake up after this, I don’t know what it will take to get them behind us,” he said. “Our stud farms breed high-quality bloodstock at the most affordable prices. They’re able to hold their own anywhere in the world — we’ve proven that time and again and our results get better every year.” Variety Club has managed the process well, which is not always a given. The change in weather — from a hot summer to wet winter — from Mauritius to Newmarket, England, could not have been more stark. One of his traveling companions was not so lucky. Blueridge Mountain, a Group 1 winner in South Africa, grew a winter coat immediately and her plans for Dubai were aborted. “So we spent all the money for her to get there and had to abandon ship,” Brugman said. “It was very disappointing.” Blueridge Mountain remained in England, where she should return to the races in the spring. By then, she may be rejoined by Variety Club. After the Godolphin Mile, the major assignments of international racing are now, finally, within his reach. Brugman said races in England, France, Hong Kong, Japan, and the United States are all possible. “Now that he’s an international horse and doesn’t have to go through all that quarantine, we plan on campaigning him on the world stage,” he said. “Hopefully, on World Cup night he shows what a good horse he is and what a good product South Africa can produce.”


Too Long a Wait for Michael Sam at the N.F.L. Draft

Abstract: By the time I arrived at Radio City Music Hall in Manhattan on Saturday, the sixth round of the N.F.L. draft had started, but Michael Sam had still not been selected. The team that took Sam, an all-American defensive end at Missouri, would be the league’s first to draft a publicly gay player . No team had raised its hand. Seattle passed with the 227th pick, early in the seventh and final round, and you could understand why: The Seahawks already had a great defense. Washington, picking next, chose a kicker from Arkansas. Detroit, a perennial loser, also chose a kicker. Perhaps Pittsburgh would step forward at No. 230. The Steelers, though, with Coach Mike Tomlin’s job perhaps in danger, took a tight end from Massachusetts. Indianapolis, at No. 232, has an owner who entered a drug rehabilitation center in March and perhaps did not want more attention devoted to off-field matters. Miami, two spots later, seemed a possibility, a team in need of redemption after the Richie Incognito bullying scandal . The Dolphins did take a defensive end — from Marist. Maybe Dallas, which passed at No. 231 but was picking again at 238, would choose Sam. After all, Jerry Jones, the Cowboys’ owner, is always up for making headlines. Instead, the Cowboys drafted a linebacker from Texas Tech. And so it went, Denver taking an Oklahoma linebacker at No. 242, San Francisco selecting a Boston College defensive end at 243, Dallas skipping over Sam again at 248. This had the makings of a horrible day for a league already up to its eyeballs in moral and ethical questions about the safety and the culture of the sport. Finally, around 6:45 p.m., Mike Kensil, the N.F.L.’s vice president for game operations, strode to the lectern to make a historic announcement: With the 249th pick of the draft, the St. Louis Rams had selected Sam . “It was somewhat overwhelming to walk out,” Kensil said after the draft. “I really felt like I was a part of N.F.L. history. It was a memorable moment, and I really felt honored to be a part of it.” Asked if he was concerned that Sam might not be drafted, Kensil said: “I don’t know if we were concerned about it. He’s a good player. St. Louis realized he was a good player, and they were smart enough to take him.” Kensil added, “Anytime you get the SEC defensive player of the year in the seventh round, that’s a pretty good pick.” And that is precisely why the N.F.L. doesn’t get a parade: Sam should have been taken three rounds earlier. You cannot acknowledge the Southeastern Conference as the best college football conference, as the N.F.L. has, and then let one of its top players be drafted behind kickers and players from obscure programs in obscure conferences. “As is the case in the draft, sometimes players fall,” Rams Coach Jeff Fisher said in an interview with NFL.com. “He fell.” So why did Sam, a 6-foot-2, 261-pound senior pass rusher, fall? His off-the-field conduct was apparently stellar: no firearm violations, no driving-under-the-influence arrests, no reports of domestic abuse or barroom brawls. Especially after his mediocre performance at the scouting combine in February, critics said he was too slow to play linebacker in the N.F.L. and too small to be an effective lineman. Sam may have been overlooked, though, because of his sexual orientation. Even teams that had no problem with Sam’s being gay might have been wary of the possibility of a news media distraction and of a public-relations quandary, real or imagined. Still, players and fans have recently been able to see how public outrage and scrutiny can influence an entire league’s behavior. Two weeks ago, the N.B.A. barred the Los Angeles Clippers’ owner , Donald Sterling, for life and fined him $2.5 million for racist comments he made in private. On Saturday, the N.F.L. made history with Sam’s selection. In each case, the leagues had little ethical wiggle room. Had Sam not been drafted, the N.F.L. would have had much explaining to do. After the draft, I asked myself which was more captivating: Sam’s being drafted or Johnny Manziel’s being repeatedly passed over in the first round. I must admit that there was a guilty pleasure in watching Manziel sweat and stew as teams cast vote after vote for substance over style. For all the attention on Sam’s sexuality, the vanity embodied by Manziel poses a greater challenge to the American soul. In a sense, both players got what they were due: acceptance for Sam and an indictment for Manziel. Viewed through that prism, the draft was a triumph of enlightenment over entitlement. The N.F.L. did the right thing by Michael Sam; I only wish it would have done the right thing a little sooner.

