Displays of Hispanic Talent, From the Folkloric to the Contemporary

Abstract: Several exhibitions of Hispanic art and artists are on display across Long Island, flickering softly in the shadows of the continuing political debate on immigration policy. "Baile y Música: Preserving Hispanic Culture on Long Island," at the Hofstra Museum through Aug. 18, is the most substantial of these quietly opportune displays of talent and heritage. Part of a university-sponsored research project, the exhibition, though large, with more than 85 items, is more like a sampler than an exhaustive survey. Its predominant focus is the activities of several important Hispanic musical and dance groups that reside on Long Island. Since music is an art form that elicits first and foremost an emotional response, its parameters are not visible artifacts but ways of feeling — sometimes tender, sometimes disquieting. It is the same with the displays in this exhibition, which are often less remarkable as aesthetic objects than as starters for thought. Grouped mostly by country, the material includes traditional musical instruments, folkloric costumes, body adornment, sheet music, photographs and music-related books, fliers, posters and other bric-a-brac. The most eye-catching items are the folkloric costumes and the musical instruments. A tall wooden harp from Colombia, its construction radically improvised, has a base and soundboard made of soft rainforest timber while a bit of old balustrade forms the pillar (mounted onto the soundboard) and legs. Pavelid Castaneda from La Familia Castaneda, one of the more celebrated Hispanic musical groups based on Long Island, brought the harp with him from Colombia in 1992. A traditional Paraguayan skirt and blouse were lent to the exhibition by Berta Gauto, founder of the Paraguayan dance troupe Panambi Vera. These days she runs a beauty salon in Mineola, but her dance troupe has given more than 125 performances across the United States since 1995, including several at the United Nations. Ms. Gauto no longer performs, but her two daughters are part of the troupe. Nearby, photographs show members of Panambi Vera performing traditional Paraguayan dances, like La Galopera, in which a woman dances while balancing several bottles on her head. Hispanic people have been migrating to Long Island in large numbers since the 1930's and 40's, establishing themselves in communities like Brentwood, Long Beach, Bay Shore and Glen Cove. They came initially for the cheap land and steady work at places like Grumman, the aircraft manufacturer, and Pilgrim State Hospital. There are still many Hispanics in these places, although the population has since fanned out all over the Island. The earliest material in the exhibition comes from the 1970's. It is a series of photographs of the Long Island-based group Los Macondos de Colombia performing at a television studio in New Jersey, circa 1971, and, from the same era, at the Plaza Theater in Queens. While much of the material in the exhibition embodies values and traditions inherited from the past, honoring and celebrating that heritage, several new gallery exhibitions are dedicated to the work of contemporary Hispanic artists. The latest architectural paintings of the Brazilian artist Fernando Vignoli will be on display at the Vignoli Gallery in Sag Harbor throughout the summer, but there are only a few days left to catch the delightful exhibition at Gallery Solar in East Hampton, where three artists of Hispanic descent have made art from stones. Gustavo Souto paints forms and figures composed of sensual arrangements of stones. Jessica Cuni-Applebee transforms her stone subjects into bubbling, cell-like organisms, and Miquel Salom invests stones with sacredness by wrapping them in bright orange cloth, recalling the color of Buddhist robes. Solar is an intimate cavelike space in the basement of a private residence on a suburban street. It is run by Esperanza Leon, a Venezuelan who moved to the United States with her family when she was 4. Her gallery specializes in showing artists of Hispanic descent, as well as traditional Latin American jewelry, pottery and textiles. The stone exhibit ends on Thursday and will be followed by a show by Maria Schon, a Venezuelan painter who now resides in Sagaponack. At the Boltax Gallery on Shelter Island, photographs by Juan Doffo, a well-regarded Argentine painter and photographer, will be on display through Monday. The photographs document performances with fire undertaken in fields around the small, rural Argentine town of Mechita. The townsfolk also play a part in the artwork, helping the artist to light fires and posing in ritualistic arrangements for photographs — a collaboration that, Mr. Doffo has said, is as important as the photographic outcome.


Holding Howard in Check, Thunder Open With a Win

Abstract: Kevin Durant scored 30 points to help the Oklahoma City Thunder to 97-89 season-opening victory over the visiting Orlando Magic on Sunday night. Durant led the league in scoring the past two seasons, including last season, when he averaged 27.7 points a game. On Sunday, he shot 11 of 19 from the field and added 5 rebounds and 6 assists. James Harden added 19 points, and the Thunder held the Orlando star Dwight Howard to 11 points. The Thunder lost to Dallas last season in the Western Conference finals, but they are expected to be one of the league’s top teams this season. They led throughout, were ahead by 18 at the end of the third quarter and really were never in danger of losing. Meanwhile, the Magic looked like a team that was still dealing with the distraction of Howard and his trade demands, which have dominated the headlines in Orlando since the lockout ended. N.B.A. Commissioner David Stern weighed in on the Howard situation Sunday, saying before the game: “That’s the beauty of the soap opera. How it plays out, we’ll wait and see.” Oklahoma City center Kendrick Perkins did a good job on Howard, an All-Star who averaged more than 22 points a game last year and shot 59 percent for the season. And though Howard struggled to score, he did have 15 rebounds. A 13-2 run in the second quarter, after Durant and Russell Westbrook checked back in following a brief rest, helped the Thunder open a 17-point lead. They led, 55-41, at halftime behind 14 points from Durant. Ryan Anderson scored 25 points and Jameer Nelson added 18 for the Magic, who shot 37 percent from the field and had 18 turnovers. CLIPPERS 105, WARRIORS 86 The prize acquisition Chris Paul had 20 points and 9 assists in his much-anticipated Clippers debut, Blake Griffin added 22 points and 7 rebounds and visiting Los Angeles beat the Golden State Warriors to spoil Mark Jackson’s opener as a first-time coach. Monta Ellis had 15 points and 8 assists after his grandmother’s death earlier in the day in Mississippi, and David Lee added 21 points and 12 rebounds for the Warriors, who cut the Clippers’ lead to 78-77 with 9:35 left on Brandon Rush’s 3-pointer before Los Angeles pulled away. It was hardly a spectacular opener for Paul and Company, though Coach Vinny Del Negro certainly will take a methodical win any day. These new-look Clippers hope to shine in Los Angeles, perhaps no longer as second fiddle to the Lakers. JACKSON-MULLIN REUNION The friendship of Chris Mullin and Mark Jackson began in their days as high school stars in Brooklyn, and endured through their time as teammates at St. John’s and then through lengthy N.B.A. careers that included a three-season stint together in Indiana. That was why it meant so much to both men that Mullin worked with the ESPN broadcasting crew for Jackson’s coaching debut with the Golden State Warriors on Sunday night. “To me, it’s fun for that reason to watch Mark coach his first game,” Mullin said. “I would have been watching, anyway. So to come and do it here and get a closer look, it’s even better.” Mullin’s ESPN colleagues, Jeff Van Gundy and Mike Breen, pulled off a remarkable doubleheader. They began their day in Dallas calling Miami’s 105-94 win over the Mavericks. They then hopped a charter flight to the Bay Area for Jackson’s first game, the fifth game of the league’s marathon opening day schedule.

