Holder Meets With Attorney General of Mexico

Abstract: MEXICO CITY — At the end of two days of meetings with Mexican officials, Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. said that cooperation between the United States and Mexico was stronger and “fundamentally different than that which existed in the past.” In an interview on Friday before meeting with President Felipe Calderón of Mexico, Mr. Holder and his Mexican counterpart, Eduardo Medina-Mora, said the stakes of their new efforts to stem the drug violence wreaking havoc in Mexico were high for both countries. Both men dismissed assertions in a Pentagon report in December that the crisis had pushed Mexico to the verge of becoming a failed state. Mr. Medina-Mora, however, raised images of Colombia, where corruption and insecurity were so rampant that the leader of the powerful Medellín cartel , Pablo Escobar, was elected to Congress. And Mr. Holder recalled the years when the crack epidemic caused a crisis of crime and corruption in the United States. “Mexico has never been a weak state,” Mr. Medina-Mora said. “It is not today. It will never be in the future. We have faced even more difficult problems than this one. And it is relevant to put this in perspective.” But he added: “What is at stake is the ability of Mexico to keep peace and tranquillity for its citizens. That is why our objective is not ending drug trafficking. It is to remove power from these groups and remove their ability to seize and to kidnap our right to live in peace.” Talking about the efforts of Mexican law enforcement officials to end the drug trade, Mr. Holder pounded his hand on the table and said, “People have to understand this, people really have to get this: they are putting their lives on the line in a fundamental way.” In their meetings with Mr. Calderón, Mr. Holder and the secretary of homeland security, Janet Napolitano, discussed plans to provide training to Mexican canine teams, and to increase cooperation between the United States Coast Guard and the Mexican Navy to stop the increasing numbers of illegal immigrants and drug smugglers using the Pacific Ocean as a result of increased enforcement along the land border. “We are going to operate almost like a vise,” Ms. Napolitano said of the United States and Mexico, after the meeting with Mr. Calderón. “We’re going to take out the cartels that have been plaguing our communities for far too long.” In the interview, Mr. Holder said he was sending an additional 100 agents from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives to the southern border to crack down on the so-called straw gun purchases — in which one person submits to the federal background checks to obtain guns for someone else — that fuel much of the southbound smuggling. And with marijuana sales central to the drug trade, Mr. Holder said he was exploring ways to lower the minimum amount required for the federal prosecution of possession cases. “The reality of the level of cooperation that now exists is fundamentally different from that which existed in the past,” he said. The current Mexican administration, he said, was “in a fundamentally different place, and the possibilities of cooperation, as a result, are substantially greater, and they will show results.” Mr. Medina-Mora said Mexico and the United States were working on ways to cooperate in the investigation and prosecution of smuggling and violent crimes, so that when there was a choice of jurisdiction, trials would be held in the country with the toughest applicable laws and penalties. He said that all federal agents involved in investigating and enforcing laws on organized crime were being vetted by both Mexican and American investigators. And he said that the government was upgrading most of its law enforcement infrastructure and technology to make it easier to oversee officers’ activities and detect irregularities, which he said may occur because of “technical reasons or because of corruption.”

Mexico
Drug Abuse and Traffic
United States
Cartels
Holder Eric H Jr


Greek Bond Yields Soar as Investors Sell

Abstract: Investors fled Greek bonds on Tuesday, pushing up the cost of new borrowing for the debt-stricken nation and calling into question a joint rescue plan by the European Union and the International Monetary Fund . As early as May, Greece will need to raise an additional 11.6 billion euros ($15.5 billion), to cover a gaping budget deficit and refinance old debt as it comes due. The surge in interest rates on Greek bonds is expected to make it harder, and more expensive, for the country to borrow the money it needs. Over the last few months, worries about a possible default by Greece have unnerved markets around the world, forcing European leaders and the I.M.F. to come up with a plan to provide aid in the event that Greece could no longer raise money from private investors. That plan, announced on March 25, was supposed to calm the markets. It succeeded briefly, but details of how it would work — like the size of the rescue and the precise role of the I.M.F. — were left vague. Now investors are signaling a lack of faith in the ability of the European Union and the I.M.F. to coordinate any help. “The E.U. hasn’t gotten that far in coming up with an aid mechanism,” said Eric Fine, an emerging markets portfolio manager with Van Eck Global in New York. The sell-off on Tuesday was spurred by reports, later denied, that Greece was seeking to renegotiate the terms of the rescue deal. A spokeswoman for the Greek finance ministry, Filio Lanara, said Tuesday that Greece had taken “no action to change the terms of the agreement on mechanisms of support.” Nor, she said, has Greece “sought to activate this mechanism.” I.M.F. officials are set to arrive in Athens on Wednesday to discuss the government’s austerity measures and find ways to increase tax revenue. At one point Tuesday, the yield on Greek debt climbed past 7 percent — the highest since January — as investors sold Greek bonds. At the last Greek bond auction on March 29, when the country raised $6.7 billion, yields stood at 5.9 percent. That auction was meant to show the world that investor confidence in Greece had returned, but it had the opposite effect because of weak demand from foreign investors. Local Greek banks were forced to buy much of the offering. “It’s becoming increasingly difficult to believe that Greece will be able to fund itself,” said Michael Conelius, a portfolio manager at T. Rowe Price in Baltimore who specializes in emerging market debt. When Greece returns to the market in May, it will probably have to pay much more than 5.9 percent. Greece needs to raise more than $40 billion before the end of the year, so an additional 1 percent in interest would cost the Greek treasury an extra $400 million annually. That would put the nation’s budget further out of whack and force even sharper austerity measures than it has committed to so far. “If we don’t see a concrete step, then we will enter a vicious cycle as financing costs get higher, making the debt look even more unsustainable,” said Marco Annunziata, chief economist for UniCredit. “The end game is an I.M.F. program, and the end game is getting closer.” That would be a humiliating step for Greece, which is among the 16 countries that share the euro currency. The prospect of a default by Greece, however, is an even more worrisome prospect; fears of such an outcome drove down the euro Tuesday, to $1.3396 from $1.3486. The yield on the Greek government’s benchmark 10-year bond finished the day at 6.9 percent, after officials denied that they wanted new terms for any bailout. The difference in yields between Greek bonds and comparable German bonds, a barometer of market confidence, rose to 3.73 percentage points from 3.37 points. The Greek government has blamed speculators for its troubles, but long-term investors like Mr. Conelius are also losing faith, increasing the prospect that the I.M.F will have to act quickly and come up with a revised bailout package. On Tuesday, he closed out his position on Greece, contributing to a consensus of lost confidence. “I’d like nothing more than to see Greece do the right thing,” he said. “Greece needs to improve the plan.”

Greece
Debt
Credit
Auctions
European Union
International Monetary Fund
Economic Conditions and Trends


European Bank Cuts Rate, but Signals It Has Limits

Abstract: BRATISLAVA, Slovakia — The European Central Bank cut its benchmark interest rate to a record low on Thursday. But its president, Mario Draghi, indicated that his promise last year to do “whatever it takes” to save the euro had limits. For now, at least, the bank remains unwilling or unable to wield the more powerful weapons that many economists say are needed to jolt the Continent out of recession. Although the big fear last year that the euro zone might break apart has receded, the danger now could be prolonged stagnation like that which has plagued Japan for most of the last two decades. Even the traditionally conservative Bank of Japan has become bolder lately, aggressively buying government bonds to try to double the supply of money in circulation and spur growth. Such a step would be unthinkable for Mr. Draghi, who is hemmed in by the bank’s narrower mandate and the historically rooted inflation fears of Germany, the euro zone’s wealthiest and most politically powerful member. The bank’s Governing Council, meeting in Bratislava, reduced its benchmark interest rate to 0.5 percent from 0.75 percent. But that move was widely seen as mostly symbolic, to avoid the impression that the bank and Mr. Draghi were doing nothing as the euro zone recession threatens to engulf countries, like Germany, that have previously been spared. The central bank also extended its promise to provide banks with as much cheap cash as they need through 2014, and said it was exploring ways to use the European Union’s house bank to stimulate lending to small businesses. Intriguingly, Mr. Draghi raised the possibility of imposing a “negative rate” on the deposits that banks routinely park at the central bank, essentially charging banks to store their money. That might discourage lenders from hoarding cash rather than lending. But it could have unintended consequences. For example, banks might store huge amounts of paper bills as a low-risk alternative to central bank vaults. Mr. Draghi insisted that the rate cut, which takes effect May 8, would stimulate growth, especially now that the economic slump that has afflicted Spain and Italy for more than a year is spreading north to countries like Germany, Austria and Finland. Anticipating skepticism, he urged reporters “not to underestimate the impact” of the rate cut and other measures at his news conference on Thursday, under a crystal chandelier in an ornate building that houses the Slovak Philharmonic. It was one of the central bank’s twice-a-year meetings in the capital of one of its member countries. Not only is the central bank avoiding Japanese-style shock therapy, but it remains far from pursuing any equivalent of the so-called quantitative easing that the United States Federal Reserve Board and the Bank of England have used to stimulate their economies. “The bright minds in the Eurotower are still working hard to come up with a new magic bullet,” Carsten Brzeski, an economist at ING Bank, said in a note to clients, referring to the central bank’s headquarters in Frankfurt. “In the meantime, the only thing Draghi found in his tool kit was an old tool and a chill pill to keep markets happy in the waiting room.” Image Mario Draghi, president of the European Central Bank, signed new bank notes for children on Thursday in Bratislava, Slovakia. Credit Peter Hudec/European Pressphoto Agency Under the euro zone’s political structure as a loose confederation, the European Central Bank does not have the monolithic power of the Fed, Bank of England or Bank of Japan. Even if Mr. Draghi and some others on the 23-member Governing Council wanted to do more to spur growth, they are hamstrung by a charter that obliges the bank to defend price stability above all else and forbids it from providing financing to governments. Mr. Draghi has at times been willing to stretch that mandate. Last summer, for example, he promised to buy government bonds in unlimited amounts to control borrowing costs. His expression of resolve has been enough to keep speculators at bay and tamp down the interest rates on Spanish and Italian debt, without any actual bond purchases. Mr. Draghi also must contend with the politics of the central bank’s Governing Council, which includes the heads of all 17 national central banks in the euro zone. Germany, in particular, remains staunchly opposed to bond buying or other aggressive measures to stimulate growth, for fear of inflation. “There are 17 governors of 17 member states with completely opposing views,” said Zsolt Darvas, a research fellow at Bruegel, a research organization in Brussels. “There are major disagreements.” The need to promote consensus breeds caution, he said. Mr. Darvas also noted that the European Union lacked a central treasury that would stand ready to provide financial backup if central bank investments went wrong, as the United States Treasury implicitly backs the Fed. “That probably makes the E.C.B. more reluctant to take risks,” Mr. Darvas said. Mr. Draghi promised on Thursday to continue letting banks borrow as much as they wanted at the benchmark rate for “as long as needed,” and at least until mid-2014. That was a longer time commitment than the E.C.B. has offered in the past. Bank loans are still readily available in the northern countries, so it is easier for an official rate cut to reach borrowers. In the latest sign of trouble in Europe’s core, two stalwarts of corporate Germany, BMW and Siemens, warned on Thursday of lower profits for 2013 because of the weakness in European markets. While acknowledging that the slowdown was spreading to Germany, Mr. Draghi listed several indicators that he said signaled that the euro zone was healing, including big gains in the Italian and Spanish stock markets and lower market interest rates on their government bonds. Some economists argue that the central bank can do little to force-feed credit to small businesses in countries like Greece and Portugal that are having prolonged downturns. Banks’ reluctance to lend reflects the fact that many businesses and consumers are poor credit risks. The rate cut, Mr. Draghi said, “is going to be more effective today than it would have been a few months ago.” Even at its new low of 0.5 percent, though, the central bank benchmark rate remains higher than the 0.25 percent rate the Federal Reserve has had in place since late 2008. In another disturbing parallel to Japan, inflation in the euro zone was just 1.2 percent in April, well below the European Central Bank’s target of about 2 percent. Mr. Draghi gave no indication Thursday that the bank was worried that the euro zone was edging toward deflation, the growth-sapping decline in wages and prices that vexed Japan. But a few analysts have begun to warn of the danger of such a price spiral, which could be more destructive than runaway inflation because it is so difficult to reverse.