Football
Sports Drafts and Recruits
MIchael Sam
Rams
Gay and Lesbian LGBT


Tabasco and Frank’s RedHot in a Buffalo Wing Sauce Duel

Abstract: “SOME like it hot,” Tony Curtis told Marilyn Monroe in the 1959 movie of the same name, referring to music. Since then, Americans have grown to like something else — food — even hotter, as evidenced by the popularization of spicy fare like Buffalo chicken wings, made with cayenne pepper hot sauce. Now, a hot sauce war has broken out in time for the Super Bowl , perhaps the most snack-centric day of the year. According to a survey from the Retail Advertising and Marketing Association, consumers who plan to watch Super Bowl XLVI on Sunday will spend $11 billion on food and other goodies, compared with the $10.1 billion they said they would spend before Super Bowl XLV last year. One hot sauce warrior is the McIlhenny Company, which is introducing a seventh flavor in its Tabasco line, Tabasco Buffalo Style hot sauce, joining varieties like the original, known as Tabasco pepper sauce, and chipotle pepper sauce. The new flavor is celebrated in a campaign by Ogilvy West in Los Angeles as “from the people who perfected hot sauce,” offering “classic Buffalo flavor with just the right amount of heat.” As those ads begin, Tabasco’s principal rival, Frank’s RedHot sauce, is expanding to national television a sassy campaign, previously in print and on radio, that carries the theme “ I put that — — on everything. ” ( The campaign, with a budget estimated at $15 million, is created by Euro RSCG New York. In the frank Frank’s commercials, a bleeping sound is heard over the word as it is uttered by a mischievous older woman named Ethel. On screen, her mouth is covered by a splat, as if a censor spilled sauce on the film. Ethel adds “a little bit of heat” to everyday life, “and not only metaphorically,” said Rahul Sabnis, executive creative director at Euro RSCG New York, part of the Euro RSCG Worldwide unit of Havas. Because “we want to be clever and fun, but we don’t want to go over the top,” he added, the intent is to portray her as “your grandmother being a straight talker.” The maker of Frank’s, Reckitt Benckiser, also plans to send a branded bus on a cross-country Frank’s to the People tour. It starts this week in Indianapolis, this year’s host of the Super Bowl. When Buffalo wings were first served, in Buffalo, N.Y., in 1964, Frank’s RedHot was an ingredient in the sauce. Frank’s also offers a RedHot Buffalo Wings sauce, introduced in 1996, and even sells a flavor called Frank’s RedHot Hot Buffalo Wings. The heating up of the hot sauce category is indicative of the increasing efforts by marketers of packaged foods to take advantage of a trend that began in 2008, when consumers seeking to economize started eating at home more often . That dovetailed with another change, a yen for bolder, intensely flavored foods. For instance, the inside front cover of the Feb. 6 issue of Time magazine carries an ad for Lay’s Kettle Cooked Mesquite BBQ potato chips, sold by the Frito-Lay division of PepsiCo. “BBQ so real,” the headline promises, “you’ll want to wipe the sauce off your face.” (Hmmmm. Maybe Lay’s could flavor a chip with Tabasco or Frank’s RedHot.)  “We did a ‘needs gap’ study with consumers in 2010,” said Martin Manion, vice president for corporate marketing at the New Orleans office of McIlhenny, and “over 80 percent of the people we talked to thought that Buffalo would be a great addition to the Tabasco portfolio.” Although “Frank’s is aligned with chicken wings through the story of Buffalo wings,” Mr. Manion said, in taste tests with consumers “six in 10 preferred the Tabasco formula to the one we tested against.” The campaign promotes the product as “a Louisiana twist on something you’re familiar with,” he added, echoing a commercial that declares, “Buffalo, New York, meet Buffalo, Louisiana.” “What McIlhenny has done is try to understand and remain on the leading edge of how palates have evolved over time,” Mr. Manion said. “When we introduced chipotle sauce, 90 percent of people couldn’t pronounce it.”  The campaign for Tabasco Buffalo Style, with a budget estimated at $3 million, includes television, radio and online ads; the Tabasco Web site, tabasco.com ; and social media like Facebook and Twitter . The campaign carries a theme, “Are you one of us?,” created by Ogilvy West for the Tabasco brand. “There are people who get hot sauce, and those who don’t,” said Colin Drummond, senior partner and head of planning at Ogilvy West, part of the Ogilvy & Mather Worldwide unit of WPP, and Tabasco is particularly interested in those “we call ‘zesties,’ who share a zest for life and the food they eat.” His colleague at Ogilvy West, Peter Kang, senior partner and executive creative director, said: “It’s kind of like life turned up to 11. Zesties carry Tabasco with them to put on their Egg McMuffins in the morning and on their dinners at four-star restaurants.” As Reckitt Benckiser confronts competition in hot sauce, it is introducing a $20 million multimedia campaign — also by Euro RSCG New York — for another of its pantry staples, the French’s line of mustards, which carries the theme “ Friends. Family. French’s .” In mustards, too, flavor is a focus, with ads for products like Spicy Brown and Dijon With Chardonnay along with original yellow. Although they are “so different as brands,” said Paolo Zotti, vice president for marketing in the food division of Reckitt Benckiser in Chester, N.J., each campaign is about “trying to leverage and nurture a brand experience” centered on variety. “I’m a romantic marketeer,” he added. “You’re successful if people love your brands.”

Super Bowl
Sauces
McIlhenny Co
Reckitt Benckiser
Frank's RedHot
Advertising and Marketing
Football


With Governor’s Indictment, Scrutiny of Grand Jury System

Abstract: AUSTIN — The indictment of Gov. Rick Perry by a Travis County grand jury has put the spotlight on the state’s quirky system that gives judges a choice in how to seat a grand jury. Mr. Perry’s charges for overstepping his authority as governor came from a type of grand jury that is not the norm in Austin’s criminal courts: one whose members were chosen at random. Austin courts, like those in many of Texas’ larger cities, typically rely on a so-called “key man” selection process, where judges choose a commissioner responsible for recruiting a panel of grand jurors. The practice was not used to seat Mr. Perry’s grand jury because the judge overseeing the case comes from San Antonio, where random selection is preferred. As the case moves to trial, it is prompting questions about whether it is time to end the “key man” practice, which can be seen as favoring prosecutors. “The difficulty is, where did the ‘key man’ come from?” asked Larry Karson, a criminal justice professor at the University of Houston-Downtown who studied the system in 2004. “What is the relationship of the key man to the judge? And what is the relationship of the potential grand juror to the key man?” (The University of Houston is a corporate sponsor of The Texas Tribune.) Texas law allows judges in its 254 counties to decide whether to have grand jurors chosen at random or selected by a key man — a method frequently used by judges in Austin, Dallas and Houston. Grand jury selection preference is often dictated by experience, and Mr. Perry’s was random because that is the method favored in San Antonio’s Bexar County, where Senior District Judge Robert C. Richardson, who is presiding over the case, resides. Critics derisively call the system the “pick-a-pal” method, because judges select people they know to find willing citizens to serve as grand jurors. “I find the random system much easier,” said Judge Sid Harle, who oversees the 226th state district court in San Antonio. “With the random selection, I think you get a better demographic, people from across the county.” But those who like the key man system say it speeds the process. One proponent is John B. Holmes Jr., who was district attorney in Houston’s Harris County for 21 years. He said it is tough enough to use the random selection process to seat a trial jury. It would be even harder to use that process to find people willing to sit for a grand jury, which generally meets a couple of times a week for three straight months. “It fouls up your work, taking care of your kids,” Mr. Holmes said. “Getting the people who are willing to do it is a big thing.” Mike Lynch retired in 2012 after serving 20 years as a judge in Travis County. He said he always used the key man method because it is the one he was taught to use. “Done properly, you can get a good mix,” he said. But he added that in Mr. Perry’s case, he would have switched gears and used random selection, because it is a way to eliminate the appearance of any bias. While bias is critics’ biggest concern with the key man system, Mr. Holmes argued that putting someone who does not want to serve on a grand jury creates its own risk — that he or she may take out their resentment on the prosecutor. “You’re really going to get a reaction,” he said, adding that a prosecutor needs grand jurors to weigh the evidence, not plot ways to get back at them. “They’re already mad about having to serve.”


