AARP Sues U.S. Over Effects of Reverse Mortgages on Elderly

Abstract: Reverse mortgages, which pay older homeowners a regular sum against the equity in their house, are supposed to shield borrowers from economic upheaval. But the popular loans have become tangled up in the real estate collapse. AARP , the seniors’ organization, filed suit Tuesday against the Department of Housing and Urban Development , which regulates reverse mortgages. The suit asserts that policy changes by HUD are pushing older homeowners into foreclosure. The case was filed in Federal District Court for the District of Columbia by the AARP Foundation, the organization’s charitable arm, and the law firm of Mehri & Skalet on behalf of the surviving spouses of three homeowners who had bought reverse mortgages. All three are facing eviction, the suit says. “HUD has illegally and without notice changed the rules in the middle of the game at the expense of vulnerable older people,” said Jean Constantine-Davis, a senior lawyer at the AARP Foundation. The lawsuit focuses on reverse mortgages where only one spouse signed the loan document. It argues that HUD shifted course in late 2008, making changes in its procedures so that surviving spouses who are not named on the mortgage must pay the full loan balance to keep the home, even if the property is worth less. Owners of traditional mortgages often are liable for the difference between the value of their house after foreclosure and their original loan. Reverse mortgages were intended to be nonrecourse, which means that even if the value of the property shrinks, the most the borrower can lose is the house itself. It is unclear how many elderly homeowners are facing foreclosure for reasons related to the lawsuit, but Ms. Constantine-Davis said that hundreds and perhaps thousands of elderly people were in positions similar to those of the three plaintiffs. Nearly a quarter of all homes with mortgages in the United States are worth less the loan. These so-called underwater properties are difficult to sell and impossible to refinance. The suit accuses HUD of making policy changes that allow underwater homes with reverse mortgages to be sold to strangers in arm’s-length transactions for less than the full mortgage balance, but that require spouses or heirs in some cases to pay the full amount. Finally, the suit says HUD is ignoring its own provisions against displacing a surviving spouse. A HUD spokeswoman said the agency does not comment on pending litigation. One plaintiff, Delores Jeanne Moore of Covington, Ind., was not on the reverse mortgage because her husband had owned the house before they married. He died in 2008. Under the new HUD rules, the suit says, if Mrs. Moore wants to keep the house, she must pay the balance of the loan, $91,000. But a third-party buyer could get the house for 95 percent of its appraised value, or about $81,000. Mrs. Moore’s lender has been seeking to foreclose since August 2009. “When the housing market was constantly ticking upwards, these new provisions would not have mattered so much,” Ms. Constantine-Davis said. “Now it’s a much bigger problem.” More than half a million people have received reverse mortgages since Congress authorized the program a quarter-century ago. Those who get the cash must be at least 62 and have substantial equity in their houses. Participants receive either a lump sum or monthly payments from lenders. After their death, the house is sold and the mortgage is paid off. Robert Bennett, a 69-year-old retired cook at the United States Naval Academy, is also a plaintiff. Three years ago, he and his wife, Ophelia, replaced the traditional mortgage on their house in Annapolis, Md., with a reverse mortgage so they could make ends meet. Lenders sometimes encourage only the elder member of a couple to put his or her name on the mortgage because then the payout is greater. Mr. Bennett said he did not realize that his new mortgage had taken his name off the title of the home, which the couple had owned together since 1981. Mrs. Bennett, who was a decade senior to her husband, died shortly after the new mortgage went into effect. The payments immediately stopped and the mortgage became due and payable. The lender began foreclosure proceedings and scheduled a sale of the property last month. The new mortgage, intended to secure this couple’s future, instead helped destroy it. They paid $20,000 in fees but received only $1,800 in cash. Meanwhile, fees and interest continue to accumulate. The balance of the loan is now about $300,000, while the value of the property has fallen to about $200,000. If HUD had not changed the rules, the suit says, Mr. Bennett would have been allowed to live in the house until his death. “It’s a miserable thing to be thinking you’re going to get kicked out after you’re living all this time and you’re retired,” Mr. Bennett said in an interview. “If I thought a reverse mortgage was going to set me up in a situation like this, I never would have participated.”

Housing and Urban Development Department


Investors Regain Some Losses to End Bad Week

Abstract: In a day of light trading, investors clawed back some of their losses from earlier in the week after an unemployment report showed that job losses were continuing to ebb. Industrial companies like Caterpillar led the gains on hopes that a recovery would increase production on assembly lines and rekindle demand for capital goods. Markets in the United States and Canada will be closed Monday for Labor Day . The Dow Jones industrial average gained 96.66 points, or 1 percent, to 9,441.27, while the broader Standard & Poor’s 500-stock index was 1.3 percent higher at 1,016.40. The Nasdaq composite index was up 1.8 percent at 2,018.78, bolstered by gains in wireless providers and semiconductor companies. “On light volume days, it’s easy to move stocks around, it’s easy to push them,” said Joseph Saluzzi, co-head of equity trading at Themis Trading. “All it takes is a few futures contracts, and you’re off to the races. I’m not buying into the rally. It’s a little suspect.” Investors showed an appetite for a range of stocks, including defensive picks — like utilities and health care companies — and financial firms and technology companies. Microsoft and its rival Apple each gained more than 2 percent, and retailers, including Saks, Macy’s and Coach, rose despite worries that high joblessness would crimp consumer spending. The latest report on employment showed that the United States economy lost an additional 216,000 jobs in August — the 20th consecutive month of job losses — and unemployment surged to 9.7 percent, the highest level in more than two decades. In the bond markets, investors seemed to see signs of a recovery in the employment numbers and sold off their positions in the safety of government debts. The benchmark 10-year Treasury note fell 25/32, to 101 18/32, while the yield rose to 3.44 percent, from 3.34 percent late Thursday. Even with Friday’s gains, Wall Street rounded out its worst weekly performance since mid-July, just before stocks began a summer rally that catapulted the S.& P. 500 some 15 percent higher. For the week, the S.& P. 500 was down 1.2 percent and the Dow was off by 1.1 percent. Shares of the battered insurance company American International Group, which dropped 4 percent on Friday, were among the week’s biggest losers. Investors bid up A.I.G.’s stock by 400 percent in recent months on rumors about the company’s future, but its shares fell from $50 at the start of the week to $40.05 on Friday. This summer, the higher Wall Street flew, the more concerned analysts became that its gains had far outpaced the real economy, where some 14.9 million people are unemployed and millions more are working part time for lack of a full-time job, or have given up looking for work. The pace of job losses has slowed markedly since the first quarter, when the economy was shedding an average of 691,000 positions a month, and many economists say the recession has bottomed out and the economy is already growing again, from a very low base line. But economists say job and wage growth could come slowly next year, weighing down consumer spending and an economic recovery. “With the workweek flat and temporary help still declining, there were no leading indicators in the report suggesting that we’ll actually be adding jobs this year,” Nigel Gault, chief United States economist at IHS Global Insight, said in a research note. With so much uncertainty ahead for the economy and corporate revenue, some analysts say stocks have become too expensive, and they are betting on a pullback in the markets.

Stocks and Bonds
United States Economy
Dow Jones Stock Average


New York Union Leader and 9 Others Indicted in Corruption Inquiry

Abstract: Nearly two decades after federal authorities moved to loosen the mob’s grip on the New York City’s carpenters’ union and end a culture of contractor bribery, they announced new corruption charges on Wednesday against the union’s leader and nine other union officials and contractors. The charges include racketeering, bribery, fraud and perjury. The men were named in a 29-count indictment that alleges crimes similar to some set out in a civil racketeering lawsuit that Manhattan prosecutors brought against the union, the New York District Council of Carpenters and Joiners of America , in 1990. That case led to a 1994 consent decree and, later, a court-appointed corruption monitor; both are still in place. The indictment was unsealed in Federal District Court in Manhattan hours after a 6 a.m. roundup in which seven of the defendants were arrested, some as they prepared to go to work. It charges that in exchange for bribes valued at about $1 million, they helped corrupt contractors steal millions of dollars more from the union and its benefit funds by allowing contractors to pay members cash wages below union scale without benefits, hire illegal aliens and nonunion workers and skip contributions to the union’s benefit funds. The 20,000-member district council, which oversees 11 local unions around New York City, has remained not only a major player in the city’s labor movement but also a major force in its politics, despite a history of mob influence, labor racketeering and bribery. Indeed, six weeks ago, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg ’s re-election campaign put out a news release announcing that the union had endorsed his bid for a third term . The release included a video clip showing Michael J. Forde , the district council’s executive secretary-treasurer, who is now indicted, giving the mayor a rousing introduction at a union event and sealing his support for Mr. Bloomberg with a hug. Mr. Bloomberg, asked on Wednesday for his response to the indictment, said he was surprised and that he hoped the union members themselves would not be hurt, calling the situation “sad.” “I don’t know whether any of the charges that I read about late this afternoon are true or not — I’ll leave that to the courts,” he said. “It’s the men and women of the carpenter’s union that have endorsed me, and I’m thrilled to have it.” The charges, a result of a lengthy investigation by Manhattan prosecutors, the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Department of Labor Inspector General’s Office of Labor Racketeering and Fraud Investigations, were not Mr. Forde’s first brush with such accusations. He and another district council official went to trial on bribery charges involving the union in state court twice in recent years, with the first case ending in a conviction that was later overturned, and the second in acquittal. Lev. L. Dassin , the acting United States attorney, who announced the charges in a news release, said that the union’s leaders had failed to protect their members. “Instead of protecting the financial interests of union members and their families, corrupt union officials and the contractors who bribed them are charged with betraying the carpenters’ union and its benefit funds to enrich themselves,” he said. Gary Rothman, a lawyer for the district council, said he was reviewing the indictment. “We understand that the charges are serious, but we also believe in the presumption of innocence and we will have a further statement as the situation becomes clearer,” he said in a brief statement. Two years ago, prosecutors unsuccessfully sought to remove the union’s court-appointed monitor, known as the independent investigator, saying his investigations were “superficial” and “incomplete.” The investigator, William Callahan, defended his tenure on Wednesday, saying he had been “aggressive” and “effective.” Among the others charged in the new indictment with Mr. Forde and the other union officials was Joseph Olivieri, a benefit funds trustee and executive director of the Association of Wall, Ceiling and Carpentry Industries of New York. F.B.I. reports and law enforcement officials say Mr. Olivieri has a long history of ties to the Genovese crime family, the powerful Mafia clan that for generations has held sway over the union. While the indictment makes passing mention of another Genovese figure, it does not charge that organized crime wielded any influence over the union. But law enforcement officials said the investigation was continuing. “Rather than doing what they were elected to do — safeguarding wages and benefits for union members — they took cash and other bribes to turn a blind eye on contractors’ schemes to cheat the rank and file,” Joseph M. Demarest Jr., who oversees the New York F.B.I. office, said in the news release. Mr. Forde, who was attending a conference in Canada, surrendered about 3 p.m. after returning to New York. The prosecutor in the case, an assistant United States attorney, Lisa Zornberg, said at his arraignment that he had tested positive for cocaine and marijuana . His lawyer, Andrew M. Lankler, declined to comment, and a lawyer for Mr. Olivieri did not return a call seeking comment. Two defendants, Finbar O’Neil, a contractor, and Michael Brennan, a shop steward, remained at large.