European Central Bank
Interest rate
Euro Crisis
Euro
Mario Draghi
Europe


Labor Case Filed by Injured Player in ’70s Has Echoes Today

Abstract: BELLEVILLE, Ill. — In a drill at a college football practice, Fred W. Rensing charged downfield, lowered his white helmet and drilled the punt returner in the chest for a thunderous hit. Rensing did not get up, and he never walked again. He spent the next 28 years in relative anonymity, the initial years engaged in a long-shot legal dispute with his university, Indiana State, fighting for benefits for injured workers. Today, as a landmark case at Northwestern challenges the foundation of collegiate athletics, Rensing and the 1976 punt drill that felled him still resonate. Though he has been largely forgotten by the public, those who have been pushing for changes in the N.C.A.A. see him as a pioneer in the struggle to win employment rights for campus athletes, a victory that could qualify them for protections like workers’ compensation benefits and unemployment insurance. Rensing did not win his fight. When the courts ultimately ruled against him, the decision gave the N.C.A.A. an important legal victory, bolstering its stance that its athletes are not professionals and delivering a precedent that stood opposite to what Rensing had pushed for. “The Rensing decision provided legal camouflage for the myth that college athletes are amateurs engaged in sports during their free time,” said Allen Sack, a professor at the University of New Haven who advocates N.C.A.A. reform. “I was stunned by that ruling, and I still am today.” Nevertheless, Rensing, who died in 2004, “should be pulled back into history,” Sack added. “He was written out of history.” Rensing’s legal battle bears similarities to the one roiling Northwestern. Whatever the outcome, Rensing’s family and friends see today’s push to change the N.C.A.A. as a continuation of his battle. “It’s about time — a long time coming,” said his widow, Babette Rensing. “I don’t think he ever thought he’d be around to see it.” Image Rensing chose to attend Indiana State, and had dreams of playing in the N.F.L. Credit Photo Provided by Fred Rensing She keeps an old Indiana State football helmet near framed photos of a muscular 20-year-old in her small office here. She was with Rensing as he waged his legal campaign from his wheelchair, suing Indiana State for workers’ compensation benefits. She was with him in 1982 when a state appeals court ruled in his favor , declaring that as a football player, he should be considered a university employee. (Last month’s decision by a regional director of the National Labor Relations Board about the Northwestern case echoed this argument.) And she was with him the next year when the Indiana Supreme Court reversed that ruling , declaring that he should not be considered a professional athlete after all. The son of a former high school football player, Rensing was an unlikely figure to take on the N.C.A.A. He was a lifelong football fan who grew up here watching the St. Louis Cardinals football team with his father. But he spent his final years struggling with medical problems and was largely unemployable: He typed by tapping the keyboard with a piece of cardboard held between his lips. “As far as I’m concerned, the N.C.A.A. just put me in a bag and tied me up and threw me in the river,” Rensing told a reporter in 1997. Rensing would have been encouraged by the recent N.L.R.B. decision that Northwestern football players are university employees. Image When Rensing was released from rehabilitation his parents turned their garage into a wheelchair-accessible bedroom. Credit Photo Provided by Babette Rensing The university has appealed the decision to the full N.L.R.B., which is now deciding whether to hear the case. The Northwestern players will hold a vote Friday on whether to unionize. At Althoff Catholic High School here, Rensing excelled on the offensive line, and was so dedicated that he lifted weights in an assistant coach’s basement at night. By his senior year, coaches from Indiana State, Tulane and Army were recruiting him. Rensing chose Indiana State, and had dreams of playing in the N.F.L. In spring practices after his sophomore season, Rensing was competing for a starting spot on the offensive line. Before the final spring practice, on April 24, 1976, his coaches told him that they had seen enough and that he could rest his ailing knee. But Rensing insisted on practicing. He was injured on the punt drill that morning. Once the swelling subsided, a fractured dislocation of the cervical spine was diagnosed: He was a quadriplegic. When he was released from rehabilitation many months later, his parents turned their garage into a wheelchair-accessible bedroom. He did not return to Indiana State, and the university’s insurance covered only initial expenses. His family’s insurance covered much of the costs, but his father remembered needing to come up with $20,000 early on. Indiana State and the Belleville community held fund-raisers to help offset the initial costs. Indiana State even hosted a Fred Rensing week, which included a visit from Jim Otis, the Cardinals’ running back. But Rensing’s parents understood that their son would always need caretakers to dress him, feed him and help him out of bed. Finding a job would be difficult, if not impossible. “I was worried about my son and his medical bills that were coming in droves,” said his father, Fred J. Rensing. “I knew he wasn’t going to make a livable salary. He couldn’t use his hands or his legs. That pretty much ties you down.” Image When Rensing died in 2004, he was buried in his Indiana State jersey. Credit Whitney Curtis for The New York Times In 1977, Rensing filed a claim for workers’ compensation benefits from the state of Indiana. His lawyers acknowledged in their letters to the Rensings that the case would be a novel one. The state’s workers’ compensation panel rejected Rensing’s claim, prompting his lawyers to turn to an Indiana appeals court. Rensing appeared in person for the hearing. In 1982, the appeals court decided, 2 to 1, in Rensing’s favor, finding that his “scholarship constituted a contract for hire” within the state’s law and that it “created an employer-employee relationship.” The decision immediately drew fire from college sports officials. “We don’t like it,” an N.C.A.A. lawyer said at the time, questioning if scholarships would soon be taxable and if out-of-work athletes could file for unemployment benefits. Indiana State, with the support of the N.C.A.A. as well as nearby universities like Indiana, Purdue and Ball State, appealed to the Indiana Supreme Court. Rensing’s friends were surprised he had taken on such a battle. “We were young and out of a small town,” said Tim Thomas, his high school teammate and best friend. “You think, ‘Man, that’s pretty bold.’ But it was just something they felt they needed to do.” The Indiana Supreme Court ruled in 1983 that Rensing “was not considered to be a professional athlete who was being paid for his athletic ability.” The decision noted that the benefits Rensing received from Indiana State were governed by “strict” N.C.A.A. rules “designed to protect his amateur status.” The decision was later cited in other cases challenging the N.C.A.A. Rensing struggled to find work. He eventually found a low-wage job with a cellphone and paging company that allowed him to work from home, but he spent years unemployed. He continued to go to the weight lifting club, even if he could not do much there. He managed an adult softball team and coached youth football. And he counseled his adopted son, Gabe, who played college football before his playing career was cut short by concussions. Rensing even maintained his love for Indiana State, often returning to watch games from his wheelchair. When he died in 2004, he was buried in his Indiana State jersey.