Actor Gets an Encore as Broker's Spokesman

Abstract: SAM WATERSTON is taking on a new role. No, he is not leaving the NBC series "Law & Order," where he has portrayed stalwart Jack McCoy for 11 seasons. Rather, Mr. Waterston, who served for two years as the spokesman for the TD Waterhouse brokerage firm, is becoming the face and voice of TD Ameritrade. A campaign, scheduled to begin Monday, will introduce TD Ameritrade to Wall Street and Main Street. The company was formed in January after the Ameritrade Holding Corporation, a brokerage firm, completed the acquisition of TD Waterhouse USA from Toronto-Dominion Bank. The deal was among a spate of recent consolidations in the online and discount brokerage business, which also included the purchases of BrownCo and HarrisDirect by the E*Trade Financial Group. The TD Ameritrade campaign carries the theme, "The independent spirit," expressed in headlines like, "Independence is the spirit that drives America's most successful investors." The double meaning is meant to evoke the do-it-yourself approach of current and potential TD Ameritrade customers. Mr. Waterston will be at the center of the campaign, which is being created by the former Ameritrade agency, OgilvyOne Worldwide in New York, part of the Ogilvy & Mather Worldwide unit of the WPP Group. He will be in advertising on television, in print, in brokerage offices and on Web sites, both general interest like msn.com and yahoo.com, as well as financial-oriented ones like MarketWatch (marketwatch.com), Motley Fool (fool.com) and of course, the coming TD Ameritrade (www.tdameritrade.com). Of the $150 million estimated marketing budget that TD Ameritrade plans to spend in the next year, about half is earmarked for online media and direct marketing. That is indicative of the increasing commitment being made by major marketers to the nontraditional media, which also include e-mail marketing, video on demand, search engine marketing and branded entertainment. "It's a very strong presence in the online space," said Chris Armstrong, executive vice president for sales and marketing at TD Ameritrade, who is based in Jersey City. "We have to work at building a brand where the customers of both brands could find themselves, as well as appeal to prospects," said Mr. Armstrong, who had been chief executive at TD Waterhouse. When one company acquires another in the same category, it is unusual for the celebrity pitchman of the acquired company to be retained. But that made sense in this instance, Mr. Armstrong said. "We had to decide whether or not Sam and his appeal with the old brand would alienate the Ameritrade customers," Mr. Armstrong said. To the contrary, he added, research found that Mr. Waterston "resonates incredibly well with customers of both brands." In addition to Mr. Waterston, TD Ameritrade is adopting other elements from the marketing of the TD Waterhouse brand, including the green and white color scheme, the style of the logo and the serious tone of the campaign. Ameritrade ads were more light-hearted, carrying themes like: "It's the 21st century. Trade like it." The continuity from TD Waterhouse partly reflects "the fact we have a large shareholder with a North American strategy we could help extend," Mr. Armstrong said. His reference was to Toronto-Dominion, which owns 32.5 percent of TD Ameritrade and is to increase its stake to 37.5 percent by January 2007. Toronto-Dominion also operates a division, TD Banknorth, that owns banks in the Northeastern United States, which keeps the "TD" letters in front of American consumers. The TD Waterhouse campaign featuring Mr. Waterston was introduced in November 2003 by Cossette Post in New York, an agency that is part of the Cossette Communication Group. When one company acquires another in the same category, it is typical for the agency of the acquiring company -- here, OgilvyOne -- to be kept on. "OgilvyOne has had the relationship going back to 1997," said Harvey Kipnis, co-managing director for the OgilvyOne New York office, "and built for Ameritrade over time a 'test and learn engine' -- trying new things, measuring them, putting dollars around what provides the best return." "The TD Ameritrade media strategy is a blend of what has worked for Ameritrade and what has worked for TD Waterhouse," Mr. Kipnis said. "We'll see what works over the next year and shift our investments for better yield." Bill Heater, creative director at OgilvyOne, said the agency and TD Ameritrade discussed "for a long time whether we stay with Sam Waterston or not," adding: "At the end of the day, we decided he is a valuable, credible spokesman for the idea of independence. In his role on 'Law & Order,' he is the voice of critical, independent thinking." In the TD Ameritrade campaign, Mr. Waterston "will be moving from the pitchman role he had with TD Waterhouse to an anchor role," Mr. Heater said. In the commercials, Mr. Waterston will speak briefly, introduce actors who portray different types of TD Ameritrade customers, then return at the end to deliver the independence theme. "Independence was in the DNA of both brands," Mr. Heater said. "For TD Waterhouse, Sam Waterston said, 'You can do this,' and Ameritrade celebrated the active traders by giving them tools to invest. It was all about empowerment, independence." Mr. Kipnis invoked perhaps the most famous Ameritrade campaign, created by OgilvyOne in 1999. It featured an office clerk named Stuart who helped his boss, Mr. P, go online to trade stocks. A line of dialogue that Stuart uttered to encourage the boss, "Let's light this candle!" became a catchphrase. "That was about independent spirit," Mr. Kipnis said. Perhaps Michael Maronna, the actor who portrayed the voluble Stuart, could make a cameo appearance in the campaign. Indeed, according to the imdb.com data base, Mr. Maronna appeared with Mr. Waterston in an episode of "Law & Order" that was broadcast on Sept. 24, 1997.

OGILVYONE WORLDWIDE
AMERITRADE HOLDING CORP
AMERITRADE HOLDING CORP
TD WATERHOUSE
TD AMERITRADE
WATERSTON SAM
WATERSON SAM
ADVERTISING AND MARKETING
STOCKS AND BONDS
ADVERTISING (TIMES COLUMN)