Italy’s Monti Is Cool to Running on His Own

Abstract: ROME — While Prime Minister Mario Monti ’s decision over the weekend to resign this month rattled Milan’s stock market and worried European leaders, Italian centrists stepped up their efforts on Monday to persuade him to join their political movements. But even as some groups tried to recruit him as a candidate to challenge former Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi , the leader of the center-left Democratic Party, Pierluigi Bersani, urged Mr. Monti to refrain from running. “Precisely because Monti should still be able to be of service to this country, it would be better for him to stay out of the contest,” said Mr. Bersani, whose party now looks likely to place first in the coming national elections on a pro-Europe platform. For his part, Mr. Monti played down speculation about whether he would run in the elections, expected to take place in February. “I am not considering this particular issue at this stage,” he said in Oslo, where he was attending the ceremony at which the European Union was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. He said he would devote his remaining time to the work of his current government, adding that the reaction of financial markets to his decision to step down “should not be dramatized.” In recent weeks, two centrist groupings have been actively courting Mr. Monti: the Union of Christian Democrats, led by Pier Ferdinando Casini, a former ally of Mr. Berlusconi; and Luca Cordero di Montezemolo, the president of Ferrari who started a civic movement last month and said it would endorse Mr. Monti. In another significant development, Cardinal Angelo Bagnasco, the leader of the Italian Bishops’ Conference, all but endorsed Mr. Monti. “What leaves one astonished is the irresponsibility of those who think of arranging things for themselves while the house is still burning,” Cardinal Bagnasco told the newspaper Corriere della Sera on Monday. No Italian government has survived without the blessing of the Roman Catholic Church, which is as much a political operation in Italy as a religious one. The centrist movements do not have well-oiled political operations or even a clear constituency, but could be vessels for a potential Monti candidacy. If Mr. Monti gave them his support, that would significantly weaken the Democratic Party, which is unlikely to win enough seats in Parliament to govern without forming alliances with centrist groups. A moderate former Communist, Mr. Bersani is seen as part of the old guard of the Democratic Party and recently won a hard-fought primary race against Matteo Renzi, the 37-year-old mayor of Florence. Mr. Bersani has pledged to adhere to Mr. Monti’s cost-cutting agenda. But his party is seen as beholden to unions, which have challenged changes to Italian labor laws that could make it easier for businesses to hire and fire employees. Still, some analysts say that a Bersani government would be in tune with President François Hollande of France, a Socialist, and could serve as a counterbalance in Europe to an increasingly powerful Germany. But even if Mr. Monti decides to run, it remains to be seen whether his austerity program would win over Italian voters. Mr. Monti, an economist who was asked to form a government last year after Mr. Berlusconi resigned, may have raised Italy’s profile on the world stage, but many Italians know him as the unelected leader who raised taxes and the retirement age and made it harder for small businesses to survive. Mr. Berlusconi, who is not expected to win enough votes to govern, is likely to try to tap into that popular discontent. The former prime minister has always been the id of Italy, but for his next act, he may well become the id of Europe, a populist force that rails against the single currency even as he outwardly supports it. While saying that he had always been a “a convinced Europeanist” who had always fought for a Europe with single currency, Mr. Berlusconi, in a statement on Monday, criticized foreign news organizations that questioned, or even mocked, his return to politics. “It would be too simple to connect this interference with the umpteenth speculative maneuver aimed at weakening our businesses and making them the easy prey of foreign buyers,” he said.

Monti Mario
Italy
Berlusconi Silvio
European Union
European Sovereign Debt Crisis (2010- )
Politics and Government


Eurozone Economy Grows Steadily, Albeit Slowly. What Now?

Abstract: FRANKFURT — Amid myriad battles over trade agreements, concerns about the impending negotiations for Britain’s exit from the European Union, and political instability across the region, the eurozone continued to grow steadily but slowly in the third quarter. Gross domestic product in the 19-nation currency union rose 0.3 percent in the three months through September, compared to the previous quarter, Eurostat, the office that compiles statistics for the European Union, announced on Monday . That was an unchanged growth rate from the previous quarter and corresponds to an annual rate of 1.4 percent. Consumer prices in the 12 months through October rose 0.5 percent, up from 0.4 percent in the 12 months through September. Economic growth and inflation were in line with analysts’ forecasts. The indicators were closely watched not only for what they might say about the health of the eurozone economy, but for how they might affect decisions by the European Central Bank that can have a profound effect on financial markets. Here are the main takeaways: Still sluggish First, some good news: The eurozone economy has not shrunk since the beginning of 2013, and some countries are doing pretty well. Spain, which once had one of Europe’s sickest economies, grew a healthy 0.7 percent in the third quarter. But the currency bloc’s economy only recently got back to where it was eight years ago, when the global financial crisis was gathering steam. In many ways, the eurozone is still in crisis. Unemployment is 10.1 percent, and many countries are struggling. France, which has the second-largest economy in the eurozone, grew only 0.2 percent in the third quarter after shrinking in the second quarter. Based on recent surveys showing rising optimism among businesses and consumers, some analysts thought the numbers released on Monday would provide a positive surprise. But they were disappointed. What will the E.C.B. do? The European Central Bank orients its policy to the inflation rate, which remains well below the official target of close to, but below, 2 percent. The annualized inflation rate of 0.5 percent in October was slightly higher than the previous month, but the slight acceleration is not a game changer. Analysts have begun speculating about whether the bank might begin scaling back its de facto money-printing program (which aims to reduce market interest rates and stimulate the economy). But the numbers released on Monday did not provide any ammunition for those who think that “tapering” could begin sooner than expected. Mario Draghi, the central bank’s president, has refused to stoke the tapering talk. He said on Oct. 20 that purchases of government bonds, corporate debt and other assets — a way of pumping money into the economy — would continue at least through March, and longer if necessary, to push up inflation. If growth and inflation remain sluggish, the central bank could decide to keep buying assets for longer. Bert Colijn, an economist at ING Bank in London, predicted that the central bank would announce an extension of the stimulus program at its next meeting, on Dec. 8. “It will become very difficult for the E.C.B. to wait longer than that,” Mr. Colijn said in a note to clients on Monday. What’s next? Some economists expect the eurozone to grow more quickly in the current quarter. The region’s economy seems to have shrugged off the “Brexit” vote from the summer, and Europe is benefiting from the stronger economy in the United States, the biggest market for eurozone exports. The austerity that has weighed on growth is also running its course. Strict limits on government spending, a reaction to excessive indebtedness in countries like Italy and Greece, are being relaxed. “Worries about weak growth in the second half of the year can in our opinion now be tossed overboard,” Katharina Utermöhl, an economist at the German insurer Allianz, said in a note to investors.