Indiana State University
NCAA
Workers' compensation
College football
Sports injury
Decisions and Verdicts
Fred W Rensing
College Sports
Labor Unions


When the Germans, and Rockets, Came to Town

Abstract: HUNTSVILLE, Ala. — In 1950, this cotton market town in northern Alabama lost a bid for a military aviation project that would have revived its mothballed arsenal. The consolation prize was dubious: 118 German rocket scientists who had surrendered to the Americans during World War II, led by a man — a crackpot, evidently — who claimed humans could visit the moon. Ultimately those German immigrants made history, launching the first American satellite, Explorer I, into orbit in January 1958 and putting astronauts on the moon in 1969. The crackpot, Wernher von Braun, was celebrated as a visionary. Far less attention, though, has been given to the space program’s permanent transformation of Huntsville, now a city of 170,000 with one of the country’s highest concentrations of scientists and engineers. The area is full of high-tech giants like Siemens, LG and Boeing, and a new biotech center. Rocket scientists, propulsion experts and military contractors have given the area per capita income levels above the national average and well above the rest of the state. Huntsville residents regard their city as an oasis, as un-Alabaman as Alabama can be. But they acknowledge that the state’s backwater reputation is a hindrance to recruiting. Local boosters are hoping to use the 50th anniversary of Explorer I on Jan. 31 as a way to promote Huntsville as Rocket City, unveiling a new pavilion, housing a 363-foot Saturn V rocket, at the U.S. Space and Rocket Center, a museum and popular tourist attraction. Even the Germans, who had spent five years cloistered on an Army base near El Paso, knew beforehand of Alabama’s spotty “résumé,” as Konrad Dannenberg, who at 95 is one of the last surviving members of the original von Braun team, put it last week. “We knew that the people here run around without shoes,” Dr. Dannenberg said, in a tone of deadpan gravity. “They make their money moonshining and that’s what they drink for breakfast, and supper. And so we, in a way, were a little bit disappointed that it was really not that bad.” The residents were wary of the Germans as well. They knew that most of them had been members of the Nazi Party and that they had built the V-2 rocket for Hitler. But the charismatic von Braun accepted virtually every speaking invitation, winning over Rotarians and peanut farmers. And the Germans tried hard to assimilate. Von Braun insisted that the scientists speak English if there was so much as a single American, even a janitor, within earshot, said Ernst Stuhlinger, 94, another surviving member of the team. Dr. Stuhlinger was one of many who settled on Monte Sano, the mountain overlooking the town, which reminded the Germans of home. “People said, ‘If you had just been at war with these people, how can you be so accepting of them?’ ” recalled Loretta Spencer, the 70-year-old mayor of Huntsville, offering a visitor a homemade pecan cookie. “But I think we were just in awe.” In school, the German children’s diligence posed a challenge. “I remember working real hard in physics class to beat Axel Roth, who later worked for NASA,” Ms. Spencer said. “I beat him by a point on the final exam, and I was really tickled by it.” The Germans also needed thousands of Americans to staff the missile program. Many who answered the call were “rocket boys” like Homer H. Hickam Jr., author of the memoir by that name, who scavenged together his first rockets in a West Virginia mining town and now lives here. Others were young men from cotton-picking families who went to school on the G.I. Bill. By the time Explorer I was launched, the residents of Huntsville had so thoroughly adopted the Germans that there was an impromptu celebration. Charles E. Wilson, the former secretary of defense whose severe curtailment of the Germans’ work was blamed by some as having allowed the Soviet Union to beat America to space with Sputnik, was burned in effigy. And by the mid-1960s, von Braun had so mastered the local culture that when he wanted voters to approve a bond issue for the Space and Rocket Center, he persuaded Bear Bryant, the revered University of Alabama football coach, and Shug Jordan, the rival Auburn coach, to make a television commercial supporting the project. Rocketry permeated Huntsville, where windows shook and dishes cracked each time the powerful propulsion engines were tested. Children built rockets powered by zinc powder and sulfur, and the mad-scientist-in-the-basement tradition still has a hold. Tim Pickens, a rocket designer who helped a private manned spacecraft win the $10 million X Prize in 2004, attached a 200-pound-thrust engine to a bicycle in his garage here. City officials trying to capitalize on this kind of ingenuity are irritated that prominent scholars have chosen this moment to scrutinize the von Braun team’s Nazi ties. A new biography by Michael J. Neufeld portrays von Braun as a man who made a Faustian bargain. Diane McWhorter, a Pulitzer Prize-winning historian and Birmingham native, is at work on a book on the space race that compares Nazi ideology to contemporaneous white supremacy in the South. Most Huntsvillians concluded long ago that the Germans had been coerced into joining the party. And, though skeptical of claims that the scientists were thoroughly apolitical, Ms. McWhorter says Southerners might easily understand that membership in an organization is not necessarily the best indicator of sentiment. “There were members of the White Citizens Council in the South who were probably less racist than people who weren’t members,” she said. Residents point to the symphony and the Huntsville branch of the University of Alabama, both nurtured into being by the Germans, and say their enlightened views contributed to the fact that the town had the first integrated elementary school in the state. Dr. Von Braun himself was threatened by the Ku Klux Klan for hiring blacks, said Bob Ward, a Huntsville newsman and von Braun biographer. Besides, Huntsville is a forward-looking place. The Nazi question “just doesn’t come up,” said Loren Traylor, a Chamber of Commerce vice president. “That was then, this is now.”

Huntsville (Ala)
Rockets and Rocket Propulsion
Alabama
von Braun Wernher
United States Armament and Defense


Jurors Chosen for Dzhokhar Tsarnaev’s Trial in Boston Marathon Bombings

Abstract: BOSTON — Dzhokhar Tsarnaev sat in the federal courthouse here on Tuesday in front of 64 prospective jurors who were waiting to see who among them might decide whether he would live or die. Mr. Tsarnaev, 21, the defendant in the Boston Marathon bombing , was more clean-shaven than usual, sporting a trim goatee instead of his earlier scraggly chinstrap beard. His hair was still long and floppy but slightly tidier. He wore a sports jacket rather than a sweater. But he retained the air of a bored college student forced to sit through a chemistry class. His lawyers included him in their circle as they mulled which potential jurors to strike and which to keep, but he appeared only minimally engaged. Most of the time, he cast his eyes downward, avoiding the gazes of the prospective jurors and members of the news media who sat just a few feet away. After an hour, eight men and 10 women, most of them holding middle-class jobs and most appearing to be middle-aged, were chosen to sit in judgment of him. They include a restaurant manager, a self-employed house painter, an air traffic controller and a man who was recently fired from his job as an auditor. They are all white, with one man of Iranian descent. The man, a student who dropped out of college when his financial aid fell through, said his mother had fled Iran because of religious persecution; she was Muslim and converted to Bahai. They are set to hear opening statements Wednesday morning in the much-anticipated trial of Mr. Tsarnaev, who has pleaded not guilty to 30 counts against him stemming from the explosion of two bombs at the marathon finish line in April 2013. The bombs killed three people and injured more than 260 others. The counts include the subsequent murder of an M.I.T. police officer. Seventeen of the 30 counts carry the death penalty. The 18-member panel that was chosen will not know until the end of the trial which 12 will take part in deliberations and which have been cast as alternates, a strategy intended to force all of them to pay attention over the course of the proceedings, which the judge has said could last through June. Boston Bombing Trial, Week by Week A synopsis of the trial of Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, who is accused of killing three people and injuring more than 260 in the bombing at the Boston Marathon in 2013. Mr. Tsarnaev is facing 30 federal charges, 17 of which carry the death penalty. He has pleaded not guilty. Judge George A. O’Toole Jr. of Federal District Court and lawyers for both sides spent two months assembling the panel, with several days off because harsh winter weather shut the courthouse. They began on Jan. 5 with an initial pool of 1,373 prospective jurors from throughout eastern Massachusetts who filled out detailed questionnaires that explored their views on the death penalty and on Mr. Tsarnaev’s possible guilt, and delved into their personal connections to the case. More than 250 were brought back for individual questioning over a three-week period. The defense has maintained that a fair and impartial jury could not be found here, that too many people already believed Mr. Tsarnaev was guilty and had personal connections to the case. The prosecution and the judge maintained that the individual questioning would eliminate people with those biases. Of the 18 who made the final cut on Tuesday, at least three had said that they believed Mr. Tsarnaev was guilty but that they could keep an open mind and decide on the evidence presented. All the others said they had made no determination as to his guilt. All said they were willing to sentence him to death, which is a requirement to sit in a death penalty case; one woman said she was against the death penalty but could still consider imposing it. None appeared to have strong, direct personal connections to the case, although some had given small donations to the One Fund set up on behalf of victims. These jurors will be asked first to decide whether Mr. Tsarnaev is guilty. If they convict him on any of the 17 counts that carry the death penalty, the same jurors will decide in a second phase whether to sentence him to death or to prison for the rest of his life without the chance of parole. They include a woman who sells electronic tablets at a bookstore, a woman who is a retired actuary and one who is an event planner who also volunteers to help victims of domestic abuse. Another is a former emergency room nurse who was preparing to travel across the country with her boyfriend; she had said they would stay nearby in their recreational vehicle if she was chosen. The house painter who was picked had told the judge that he would be honored to serve. “I think it’s important to hear his side,” he said of the defendant. “There’s two sides to every story.”

Boston Marathon Bombings
Dzhokhar A Tsarnaev
Capital punishment
George A O'Toole Jr


The Online Video View: We Can Count It, but Can We Count on It?