Gazing at Bodies During the Olympics

Abstract: HERE is a confession: I like to watch. For two summer weeks every four years, I avoid the lure of sun and sand to hole myself up in a darkened room and watch mesmerized as nearly naked people perform curious acts on television. On the evidence of the broadcast hours being devoted to satisfying this obsession, it cannot be mine alone. Across the two-plus weeks of the Beijing Olympics, NBC Universal will have broadcast nearly 2,900 hours of live coverage (and 3,600 hours of total coverage) on NBC, CNBC, MSNBC, Oxygen, Telemundo, Universal HD, the USA Network and streamed coverage on its Web site, NBCOlympics.com . Without question, this is too much Bob Costas — he of the ready cliché, the coltish forelock and the jaw-dropping impertinence. (Has another broadcast journalist ever concluded an interview with an American president by informing him that he was “dismissed”?) Even so, it is worth enduring Mr. Costas’s banalities, along with the welter of kooky color stories (“There is this and there is that,” noted the sage Al Trautwig, always quick with a koan, during one prime-time feature on a gymnast), the commercial barrage of beer-barrel Americana and even the sometimes thinly veiled journalistic partisanship in order to get to the heart of the Summer Games. By that one means that, for days and nights in the privacy of one’s living room, and without once resorting to XTube, a viewer is permitted and even encouraged to ogle an ongoing parade of muscled and lithe and rippling and toned and occasionally highly perplexing bodies, wearing little more than the evidence of our mutating cultural ideals. Here, for example, is Michael Phelps, the Baltimore merman, whose varied anatomical particulars (short legs, long torso, jug ears, size 14 feet, Olympic rings tattoo below right hipbone, on latitude with the pubic bone) have in recent days become more familiar in some ways than our own. Here are the gnomish female gymnasts, seemingly more compact than ever, more muscularly developed and yet at the same time troublingly arrested, to judge from the lack of secondary sexual characteristics like breasts. Here is Dara Torres, the 41-year-old swimmer with the blister-pack abs and the padded deltoids, her stupendous physique attained, she says, through Herculean training, and now unquestionably resembling that of a cover boy for Men’s Health. Here are the sprinters, their muscular bodies so different from those of the whippet-lean athletes of yesteryear. What is it that happened to the human body, one finds oneself asking. Is it diet or drugs or training or mysterious substances like human growth hormone that have turned so many sports stars into bendable action figures? Just as in baseball , when athletes overnight began looking more like Humvees than the reliable mid-size family Chevy, one’s eye registers a difference that defies any easy effort to comprehend. It was the art historian Anne Hollander who noted that, even naked, the body is subject to fashion and that the body beautiful differs according to an era’s prevailing mores and tastes. Because the Greek word gymnasium translates as something more or less like “nuditorium,” it seems clear that few events offer a richer opportunity to see how physical beauty is currently constructed than the Beijing Games. In a book “Made in Beijing,” put out by the German sportswear giant Adidas, there is a compelling group of archival pictures that date as far back as the 1920s. They show athletes like Emil Zatopek (the “Czech locomotive”), Bob Mathias and a surprisingly lean young boxer still known at the time as Cassius Clay. What is striking about these images is how lightly muscled the athletes’ bodies appear, how fine in proportion and aesthetically balanced, and how unlike so many of those on view in these Games, bodies that even in real time seem digitally enhanced. It has been nearly two decades since I wrote a profile for Vanity Fair of the pioneering Australian body builder Bev Francis, and it is instructive to recall that Ms. Francis’s rippling physique drew stares on the street back then. Now that the eye has adapted to more muscular padding on women (Madonna’s shoulders, Dara Torres’s arms), Bev Francis would barely rate a second glance. None of this is to infer that everyone in sports is juiced on steroids or ingests still-undetectable substances or requires DNA testing to determine his or her sex. And it is not to suggest that the Olympic ideals have been forever lost. Even in the classical world, the range of forms at the Games was broad enough to encompass lean bodies suited to running, wiry wrestlers with bantam bodies, refrigerator-size hulks capable of feats like lifting a young ox (and then consuming it later: certain athletes at the ancient Games gained laurels, while others won all they could eat). A mosaic floor in a fourth-century villa at the Piazza Armerina in Sicily depicts three female athletes playing some sort of ball game and wearing bandeau bikinis. One of them looks distinctly like that Diana of beach volleyball , Kerri Walsh. “The Olympics caters to all shapes and sizes,” as Rick Burton, the marketer-in-chief of Team USA at the Olympics, points out. “It always has.” What the Games also frankly accommodate is a taste for the spectacle of straining young bodies, an appeal that was not lost on the ancients. The crowds at the early Games, according to the historian Nigel Spivey, were as excited by the “boys with slim waists, broad shoulders, neatly proud buttocks and springy thighs” as they were by the lofty ideal of the Games. However distorted, the belief that to be fit is not merely to be brimming with sexual aliveness, but also to be prepared for hardship and battle, to be pure and good, remains deeply enmeshed in every Olympiad. Goony for athletic beauty, Socrates managed to find in all that young flesh not only a delight to the eyes, but also food for the soul. In many ways, the marketers of the Summer Olympics are still mining Socratic ideals, even if purity in sports at this point is surely a fantasy. At least that is the impression one obsessive has taken away from the Games thus far, as the shape of human perfection continues to evolve. There is a picture in the Adidas book of Nadia Comaneci at her Olympic apotheosis. If you happened to have been alive to watch those Montreal Games, you will probably recall how curious her superpowered child’s body looked at the time. But hold that image of Comaneci against the current hypertrophied Pocket Pals, and the prepubescent Romanian gymnast of 1976 seems as willowy and womanly as Cyd Charisse.

Olympic Games (2008)
Muscles
body image
History


A Review of Harvest on Hudson, in Hastings-on-Hudson

Abstract: Like the other restaurants operated by the Fort Pond Bay Company — Harvest on Fort Pond and East by Northeast in Montauk, and Half Moon in Dobbs Ferry — Harvest on Hudson, in Hastings-on-Hudson, sits on a waterfront with million-dollar views. But Harvest on Hudson offers something else: an opportunity for diners to build up their appetites with a pre-dinner stroll through the restaurant’s lush, well-tended vegetable and herb gardens, filled with flourishing peppers, tomatoes, squashes, mint and thyme. The menu at Harvest is flexible and allows diners to share and sample many dishes by ordering for the table. It’s communal and it’s fun. Select among sfizi (very small snack plates), the raw bar, a cheese selection, salads, antipasti, risottos, pizzas, pastas, even slices of steak. Diners might find some items on the salty side, like the cod fish fritters and, except for the silken prosciutto, the sausages on the salumi platter. A pizza of broccoli rabe, sausage and Gorgonzola met the same judgment from the palates at our table. Salad, risotto or pasta helped balance any salinity. Image Pork tenderloin in crepinette. Credit Gregg Vigliotti for The New York Times Risottos are available in full or small portions, a welcome idea for this satisfying dish. We shared a richly layered half portion of the anatra — a play of tangy sheep’s milk cheese, bits of duck confit and fatty pine nuts mingled into perfect rice. Also appealing was an appetizer special of vegetable-stuffed calamari, further enhanced by its bed of lovely soft chickpeas bathed in the exotic flavors of brown butter dashed with black squid ink. Considering the aggressive seasoning of some dishes, the pastas we sampled were surprisingly subtle, like a special of rigatoni in thin flavorless clam ragù. But mellow ravioli with spinach, ricotta and a touch of sage offered relief from the spiciness and salinity of some other dishes. Informing diners of the provenance of a menu item has become a welcome trend, and we found that all of Harvest’s cheese selections came from farms in our own Hudson Valley. A selection of four of them makes a perfect snack or a course at meal’s end. Image A cheese selection. Credit Gregg Vigliotti for The New York Times As for entrees, don’t miss the pork tenderloin in crepinette. If all the dishes here were as good as this moist, tender fillet — adorned with excellent glazed asparagus and a Parmesan sabayon that added a touch of tangy salinity to the modestly salted meat — this restaurant would be noted in travel books as a reason to come to New York. Running a close second, a roasted Crystal Valley Farm half-chicken could not have been more succulent, or more deserving of its association with smoked bacon, cremini mushrooms and sage. On the other hand guancia, or pork cheeks, with potatoes and spinach sharing the plate, was overly salty. As for fish, the crisped seared skins were delicious, but the flesh of a whole dorado was overcooked, although it came with a dewy fresh salad, dates adding a sweet note. Halibut had spent too much time under the flame as well, and it arrived in a bowl, an awkward entree presentation that this kitchen seems to favor. There seemed to be a disconnect between the desserts described on the menu and those brought to the table. Macerated cherries sparked a simple, creamy panna cotta; coffee gelato balanced a dark bitter chocolate semifreddo of Amedei chocolate. But the promised dulce de leche seemed missing from a weird, molten, unpleasantly bitter chocolate coulant cake. With the task of serving up to 175 diners outside and an additional 200 indoors, it’s no wonder the kitchen’s efforts can be inconsistent. Nonetheless, Harvest is a festive and exciting place. Bring along a hat and sunglasses for sun protection, and a jacket, in case the river wind blows cold. Kudos to Harvest on Hudson for reclaiming a section of the river’s long-neglected Westchester waterfront and turning it into a gorgeous showplace everyone can enjoy.