Eurozone
Economy
Europe
European Central Bank
GDP


Leslie Koch Makes the Rounds of Governors Island

Abstract: When Governors Island opened for the season last month, it meant a change of schedule for Leslie Koch: Until the island closes at the end of September, she works weekends, bicycling to the free ferry, then touring the island’s 172 acres on pedal power. Ms. Koch, 51, is the president of the Trust for Governors Island , a nonprofit organization created by the city in 2010. She never knows what she’ll find on her rounds. “If someone’s carrying something odd,” she said, “you just say it’s an art project, and usually you’re right.” She lives in a brownstone in Boerum Hill, Brooklyn, with her husband, Douglas Grey, who produces entertainment for cruise ships, and an English golden retriever named Clara. EARLY TO RISE I wake up early, sometimes before Clara, and the morning is about the dog. If I’m lucky, 6. It’s kind of sad when you wake up before your dog. MEET AND GREET I generally walk the dog in the neighborhood and stop in at Building on Bond , which is our local coffee place. Clara meets dogs, and we read the paper and talk to neighbors. PATCH OF TOWN I define my Sunday, with the exception of Governors Island, as a small piece of New York that goes between Dean Street to Henry Street to Atlantic Avenue. Image Credit Brian Harkin for The New York Times CORE CURRICULUM There’s an exercise chapter. I go to Pilates and my husband goes to yoga. I go to Finetune Pilates on Atlantic Avenue. It takes me six minutes to walk there from my house, and then I do Pilates for an hour. HOUSE AND HOOD After Pilates we generally do things around the house, like gardening, cleaning and futzing, and then things in the neighborhood. I call it stuff management. ISLAND NEWS I get an e-mail every hour that says how many people have gotten to the island and how many people are on the island. EYEPATCH OPTIONAL One time I got an e-mail that said there were pirates on the ship. And I actually for a moment thought, should I call the Coast Guard? But actually there was a pop-up wedding, and the groom’s side of the wedding dressed like pirates and decorated their bicycles with pirate ships, but they didn’t tell the bride’s family. So there were all these people dressed for a summer wedding, in nice dresses, and there were all these guys dressed as pirates. Image THE RIDE I try to eat on Governors Island because I like to support our food vendors. I particularly like our Jamaican food. I ride my bike from my house to Pier Six at the foot of Atlantic Avenue and Brooklyn Bridge Park. I check in; then I usually hang back a little, just to make sure the ferry line is going well. We call it management by biking around. There’s a lot of fine-tuning that happens with every year. We’ll find that we move a bike rack, and all of a sudden people will start visiting an exhibition. THE BIKE It’s not fancy. I think it’s a Trek . But it has distinctive panniers on it. They look like tablecloth material. And the reason that’s important is that everyone who works on the island knows it’s my bike, so even if I leave it somewhere they find it for me. Mine look like old-lady vinyl tablecloths. They’re Dutch. When I went to interview the team that we hired to redesign the park, in Rotterdam, I bought it. I’ve never seen another one in New York like it, so that’s my signature. BROOKLYN AGAIN My mother’s in a nursing home in my neighborhood, so I like to go visit with Clara, because she loves the dog. Clara loves to go to the nursing home to eat all the food that people drop. SHOP STOP Going to a nursing home is a little draining. So there’s a great store on Atlantic Avenue called Holler and Squall that has cool house objects, so I like to go in and pet the house objects after. We have a fabulous bookstore called BookCourt . I call it my book tax to buy a book there once every two weeks. Image Credit Brian Harkin for The New York Times GRILLING DINNER Maybe I’ll persuade Douglas to grill something in the backyard. We lived in Seattle for a long time, so whenever we go to Seattle we buy salmon and bring it back, so that’s Douglas’s specialty. LIGHTS OUT I’m a very early-to-bed person. We’ve had a couple glasses of wine, I’ve futzed in the garden, and I’m in bed before 10. I don’t think I’ve ever seen 11 o’clock on a Sunday night.


India’s Rich Benefit From Schools’ Affirmative Action

Abstract: CHENNAI, India — The two women both claim that affirmative action cost them coveted spots at elite public universities. Both cases have now reached the Supreme Court. One of the women, Abigail Fisher, 22, who is white, says she was denied admission to the University of Texas based on her race, and on Wednesday, the United States Supreme Court is to hear her plea in what may be the year’s most important decision. The other woman is from the southern Indian state of Tamil Nadu, and two weeks ago the Indian Supreme Court ordered that she be admitted to medical school pending the outcome of a broader court review. “When I came to know that I could not get into any medical college, I was really shocked,” C. V. Gayathri, the Indian student, said in an interview. “I didn’t speak to anyone for a week. I cried. I was very depressed.” Though the outlines of the two cases are similar, differences between how the world’s two largest democracies have chosen to redress centuries of past discrimination are striking. While affirmative action in the United States is now threatened, the program in India is a vast system of political patronage that increasingly works to reward the powerful rather than uplift those in need. Indeed, the caste-based affirmative action here raises questions for nations like Brazil and Malaysia that have adopted anti-discrimination programs that are in some ways similar to India’s. Without diligent judicial oversight, experts say, the efforts can help perpetuate inequality rather than redress it. In Tamil Nadu, for instance, 69 percent of university admissions are now set aside for what the state has determined to be “backward castes.” Many of those favored with these set-asides have controlled Tamil Nadu’s government and much of its resources for generations, but they claim special status by pointing to a caste survey done in 1931. (Ms. Gayathri, 17, is a Brahmin whose parents are civil servants with modest incomes.) Five prominent university officials in Tamil Nadu said in interviews that those given set-asides at their institutions were generally the children of doctors, lawyers and high-level bureaucrats. The result is that rich students routinely get preference over more accomplished poor ones who do not happen to belong to the favored castes. None of the officials would allow their names to be used for fear of angering the government ministers who benefit politically and personally from the program. India’s caste system was created nearly 1,500 years ago to organize occupations in a feudal agricultural society. Those at the bottom of the system, now known as Dalits, were forbidden in some places from even allowing their shadows to fall on those at the top, known as Brahmins. Most castes were deemed “backward,” which meant that they were consigned to menial jobs. Over the last 30 years, however, India’s economy has been transformed, much of its populace has moved from villages to sprawling cities, and once distinct castes have been scrambled. That has led to the erosion of historic differences in education and increased income mobility within castes in India, recent studies have found. “Caste is no longer an economic restriction,” said Viktoria Hnatkovska, an assistant professor of economics at the University of British Columbia , and a co-author of several studies on the changing role of caste in India. Nonetheless, quotas have transformed the taint of “backwardness” into a coveted designation. The Gujjars of Rajasthan, for instance, held violent riots two years ago to protest the government’s refusal to declare them as “most backward.” Politicians win elections in India by promising to bestow this one-time curse, which has led to a dramatic expansion in those considered backward decades after the designation had true economic meaning. Indeed, caste awareness among the young is sustained in part because of set-asides, so a program intended to eliminate the caste system is now blamed by many for sustaining it. “When I was filling out my college application forms, there was this box for caste,” said Sneha Sekhsaria, 25, of Calcutta. “I had to ask my dad what our caste was, and he had to think about it for 15 minutes before telling me that we were in the general category.” The general category meant that she received no preference, a fact that Ms. Sekhsaria blames for her failure to qualify for medical school. She went to dental school instead. “Being a doctor was always my dream, but I got a dental degree instead and that’s O.K.,” she said. But she remains bitter that some of her friends who scored more poorly than she did on entrance exams were able to become doctors even though she and others in her circle were entirely unaware that they were “backward.” Nonetheless, the benefits that flow from caste quotas have made them popular, and supporting them is one of the few issues on which the present government and its opposition agree. Within the next few months, the Indian Parliament is expected to overwhelming approve a constitutional amendment that would allow caste-based quotas not just in educational settings and in government hiring but also in government promotions. The Supreme Court has repeatedly tried to curtail the scope of caste quotas, but the Parliament has passed amendments in response to protect and even expand them. The court has ruled that quotas should not exceed 50 percent of university admissions, but Tamil Nadu has ignored this restriction and a case challenging the state’s larger quota has been pending since 1994. In the meantime, the court has ordered the state to provide extra slots to at least some students who contest the higher quotas, including Ms. Gayathri, who has been admitted to Tirunelveli Medical College. In an interview, Salman Khurshid, India’s law minister and minister for minority affairs, said that wealthy beneficiaries of caste quotas should acknowledge that they no longer need set-asides and voluntarily bow out of the system. Some rules forbid the wealthy — or “creamy layer” — from taking advantage of quotas, but those rules have not been implemented in many states and are widely ignored in others. D. Sundaram, a retired professor of sociology from Madras University and a longtime member of Tamil Nadu’s now-disbanded Backward Classes Commission, defended the state’s quotas by saying that even three generations of wealth and power cannot reverse centuries of backwardness. “The system has not been in place long enough,” Dr. Sundaram said. To be sure, many Dalits and people from tribal backgrounds are still overwhelmingly poor, and even many critics of India’s caste-based quotas acknowledge that set-asides for them may still be worthy. Ravi Kumar, general secretary of a Dalit political party in Tamil Nadu, agreed that many of those who benefit from the state’s vast caste-based quotas are wealthy and powerful. But his party supports quotas, also known as reservations, for the wealthy “because if we opposed them they would stop all reservations,” Mr. Kumar said. Pratap Bhanu Mehta, president of the Center for Policy Research in New Delhi, said that caste-based quotas will gradually become less important as the quotas themselves make public universities less attractive to the most talented students. “The talented people will simply migrate away,” he said. But that is no comfort to Ms. Sekhsaria, whose family ended up spending tens of thousands of dollars to send her to a private dental school after she was turned down for a government medical school, where the fees are modest. “Of the thousands of reasons to hate the government, reservations is definitely one of them,” she said.

Affirmative Action
India
Colleges and Universities
Discrimination
Admissions Standards
Fisher Abigail Noel
Gayathri C V


Iranian Commander Vows to Avenge Israeli Airstrike

Abstract: TEHRAN — Iran ’s highest Revolutionary Guards commander issued a threat against Israel after the death of an Iranian general in an Israeli helicopter strike along the border with Syria, saying that “destructive thunderbolts” awaited. The commander, Mohammad Ali Jafari, said in a statement distributed by the state news media on Tuesday that the fact that an Iranian general had been so close to Israeli territory proved that Iran’s power “has passed over geographical borders.” The Iranian general, Mohammad Ali Allahdadi, was killed along with a Hezbollah commander and the son of the group’s former military leader, Imad Mughniyeh, in Sunday’s attack on a Hezbollah convoy near the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights. After issuing a ritual denunciation of the “Zionist regime,” Mr. Jafari said: “These martyrdoms prove that we should not distance ourselves from the jihad; the Zionists should prepare themselves for our shattering thunderbolt. They have experienced our rage in the past.” Iran has often threatened Israel after attacks on its regional allies, Hezbollah and Syria, and an Iranian analyst said that the commander’s threats, like others in the past, were mostly for domestic consumption. “He is addressing his troops after some of them were martyred,” said Mashallah Shamsolvaezin, an Iranian Arab affairs analyst. “Just like Israel makes statements for domestic consumption, we do, too.” More important, said an Iranian analyst close to Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, is the country’s growing willingness to acknowledge its military expansion in the region. “Our officials and military commanders are not shy of openly saying that Iran is supporting the resistance,” said the analyst, Hamid Reza Taraghi. “Bear in mind that it has been his eminence, the supreme leader, who first proposed that the West Bank must be armed against the Zionists. Similar remarks are merely echoes of his commands.” On Tuesday, Israel denied that the helicopter attack had been aimed against the commanders, with Reuters quoting an anonymous official as saying that Israel had believed it was attacking only low-ranking guerrillas. Asked if Israel expected Iranian or Hezbollah retaliation for the airstrike, the official said: “They are almost certain to respond. We are anticipating that, but I think it’s a fair assumption that a major escalation is not in the interest of either side.” “We did not expect the outcome in terms of the stature of those killed — certainly not the Iranian general,” the official told Reuters. “We thought we were hitting an enemy field unit that was on its way to carry out an attack on us at the frontier fence. We got the alert, we spotted the vehicle, identified it was an enemy vehicle and took the shot. We saw this as a limited tactical operation.” Israeli forces and civilians were on heightened alert Tuesday in areas near the borders with Lebanon and Syria. Israel has deployed an Iron Dome missile defense battery in the north and closed a road running close to the border with Lebanon, the Israeli news media reported. According to Iranian websites close to the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, the group had been “inspecting” the region of Quneitra and giving “crucial advice” to Syrians fighting “terrorism.” That is how the Syrian government characterizes its battle against an insurgency that began with peaceful protests for political reforms and now includes fighters from the Nusra Front, a group linked to Al Qaeda.