Abstract: ONE OF THE great promises of online videos was the potential to measure precisely how effective they were: Audiences reported not through inexact ratings and surveys but directly, down to the person and the millisecond he or she spent watching. For the most part, that promise has been realized. Digital audiences are nothing if not minutely monitored. But an abundance of data, largely self-reported by internet platforms that are in direct competition with one another, presents a challenge of its own. Namely, what numbers are truly reliable? Consider the closest thing the industry has to a basic, universal metric — the video view. Facebook counts a video as viewed after it has played for just three seconds, as does Twitter. Vine, in which videos are mostly limited to six-second loops, counts a view once a video has been watched to completion. Snapchat, which does not publicly display the number of views, counts users’ posts as viewed after one second. Instagram, which hosts up to one-minute videos, registers a view after three seconds. Vimeo, which hosts videos that can be much longer, counts a view instantly, as does Twitch, on which broadcasts can last hours. YouTube has never fully disclosed its methods for counting views, but industry insiders have divined that it is somewhere around 30 seconds. For decades, TV viewership was measured primarily by one company, Nielsen, and expressed as relatively straightforward ratings — a currency upon which 30- and 60-second television ads were bought and sold. Digital video pairs more precise measurement with a vast proliferation of metrics and formats: videos viewed live, or later; on phones, computers or other devices; with obvious intention, after a search, or more incidentally, as in a feed filled with other posts; for seconds, minutes or hours. Even within the same company’s online entities, data is hard to reconcile. “You have Twitter now with live video, then you have a Periscope product, then you have Vine, and they all integrate into this feed,” said Nick Cicero, founder of Delmondo, a social media marketing and analytics firm. “Then you have Twitter on TV, where you can watch live video from your couch.” “It’s really hard to say what is comparable to what,” he said. Those who post videos can afford to look at these shifting definitions of what counts as a view with at least a modicum of humor. But for the advertising industry, audience measurements translate directly into dollar amounts, and the different methods to measure views — and the fact that the information is all self-reported by the technology companies — are problems. Then came the recent admission by Facebook that for years it had miscalculated its video viewing metric, giving its partners the impression that their videos had been viewed for longer, on average, than they actually had been. The Association of National Advertisers, a trade group, took the opportunity to scold Facebook, which has rapidly altered the online advertising industry. “With more than $6 billion of marketers’ media being directed to Facebook, we believe that it is time for them — and other such major media players — to be audited and accredited,” the agency’s chief executive, Bob Liodice, said in a statement. Such demands are not entirely new, and some websites, in an effort to appease and court clients and partners, have already begun to take tentative steps in that direction. In April, Facebook announced a series of deals with Integral Ad Science, comScore and Nielsen to offer third-party verification. It also made a deal with a company called Moat, which seeks to standardize some forms of measurement across websites that host video. YouTube, Twitter and Snapchat have made similar deals in recent years. “We think it is really important to have a standard set of metrics like audience reach, total minutes, average minutes viewed,” said Jessica Hogue, senior vice president for product leadership at Nielsen. “The market doesn’t want more metrics, just a refined set applied in a consistent manner regardless of the content type or platform.” Though it has recently been criticized for failing to keep up with TV’s digital revolution, Nielsen has for decades offered familiar ratings and is hoping to find its place — by creating simple, Nielsen-like ratings across different services — despite competition. The use of familiar measurement methodology may help persuade advertisers to move more of their spending from TV, where the bulk of it has traditionally gone, to digital. Facebook’s stumble may represent the beginning of a bigger conflict between sites that host video and advertisers. Consistent measurement, which could allow views on one site to be compared directly with views on another, could streamline and accelerate advertiser spending. (Reverse-engineering each company’s counting methods has actually become something of a sport among marketing professionals.) “Every other medium has a currency,” said Jonah Goodhart, the founder of Moat. “You can measure time in the same way across platforms even if the impact of time is different on those platforms.” But such standardization could also diminish what platforms regard as their own unique advantages that cannot always be captured in raw numbers — differences in the ways users use particular apps, and consume video, that could command a premium. It is in a platform’s interest, in other words, to be regarded as a different medium than its competitors, measured not just in views or time spent watching. “What you’re going to have is a whole bunch of ad sales people trying to make the case as to why their thing is better,” said Tony Haile, the founder and former chief of Chartbeat, an analytics company. “But it’s going to be very difficult to try to match the experiential differences on the platforms to the media buyer’s desire for a simple message about performance.” A compromise, he suggested, could be a clearer distinction between public metrics — view counts displayed to influence users’ behavior or provide positive feedback to those who post — and the numbers the companies use to sell advertising. Already on Facebook, advertisers are able to buy video impressions, which are counted as soon as someone sees a video, or 10-second views, which are more expensive and counted only if the user makes it to 10 seconds. But the three-second view, the one behind the totals the public sees, is not for sale. “A video view which isn’t being transacted on, but which is there to make someone feel good about how many views their video received, is useful for a totally different purpose,” Mr. Haile said. “They almost should diverge.” Mr. Goodhart, of Moat, suggested a shift in attitudes over the last year. “No individual media owner can be their own referee anymore,” he said. “You really can’t be against that.” At a news conference during the recently concluded Advertising Week in Manhattan, Facebook executives seemed to concede as much, noting plans to focus more on metrics that they think advertisers should care about, like sales outcomes, though they did not offer a specific timeline for when that would happen. “There is very universal agreement that the industry needs to evolve to metrics that actually matter,” said Carolyn Everson, vice president for global marketing solutions at Facebook.

Online advertising
Video Recordings
Downloads and Streaming
Social Media
Facebook
advertising,marketing
Association of National Advertisers


Race Crew in Volvo Ocean Race Will Abandon Ship

Abstract: Team Vestas Wind has run aground on the Cargados Carajos Shoals, Mauritius, in the Indian Ocean during the Volvo Ocean race, and the crew plans to abandon ship at daylight. Race organizers said there were no injuries. The American-based crew aboard Team Alvimedica is motoring with sails down about 1.8 miles from Team Vestas Wind.


DeLay Cleared in Abramoff Corruption Inquiry

Abstract: WASHINGTON — Tom DeLay , a Texas Republican and former House majority leader who resigned from Congress in June 2006 in a spectacular fall from political power, will not face federal corruption charges over his dealings with the disgraced lobbyist Jack Abramoff . After a six-year investigation, the Justice Department’s public integrity section has informed Mr. DeLay that it was closing its file on his involvement in the Abramoff affair without an indictment, Mr. DeLay and his lawyer, Richard Cullen, announced Monday. “This is a great day for me and my family,” Mr. DeLay told reporters in a conference call. Mr. DeLay’s legal troubles are not yet over. He still faces a trial in Texas on unrelated state charges of money laundering and conspiracy in connection with campaign donations during the 2002 election. A trial on those charges, for which he was indicted in 2005, was delayed for years because of an appeal by co-defendants, but a hearing on pretrial motions is scheduled for next week. Mr. DeLay predicted Monday that he would be exonerated on those charges as well, while saying that he was always confident that he would be found not guilty of any wrongdoing in his dealings with Mr. Abramoff. Mr. DeLay noted that while he could have thrown up roadblocks to the federal investigation, he had instead turned over his e-mail and computer files and instructed aides to cooperate fully. The scandal, which helped Democrats win majorities in Congress in the 2006 election, led to convictions or guilty pleas by two of Mr. DeLay’s former aides; former Representative Bob Ney, Republican of Ohio; two former White House officials; Mr. Abramoff himself; and several other former Congressional aides and lobbyists. Mr. Abramoff was released from prison in June. It involved a sprawling series of accusations that officials accepted gifts, trips and campaign donations while doing favors for Mr. Abramoff’s clients, which included gambling interests like Indian tribal and online casinos and the Northern Mariana Islands, a United States commonwealth that was seeking to preserve its exemption from a minimum wage. Mr. DeLay took several trips arranged by Mr. Abramoff, who also helped raise money for his political campaigns and a charity Mr. DeLay runs for foster children. A firm with financial ties to Mr. Abramoff established a retirement account for Mr. DeLay’s wife, and she and their daughter also received payments for consulting work on Mr. Delay’s campaigns. Melanie Sloan, the executive director of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, a government watchdog group, sharply criticized the Justice Department’s decision to close the investigation into Mr. DeLay’s role without charges. “It’s a sad day for America when one of the most corrupt members to ever walk the halls of Congress gets a free pass,” Ms. Sloan said. “The Justice Department’s decision not to prosecute Mr. DeLay for his actions sends exactly the wrong message to current and future members.” But Mr. DeLay said that he had done nothing wrong and that his political enemies had spent more than a decade coming up with “frivolous” ethics charges against him. He denounced the “criminalization of politics and the politics of personal destruction” that he contended his case exemplified. “The new politics — it’s no longer good enough to beat you on policy,” he said. “They have to completely drown you and put you in prison and destroy your family and your reputation and finances, then dance on your grave.” The Justice Department has a policy of not discussing or confirming investigations that end without charges, and a spokeswoman declined to comment. Mr. Cullen said prosecutors had periodically contacted him to ask questions over the years, but had never requested an interview with Mr. DeLay himself. Mr. DeLay said he had no regrets over his dealings with Mr. Abramoff, saying he had never done anything “untoward or unprofessional” for him. Mr. DeLay defended the trips, saying it was good to find ways to avoid having taxpayers pay for his travel, and also defended the merits of the policy positions he took that dovetailed with the interests of Mr. Abramoff’s clients. “The thing that bothers me the most, I think, is not that people think I’m corrupt,” Mr. DeLay said. “It’s that they think I’m stupid. I knew the Democrats were going to come after me — they announced they were going to come after me. So I wouldn’t even go to the restroom without a lawyer saying I could. Everything was absolutely above-board, transparent, within the House rules, and I have been found guilty of nothing.”

Delay Tom
United States Politics and Government
Ethics
Abramoff Jack


Syrian Forces Continued to Pound Damascus Suburbs on Tuesday

Abstract: Government forces continued to pound the Damascus suburbs with artillery and airstrikes on Tuesday, as antigovernment activists reported that the main airport in the northern city of Aleppo was closed because of fighting nearby. There were explosions in Daraya and Moadamiyeh, rebel strongholds south of the capital where the government has been carrying out one of its most intense counteroffensives in months. In Aleppo, Syria’s largest city, the airport was reportedly closed Tuesday amid nearby fighting, three days after activists reported that a blast, possibly from a rebel mortar, hit a civilian jetliner on Saturday. Some rebels have said civilian airlines are legitimate targets.