Harvest on Hudson Hastings-on-Hudson NY Restaurant


Experiencing the Alpine World Ski Championships From Above

Abstract: BEAVER CREEK, Colo. — The first ski race I covered was the Olympic women’s downhill in Meribel, France, in 1992, and I watched it from the finish area amid the cheers, the groans and the rubbing shoulders in the close-quarter mixed zone. So it has continued, but after 23 years of staring uphill as great skiers carved their way down, I had the opportunity on Friday to observe from a different vantage point: to look downhill instead and see a championship race from the start. “It’s one of the better views in sport,” said Barry Bryant, a 79-year-old American known as Bear who was the assistant start referee for the men’s giant slalom at the 2015 Alpine world ski championships . The truth is that it can be hard to see the forest or the trees when the fog is thick or the snow or sleet is coming down sideways. But Friday was not one of those days. Bryant got to enjoy the panorama of the Rocky Mountains on a blue-sky afternoon with Grouse Mountain and Larkspur Bowl stretched out before him and a packed grandstand that looked like a scale model in the distance. He got to see great talents like Ted Ligety and Marcel Hirscher kick out of the start and, fresh and full of ambition, attack the opening slope and the first few gates of the course before dropping quickly — astonishingly quickly — out of sight. “It’s what I live for,” Bryant murmured when the day’s work was done. But as Bryant stood watch in the start house — an inflated white archway that comes from the same architectural tradition as the bouncy castle — what he could not see was all that was transpiring outside the temporary walls of his domain. Image Ted Ligety, in bib, amid a group watching the race on a TV screen. Credit Christopher Clarey/The New York Times He could not see the racers, lips pursed and eyes closed or open, contorting their bodies as they visualized the race and the challenges to come. He could not see them stooping in their boots to grab a handful of snow and then slap it on their necks to stay cool on an unseasonably warm day. “It’s 50 degrees,” Ligety mumbled to Steve Porino, the American television reporter, in what sounded like a complaint. On the World Cup circuit, the challenge at the top often can be staying warm. On Friday, it was quite the contrary, but the racers still warmed up nonetheless. There were push-ups, crunches and planks; sprints up the steep slope just outside the start house. A few earnestly yanked on elastic bands looped around their trainers’ legs — a little too earnestly for Tim Jitloff, the veteran American. “That’s the new trend,” he said. “They’ve got the bands and the trainer, and it’s all kind of ridiculous. I don’t need it. I just do my own thing and stay calm and go for it.” With 60 racers qualified for the second run, there were indeed a world of pregame philosophies on display in the corral that surrounded the start house. The top 30, as usual at world championships, went first on the second run and in reverse order of their first-run finishes. Between the support staff and the competitors, it made for quite a crowd in a tight space, but the surprise to an outsider was how quiet and orderly it all seemed: more tea ceremony than ready room. There was little chitchat, virtually no tomfoolery except for one lobbed snowball. You could hear the hum of the generator that was keeping the start house inflated and the occasional shouts accompanying a racer’s burst out of the start gate that were not unlike the intermittent shrieks of teenagers jumping off the diving board in a different season. The Sounds of the Downhill Some of the top ski racers in the world describe the sounds of a World Cup downhill. But in general it was enough to pick up on the subtleties: the slap of the skis as a racer bounced to get himself ready, the thump of the therapist’s palms on a skier’s powerful thighs. “It is very quiet, because it’s a no-joke matter,” Jitloff said. “It’s kind of like the room before you take the test.” Except when you prepare to take the test, the student at the neighboring desk probably was not performing moves that Martha Graham or Twyla Tharp could have choreographed. Skiers, like many athletes, have been visualizing for decades, but it is still quite a sight, particularly in close quarters, and ever more a stylistic smorgasbord. Some lean on their poles and use one hand to trace a sinuous path through the air; the path that mimics the one they intend to follow past the gates. Some grip both poles, throw body and artistic soul into the task and work up a sweat. Others, like Ligety, are much closer to Zen as they stand quietly and barely twitch a muscle as they see what is not yet there. “Another thing that’s special with Ted is he does conserve his energy,” said Adam Cole, the start coach for the U.S. Ski Team who was on site on Friday. “He’s not stressed out for two hours before his run or anything. He’s pretty even keel all the way until we are in the tent.” Image Barry Bryant, known as Bear, is a starting official. Credit Christopher Clarey/ The New York Times Half asleep might be a better way of putting it for a man who is viper quick between the gates. But Ligety took his time and then some, whether it was donning his speed suit or his bib or buckling his boots. He took in the view with the crowd gathered around the television monitor that sits just outside the start house. “I was staying as relaxed as I possibly could,” said Ligety, even if it did not reflect his inner state. “I know any time I get in the start gate of a giant slalom I have a good chance of winning, and that adds that extra bit of pressure because you are fighting for the title.” He fought particularly well on Friday, and when he finished his remarkable second run, the roar from far below in the valley was obscured by the round of applause from those gathered around the screen up on top, most of whom had very little to gain from Ligety’s excellence. “Maybe it was everyone clapping for what they recognized as a little piece of art,” Porino said. “All I know is I’ve never heard that before.” Only Hirscher, the first-run leader, would have a real crack at drawing a mustache on Ligety’s Mona Lisa. Unlike his rivals, Hirscher had arrived in the start area just a few minutes before his second run: emerging from splendid isolation by way of the women’s downhill course. Once into the enclosure, he shadow boxed and stretched, heard a course report from the Austrian coaches delivered by two-way radio and then another course report as he clicked into his skis at the entry to the start house. He lifted them, first the right and then the left, as a ski technician wiped the bottoms with a cloth. He then slid methodically forward, his eyes fixed on the light-filled space in front of him before he finally heard the countdown and the electronic beep and propelled himself into the arena. Television now shows you so much with Alpine skiing, but it still cannot quite capture the steepness of the pitch or the speed of the racers. Watching Hirscher from this fresh angle, as he leaned hard and sliced past the gates and through the air, he looked computer generated in his wind-tunnel-ready perfection. But the challenge was very real, and when the last and loudest roar rumbled up to those of us whom Hirscher had left behind, it was the roar of an American celebration.