Iran
Israel
Mohammad Ali Allahdadi
Islamic Revolutionary Guards
Military
Hezbollah
Syria
Golan Heights


A Call to Rethink Storm Classification

Abstract: Some researchers say Hurricane Sandy should prompt scientists to devise new methods to categorize coastal storms. S. Jeffress Williams , a coastal scientist with the United States Geological Survey and the University of Hawaii, noted that Sandy was barely a Category 1 hurricane — the weakest — on the widely used Saffir-Simpson scale , which measures hurricane intensity largely according to wind speeds. But, Mr. Williams said, its low barometric pressure increased the height of its storm surge, and its immense size widened its impact. Researchers are already calling Sandy “the storm of record,” on the East Coast, surpassing even the notorious Ash Wednesday Storm of 1962. That storm, a northeaster, sat off the Atlantic coast for days in March, slamming the beaches again and again through five high tides. The 1962 storm is a landmark in coastal geology. Studies in its aftermath were the first to demonstrate systematically that developed beaches suffer more than pristine stretches when storms strike. That seems to be the case with Sandy, according to Cheryl J. Hapke, a coastal geologist with the Geological Survey, who is studying conditions on Fire Island, N.Y. Preliminary surveys suggest the storm moved “a huge amount of sand” off the beaches, she said. In park areas, where there is little infrastructure, dunes 3 to 5 yards high appear to have shifted 25 or 30 yards inland, she said. In developed areas, sand also moved inland, but “there is no dune remaining.”

Hurricane Sandy (2012)
Hurricanes and Tropical Storms
United States Geological Survey
Geology


An Italian Shows It Could Be His Time at the Top

Abstract: CESANA PARIOL, Italy, Feb. 12 - These Winter Games have been criticized for the host country's apparent apathy. But in the blink of an 80-mile-an-hour ride down an icy track Sunday night, Armin Zoeggeler gave his fellow Italians a reason to show off their festive side. He became the first Italian to win a gold medal at the Turin Games with a dominant victory in the singles luge. Zoeggeler, who led after each of the four runs, had a total time of 3 minutes 26.088 seconds and defeated Albert Demtschenko of Russia by 11-hundredths of a second for his second consecutive Olympic gold medal. Tony Benshoof missed becoming the first American to win a medal in the event when Martins Rubenis of Latvia edged him by 153-thousandths of a second for the bronze. Rubenis became the first Latvian to win a Winter Games medal. The 39-year-old German Georg Hackl, who won medals in the previous five Winter Games, finished seventh in what he had said would be his last Games. Hackl, who has three Olympic gold medals and two silvers, had been regarded by many as the greatest singles luger ever. But Zoeggeler, 32, may be challenging that contention. Besides his Olympic gold medals, he took home the bronze in 1994 and the silver in 1998. If he wins a medal in Vancouver, British Columbia, in 2010, he will match Hackl's Winter Games record for the most consecutive medals in one event. Zoeggeler has also been the overall World Cup champion in five of the past eight seasons. Benshoof said that Zoeggeler might have surpassed Hackl as the greatest technical luger. "I think Armin is a better slider, but Georg is a better sled builder," Benshoof said. "If you combined the two, they'd be unstoppable." Zoeggeler played down the importance of becoming the first Italian to strike gold. "An Olympic medal is always extraordinary in itself," he said through an interpreter. "I'm simply the lucky one who got this medal here." Zoeggeler might not have been treating this evening as a special occasion, but the Italians in attendance certainly were. Demtschenko and Rubenis, standing on either side of Zoeggeler, lifted him in the air after the race as fireworks began crackling in the chilly air. The fans were few but festive. They rang cowbells and waved green-white-and-red Italian flags. When Zoeggeler crossed the finish line, the grandstand resembled a choppy ocean, with the fans jumping up and down as they shouted. Even before Zoeggeler took the track for his final run, floodlights sparkled off the glistening ice and fans waved flags to support the sliders from their home country. A large video screen at the finish line showed Zoeggeler getting ready in the dressing room, as if it were a championship boxing match. The fans screamed and rang bells every time he graced the screen. Hackl said it was not fair to compare Zoeggeler's legend with his. "Of course, Armin proved what an exceptional athlete he is," Hackl said. "I think the best slider is the one who has just performed the fastest at a competition. "I had my time when I was in top form. That time is long gone. For Armin, that time is now, and it's still going. He will still celebrate some big success in this sport, I am convinced of that." Demtschenko said he hoped he could be the one to dethrone Zoeggeler. "I think he has just been more fortunate than I," Demtschenko, 34, said through an interpreter. "I hope the new competitions will show who is better." Benshoof was more than half a second behind Zoeggeler in these Games, but he said he hoped to give it another run in four years. Though disappointed to have missed a medal by thousandths of a second, Benshoof said he would not let it get him down. "It's hard to believe that I'd judge my life on that small of a time frame," Benshoof said. "It's the blink of an eye. That's the difference between U.S. luge history and fourth place." Benshoof was in third place after Saturday's two heats. But he fell to fourth after the third heat Sunday and did not recover. Benshoof said he considered quitting luge after high school, fearing he would not have anything to show for his life by 30. Well, he is 30 now and says he is proud of what he has accomplished -- Olympic medal or not. "It gives you a lot of confidence, finishing fourth in the Olympics," said Benshoof, who was 17th four years ago in Salt Lake City. "That's pretty good." NOTES Anne Abernathy, a 52-year-old luger from the Virgin Islands, withdrew from the women's event Sunday after breaking her right wrist in a crash during a training run earlier in the day. The event will have two heats Monday night and two more Tuesday.