In Tight Connecticut House Race, Incumbent Battles Bush Record

Abstract: BRIDGEPORT AS the last Republican United States representative left in Connecticut — and in all of New England — Christopher Shays of the Fourth District is familiar with close contests. He came within about 6,000 votes of losing his Congressional seat in 2006 at a time when constituents were angry about the war in Iraq, which he voted to support. Now, he faces perhaps the closest race yet as he tries for an 11th term, running against Jim Himes, a Democrat from Greenwich, at a time when constituents are angry about the economy and the Wall Street bailout . Mr. Shays, 62, voted in favor of both versions of the bailout bill despite the fact that constituents who contacted his office were against it, 30 to 1. “I’m not going to play Russian roulette with Main Street,” Mr. Shays said recently during an interview at his home in Bridgeport overlooking Long Island Sound. Mr. Shay’s district in southwestern Connecticut is one of the wealthiest in the nation, encompassing portions of Fairfield and New Haven Counties and the communities of Greenwich, Stamford, Bridgeport and Westport. Once a Republican stronghold, the Fourth District has voted for a Democrat in every presidential race since 1996. Political experts say Mr. Shays has hung onto his seat because he has been seen as an independent — fiscally conservative but socially progressive — and is seen to be effective in constituency work. But this election comes against the backdrop of an economic crisis and a presidential election. Not only is the state considered to be safely in Senator Barack Obama’s column, but state polls also show the Democratic presidential candidate running strong in Mr. Shays’s district. That trend, coupled with what the secretary of state’s office says is a record number of voters registered in Democratic-leaning Bridgeport this election, may present the biggest challenge ever to Mr. Shays, who has been in office for 21 years. Still, political experts say that while voters may be upset with President Bush’s administration, they often take other issues into account when voting for their own Congressional representatives. “I’m not sure people in this district are blaming Shays for the problems we are having,” said Gary L. Rose, a political science professor at Sacred Heart University in Fairfield. “The issues Shays has favored have appealed to so many constituent groups, such as housing for the poor, health care, pro-choice. He just seems to placate every aspect of the Fourth District with his positions.” Based on Mr. Shays’s voting record, Congressional Quarterly ranked him the No. 1 moderate Republican in the House. A poll conducted from Sept. 22 to Sept. 25 by WSHU Radio/Sacred Heart University showed Mr. Shays leading Mr. Himes by 10 percentage points, with 30 percent of voters undecided. Professor Rose said that two-thirds of undecided voters often cast their ballots for the challenger. The Sacred Heart poll had a 5 percentage point margin of sampling error. Mr. Shays said he was not surprised that the race was close. “I realize my district hates Bush,” he said. With the Nov. 4 election less than a month away, the economy has become the dominant issue in the race. Mr. Himes, a former investment banker for Goldman Sachs, who has said he would have voted for the bailout legislation also, has tried to tie Mr. Shays to the Bush administration’s economic policies. He has reminded voters that in September, Mr. Shays said that the fundamentals of the economy were sound, and he has questioned why, with Mr. Shays’s position as a senior member of the House Financial Services Committee, on which he has served since 2001, he has failed to take measures to prevent the banking meltdowns. Mr. Himes, who has raised more than $2 million — more money than any of Mr. Shays’s previous challengers — said Mr. Shays was out of touch with his constituency on the two main issues on the minds of voters. “He was dead wrong on Iraq and has supported the administration’s disastrous economic policies,” Mr. Himes said during a recent interview at his campaign headquarters in Norwalk. He likes to remind voters of how often Mr. Shays voted to support President Bush’s policies. In 2002, Mr. Shays voted 82 percent of the time with the Bush administration, but in 2007, Mr. Shays voted 33 percent of the time with the president, according to Mr. Shays’s campaign. Mr. Himes said Mr. Shays’s policy of supporting deregulation left the economy vulnerable to abusive and reckless actions by banks. Having worked as an investment banker, Mr. Himes said he knew what needed to be done to better regulate the financial industry. Mr. Shays bristles at his opponent’s criticism, saying he was one of the first to voice concerns about lack of oversight of the mortgage lenders Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, supporting legislation in 2003 to require the two companies to comply with the same reporting requirements as publicly traded companies despite fierce opposition and pressure from his party and lobbyists. In 2006, he said, he raised concerns about the increased commercial operations of banks in a letter to the comptroller of the currency. But Mr. Himes retorts: “While the basement was full of dynamite, Chris Shays was checking on the smoke in the attic.” Mr. Shays also says in campaign literature and commercials that he has the hope of Mr. Obama and the straight talk of Senator John McCain, the Republican presidential candidate. He said he supports Mr. McCain and Mr. McCain’s running mate, Sarah Palin, saying he views them as fellow reformers. And he said he wondered why Mr. Himes was running against him when the two hold similar positions on many issues including health care, support of Roe v. Wade and the environment — both support a continued ban on drilling for oil in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. Mr. Himes said Mr. Shays sided with Republicans on close votes. Nine out of 10 times, he said, Mr. Shays voted with his party on issues like tax cuts for the middle class and timetables for withdrawal of troops from Iraq. “He voted against withdrawal timelines five times,” Mr. Himes said. “He’s been dishonest with us. He says what he needs to say to get elected.” Mr. Shays does favor a timeline, he said, and has voted for one that includes withdrawing most combat troops from Iraq by December 2009. He has said that he voted against other proposals that he thought withdrew troops too quickly. As House candidates, Mr. Himes ranked No. 2 and Mr. Shays No. 3 in the amount of campaign contributions received from securities and investment firms in 2008, according to the Center for Responsive Politics, a nonpartisan research group. Mr. Himes received $393,254, and Mr. Shays received $362,720. Mr. Himes has also received contributions from the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, which has spent more than $300,000 to air two television commercials on his behalf. The two candidates have scheduled seven debates beginning on Tuesday. “This race will be decided by a tiny margin,” Mr. Himes said. “But instead of one issue, the war, that almost got him beaten, we’ve got two where he’s been wrong, the war and the economy.” Mr. Shays said he is taking nothing for granted. “People wrestle with, can I be an Obama and a Shays supporter. I can work with McCain or Obama,” he said. “I listen, I learn, I help, I lead and I listen again.”

Shays Christopher H
Politics and Government
Connecticut
House of Representatives


Russia Drains Fountains for Paratrooper Day

Abstract: MOSCOW — City governments across Russia drained the water from municipal fountains on Thursday, hoping to keep drunken paratroopers from drowning in them. Aug. 2 is Paratrooper Day in Russia, and every year more than a million burly active and retired soldiers take to the streets in their signature blue berets and striped undershirts to mark the occasion, often by combining large quantities of vodka with plunges into fountains. President Vladimir V. Putin seemed to call for restraint on Thursday, but with a barely concealed smile, during public remarks to paratroopers in Ulyanovsk. “I hope that Paratrooper Day will pass without excesses, and that your colleagues will behave themselves adequately, at least without gross violations of public order,” he said. Officially, the day is celebrated with cadet marches and memorials. Unofficially, the elite troops start drinking at sunrise, then head off to city parks to brawl. Migrant workers from Central Asia have been targets of violence on past Paratrooper Days, and the Federation of Migrants of Russia issued a public warning to avoid parks, train stations and commuter trains, and anywhere else paratroopers might be celebrating on Thursday. The United States Embassy in Moscow similarly sent out an announcement , saying that while the majority of the celebrations are “jovial and peaceful,” Americans in Russia would be wise to steer clear of “any large crowds and public gatherings that lack enhanced security measures.” However, a leading gay-rights activist in Russia, Nikolai Alekseyev, said he was not concerned about violence. “I can tell you honestly that in the entire history of the existence in Moscow of the L.G.B.T. movement, we have not had one conflict with the paratroopers, or with the border guards, or with other former military servicemen,” he told the Interfax news agency. In any event, there were no serious reports of violence on Thursday. Two drunken revelers were arrested in Moscow after they slammed a Tiger — a vehicle similar to an American Humvee — with a mock machine gun strapped to the roof into a car on a Moscow highway. They drove off, but the police caught up with them 10 minutes later. Moscow city authorities also distributed several tons of watermelons in a downtown park at no charge; paratroopers had been known to steal them in the past. Most specializations in the Russian armed forces, even radio operators and translators, have their own annual holidays. But only the border guards, who celebrate on May 28, rival the paratroopers for celebratory pranks and melees with the police. One riot police officer died in St. Petersburg this year after a fight with celebrating border guards.

Defense and Military Forces
Fountains
Drownings
Russia
Putin Vladimir V
Holidays and Special Occasions