Skiing
World Cup Skiing
Beaver Creek Colorado


Carmelo Anthony Hobbled as Knicks Extend Skid to Eight Games

Abstract: Wesley Matthews scored 28 points, including six 3-pointers, and the host Portland Trail Blazers beat the short-handed Knicks, 101-79, on Sunday night. Matthews, who leads the N.B.A. with 106 3-pointers this season, made five 3s in the first half against the Knicks. His teammate Nicolas Batum finished with five 3-pointers and 17 points. The Blazers went 16 for 36 from long range on the night. They have made at least 10 3-pointers in five of their last six games. “It’s contagious,” Matthews said. “It was just a good vibe from the jump.” It was the eighth straight loss for the Knicks (5-28), who had just nine available players to start the game and then lost Carmelo Anthony for the second half because of a sore left knee. Portland, which led by as many as 27 points, has won eight of its last nine games. Cole Aldrich had 12 points and a career-high 19 rebounds for the Knicks, and Tim Hardaway Jr. scored 17 points. The Blazers were without LaMarcus Aldridge, who has missed three of the last four games with an upper respiratory illness. The Knicks were without J. R. Smith, who is having continuing problems with his left heel. Samuel Dalembert was sidelined by a sprained right ankle, and Amar’e Stoudemire missed the game with a sore right knee. To make matters worse, Anthony, who had been nursing a sore left knee, did not return for the second half. Anthony had 36 points in a 135-129 overtime loss at Sacramento on Saturday night. Anthony had 13 points in the first half on Sunday, but he grimaced in pain at times. “Tonight it feels like fatigue, and not getting a chance to recover from last night,” Anthony said. “I felt this before the game, but I looked around the locker room, and we have seven or eight guys ready to go — I really didn’t have a choice but to go out there and attempt to play and see how much I could take.” Image The Spurs’ Tim Duncan, who finished with 16 points, shooting against the Rockets, who lost, 110-106, on Sunday. Credit Darren Abate/Associated Press Matthews made three 3-pointers in the first quarter, helping the Blazers to a 31-22 lead. Batum hit a 3-pointer to extend the lead to 50-32 in the second. At that time, 30 of Portland’s points were from 3-pointers by either Matthews or Batum. Batum made a 3-point shot in the third quarter that pushed Portland’s lead to 71-47. PISTONS 103, CAVALIERS 80 Brandon Jennings scored 25 points, and Detroit mounted an 18-0 run in the second quarter to roll past host Cleveland. Andre Drummond had 16 points and 17 rebounds for the Pistons (7-23). Detroit set a season high for 3-pointers made by going 17 for 31 from long range. Kevin Love had 20 points and 10 rebounds for Cleveland. It was Detroit’s first road win against an Eastern Conference team this season. SPURS 110, ROCKETS 106 Danny Green had 24 points, and injury-depleted San Antonio held off a late rally to beat visiting Houston, ending a six-game skid against an intrastate rival. Tim Duncan had 16 points and Manu Ginobili had 15 for San Antonio (19-13), which won for the first time in three games. James Harden had 28 points, and Dwight Howard added 24 points and 17 rebounds for Houston (21-8). MAVERICKS 112, THUNDER 107 Dirk Nowitzki matched his season high with 30 points, Chandler Parsons added 26, and host Dallas beat Oklahoma City. The Mavericks rallied from 7 points down to start the fourth quarter. They were without center Tyson Chandler, a late scratch with back spasms. Nowitzki put the Mavericks ahead for good with a pair of free throws with 3 minutes 25 seconds to go. Serge Ibaka led Oklahoma City with a season-high 26 points.

Basketball
Carmelo Anthony
Wesley Matthews
Cole Aldrich
Tim Hardaway Jr
Knicks
Trail Blazers


Mozzarella for Big Cheeses at an East Hampton Market

Abstract: Unlike other East Hampton haunts treasured by affluent summer people for their beachy, low-key vibe, Red Horse Market bustles with productivity. The produce is arranged like a Flemish still life, women in equestrian garb demand to know the provenance of the grass in the grass-fed beef, and the Kardashian sisters once fought on camera in this small shop. Its patrons are a devoted lot. “Because of the quality, of the meat, of the seafood, because they stock local producers,” said Molly Dunkirk, a personal chef who was filling her car with grocery bags on a recent Thursday afternoon. The shop attracts its share of boldface names — Martha Stewart, Alec Baldwin, Jimmy Fallon, Drew Barrymore, Katie Couric, Ed Burns — as well as finance and movie-industry types. East Hampton is a town where million-dollar homes are described by real estate agents as “affordable.” So it’s probably no surprise that behind the neatly arranged shelves (black chia seeds and $8 jars of sauce), there is an ultra-attentive level of service. “I personally stock the refrigerators for some of our people,” Jeff Lange, one of three men who own the store, said. “The cupboards, too. So that when they arrive on a Friday night, everything that they need is right there.” That kind of efficiency, though expected, is not what draws the weekender to the market. The coffee is always on, and there is a rack of newspapers for those whose morning routine includes sitting on one of the benches just outside the doors. The best-selling item in the store is “Grandma’s chicken salad,” Mr. Lange said. Of course, among a clientele that owns helicopters, the market also sells a fair amount of octopus salad and chicken Florentine. The butcher shop is the store’s centerpiece, and summer is high grilling season. According to the owners, one family in Water Mill regularly orders $2,000 to $3,000 of beef each weekend (primarily wagyu, at $45 a pound). In one corner, there is a pizza oven. At the other end of the store is Pasquale Langella, who presides over the market’s mozzarella station. “How many?” he calls out to shoppers. Toddlers stand on tiptoe in front of his work space: an immaculate table where he is surrounded by buckets of milky water and where he pulls and swirls amorphous slabs of the soft cheese in hot, salty water. Out of the aluminum caldron, he twists off a knob and skewers it on a toothpick for a sample, which is usually quickly snapped up. Last year, the market sold 34,000 pounds of fresh mozzarella. Even hedge funders seem to defer to Mr. Langella. “Hey, Pasquale!” Josh Harlan (of Harlan Capital) said from the other end of the store. “The cheese was excellent last night. I had my mother over for dinner.” In a precinct hungry for authenticity, each summer Mr. Langella, 59, is the attraction at several charity events and private parties in the Hamptons, making the cheese on-site. “I’ve been making mozzarella since I was 14 years old,” he said. “My grandma taught me. She picked me out of all of the kids. You know why? You gotta have patience for the cheese.” But patience is sometimes in short supply at Red Horse Market. “They literally fight in line here over who is going to get the mozzarella first,” Mr. Langella said of some of his customers. “Always in a hurry. What do they think, the beach is gonna disappear?”