Clay Zavada: A Lunch-Pail Prospect for the Diamondbacks

Abstract: STREATOR, Ill. — Days before the Yankees signed C. C. Sabathia to a $161 million deal, one of the Arizona Diamondbacks ’ most promising minor league pitchers rose before dawn at his house on the outskirts of this central Illinois town. An overnight storm had coated the roads in ice, and the thermometer read 8 degrees. It was the perfect morning to sleep in, but not for Clay Zavada, who steered his Nissan Sentra toward town — past frozen cornstalks, an abandoned farmhouse and the red lights of windmills blinking in the distance. A dilapidated motel and a series of fast-food restaurants indicated his arrival in Streator. Zavada could not afford to be late. This was the only time the high school gym would be empty, and his old coach — the assistant principal — would have time to catch for him. “If you don’t get it done early and get it out of the way, it’s kind of hard to get it done,” Zavada said, slamming a two-seam fastball toward the gloved hand of Nick McGurk. “You’ve got to get in here and get it done.” Once the sun came up, Zavada knew there would be other demands on his time. His uncle might call him to work at the family sawmill. A cousin in the construction business often needs a hand. And Zavada has a long list of chores waiting for him on the 40-acre property his father left him and his brother — logs to be split and sold for firewood, a go-kart awaiting refurbishing and posting on eBay, or the thick bushes choking a grove of walnut trees that need clearing. For that task of protecting the trees, the federal government sends him a small yearly subsidy. Despite an impressive 0.51 earned run average and a 3-1 record last season as a reliever for the Class A South Bend Silver Hawks, Zavada, 24, must work outside of baseball to pay his bills. Last season, he earned $280 a week — before taxes — from the Silver Hawks. His income is typical of the roughly 4,500 minor league players, about 10 percent of whom will play in even one major league game. “Not all of these guys are getting million-dollar bonuses,” said A. J. Hinch, the director of player development for the Diamondbacks. “I don’t know that everybody is quite aware of what these guys go through in order to give themselves a chance to make it.” Zavada had never been a hotly pursued prospect until now. His work last season, which included allowing six hits in 35 innings, earned him a coveted spot on the Diamondbacks’ 40-man roster. In spring training, he will have the chance to compete for one of the 25 spots on the major league roster. Zavada had considered playing N.C.A.A. Division I baseball, but big-time college recruiters do not stop here. After playing at Illinois Valley Community College, he transferred in his junior year to Southern Illinois University Edwardsville, which competes in Division II. In 2006, the Diamondbacks drafted him in the 30th round, paying him a $1,000 signing bonus that after taxes, barely paid the deposit on his apartment in Missoula, Mont., where he played on a summer rookie team. That December, Zavada’s father, Clarence, a quality-control manager for a nuclear plant, died of a heart attack. Zavada’s mother, Linda, had died when he was 3; his older brother, Dustin, was serving in the Navy. Suddenly, Zavada found himself responsible for looking after his family’s property, a mix of farmland and forest that was his father’s pride and joy. “That’s when the wheels kind of came off the track,” Zavada said. “He was my life. My brother and him, that’s all we were. The three of us.” Zavada failed to report to spring training in 2007 and lost touch with the Diamondbacks, who dropped his contract later in the summer. “I was just sitting around, trying to figure things out,” he said. That fall, Zavada decided to honor his father’s wishes by completing his bachelor’s degree at Edwardsville. He also took a part-time job delivering furniture. “I was pretty much done with baseball,” he said. Last spring, he graduated with a degree in business. At the prodding of a friend, he decided to celebrate by trying out for an independent team, the Southern Illinois Miners. “I hadn’t picked up a ball in over a year,” he said. After a few practice games that were “absolutely awful,” Zavada said, he eventually picked up momentum. “From that point on, it was like, boom,” said Zavada, who is 6 feet 1 inch and 195 pounds. “I didn’t have a negative thought in my mind.” Zavada’s performance caught the attention of the Diamondbacks, and in June, they re-signed him to a one-year contract. He was assigned to the Silver Hawks. “He opened some eyes — one, being left-handed, and two, he had a good arsenal,” Hinch said. “But he didn’t come in with a lot of accolades. He’s had to earn every bit” of the attention he is starting to get. Zavada does not argue the point. “I’ve been a low-percentage shot for baseball my whole life,” he said. Last Monday, Zavada’s sneakers squeaked down the aisles of the Kroger supermarket as he hunted for breakfast. He grabbed a box of store-brand raisin bran cereal — at $1.89, it was $2 less than the name brands nearby. “As far as food is concerned, I don’t buy anything that’s not on sale, or not cheap,” he said. A few aisles away, he tucked a pack of chicken thighs under his arm. “Almost five pounds of it for $3,” he marveled. As much as baseball is Zavada’s dream, it is also a paycheck. Being on the 40-man roster will quadruple his salary, at the very least. If he is selected for the major league team, he will earn the rookie minimum, $400,000. “It’s good that I play baseball and I actually have a job that I know I can go to in about two months,” he said. “Some people can’t. Some people around here, they’re barely getting by.” Once a bustling town of coal mines and bottle factories, Streator is now home to about 14,000 people, many of whom drive long distances to work at power plants. The nearest interstate is 13 miles away, and there is not even a Wal-Mart, although Zavada said many residents welcomed plans to build one because it might bring jobs. The only cinema — a renovated movie palace called the Majestic — charges $5.25 a ticket. The theater’s owner addressed members of the audience before a recent screening of “The Day the Earth Stood Still,” pleading with them to come back soon and to invite relatives and friends. “I’m going to try to keep it open through the end of the year,” he told the crowd. The temperature was still in the single digits by the time Zavada returned home from the grocery store about 9 a.m. In the kitchen, he poured a bowl of raisin bran and turned up the volume on his kitchen radio. “Swap Shop,” a live classified advertising show broadcast every morning on a local AM station, was about to start. “This is the home run derby of Streator,” Zavada said, slurping his cereal as Gunner, his Labrador retriever, waited hopefully at his feet. “This is what you live for.” On this morning, the items for sale or trade included a pair of turquoise bracelets, a 2-year-old cocker spaniel, an Xbox video system “only used once,” an extra-large Green Bay Packers jacket with tags attached and a 1994 Honda Civic. One woman called in looking for beeswax. Another wanted to alert her neighbors that two dogs — “a shepherd and a hunting dog” — seemed to have gotten loose at the end of her block. Not long ago, Zavada said, he got an “awesome deal” on a 1996 Honda Rebel motorcycle that he bought from “Swap Shop.” He fixed it up and sold it on eBay, making a $900 profit. “If you can find a deal, you can definitely make a mint,” he said. Like many of his neighbors, Zavada’s livelihood relies on a mix of odd jobs and an entrepreneurial spirit. He is a regular at the Streator pawn shop, searching for underappreciated treasures that can be sold online. During the harvest, he drove a truck for a farmer who had shattered his ankle after falling off a grain bin. His pitching is equally versatile. Zavada takes pride in his best pitch, a changeup, and said that for now, baseball was his priority. But it is clear that he also takes pleasure in other tasks, like clearing brush behind his house, or slicing an old telephone pole into smooth, straight boards at his uncle’s sawmill. Using his pitching hand to line up the blades of an industrial saw may make the Diamondbacks’ management cringe, but Zavada says he will not give it up. “You got to do what you got to do,” he said. “It’s how I grew up, you know. I wouldn’t trade it for the world.” Last Sunday, Zavada spotted an opossum that had been wandering around his property for days. He grabbed his grandfather’s shotgun over the fireplace and raced outside. Later, as Gunner trotted toward the house with the carcass in his mouth, Zavada ordered the dog to drop it. With any luck, he explained, this animal may attract another. Raccoon pelts are selling for $25 apiece.

Arizona Diamondbacks
Baseball
Zavada Clay


Italy: Fuel Removed From Cruise Ship

Abstract: Completing the first step needed to avert an environmental disaster off Italy ’s coast, salvage experts have emptied the tanks containing most of the fuel aboard the Costa Concordia cruise ship , which capsized on Jan. 13 . About two-thirds of the 500,000 gallons of fuel were pumped out of the half-sunken vessel, Italian officials said, who added that crews would need at least three weeks to remove the remaining fuel in less accessible tanks. Once all the fuel has been removed, the vessel will either be dragged into port or cut up and towed away. This process could take up to 10 months, officials said.

Cruises
Italy
Costa Concordia
Maritime Accidents and Safety
Tuscany (Italy)
Costa Crociere SpA
Carnival Corporation


South Carolina’s Ban on Election Day Liquor Sales May Go the Way of Prohibition

Abstract: AIKEN, S.C. — Tony Suh, the owner of Harvard’s Wine and Beverage here, does not know why South Carolina’s government will not let him sell liquor on statewide election days. He figures it is just one of the many quirks of doing business in this culturally conservative state, in league with his customers’ habit of parking their cars on the far side of the parking lot to avoid the attention of judgmental neighbors. “I think it’s got to do with being such a Baptist place for such a long time,” said Mr. Suh, 43, who moved to the state from the New York City area eight years ago. Now it appears that South Carolina’s Election Day liquor law, the last blanket ban in the country, could finally go the way of bathtub gin and the Anti-Saloon League. On Wednesday evening, the South Carolina Senate, following the lead of the lower house, approved a bill to rescind the ban. If the bill is signed by the Republican governor, Nikki R. Haley, South Carolina will join six other states that have rescinded similar laws since 2008, according to the Distilled Spirits Council of the United States , an industry group. That would leave only Alaska and Massachusetts with Election Day alcohol bans, the council noted, although in these states, local governments may choose to be exempt from the prohibition. And it is another step in the nation’s long, slow coming to terms with demon rum and other once-maligned spirits. Election Day alcohol bans were common throughout the United States in decades past, when politicians’ promises of free drinks played an essential role in many a get-out-the-vote strategy. South Carolina is a state known as much for its political chicanery as it is for its deeply held religious sentiment, and the fear that a crooked politician might buy votes with free drinks is the reason the state government here has clung to its ban for so long. But in the age of the robocall and the “super PAC,” the alarm over the possibility of a ham-handed votes-for-drinks scheme has come to seem downright quaint. State Representative Bakari T. Sellers, a Democrat who favored overturning the ban, said he was among those exasperated to be wasting 21st-century time on a debate that seems more suited for the age of Woodrow Wilson. “It’s 2014, dude,” he said. The ban did have its modern-day supporters, however. J. Todd Rutherford, a Democratic state representative who co-sponsored the House bill, said he had introduced similar legislation in previous years, only to have it scuttled by conservative lawmakers. Mike Burns, a Republican state representative from Travelers Rest, S.C., was one of 20 legislators who voted against a bill in April that proposed lifting the ban. He said that he and the others were “making a statement” about the steady erosion, nationwide, of the state and local “blue laws” that once strictly limited the sale of alcohol for religious reasons. The Distilled Spirits Council noted that since 2002, 16 states had rescinded bans on the Sunday sale of hard liquor, in whole or in part, with 38 states now allowing it. “Many states had these laws for many years and, you know, everything has gone by the wayside, day by day, little by little,” Mr. Burns said. The tradition of plying voters with drinks has deep roots in American electoral politics. In Virginia and other pre-independence Southern colonies, candidates were often expected to supply the libations for voters, said David E. Kyvig , an emeritus professor of history at Northern Illinois University. In the late 19th and early 20th century, political machines in cities like New York and Chicago regularly traded drinks for votes, a practice often denounced by prohibitionists. The South Carolina ban, according to a legislative analysis of the bill to repeal it, was “rooted in the Prohibition era, when saloons sometimes served as polling stations for elections.” For a brief period beginning in 1893, South Carolina controlled the distribution of all alcohol sales statewide through a dispensary system that proved to be hopelessly corrupt. P. C. Richardson, a University of South Carolina history professor, noted that in the mid-1800s, South Carolina political factions brought male voters to Columbia, the capital, and held them in cordoned-off “bullpens,” where they plied them with liquor before marching them off to the polls. Mr. Rutherford and his allies had argued that the ban was not only hopelessly old-fashioned, but anathema to the conservative principle of limited government. “This means that we take another step out of the Dark Ages and join the rest of the country in being able to go to a package store and buy alcohol on Election Day,” he said Wednesday. Joe Berry, executive director of the Wine and Spirits Wholesalers Association of South Carolina, predictably, is supporting the bill. In Aiken, Mr. Suh, the liquor store owner, said that retailers like him would stand to earn a little more money if the bill became law. But he also wondered whether a change was worth the trouble. He had grown accustomed, he said, to taking a day off from work when the polls opened.