For McCain, Lighter End After Years on the Trail

Abstract: PETERBOROUGH, N.H. — Somewhere in a corner of northeastern Ohio, just five days before the presidential election that more than a few pundits have declared he will lose, Senator John McCain sat in the back of his campaign bus telling his favorite Henny Youngman jokes. No one laughed harder than he did. “It was one after another — ‘Take my wife, please,’ ” said Senator Lindsey Graham , a South Carolina Republican and one of Mr. McCain’s closest friends. For 90 minutes, as his bus rumbled from the edge of Lake Erie to Youngstown, Mr. McCain kept up the patter with Mr. Graham and his campaign’s high command. He talked about how he once saw the old borscht belt comedian perform in New Jersey. He told stories about Morris K. Udall, the legendary Arizona congressman. And he roared with Mr. Graham about a book he was reading, “A Walk in the Woods,” a comic account of an out-of-shape writer’s 2,100-mile hike of the Appalachian Trail. No one is suggesting that Mr. McCain is ecstatic that he is behind in the polls or that the cognoscenti, as he puts it, “have written us off.” But in the frantic last days of his nearly two-year second quest for the presidency, Mr. McCain has liberated himself from the irritable, edgy candidate of a month ago. He has, by all appearances, decided he will get to Tuesday by having a good time. His aides say he is relieved that the race is almost over and for the most part out of his hands. He is also buoyed — and obsessed, his staff says — with polls that show the race tightening in some battleground states and allow him hope that he might still have a shot. He is also now in the role that he finds at least familiar, if not comfortable — the scruffy underdog barking at Washington. It was not for nothing that his first stop Thursday was in Defiance, Ohio. “If we were 10 points up, we’d all be a little bit happier,” said Mark Salter, one of Mr. McCain’s closest aides. “But you throw a lot of stuff at the guy, and he fights all the harder.” Mr. Graham and Mr. McCain’s other traveling buddy, Senator Joseph I. Lieberman, independent of Connecticut, are a frequent part of the road show and will fly home with him to Arizona in the small hours of Tuesday morning. Aides say they are essential to improving the candidate’s mood, Mr. Graham in particular. Mr. McCain’s wife, Cindy, who is now constantly at his side, introduces Mr. Graham at each stop as “my husband’s best friend.” “He’s like campaign Prozac ,” said Nicolle Wallace, a top adviser to Mr. McCain. “They just sit there and laugh.” Mr. McCain has also been moved these last few days, his aides say, by the panorama of America that has unfolded before him. He has made appearances at high school football fields, town squares and lumberyards, and he held a nostalgic final town hall meeting on Sunday night here in Peterborough, N.H., one of the earliest stops of his first presidential campaign in 2000. On Friday Mr. McCain marveled to aides about the beauty of the rolling Appalachian foothills on Ohio’s border with West Virginia. On Saturday his motorcade sped through a tunnel of gold leaves in Bucks County, Pa. Two hours later, the caravan was navigating Midtown Manhattan so Mr. McCain could open “Saturday Night Live” with Tina Fey. There he good-naturedly mocked his circumstances in a faux QVC segment by saying he could only afford the shopping channel and not a half-hour of prime-time television time for an infomercial like Mr. Obama. “Look, would I rather be on three major networks?” Mr. McCain asked viewers. “Of course. But I’m a true maverick – a Republican without money.” Whatever happens on Tuesday, Mr. McCain’s aides say he is too much a student of history not to be astonished and humbled by his own place in it. As a prisoner of war in Vietnam, Mr. McCain mused to his cellmates about becoming president one day. Now he is amazed that a candidate who was left for politically dead a year ago has managed to “lurch” — his own choice of verb from a recent interview — toward the finish line at all. That is not to say that he is about to ease up on his decade-long pursuit of the White House. “He wants this very badly,” Mr. Graham said. Mr. McCain’s days now begin earlier than they used to, around 6 a.m., for morning interviews that he races through in 5- and 10- minute bites. Afterward the drill is the same as it has been from the start. He and his aides assemble with coffee in his hotel suite, go over the plan for the day, check out the newspapers and, lately, pore over the campaign’s overnight polls. Mr. McCain tracks every move, particularly anything from his own pollster, Bill McInturff. He avidly listens to campaign aides who say that if the unexcitable Mr. McInturff says he is gaining, it must be so. “We do not have a happy-numbers pollster,” Mr. Salter said. “We’ve got Mr. Buzz Killer.” By the middle of the day, Mr. McCain likes to have news of the latest tracking polls. “We all kind of know when Rasmussen comes out, and Zogby,” Ms. Wallace said. “So we all watch for it.” Mr. McCain, in the meantime, is on the phone a half-dozen times each with his campaign manager, Rick Davis, and his top strategist, Steve Schmidt, wanting to know everything they are doing and anything they have heard. “He is an information sponge,” Mr. Salter said. His low point, his aides say, was the suspension of his campaign in September to make his way to Washington to help negotiate a $700 billion bailout of Wall Street, only to have the House Republicans blow the deal up in his face. His slight edge in the polls evaporated, and he was described by friends as mad at himself, his campaign and the world. Two and a half weeks later he was devastated, aides said, when Representative John Lewis, a Georgia Democrat and civil rights leader, invoked the segregationist George Wallace to rebuke Mr. McCain for tolerating insults and threats hurled at Mr. Obama at his rallies. Mr. McCain took the edge off some of his rhetoric and has in the last few days loosened up in his speeches, although he still lustily attacks Mr. Obama as the tax-and-spend “redistributionist in chief” who can not be trusted to lead the nation in crisis. But the “get off my lawn” tone of the angry guy across the street has at times become a more neighborly “give me a break.” “He’s measuring the drapes!” Mr. McCain shouted on a chilly Saturday morning at Christopher Newport University in Newport News, Va. The line was a well-worn one from his stump speech about what he calls Mr. Obama’s White House presumptions, but he delivered it laughing, as if he was amusing no one more than himself. During the day he gets almost no exercise, eats the candy and junk food strewn all over his bus, and naps slumped in his seat in the curtained-off front section of his plane. The national reporters he once called his “base” remain banished in the back; aides say he is convinced that they are all rooting for Mr. Obama. There would in any case be little time for the rolling seminars he once conducted on the bus. He has local reporters aboard for short hops, but he and Mrs. McCain spend far more time entertaining a shifting cast of Republican governors and members of Congress. Last week on the campaign plane, the group included Gov. Charlie Crist and Senator Mel Martinez of Florida. Mr. Martinez came through the curtain long enough to spin about what might have been. If Lehman Brothers and the insurance giant A.I.G. had not foundered, he said, “we would still be up seven.” In the evenings, Mr. Graham and Mr. McCain’s top campaign advisers — almost all are now traveling with him — walk the candidate to his hotel room, where they go over the plan for the next day and then leave him alone. Mr. McCain turns on ESPN and relaxes after rallies that blast out “Life Is a Highway” and other campaign anthems. “It’s like being in a rock band,” Mr. Graham said. “You do your gig, and you’ve got to wind down a little bit.” Mr. McCain takes an Ambien if he needs one, but in these last days there is scant sleep on the schedule. He planned to end Sunday with a three-hour flight from New Hampshire to a post-midnight rally in Miami, then rest briefly and head to the airport for an 8 a.m. departure for Tampa. From there he was to embark on a seven-state, 18-hour odyssey across America: north to Tennessee, northeast to Pennsylvania, then west to Indiana, New Mexico, Nevada and finally home to Arizona, where he will hold a midnight rally on the courthouse steps of the old territorial capital of Prescott, the town where he has ended all his Senate campaigns. He was set to arrive at his condominium in Phoenix sometime after 2 a.m. on Election Day. Before Monday’s marathon, Mr. McCain said goodbye to New Hampshire, the state that gave him two primary wins and twice resurrected his candidacy. Polls show Mr. Obama with a double-digit lead for the state’s four electoral votes, and it was an odd place to devote five hours just a day and a half before the election. But Mr. McCain loves the state. In Peterborough’s 90-year-old town hall, he jettisoned his stump speech to answer questions on politically dangerous topics that he has avoided for months. He even had praise for Mr. Obama. “I admire and respect my opponent,” he said. It was a message tailored to his audience of independent-minded voters, but it was also a display of the old John McCain, or perhaps the new one of the last few days. “I come to the people of New Hampshire — Republicans, independents, Democrats, libertarians, vegetarians ,” Mr. McCain said quietly, to laughter, “and ask again to let me go on one more mission.”

Presidential Election of 2008
McCain John
Emotions
Graham Lindsey


Somalia: Islamist Rebels Vow to Eject Aid Agency

Abstract: The Shabab Islamist militant group, which still controls a few large patches of Somalia , said Tuesday that it was expelling the Save the Children aid agency because it had distributed expired food and tried to bribe Shabab officials. The Shabab, who are vehemently anti-Western, have kicked out several other aid agencies in recent years. Save the Children, based in Westport, Conn., said that it was looking into the allegations and that it would continue its operations in other parts of Somalia. The Shabab’s area of control has been steadily dwindling in recent months.

Somalia
Shabab
Save the Children
Humanitarian Aid


New York Times Co. Reports $9 Million Profit in 3rd Quarter

Abstract: The New York Times Company reported slightly increased revenue of $367 million and net income of just over $9 million for the third quarter, helped in part by a slowing decline in print advertising and a rise in digital subscribers. The company said on Thursday that it had added 51,000 net digital subscribers in the quarter, the largest number it had added since the fourth quarter of 2012. Last summer, The Times passed one million digital subscribers; paid digital-only subscriptions now stand at 1,041,000. The company reported adjusted earnings of 9 cents a share, beating analysts’ forecasts of 6 cents a share. Digital advertising, an important component of the company’s plan to double digital revenue to $800 million by 2020, decreased 5 percent. Mark Thompson, the company’s chief executive, said that it had been the company’s “best advertising quarter of the year” despite that decline. He described the quarter as strong and said that the company remained bullish about its digital advertising business and expected it to return to growth in the fourth quarter. Print advertising revenue, the traditional bedrock of most newspapers, declined by less than 1 percent, a less precipitous fall than has been the case for The Times and other publications, as print advertising drops across the industry. Operating costs decreased 8 percent, driven by declines in severance payments, depreciation and amortization, and efficiencies and reductions in print costs. Severance costs, which had been a drag on profit a year ago, were $1 million in the quarter, compared with $21.4 million in the same period last year, when charges related to buyouts and layoffs were included in third-quarter earnings. Digital-only circulation revenue grew about 14 percent to $49 million; overall circulation revenue increased by 1.1 percent to $209 million, a result of the rise in digital subscribers and an increase in home delivery prices that offset a decline in print copies sold. Over all, total revenue was 0.7 percent higher from the year-ago quarter’s $365 million. Revenue from other sources, such as the company’s crossword product and rental income, was up 16 percent. In a call with investors, Mr. Thompson said that the digital subscription number had surpassed the company’s expectations, and credited improved acquisition and retention initiatives. The company has started new digital advertising initiatives, he said, which seem poised to grow despite the rise of ad-blocking software on smartphones. The company’s chief financial officer, James M. Follo, said that circulation revenue was expected to increase in the fourth quarter of the year, with about 40,000 additional digital subscribers possible, an increase partly offset by declines in print. Overall advertising revenue will most likely be down slightly, though the company expects growth in digital advertising revenue “in the mid-single digits,” he said. The company’s stock was up about 1.6 percent by the early afternoon.


Data Shows Slower Decline in E.U. Employment

Abstract: BRUSSELS — The number of people employed in the euro zone fell again in the second quarter of this year but at a slower rate, according to data released Friday, adding to hopes that the bloc’s modest recovery may be gaining momentum. Employment in the 17 nations sharing the euro fell 0.1 percent in the April-to-June period compared to the first quarter, which was significantly less than the two previous quarters, the European Union’s statistics office Eurostat said Friday. The euro zone emerged from a recession in the second quarter, ending its longest downturn since the currency area’s creation in 1999, while June saw unemployment fall for the first time in more than two years. The recovery remains weak, however, and reliant on exports. The European Central Bank president, Mario Draghi, warned last week that the shoots of recovery were still “very, very green.” Business surveys point to better morale, but improvements in hard data are modest at best, highlighted by this week’s unexpected decline in July industrial production in the euro zone. Before June, the euro zone’s jobless rate had not improved since the start of 2011. In some countries unemployment is over 25 percent, with Greece posting a 28 percent unemployment rate.