Red Horse Market
East Hampton NY
Supermarkets
Cheese
Pasquale Langella


S.E.C. Investigates Company Founded by Clinton Donor

Abstract: OMAHA, Nov. 21 (AP) — The Securities and Exchange Commission has opened an investigation into spending by a database marketer in Omaha that already faces a lawsuit contending that the company misspent millions, some of it on Bill and Hillary Rodham Clinton . The shareholder lawsuit contends that Vin Gupta, founder of the company, InfoUSA, used private corporate jets to fly the Clintons on business, personal and campaign trips; that Mr. Gupta gave Bill Clinton a $3.3 million consulting contract; and that the company paid for luxuries that Mr. Gupta enjoyed. The company said in a filing Tuesday that it would cooperate with the S.E.C.’s request for documents related to expense reimbursement, transactions with related parties, some corporate expenditures and certain trades of company stock. The company did not specify what the S.E.C. was looking for, but the lawsuit, filed by two investment managers in a Delaware court, might offer some clues. The investment manager Cardinal Value Equity Partners and the hedge fund Dolphin Limited Partnership filed the lawsuit earlier this year, contending that Mr. Gupta misspent millions of dollars in corporate funds. The lawsuit states that Info USA has spent nearly $900,000 since 2001 flying the Clintons to domestic and international destinations and political events. Mr. Gupta has been a major donor to Democrats and gave at least $1 million to Mr. Clinton’s presidential library in Arkansas. Mr. Gupta also took part in a June fund-raiser for Mrs. Clinton in Manhattan. A spokesman for Mrs. Clinton said in May that all the flights connected to InfoUSA were reimbursed and disclosed in accordance with Federal Election Commission and Senate ethics rules. The investment managers also say InfoUSA paid for use of a jet plane, the 80-foot yacht American Princess, condos in Hawaii and California and a University of Nebraska-Lincoln stadium box. Some of the $28 million in “related-party transactions” the investment managers have questioned included payments to Annapurna Corporation, which Mr. Gupta owned. InfoUSA did not immediately reply to a message seeking comment Wednesday. In the past, Mr. Gupta and InfoUSA said the jet, condos, stadium box and American Princess were for entertaining clients.

infoUSA Inc
Securities and Exchange Commission
Securities and Commodities Violations
Clinton Hillary Rodham
Clinton Bill
Presidential Election of 2008


Sweden: Government May Fall

Abstract: Sweden’s left-leaning minority government was on the verge of collapse Tuesday after a far-right party, the Sweden Democrats, said it would side with the opposition to vote against a proposed budget in an attempt to force the government to resign. Options for Prime Minister Stefan Lofven, a Social Democrat, appeared limited: He could withdraw the budget plan, which would postpone the vote set for Wednesday, resign or wait until Dec. 29 to call for a new election.

Sweden
Stefan Lofven
Budget
Sweden Democrats


Endeavour Lands in California, Avoiding Florida Weather

Abstract: Jarring the Mojave Desert calm with rumbling sonic booms, the shuttle Endeavour dropped out of a cloudless blue sky and glided to a smooth landing Sunday at Edwards Air Force Base in California to close out a 16-day assembly mission for the International Space Station. Diverted from a planned landing in Florida by low clouds and high crosswinds at the Kennedy Space Center, Capt. Christopher J. Ferguson of the Navy, the shuttle commander, guided the winged orbiter to a picture-perfect touchdown on Runway 4 at 4:25 p.m. Eastern time. A few moments later, Col. Eric A. Boe of the Air Force, the shuttle’s pilot, released a red and white braking parachute and the shuttle rolled to a halt, wrapping up a 6.6-million-mile voyage that included 250 orbits since its launching on Nov. 14. “Wheels stopped, Houston,” Captain Ferguson radioed. “Copy, wheels stopped, Endeavour,” replied Capt. Alan G. Poindexter of the Navy from the mission control center in Houston. “Welcome back. It was a great way to finish a fantastic flight, Fergie.” The astronauts had hoped to land in Florida, where friends and family had gathered, but low clouds and high crosswinds from a cold front forced the flight director, Bryan Lunney, to wave off two landing opportunities. He briefly held open the option of keeping the astronauts in orbit an extra day and trying again for Florida on Monday. But forecasters concluded there was little chance the weather would improve. Flight surgeons were standing by to assist the outgoing space station flight engineer, Gregory E. Chamitoff, returning to the unfamiliar tug of Earth’s gravity after six months aboard the space station. To ease his return to gravity, Dr. Chamitoff made the trip resting on his back in a recumbent seat on the shuttle’s lower deck. Also on board: More than a gallon of processed urine and condensate, the first samples from a newly installed water recycling system aboard the station that is a central element in the National Aeronautics and Space Administration ’s plans for increasing the lab’s crew size to six from three next May. At least three months of testing are required before station astronauts will be allowed to drink any recycled water. Joining Captain Ferguson, Colonel Boe, Dr. Chamitoff and Mr. Pettit for the trip home were Capt. Heidemarie M. Stefanyshyn-Piper and Capt. Stephen G. Bowen, both of the Navy, and Lt. Col. Robert S. Kimbrough of the Army. Endeavour delivered more than eight tons of equipment and supplies to the space station for what was dubbed an extreme home makeover, including the water recycling gear, a new toilet, a new galley, a refrigerator and two astronaut sleep stations. While their crewmates worked inside the station, Captain Stefanyshyn-Piper, Captain Bowen and Colonel Kimbrough carried out four spacewalks to overhaul the space station’s damaged right-side solar array rotary mechanism and to lubricate its left-side counterpart. They also installed a spare cooling system component, removed a spent nitrogen tank and prepared the Japanese Kibo lab module for attachment of an external experiment platform next year. Endeavour also delivered Sandra H. Magnus, Dr. Chamitoff’s replacement. Dr. Magnus will remain aboard the lab with Michael Fincke, the Expedition 18 commander and an Air Force colonel, and Yury Lonchakov, a cosmonaut and a colonel in the Russian air force, until the next shuttle visit in February.

International Space Cooperation and Ventures


As City’s Elderly Population Swells, Concerns Rise Over Lack of Access to Retirement Plans