South Carolina
Election
Legislation
Alcohol
Mike Burns
Nikki R Haley
Massachusetts
Alaska
US states


New York to Create Global Insurance Exchange

Abstract: In a bid to create jobs and bolster New York’s position as a financial center, Gov. David A. Paterson announced plans on Wednesday to create an international insurance exchange, modeled after Lloyd’s of London. The exchange would specialize in coverage of complicated risks — oil rigs in hurricane regions, tall buildings that are potential targets of terrorists or corporate directors who could be blamed for accounting scandals. Such risks are hard to insure because they are unpredictable and potentially catastrophic. As a result, many companies go offshore for such coverage, usually to Lloyd’s or to other exchanges in Bermuda and Dublin. Currently, about 50 percent of the insurance placed through Lloyd’s originates in North America. Governor Paterson is hoping to keep some of that business at home because insuring complex risks can be very profitable. The governor announced his plans in his State of the State address, calling it “part of a bold and decisive plan to rebuild our state’s economy.” Officials associated with the project said they believed it could eventually generate 2,000 to 3,000 jobs, both for market participants and regulators. The exchange would be regulated by the state. It is unrelated to the Obama administration’s proposals to allow uninsured individuals to buy health coverage through exchanges. The New York insurance superintendent, James J. Wrynn, said it would be easier for New York to create an insurance exchange than for most other states because it tried to start such an exchange in the 1980s. That attempt failed, but the laws allowing it are still on the books, Mr. Wrynn said. He said the 1980s effort was doomed because the companies participating were not required to have adequate capital and did not always understand the risks they were taking on. The market was also “soft” then, meaning the participating insurers had a hard time charging large enough premiums to both cover their risks and turn a profit. Mr. Wrynn said New York had been studying what went wrong with the earlier exchange and would see to it that the mistakes were not repeated. He said the state was about to start working with people from various financial institutions in the private sector to draft the rules and procedures for the exchange. Members of the working groups are to be named on Thursday. Another crucial difference between the 1980s and now is the rise of hedge funds and other unconventional financial companies, which might want to try insuring catastrophic risks to balance investment portfolios. Such investors would participate directly in insurance syndicates, underwriting risks without having to become licensed insurers. By forming syndicates, participants would be able to buy into relatively small slices of certain risks. The idea would be that the syndicate as a whole would have the capacity to absorb huge losses that might topple an insurance company working on its own. In addition to hedge funds, private equity firms, banks and wealthy individuals might want to participate. Licensed insurance companies might also want to participate, officials said. If, for example, a homeowner’s insurance company decided its coverage was too heavily concentrated on the coasts of Florida, it could come to the New York exchange and seek an exchange to assume some of the risks, spreading them over a bigger pool.

New York State
Insurance
Paterson David A
Lloyd's of London


In the Face of the Extreme, Finding Balance (and Mashed Potatoes)

Abstract: AFTER college, I joined the Peace Corps and eventually started working with refugee charitable organizations. When I started working with Catholic Relief Services, I had some travel under my belt, and now almost all of my work is focused on going to countries where people are in crisis, whether because of a natural disaster or war. Because my work is communications-focused, I meet with those people we are helping to capture their story and document relief efforts. I also do quite a bit of domestic travel for the organization, mostly for various events. In recent months, I’ve been to Gaza, Central African Republic, Bosnia and Herzegovina, the Philippines and the Syrian border with Jordan and Lebanon, among others. These aren’t places where you worry about the state of the airline’s hospitality lounge. But I have to say that your sense of self can start to slip when you’re in places where humanity is so greatly tested. I’ve learned the importance of having the right combination of personal relief supplies, which help keep you going when things start to get difficult. It took a while for me to realize that, rather than just a few days away from the office, my travel for work was my lifestyle, and how much of a difference it made when I tried to make my life on the road mirror my life at home, as much as it was humanly possible. That means equal weight and suitcase space are given to the things that keep me physically healthy, like water purifiers when traveling to areas with collapsed or contaminated water sources and medication for the common case of giardia. Equally important are the salves for my emotional sanity — the things that are reminders of home, normalcy and comfort, like a favorite five-oil shampoo, facial serum, music playlist, exercise bands or bags of ground Chicago coffee. The absurdity of packing products when headed to places of peril is not lost on me. And I’ve struggled with the guilt. But it’s exactly that extreme that brings me back to center when the base of normal has swung so far in the other direction. I think that anyone who does the kind of work we do knows that you have to find balance and, even on occasion, humor in absurd situations. I was headed to Banda Aceh, Indonesia, and had a 13-hour layover in Singapore. I was living in Delhi at the time, and had friends over for a nice pasta and meatball dinner the night before I left. I clearly made a mistake with the meatballs, and when I left for my trip the next morning, I was horribly sick, and once I got to Singapore, I went straight to a lounge with private beds and slept for 10 hours straight. When I finally woke up, I went out into the food area and saw what appeared to be a mashed potato machine. It looked like a cappuccino machine, but there was a potato sticker on it. Instead of espresso, potato powder and hot water came out of the spigot. It even had a gravy button. Although this may not sound enticing from a distance, after being so sick, this mechanical carb machine was like a gift from above. I would get a helping, eat it, and then circle the machine for yet another helping. I should have had more integrity and more dignity, but all I wanted were more mashed potatoes. I have never seen another mashed potato machine in any of my travels. It’s a shame. I think if every airport in the world had mashed potatoes on tap, no one would complain about business travel.

Business travel
Catholic Relief Services
Caroline Brennan
Airlines,airplanes
Work-Life Balance


Rough Is Rougher, but British Open Forecast Brightens

Abstract: LYTHAM ST. ANNES, England — In the buildup to this week’s British Open, where the weather is always a story line, the fight is on to negotiate a way through the acres of rain-soaked high grass. There are gnarly fescue tufts and sodden dunes. Cloudy skies have produced a succession of storms that has brought mud and backbreaking struggle for those caught in the saturated environment. And that’s just in the packed grass parking lots surrounding the golf course, where extricating a stuck car has become a secondary sport to the main event. Officials for the championship said they were bringing in specially designed portable pathways to facilitate the ease of movement in the parking lots. No such devices are planned to help players who find their golf balls as implacably trapped in the high growth beside the 18 holes of the Royal Lytham & St. Annes Golf Club. “As we always say with the rough, we leave it to nature,” said Peter Dawson, chief executive of the Royal & Ancient, which operates the British Open. “And nature this year has given us the thick stuff.” That would be an understatement. With the first round beginning Thursday, the competitors in practice rounds have had to invent strategies for not only the thigh-high, wispy native grass customary at links golf courses, but also a three- to four-inch sublayer of more dense turf that has flourished in the soggy conditions. “That’s the real danger,” Rory McIlroy said. “You can hit out of the long but thin grass. The stuff below it presents many more problems, including finding the ball in the first place.” That calls to mind a 41-year-old quotation from the two-time British Open champion Lee Trevino, when he was asked about the rough at the 1971 event at Royal Birkdale. “At 15, we put down my bag to hunt for a ball,” Trevino said. “Found the ball, lost the bag.” Beyond acknowledging that the rough this year is especially rough, those running the championship are not very concerned about the conditions. As with the United States Open , the philosophy seems to be: If a player cannot hit it straight, he will score high. “The champion on Sunday I doubt will have won from the rough,” Dawson said unapologetically. “I think he’ll be winning from the short grass, so there’s a premium on hitting fairways this week, obviously. But if you stray a long way off the fairways, you’re going to be penalized.” Some players have remarked that the fairways have been narrowed, but Dawson denied that any fairway had been made smaller. In general, the mood about the playing conditions has improved in the past few days as the weather forecast has brightened. Last weekend, when most of the field arrived, it appeared they would be playing in their rain suits for at least three of the four days. But Wednesday afternoon brought bright sun, and the forecast was for generally dry weather until at least Sunday. But forecasts in this part of the world are notoriously erratic. Wind is expected, and with more than 200 bunkers on the golf course, well-struck tee shots can fly into hazards that can be escaped only with a sideways or backward shot. “If we get a typical wind, it’s going to take a lot of precision, or a lot of patience, to get through the day — or both,” said Luke Donald, the world’s top-ranked player. “The wind can humble anyone.” The wind has another effect: it can help dry out the course. But that could also make the ball bounce harder and run farther on the fairways, which is a boon to the average duffer playing target golf in the United States, but on the links of England’s west coast, longer running shots can mean trouble. The bunkers are staggered in tiers throughout the length of most holes, including many directly in the path of a centered, well-positioned shot. “It’s not as easy as deciding whether to lay it up or to bomb it over the top,” Tiger Woods said. “There are some forced carries where you have to force it, but then you also have to stop it or try and skirt it past the next series of bunkers. Other times you have to shape shots, trying to bend a shot over one bunker and then around another bunker. “And you have to do that with a 3-wood on one hole, a driver on another and maybe a 3-iron on another. It’s going to be a real good test.” It is called playing links golf, and even the players who have been bedeviled by it in the past are talking about how they look forward to the challenge this time. Phil Mickelson has played his poorest major championship golf at the British Open, but he said he altered his approach and gleaned confidence from his second-place finish last yea r at Royal St. George’s. “For me, it’s an attitude adjustment that has evolved favorably,” Mickelson said. “It took me a while to be able to understand what it meant to get the ball on the ground, because I hit the ball low, but I would still hit it with spin and it would stay in the air and kind of hover above the ground rather than getting on the ground. I don’t do that any longer. “And it’s the same with the bad weather or wet conditions. I appreciate the elements. I almost look forward to them.” Mickelson, of course, has a reserved parking space near the golf course, perhaps one that is even on pavement.