EU
Jobs
Euro
Euro Crisis
Mario Draghi
Europe


Major Drug Trafficker Is Arrested in Brazil

Abstract: BOGOTÁ, Colombia , May 17 (Reuters) — Colombian and United States authorities said Wednesday that they had caught a major drug smuggler and 31 associates wanted for extradition for shipping 70 metric tons of cocaine to the United States over the past decade. A three-year investigation led to the capture of the ringleader, Pedro Pablo Rayo Montaño, in Brazil and the seizure of $70 million in assets, including three islands off Panama, yachts, art galleries and fishing trawlers, the officials said. "The Rayo Montaño organization had its own private navy to run a drug business that was nearly as sophisticated as a small nation," Karen Tandy, an administrator with the United States Drug Enforcement Administration, said in announcing the indictment. Mr. Rayo Montaño was among the top 42 drug traffickers sought for extradition by authorities in the United States, said Gen. Jorge Alirio Barón, the antinarcotics director for the Colombian National Police. The indictment, by the United States attorney's office in Miami, charged the 32 people arrested with conspiracy to import cocaine.

Colombia
Montaño Pedro Pablo Rayo
Drug Abuse and Traffic
Cocaine and Crack Cocaine
Extradition
United States


China Said to Have Made Call to Let Leaker Depart

Abstract: BEIJING — The Chinese government made the final decision to allow Edward J. Snowden, the former National Security Agency contractor, to leave Hong Kong on Sunday, a move that Beijing believed resolved a tough diplomatic problem even as it reaped a publicity windfall from Mr. Snowden’s disclosures, according to people familiar with the situation. Hong Kong authorities have insisted that their judicial process remained independent of China, but these observers — who like many in this article spoke on the condition of anonymity to talk freely about confidential discussions — said that matters of foreign policy are the domain of the Chinese government, and Beijing exercised that authority in allowing Mr. Snowden to go. From China’s point of view, analysts said, the departure of Mr. Snowden solved two concerns: how to prevent Beijing’s relationship with the United States from being ensnared in a long legal wrangle in Hong Kong over Mr. Snowden, and how to deal with a Chinese public that widely regards the American computer expert as a hero. “Behind the door there was definitely some coordination between Hong Kong and Beijing,” said Jin Canrong, professor of international relations at Renmin University in Beijing. Beijing’s chief concern was the stability of the relationship with the United States, which the Chinese believed had been placed on a surer footing during the meeting between President Xi Jinping and President Obama at the Sunnylands estate in California this month, said Mr. Jin and a person knowledgeable about the Hong Kong government’s handling of Mr. Snowden. The Chinese government was pleased that Mr. Snowden disclosed the extent of American surveillance of Internet and telephone conversations around the world, giving the Chinese people a chance to talk about what they describe as American hypocrisy regarding surveillance practices, said Mr. Jin and the person familiar with the consultations between Hong Kong and China. But in the longer term, China’s overall relationship with the United States, which spans global economic, military and security issues, was more important than the feelings of the public in China and Hong Kong, who felt that the contractor should be protected from the reach of the United States, analysts said. Mainland Chinese officials “will be relieved he’s gone — the popular sentiment in Hong Kong and China is to protect him because he revealed United States surveillance here, but the governments don’t want trouble in the relationship,” said the person familiar with the consultations between Beijing and Hong Kong. Mr. Snowden went public in Hong Kong on June 9 , the day after the meeting between Mr. Obama and Mr. Xi ended, as the source of a series of disclosures in the British newspaper The Guardian and The Washington Post about classified national security programs. The stream of information about the extent of American worldwide eavesdropping shifted the focus in the public sniping between the Obama administration and China over cybersecurity that had been unfolding for months. Image Supporters of Edward J. Snowden, the former National Security Agency contractor, with his photograph at a demonstration outside the American Consulate in Hong Kong this month. Credit � Bobby Yip/Reuters In a series of speeches, senior officials in the Obama administration, including the national security adviser, Tom Donilon, and the defense secretary, Chuck Hagel, had taken the offensive against China, publicly accusing it of cyberespionage against American businesses. Mr. Donilon said in a speech in March that China was responsible for theft of confidential business information and proprietary technologies through digital intrusions on an “unprecedented scale.” In response to those accusations, China said that it was the victim of cyberattacks from the United States. Mr. Snowden’s disclosures appeared to confirm the Chinese government’s argument, and put the United States on the defensive. The highly classified documents that Mr. Snowden gave to the two newspapers showed that the N.S.A. compiled logs of virtually all telephone calls in the United States and collected the e-mail of foreigners from American Internet companies. Mr. Snowden has denied giving China classified documents and said he had spoken only to journalists. But his public statements, directly and to reporters, have contained intelligence information of great interest to China. Two Western intelligence experts, who worked for major government spy agencies, said they believed that the Chinese government had managed to drain the contents of the four laptops that Mr. Snowden said he brought to Hong Kong, and that he said were with him during his stay at a Hong Kong hotel. If that were the case, they said, China would no longer need or want to have Mr. Snowden remain in Hong Kong. The disclosures by Mr. Snowden set off a surge of commentary against American “double faced” and “arrogant” behavior by many users of China’s version of Twitter. In some instances, the Chinese news media made snide references to what it called the gap between how the United States portrayed itself, and what the United States practiced. “Washington must be grinding its teeth because Snowden’s revelations have almost overturned the image of the U.S. as the defender of a free Internet,” Global Times, which often reflects the official point of view, wrote in an editorial . The precise details of how the Chinese government dealt with Hong Kong authorities were not immediately known. But Beijing appears to have decided that weeks of focus on Mr. Snowden in Hong Kong and his disclosures about the American government’s global surveillance practices were enough, and that he could turn into a liability, said a second person familiar with the handling of Mr. Snowden. “Beijing has gotten the most they can out of the Snowden situation,” that person said. A senior diplomat familiar with the way the Chinese government works said just before the departure of Mr. Snowden became public that he believed that Beijing would do all it could to keep Mr. Snowden out of American hands. The Chinese public would be outraged if the contractor was extradited, put on trial and jailed, he said. At the same time, the Obama administration would put relentless pressure on Beijing to get Mr. Snowden, he said. “I see the sun of Sunnylands disappearing into the snow of Snowden,” the diplomat said.

Edward Snowden
Government Surveillance
US Foreign Policy
Hong Kong
China
US


Product Placement on Reality TV Seems Somehow More Realistic

Abstract: AS the writers’ strike keeps the television networks scrambling to fill their schedules, the producers of reality shows are gladly stepping in to fill the vacuum. And with the propensity of those producers to incorporate the products of sponsors into the programs, don’t be surprised if the vacuum bears a brand name like Hoover or Dyson. It is typically easier to weave a product into an episode of a reality show like “American Idol” or “Survivor” than into a scripted series like “Grey’s Anatomy” or “Two and a Half Men.” For one thing, the contestants in reality shows are usually more willing to pitch products than the actors in scripted programs. Actors prefer to worry about their art — and their long-term value as endorsers of a certain soda if viewers have already watched them cheerfully drinking a different brand. Also, viewers seem more tolerant when products turn up in settings that are deemed realistic rather than fictitious. A result is that the networks are expanding their reality plans, particularly as the ratings for some strike fare like “American Gladiators” are surpassing the viewership for the scripted shows they replaced. NBC, which has embraced reality perhaps more ardently than its competitors, is even planning a prime-time reality special for May 11 that is being developed by and for an advertiser, Teleflora. The show — which also involves the NBC morning show “Today,” Redbook magazine and the Reveille production company — will center on a search for “America’s Favorite Mom.” Needless to say, the winner can expect to be festooned with flowers, and a rose is to be named in her honor. “We’re looking to be the best partners for our advertisers,” said Ben Silverman, co-chairman at NBC Entertainment, part of the NBC Universal division of General Electric. And one way to do that, he said, is “building programming assets in partnership with our advertisers.” The trend of reality programs becoming showcases for brands is even having an impact on series in which advertisers are not paying to place products. For instance, the Clearly Canadian line of beverages is featured prominently in a reality series, “Bobby G: Adventure Capitalist,” which will make its debut Thursday on the Mojo HD network as part of a block of three business shows called “Mojo Money Night.” The series follows the adventures — and misadventures — of Bobby Genovese, an entrepreneur in the field of so-called small-cap or penny stocks; he owns companies including the BG Capital Group and BG Capital Management.  A good deal of the plot of the eight weekly episodes of “Bobby G: Adventure Capitalist” is devoted to his efforts to revive Clearly Canadian through steps like hiring as an endorser a popular Canadian-born athlete, Steve Nash of the Phoenix Suns basketball team. “I love brand-name companies, especially ones that have fallen on hard times,” Mr. Genovese said in a telephone interview. Even so, he added, “I had no idea the beverage business is as tough as it is.” Mojo HD is part of In Demand Networks, which is owned by a consortium that includes Comcast and Cox Communications. The channel is aimed at an affluent audience, primarily male and ages 18 to 49. Although brands are prevalent in “Bobby G: Adventure Capitalist,” the viewers are sophisticated enough to distinguish between programming and infomercials, said Nick Davis, executive producer of the series for Nick Davis Productions. “We were encouraged to tell the story, warts and all,” Mr. Davis said. “If Clearly Canadian had imploded, we’d have covered it.” The NBC special, “Teleflora Presents America’s Favorite Mom,” will be a kinder, gentler show, seeking entries from viewers in categories like single mothers, working mothers and “unconventional” mothers. A Web site, americasfavoritemom.com , has been set up to accept nominations; it can also be reached through teleflora.com . The increasing interest among advertisers in branded entertainment is easily explained, said Lynda Resnick, chairwoman at Teleflora. “People are watching television; they’re just not watching commercials,” she said. “That is the distinction.” But as a sponsor of branded entertainment, “you have to be integrated into the content, not added on,” Ms. Resnick said, because no one wants to watch “a talking head at the end of a show.” “And I don’t want to bore people,” she added, so the show has to be entertaining enough to avoid playing like a program-length commercial. The producer of the special, Reveille, is also creating reality series for NBC including “American Gladiators” and “The Biggest Loser.” Both have branded-entertainment deals with marketers like Subway restaurants, 24 Hour Fitness and Toyota. “Advertiser partnerships support the show with media buys, with integrated promotions,” said Mark Koops, managing director at Reveille, which help “reach out for a wider audience” than the network alone could seek. For example, Redbook, part of the Hearst Magazines unit of the Hearst Corporation, will encourage its readers to nominate favorite mothers and will feature the finalist and winning contestants from the TV special in coming issues. “This idea Teleflora had is so of the moment,” said Mary E. Morgan, vice president and publisher at Redbook, “taking reality television and combining it with consumer-generated content.” The reference was to the materials that consumers submit to enter the contest on the favorite-mom Web site: they can upload photographs and video clips in addition to submitting nominations.  Mr. Koops was among the executives who took over Reveille after Mr. Silverman, the chief executive, left to join NBC Entertainment. Mr. Silverman played down a perception that those ties were why NBC buys so many shows from Reveille. “The greatest worry of all is if ‘American Gladiators’ had been a hit on Fox or CBS or ABC,” Mr. Silverman said. “Then your article is: ‘Forget the conflict of interest. Ben’s an idiot.’ ”