Abstract: New York City’s elderly population is exploding: By 2030, the city will have 1.3 million people 65 and over, up from a million today. And few of them are likely to have a retirement plan. Nearly 60 percent of workers in the city do not have access to a pension or a 401(k), said Teresa Ghilarducci, the director of the Schwartz Center for Economic Policy Analysis at the New School for Social Research. That, combined with the population projection, made for what she called a looming crisis. “It isn’t just a matter of people not being able to keep up their standard of living,” Ms. Ghilarducci said. “We’re talking about people who will be old and in a chronic state of deprivation.” Ms. Ghilarducci and two others — Bill Samuels, a Democratic activist, and Letitia James, the city’s public advocate — are asking city officials to consider an idea that has been gaining traction in other parts of the country: creating a pooled pension fund for private sector workers that the city itself could manage. The proposed solution seems somewhat counterintuitive at a time when areas around the country are struggling under their pension obligations. But California is looking at creating such a retirement fund, and Democrats in other states have made similar proposals . Massachusetts has created such a fund for employees of small nonprofits, overseen by the state treasurer. The city comptroller, Scott M. Stringer, is expected to attend a meeting at the New School on June 17 to learn more about the issue and talk to State Senator Kevin de León of California, who pushed the idea there. According to Ms. Ghilarducci’s research, 59 percent of workers in the city do not have either a pension or a 401(k), up from 51 percent a decade ago. Many small businesses do not have the human resources capacity to manage a 401(k). Moreover, Ms. Ghilarducci says, 401(k)’s are less than ideal for workers themselves, since they charge higher fees and have lower rates of return than pension funds, in part because people can withdraw their money at any time. In her and Mr. Samuels’s proposal for the city, workers would be required to contribute a percentage of their pay. There would be no required employer match. Ms. Ghilarducci compares the proposal to the “public option” proposed by liberals during the health care reform debate, because private individuals would be able to take advantage of the negotiating leverage and oversight of the government. The fund would cost taxpayers nothing, Ms. Ghilarducci says, because workers’ contributions would pay the full administrative costs. Also, unlike the defined benefit plans offered to many public workers, the fund’s guaranteed rate of return would vary each year based on market conditions.

Pensions and Retirement Plans
401k
Old age,elderly,senior citizens
NYC
Retirement


Report by Catholic Church Sees Gains on Sexual Abuse

Abstract: An annual report issued by the Roman Catholic Church in the United States found that almost all of its 195 dioceses and archdioceses were in compliance with the abuse prevention plan that American bishops put in place in 2002 in response to the national scandal over clergy sexual abuse. The report found that while current accusations of abuse of minors are rare, the church is still deeply mired in the fallout from past cases. In 2010, 683 people made abuse accusations for the first time, with 653 of them reporting alleged abuse from years ago. Thirty of the accusations were made by minors, and the report said that all of these were forwarded to the civil authorities. However, victims’ advocates and church critics say the annual report lacks credibility because it is based on self-reporting by the dioceses. The information is given to an outside auditing firm called the Gavin Group. The auditors do not examine personnel records or case files of those accused of abuse, so they cannot verify the dioceses’ information. The credibility of the process came under scrutiny this year after a grand jury accused the Archdiocese of Philadelphia of failing to remove from the ministry 37 priests accused of abuse or inappropriate behavior — a violation of the church’s own policies. In response, the archdiocese suspended 24 priests, and recently suspended two more. But in the report released on Monday, the Philadelphia Archdiocese was found fully in compliance with the abuse prevention policy, known as The Charter for the Protection of Children and Young People . Church officials say they were looking into the reasons for the discrepancy. The Dioceses of Lincoln, Neb., and Baker, Ore., as well as five jurisdictions for Eastern-rite Catholics, refused to participate in the audit and so were found not in compliance. The church says it cannot compel a bishop to participate. Of the 188 participating dioceses, the auditors sent warning letters to 55 saying they must improve their practices. The most common problem was the failure of parishes or schools to offer “safe environment” training for children. The church spent about $70 million on settlements with victims in 2010 and nearly $34 million on lawyers’ fees — a decrease from the peak in 2007, when the church spent $420 million on settlements and $53 million on lawyers. Insurance covered about one-third of the abuse-related costs. The report also found an increase in reports of “boundary violations,” or inappropriate behavior, by priests. It attributed the increase to the success of the church’s safe environment programs in raising awareness among young people and families.

Children and Youth
Sex Crimes
Roman Catholic Church
United States


Many Democrats Turn Their Backs on Free Trade

Abstract: WASHINGTON — Two decades ago, President Bill Clinton needed Republican support to win a bitter battle over the North American Free Trade Agreement. He also garnered 40 percent of congressional Democrats, including almost half the party’s senators. President Obama may also win some close trade votes — first with the approval of a bill giving him so-called fast-track authority to negotiate the huge Trans-Pacific Partnership and then when the deal itself moves through Congress. This time, more than 80 percent of congressional Democrats will oppose the president. Democrats have turned decidedly protectionist in the decades since the passage of Nafta, which have coincided with increasing globalization and steep losses of American manufacturing jobs. Even Hillary Rodham Clinton is breaking with her husband’s free-trade record, hinting that she may oppose the Pacific trade pact, which would bind the United States and 11 other Pacific Rim nations. Mr. Obama and his unaccustomed allies, Republican congressional leaders, want to pass fast-track authorization — which assures a straight up or down vote on the Pacific pact and other trade deals — by the end of the month. It’s a slog. For now, fewer than 20 House Democrats are on board, and the maximum is 30; 10 Senate Democrats may go along, but no more than 15. Although leading Republicans embrace the free-trade measures, a handful of the party’s senators and as many as 50 of its House members may vote against it, chiefly because it is supported by Mr. Obama. Rational critics often conflate unbridled trade, which has hurt America’s industrial work force, and trade pacts. The complaints used to center on Japan, but now they focus on China, even though the United States has no plans for a free-trade agreement with that country. Nonetheless, there are legitimate concerns about the Trans-Pacific Partnership and other deals. One raised by Senator Elizabeth Warren, a Massachusetts Democrat, is the “Investor-State Dispute Settlement,” which permits multinational companies to go before special tribunals to challenge certain domestic practices. Opposition to this provision, labor leaders say, scores through the roof in polls. Proponents have done an inadequate job of addressing concerns that this could affect American labor or environmental laws; Pacific pact negotiators may have to tighten this provision. Less legitimate are demands to include currency manipulation protections in any Pacific deal. This is aimed at China, which is not part of the pact. Yet the issue has been raised by serious lawmakers such as Senator Rob Portman, Republican of Ohio and a former United States trade representative, forcing Obama administration officials to try to come up with some cosmetic way to appease them. The overpromising of earlier trade deals, especially Nafta, has produced a backlash. For Democrats, two factors emerged in a study of the Nafta vote by the Economic Policy Institute. Back in 1993, there were 67 rural Democrats, who split almost evenly for and against the treaty, while Democrats representing urban or suburban areas opposed it almost 2 to 1. Today, there are few rural Democrats in the House. And business, which provided a big chunk of campaign cash for those pro-Nafta Democrats, gives much less support for Democrats now. The protectionist pressure has reached Mrs. Clinton. Signaling that she may oppose the Pacific deal may be good primary politics, but it may not be as popular a stance in a general election. Although conditions have changed markedly, it’s instructive to remember John B. Connally, the onetime Democrat who, more than Ronald Reagan, became the most dynamic Republican candidate at the start of the 1980 presidential race. He ran on a get-tough-on-trade platform, warning the Japanese that they “better be ready to sit on the docks of Yokohama in their own Toyotas, watching their own Sonys.” Mr. Connally spent $12 million — or $39 million today — and got one delegate, Ada Mills of Arkansas. He had to drop out after only the third primary.

Trans-Pacific Partnership
Hillary Clinton
Bill Clinton
Barack Obama
International trade
Protectionism
NAFTA
Democratic Party Japan