Golf
British Open (Golf)
Weather
Royal Lytham & St Annes Golf Club


Product information on the Enano E2 computer

Abstract: The Enano E2 is a tiny, silent PC with a footprint, and a carbon footprint, that makes most standard-size PCs look like S.U.V.’s. Enano says that thanks to their small size and low-power processors, its 6.8-by-8.8-inch computers offer power savings of up to 70 percent when compared with full-size PCs. Enano also promotes the E2’s small size as offering improved efficiency over larger, bulkier PCs and cases. An optional mounting bracket allows the E2 to hang from a flat-screen monitor, removing it from the desktop entirely. The E2 has an Intel Core 2 Duo processor and up to three gigabytes of memory. There are four U.S.B. ports, an Ethernet port, an optional TV tuner and a video-out port for connecting the device to a television. In most configurations the computer includes a DVD reader and burner and up to 300 gigabytes of hard drive space. Prices for the E2 line, available now at RCS Computer Experience and NewEgg.com , range from $1,825 for the EX7400U with a 2.16-gigahertz processor to $1,245 for the 1.67-gigahertz EX5500. What to do with your bulky old PC? Perhaps recycle the innards and make the case into a nice planter.


Obama to Seek About $50 Billion to Aid Hurricane Sandy Recovery

Abstract: WASHINGTON — President Obama plans to ask Congress for about $50 billion in emergency funds to help rebuild the states that were ravaged by Hurricane Sandy , challenging deficit-minded lawmakers while worrying regional leaders, who complained Wednesday that it was not enough. The White House will send the proposal to Capitol Hill this week, and while the final sum is still in flux, it should be between $45 billion and $55 billion, according to officials briefed on deliberations over it. That falls significantly short of the $82 billion sought by New York, New Jersey and Connecticut to clean up storm damage, as well as to improve infrastructure to prepare for future storms. Both Democratic and Republican lawmakers from the region quickly expressed disappointment in the pending request and lobbied the administration to increase it before sending it to Congress. “While $50 billion is a significant amount of money, it unfortunately does not meet all of New York and New Jersey’s substantial needs,” Senators Charles E. Schumer and Kirsten E. Gillibrand of New York and Frank R. Lautenberg and Robert Menendez of New Jersey, all Democrats, said in a joint statement. Two House leaders from New York, Nita Lowey, a Democrat, and Peter T. King, a Republican, also teamed up to call the administration’s request “insufficient” given the needs. “While recovering and rebuilding will be a long-term priority, it is important that the supplemental appropriations request meet what our region requires,” they said in a statement. Govs. Andrew M. Cuomo of New York and Chris Christie of New Jersey were more restrained, hoping to work with the White House quietly. “I know that’s a lot of money," he said in Albany. “I understand the fiscal situation. But that is the need, and we’re looking to meet the need.” The White House declined to confirm the size of the request, saying it was too early to discuss it publicly. “The administration is working closely with our partners in the states and in Congress and is in the process of developing a request for a supplemental” spending plan, Jay Carney, the White House press secretary, said. “But that process has not been completed and it would be premature to speculate on a specific number or even on a numerical range.” Administration officials would not say which specific requests were being excluded, but other officials monitoring the situation identified several that the White House seemed cool to. New York, for instance, sought reimbursement for business owners who lost money while they were closed, as well as for privately held utilities like Consolidated Edison. Another proposal that may not make the cut was fully reimbursing homeowners for the costs they incur returning damaged and destroyed homes to the condition they were in before the storm. While regional officials lamented that the amount of aid might not be higher, even a spending request in the neighborhood of $50 billion would strain the current political system in Washington, coming just weeks before a series of deep spending cuts and tax increases are set to take effect automatically unless the president and Congress agree on a plan to avert them. Supporters of the disaster-relief request are proposing that the money would not have to be offset, or paid for through spending cuts elsewhere. The administration is unlikely to propose a way to pay for the aid and Senator Harry Reid of Nevada, the Democratic majority leader, said he did not believe it should require savings elsewhere. But the House speaker, John A. Boehner of Ohio, is reserving judgment. If the aid is not offset, it would be financed through federal debt. The White House is trying to frame its storm-spending request to avoid conflicting with its showdown with Republicans in Congress over broader budget issues, hoping to present it as a separate issue that has little to do with the long-term health of the treasury. Storm relief, once completed, would not be a recurring expenditure like Medicare or military spending. But officials privately acknowledged that the timing was problematic. Republicans eager to preserve what they see as the high ground on spending in their struggle with Mr. Obama may try to avoid approving all of the storm aid right away. Representative Harold Rogers of Kentucky, the Republican chairman of the House Appropriations Committee, has privately suggested taking up the aid request in two phases: emergency needs during the current lame-duck session and longer-term requests next year. Senator Mary L. Landrieu of Louisiana, a Democrat who is the chairwoman of a Senate Appropriations subcommittee that oversees disaster funding, rejected that approach. Ms. Landrieu, a veteran of fights for recovery money after Hurricane Katrina devastated her region, said breaking it into parts would create uncertainty and make it difficult for local officials to plan long-term recovery projects. “I would suggest we do as large a package as soon as possible,” she said. “You should do a lot now and a little bit later.” “Nibbling around the edges,” she added, “is not going to help.” While she and others tried to keep the storm question separate from the larger fiscal debate now roiling Washington, it may be impossible to disentangle the two. A 10-year deficit-reduction plan presented by the Obama administration to Congressional leaders last week included $50 billion for short-term economic stimulus, generating fierce criticism from Republicans. Some Congressional officials said that could be dropped and replaced with disaster relief of roughly the same amount. Mr. Obama’s pending request would leave the states with difficult choices to make. Mr. Cuomo has said he needs $33 billion to repair the New York City subway system, hospitals, homes and other facilities damaged by the storm, and an additional $9 billion to upgrade infrastructure to protect against future storms, for a total of $42 billion. Mr. Christie has said that New Jersey needs $29.5 billion to repair schools, roads, bridges, businesses, homes and other facilities, and $7.4 billion to prevent damage from future storms, a total of $36.9 billion. Gov. Dannel P. Malloy of Connecticut has asked for $3.2 billion, the bulk of it to bury power lines, upgrade transmission systems, build sewage-treatment plants and pay for other projects to guard against future storms.

Hurricane Sandy (2012)
Federal Aid (US)
Obama Barack
New York Metropolitan Area
Christie Christopher J
Cuomo Andrew M
New Jersey
Connecticut
New York State


Taiwan’s President Calls for New Talks With Beijing

Abstract: HONG KONG — Taiwan’s president delivered a resounding affirmation of its freely elected government on Monday, noting that its deepening foothold on the island stands in stark contrast to the authoritarian government of mainland China. In her first National Day speech , President Tsai Ing-wen called for talks between Taiwan and the mainland government, but she emphasized that Beijing should acknowledge Taiwan’s choice to become a democracy. China considers Taiwan to be a renegade province, while the self-governing island Ms. Tsai leads traces its roots to the formation of the Republic of China in 1911 that overthrew the last Chinese dynasty, only to lose the Chinese civil war to the Communists in 1949. “I call upon the authorities of mainland China to face up to the reality that the Republic of China exists, and that the people of Taiwan have an unshakable faith in the democratic system,” Ms. Tsai said. One of the goals of the Chinese government is to reunify Taiwan with the mainland. Although Beijing has never renounced the use of force against the island, it has offered to achieve unification by giving Taiwan considerable autonomy, similar to an arrangement that paved the way for Hong Kong to be returned to Chinese rule in 1997, after more than 150 years of British control. But in the past two decades, a rambunctious democracy has taken root in Taiwan, and the contrast with life on the mainland is increasingly stark. Many in Taiwan, especially young people , view the growing economic power of mainland China with deep apprehension. Ms. Tsai, whose Democratic Progressive Party has traditionally favored formal independence for Taiwan, channeled that fear in her victory this year over the Kuomintang, or Nationalist Party, which favored closer ties with the mainland. In a statement, the Taiwan Affairs Office in Beijing presented a starkly different vision of the island’s future, one in which the growing power of mainland China would eventually lead to unification. “The historical tide is so powerful and irreversible that those who go along with it will prosper, and those who go against it will perish,” a spokesman, An Fengshan, said in a statement on the office’s website. Bonnie S. Glaser, a senior adviser for Asia at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, noted that much of what Ms. Tsai said about Taiwan’s relations with China was a reiteration of her longstanding policy of preserving the status quo, and that she has called for dialogue. “Beijing won’t play ball,” Ms. Glaser said in an email. “The Chinese seem determined to gradually increase pressure on her. Most of this pressure is manifest in blocking Taiwan’s participation in the international community; some of the pressure is economic as well. I am worried about whether the diplomatic truce will hold much longer.” National Day in Taiwan is known as “Double Ten,” for Oct. 10, and marks the date in 1911 when an uprising in the city of Wuchang led to the downfall of China’s last imperial dynasty and to the establishment of the Republic of China on Jan. 1, 1912.