Television
Reality Television
Advertising and Marketing
Trademarks and Trade Names
NBC Universal


Fed Panel Raises Rate to 4.75%

Abstract: WASHINGTON, March 28 - At Ben S. Bernanke's first meeting as head of the Federal Reserve's policy-making committee, the watchword was no surprises. As expected, the Federal Open Market Committee raised the benchmark federal funds rate on Tuesday by a quarter of a percentage point, to 4.75 percent, and suggested that at least one more increase was in the cards. It was the 15th such increase in consecutive meetings of the committee. In its statement describing the decision, the central bank veered little from the Fed's prior assessments of the economy and the expected path of monetary policy, underscoring Mr. Bernanke's stated intention to maintain the course set by his predecessor as Fed chairman, Alan Greenspan. Despite its predictability, the Fed's statement still modestly unsettled financial markets, bolstering the dollar in foreign exchange markets and sending the prices of stocks and government bonds lower. The broad Standard & Poor's 500-stock index fell 0.64 percent, to 1,293.23. [Page C9.] Though virtually all investors expected the rate increase, a substantial minority of operators on Wall Street had held hopes that the Fed would indicate that it would be the last one in the cycle that began in June 2004, when the benchmark rate stood at 1 percent. They were disappointed by the clear suggestion that the Fed still saw the need for further tightening. "He was paving the way for another rate hike," said Mickey D. Levy, chief economist at Bank of America. "He knew full well that with this type of language the market would price in a hike to a 5 percent funds rate." The Fed's statement relied on words nearly identical to those used after the committee's previous meeting in January, Mr. Greenspan's last after 18 years as head of the central bank. It said that "some further policy firming may be needed" to keep inflation under wraps. It pointed out that the economy was growing robustly after a slowdown in the fourth quarter of last year. It noted that core inflation, beyond food and energy, had ticked up only modestly, but it warned that the rising prices of energy and other commodities could add to inflation pressures in the future. Though the committee's statement was pored over by financial analysts for any hint of the new chairman's intentions, the market tremors appeared to have little to do with the new management at the Fed. Mr. Bernanke is expected to put his own stamp on the central bank eventually. He has long said that he supports more transparency, letting the markets know more clearly how the Fed reaches its decisions and what is the expected path of policy. He has argued in favor of setting a specific inflation target -- within a range -- to make explicit the Fed's goals. He apparently judged Tuesday not to be the day for bold moves, however. Untested as Fed chairman, Mr. Bernanke had a clear interest in projecting continuity with the Greenspan Fed. At most, the new statement provided a mere hint of Mr. Bernanke's desired transparency. "It was the same policy message but with a little innovation in communication," said Laurence H. Meyer, a former Fed governor who is now an economic forecaster at Macroeconomic Advisers in Washington. The whiff of change came in the second paragraph of the Fed's five-paragraph statement, the passage often referred to as the "snapshot paragraph," in which the committee assesses current economic conditions. It offered a somewhat more detailed analysis of current conditions than the one issued in January. Significantly, it calmed fears that wage increases might spur inflation by pointing out that productivity gains were holding down the growth in labor costs. At the same time, the Fed went beyond the expected description of the economy's current status to elucidate what it saw as its likely future path. "Economic growth has rebounded strongly in the current quarter," it said, adding that growth appeared "likely to moderate to a more sustainable pace." Mr. Bernanke comes to the helm of the nation's central bank at a delicate moment for monetary policy. Since the Fed started increasing interest rates, financial markets have come to expect a quarter-point rise in interest rates at pretty much every committee meeting. But after 15 consecutive rate increases, the cycle of monetary tightening is reaching its peak as interest rates approach what is seen as a "neutral" rate that is not so high that it slows economic growth but not so low that it allows inflationary fears to come back to life. With underlying inflation at 1.8 percent, excluding food and energy, the Fed's preferred measure is still within the range of 1 percent to 2 percent considered comfortable by most officials. That leaves the Fed debating how far to raise rates merely to counter the risk of higher inflation as opposed to the reality of prices rising too fast. In a note to investors, a Goldman Sachs economist, Andrew Tilton, said that "the potential for disagreement on policy decisions increases now that the Fed is roughly at 'neutral' and the data become more important." With the economy growing at a healthy clip but facing the potential headwind of a weakening housing market, the decision on when to end the cycle of rising interest rates will not be trivial. The outlook for inflation is slightly worse than in January, with increases in producer prices and consumer price inflation. Payrolls have expanded by some 200,000 a month and retail sales have grown sharply. Fed economists have argued that a slowing housing market is likely to dampen overall economic growth. Housing, however, is not sinking yet. Sales of existing homes rose in February, housing starts remain strong and by some measures home prices are still rising. In testimony to Congress last month, Mr. Bernanke argued that in coming quarters the Fed's policy-setting committee "will have to make ongoing, provisional judgments about the risks to both inflation and growth, and monetary policy action will be increasingly dependent on incoming data." Given such uncertainties, mused Ethan S. Harris, chief economist of Lehman Brothers, "Bernanke moved into the job right at the time it got interesting."

FEDERAL OPEN MARKET COMMITTEE
BERNANKE BEN
GREENSPAN ALAN
INTEREST RATES


Not Part of Video’s Script: An Arrest for Flying a Drone

Abstract: Sean Riddle said the other inmates in the Manhattan holding cell that night were laughing — at him. Someone had overheard him talking to his court-appointed lawyer. “They would say, ‘What are you in for?’” Mr. Riddle, 28, recalled a few days later. He replied, “‘I’m the drone guy.’” On paper, the drone guy seemed harmless enough. According to a criminal complaint, on Feb. 4 at 5:30 p.m., the defendant, Mr. Riddle, “operated said ‘drone’” in front of a building at 350 Fifth Avenue. Operating the drone created “substantial risk of physical injury to pedestrians,” the complaint stated, although no one was hurt. Had Mr. Riddle operated his drone a few blocks away, perhaps he would not have spent the night in a holding cell with a new nickname. But 350 Fifth Avenue is not just any building; it is the Empire State Building. At his apartment in Jersey City last week, Mr. Riddle explained. Raised in Indiana, he graduated from the University of Kentucky with a degree in agricultural biotechnology and moved to New York City in 2012. He discovered his passion was in the nonprofit world. Mr. Riddle became president of his alma mater’s New York City alumni chapter, a proud member of B.B.N., or Big Blue Nation, the University of Kentucky’s fan base. He helped plan fund-raisers for DanceBlue , the university’s charity for children with cancer. He was hands-on. When he helped plan a Big Blue Christmas event at a bar on West 33rd Street last year, Mr. Riddle wanted blue Santa hats. He bought bolts of blue and white fabric and a Singer sewing machine and turned his apartment into a one-man sweatshop. He had an idea to create an organization that could put people at nonprofits in touch quickly. He decided to make a video to generate interest. The video had a plot: A man is trying to get to an event at a bar in Manhattan. He takes a helicopter over the city. The pilot tells him that to get to the bar on time, he should put on a parachute and jump. Mr. Riddle needed to film the descent from the man’s point of view, with the ground rushing toward the camera. This called for a drone. Mr. Riddle went on Amazon and bought an Ionic 6-Axis Quadcopter Drone with a camera for $69.99. He flew it in his apartment. He said he looked up laws for using drones on Google and, satisfied he was out of the forbidden zone around airports, packed the drone in a duffel bag and took the train to Midtown Manhattan. “It wasn’t the best idea,” Mr. Riddle said, “but I figured I had it in me.” He saw some police officers standing near Macy’s and approached them. He told them he wanted to fly the drone straight up and let it descend. He said an officer replied, “Sounds O.K. to me.” Thus feeling empowered with a municipal seal of approval, Mr. Riddle set the drone on the ground by 350 Fifth Avenue. “Turn it on, start flying it up,” he said. In that moment, he unknowingly entered the extremely complicated legal realm regarding drone use in New York City, one that cannot be easily explained by Google and has led many an enthusiast to arrest. Steven Cohen, president of the Drone User Group Network , said last week, “The simple advice to anyone wanting to fly in New York City is: don’t.” Mr. Riddle said his drone flew up to about the sixth story before the trouble began: “The wind takes it, and it bumps against the Empire State Building a few times.” Not good. “I let it drop, and it falls onto the first tier, which is like five floors up,” he said. He entered the lobby, approached a security guard and asked to get his drone back. “You got some ID?” the guard said. Later, while he waited, a police officer arrived and arrested him on charges of reckless endangerment . In an apparent misunderstanding, and a final indignity to Mr. Riddle, the police reported that the drone had flown up 40 stories before falling, a height Mr. Riddle had only dreamed of reaching. Detectives questioned him at length. They had apparently seen his Facebook page, and asked, “What’s BBN?” in a tone, he said, that suggested they thought it might be linked to ISIS. Mr. Riddle spent several hours in the holding cell before he was arraigned and released, he said. His case is pending. His drone is evidence. He returned to the police station to collect his other property, and the officer at the desk asked his name. “I’m like, ‘Dude,’” Mr. Riddle said, “‘I’m the drone guy.’”

Drones
Empire State Building
Sean Riddle
Manhattan