Democratic Progressive Party Taiwan
Kuomintang,Chinese Nationalist Party
Tsai Ing-wen
Xi Jinping
China
Taiwan


Committee to Protect Journalists Fights Attacks

Abstract: Given the ferment in certain corners of the world, the Manhattan headquarters of the Committee to Protect Journalists seemed surprisingly quiet on Thursday morning. As is often the case, appearances were deceiving. “We’re not an office where people are running around and yelling,” said Joel Simon, the organization’s executive director. “But it’s been pretty busy and really very intense, and it hasn’t let up at all.” It seems unlikely to let up for a while. Across the Middle East and North Africa, millions have taken to the streets to demand an end to the despotism that has defined the region since pretty much forever. Journalists have been in the thick of it, often in ways that go beyond their familiar roles as observers and chroniclers. They are part of the story themselves. In Egypt, Bahrain, Iran, Yemen, Algeria — pick a place — they have been beaten, jailed, harassed and otherwise prevented from gathering information essential to the rest of us, we who are not about to wander into the cauldron ourselves. Invariably, details of these outrages are funneled into a central area. That place is on Seventh Avenue, a few blocks south of Madison Square Garden, where Mr. Simon’s nonprofit group sets up shop. Its work boils down to a few basic concepts: There is an abundance of cruelty in the world; press freedom is a universal right; and those who keep us informed need to be delivered from harm. Not that the 30-year-old committee can indeed protect all journalists; that is an impossible assignment. And not that all news gatherers are wonderful; the craft, like any other, has its share of bad eggs. Nonetheless, Mr. Simon said, it is his job to sound the alarm when dictatorships go overboard in impeding the flow of news and of ideas. There has been a lot of that going around lately. A prime example is Egypt, where the government at one point rounded up journalists and sicced rent-a-thugs on them (and others) during the Tahrir Square uprising in Cairo. “Every government recognizes that to lay the groundwork for brutal oppression you’ve got to eliminate the witnesses, and that means journalists,” Mr. Simon said. Fortunately, he said, the Egyptian authorities’ clumsy attempts at repression failed: “If they had succeeded — and they nearly did — it all might have ended very, very differently.” Considerable attention has been given to the vicious beating and sexual assault that the CBS News reporter Lara Logan endured at the hands of a mob in Tahrir Square last Friday. On Wednesday, an ABC News reporter, Miguel Marquez, was battered by club-wielding thugs in Bahrain. THE attack on Ms. Logan underscored a worry that doesn’t always get noticed. In more than a few countries, journalists — usually women, but not always — have been raped or otherwise sexually violated. How often this happens is hard to say. Like many such victims, the reporters are often reluctant to talk about it, including women who may worry about being denied certain assignments in the future because of the perceived danger. “I believe the problem is much more widespread than we’ve been able to document,” Mr. Simon said. Deplorable as the attacks on foreign correspondents were, “about 90 percent of the cases we take up involve local journalists working in their own country,” he said. With the advent of blogs and so-called social media, the very definition of “journalist” is undergoing change. In Egypt, Mr. Simon said, “bloggers have emerged as a critical new voice, and they’ve suffered horrific repression.” In a report issued this week, his group said that at least 44 journalists were killed around the world in 2010. Pakistan, with eight deaths, supplanted Iraq as the most dangerous country for reporters. Thirty-one other journalists were killed, the report said, but it wasn’t clear if they became targets specifically because of their work. Also, 145 journalists were put behind bars, the highest number since 1996. Iran and China had the dubious distinction of being the leading jailers. There is no reason to assume that things are about to get quieter for Mr. Simon and his organization. In a sense, one could think of journalists as equivalent to a canary in a coal mine. If they come under assault, Mr. Simon said, rest assured that the ground is being readied for “something much, much worse” against everyone else.

Committee to Protect Journalists
Freedom of the Press
Assaults
Simon Joel
News and News Media
Arab World Unrest (2010- )
Egypt
Bahrain
Logan Lara
Marquez Miguel


Russian Booster Rocket Fails to Deliver Satellites

Abstract: MOSCOW — A Russian booster rocket carrying two telecommunications satellites malfunctioned during a launching early Tuesday, failing to deliver the satellites into their proper orbit and rendering them useless and unsalvageable. The mishap was another blow to Russia’s space program , which has been plagued by malfunctions, crashes and failed launchings. The failure was particularly glaring because it came just hours after NASA’s successful landing of a research probe on Mars . Acknowledging the starkly different outcomes, Deputy Prime Minister Dmitri O. Rogozin, who oversees Russia’s military industry, suggested in a Twitter post that the national space agency, Roscosmos, was struggling because of aging leadership. “As long as the youngest Roscosmos director is 62, we can only dream of Mars rovers,” Mr. Rogozin said. The cause of the failure is under investigation, officials said. The satellites, worth about $45 million, were intended to provide telecommunications services for Indonesian and Russian customers. They were carried by a Proton rocket, with a Briz-M booster, launched from Russia’s Baikonur space center in Kazakhstan. During the launching, the Briz-M booster activated as scheduled but switched off after only seven seconds instead of the more than 18 minutes needed to propel the satellites into the proper orbit, Roscosmos said in a statement. The booster and the two satellites have “not been detected on the transition orbit,” the space agency said, but rather “from the interim emergency orbit,” indicating a failure. A Roscosmos spokesman said that space experts worldwide would monitor the lost satellites and that at least for the moment, they posed no danger to the International Space Station. “We have many years of successful experience in ensuring the safety of the station,” the spokesman said. A similar malfunction with the Briz-M booster last August resulted in the loss of another communications satellite, which floated in space until March, when Russian scientists redirected it into the Pacific Ocean. Aleksandr Zheleznyakov, a scientist with the Federation of Russian Cosmonautics, said the latest mishap was “a considerable blow to the industry’s image, particularly taking into account our many setbacks in the last couple of years.” One of the lost satellites, called the Telekom-3, was the first Russian-made satellite bought by Indonesia. In May, a Russian-made Sukhoi Superjet 100 airliner crashed in Indonesia during a demonstration flight for potential buyers.

Russia
Rocket Science and Propulsion
Space
Satellites


After Political Appointment in Bulgaria, Rage Boils Over

Abstract: SOFIA, Bulgaria — Delyan Peevski’s mother used to head the national lottery and leads a growing media empire with strong political and economic connections in this small, impoverished and notoriously corrupt Balkan nation. So perhaps it was not surprising that the appointment of Mr. Peevski, 32, to head the powerful State Agency for National Security sparked protests that have been attended by thousands every day over the past two weeks and show no sign of losing steam. Mr. Peevski, whose political and business career started at the tender age of 21 — when in his second year at law school he became head of Bulgaria’s large Black Sea port at Varna — resigned just a day after his appointment on June 14. But for opponents of the Socialist-led government that appointed him, the die was cast. The shaky government, itself a product of elections held after popular protests last winter forced its predecessors from office, has not recovered. Speculation is rampant that it, too, will resign, bringing further instability to the poorest nation in the 27-country European Union. Many Bulgarians are outraged that a figure like Mr. Peevski was placed in a sensitive state position in charge of fighting the most serious crimes, a job that includes access to classified information and the power to order arrests and wiretaps. “If you read the biography of Peevski, he personifies all the problems of Bulgaria,” Pavel Antonov, 40, said at a recent protest, referring to corruption, nepotism, organized crime and the abuse of state power. “He has a very ugly personality: his way of speaking, his behavior, his arrogance,” Mr. Antonov said. “It’s galvanized the people.” In his defense, Mr. Peevski released a letter to the news media after he resigned, accusing the previous government of orchestrating opposition to his appointment to fend off “the inevitable disclosures” by the new administration. “For me, power is not a goal in itself,” he wrote. Officials from the previous government had criminal origins and were running scared, he charged. “This is why they took the road of destruction and singled me out, because they know that I am a person capable of opposing them efficiently,” he wrote. Mr. Peevski declined to comment to the International Herald Tribune, as did his political party, the Movement for Rights and Freedoms, or M.R.F. After law school, Mr. Peevski became at age 25 deputy minister of disaster management policy. The prime minister fired him after a media scandal and allegations of corruption. While prosecutors started an investigation into possible abuse of office, no charges were ever brought. (The European Commission has long criticized Bulgaria for failing to prosecute a single high-level public official.) At 28, Mr. Peevski was elected to his first term as a deputy in Parliament. Mr. Peevski helps run his mother’s media empire, which includes roughly 40 percent of the print market in Bulgaria, the biggest printing press in the country, the fourth-largest television broadcaster, the distribution company for about 80 percent of the country’s newspapers and many other media outlets, according to industry watchers. While Mr. Peevski owns no companies, according to the Bulgarian commercial register, his mother, Irena Krusteva, the former head of the national lottery, has a role in dozens of media companies. According to Mr. Peevski’s 2011 financial declaration, required for those who hold public office, he had about €30,000, or $39,000, in a bank account and no other wealth or property to declare. He was absent from 92 percent of legislative sessions from 2009 to 2013 and never proposed any legislation or asked ministers any questions, according to parliamentary records. Mr. Peevski and his mother are tied to the economic group around Corporate Commercial Bank, whose assets are valued at some €5 billion. A week before Mr. Peevski was elected to his security post by the Parliament, the law for the position was changed in an apparent attempt to qualify him despite no intelligence experience and just seven months in the state investigation service. Deputies from the Bulgarian Socialist Party were informed of Mr. Peevski’s candidacy only 30 minutes before they were pressed to vote for him, said Georgi Kadiev, one of four Socialist lawmakers who abstained. “As members of Parliament we are supposed to protect national security,” Mr. Kadiev said in an interview. “Instead, we ourselves became threats to national security.” “Peevski represents a typical example of state capture by oligarchs,” said Philip Gounev, a corruption expert at the Center for the Study of Democracy in Sofia, an independent policy group. “The only difference in his case is that the example is much more visible.” According to Mr. Gounev, the economic group around Corporate Commercial Bank wields uncontrolled influence over the state and state-owned companies, attacking opponents and giving favorable media coverage to allies. “You keep your money in our bank and we support you in the media,” Mr. Gounev said, charging that this practice had prevailed “for three governments in a row.” A former reporter who worked for Mr. Peevski said that his employer seemed to understand the paper where he worked only as a business valuable for pressuring foes. The reporter, who insisted on anonymity for fear of repercussions in Bulgaria’s small media industry, said however that Mr. Peevski, surrounded by up to 20 bodyguards, was an efficient manager who frequently picked up the tab for entertainment and made an impression. Haralan Alexandrov, a social anthropologist at New Bulgarian University, said one factor feeding the angry public opposition to Mr. Peevski as security chief was that he represents “a very old and well-established image from the collective subconscious: the evil capitalist.” His beefy physique feeds the resemblance to “the exploiter capitalist” of old Communist-era cartoons, Mr. Alexandrov said. Georgi Kantchev contributed reporting.

Bulgaria
Corruption
Military
Appointments and Executive Changes
Nepotism