Oklahoma City Thunder
Orlando Magic
Basketball
Howard Dwight
Durant Kevin
National Basketball Assn


A Polish E.U. Leader Seeks Middle Ground in a Dispute With Poland

Abstract: BRUSSELS — As president of the European Council — the group representing the European Union’s often-clashing 28 leaders — Donald Tusk is forever promoting a balance between national sovereignty on one hand and common values and goals on the other. On Monday, his challenge was especially personal. Mr. Tusk is a former prime minister of Poland and a former leader of the center-right Civic Platform party, which was voted out of power last year and replaced by the right-wing Law and Justice party. Visiting him in Brussels was President Andrzej Duda of Poland, who was there to discuss issues that included a European Commission investigation begun last week into whether Mr. Duda’s new government in Warsaw poses a threat to free expression and an independent judiciary. Speaking at a news conference with Mr. Duda, Mr. Tusk tried to find middle ground. He suggested that the commission, the European Union’s executive agency in Brussels, may have been too quick to begin the investigation in the wake of a controversy over moves by the Polish government to pack the judiciary with its appointees and take control of the state broadcasting system. He reassured Mr. Duda that there was no conspiracy against Warsaw by officials in Brussels. He said some of the criticism of Poland had been overdone, and that Standard & Poor’s, the ratings agency, had miscalculated in downgrading the country’s long-term foreign currency credit rating. The “bad narrative” about Poland had gone too far, he said. “If somebody uses too-strong words or takes actions that do not entirely match the Western European community of values,” that person “has to be ready for a strong reaction,” Mr. Tusk said. “However, this reaction cannot be hysterical.” At the same time, Mr. Tusk invoked “Star Wars” imagery to warn Mr. Duda about allowing Poland to go too far down a path toward authoritarian rule . “We were talking about going back to the light side of Europe and going out of this dark politics imposed on us by a foreign state,” said Mr. Tusk, recalling a campaign by Polish trade unions three decades ago that helped weaken the Soviet Union. “We need to protect this historical event that was us joining the light side,” said Mr. Tusk, adding in an aside to Mr. Duda that he was alluding to “science fiction” movies both had probably seen. “I want to tell you in this context that there is always time to move to the light side of the Force,” said Mr. Tusk, again apparently addressing Mr. Duda. That, Mr. Tusk said, had been the pattern of “Polish history in recent decades.” Mr. Duda, who took office in November, reiterated that “media creations” had misrepresented his government’s intentions, and he warned against “unnecessary” criticism. The changes in Poland were part of a normal sequence of events after an election and change of government, Mr. Duda said. Treading a fine line between criticizing the government in Warsaw while protecting the country from more scrutiny, Mr. Tusk said that no formal debate on the state of democracy was needed at the level of European Union leaders at their next summit meeting in Brussels, where the main topic would be reaching a deal with Prime Minister David Cameron on Britain’s future in the bloc. Aleksander Smolar, president of the Stefan Batory Foundation in Warsaw, which promotes civic issues, said that the tension was tempered by the otherwise conciliatory tone taken by Mr. Tusk and Mr. Duda. “President Duda said that Poland has greatly benefited from being a member of the E.U. — quite an unusual statement for a politician from Law and Justice — whereas Mr. Tusk distanced himself from the decision of the European Commission to check if Poland violates the union’s laws,” Mr. Smolar said. On the other hand, Mr. Smolar said, Mr. Tusk did stress that concerns in Brussels about Poland are justified. “With his reference to ‘Star Wars,’ he suggested that Poland has crossed over to the dark side,” Mr. Smolar said. “But his ironic comments were not confrontational. They were rather little digs at President Duda and Jaroslaw Kaczynski, designed to let everyone know that despite Mr. Tusk’s conciliatory tone, he is still very much aware of the real problems with the current government.” Mr. Kaczynski is the leader of Law and Justice. Janusz Reiter, a former ambassador and the founder of the Center for International Relations in Warsaw, said Law and Justice and Mr. Duda had started a campaign to ease the tension between Poland and the European Commission. In the last couple of days, Mr. Duda and other Law and Justice officials in Brussels have written articles in which they have argued that democracy in Poland is not in any danger. Prime Minister Beata Szydlo, who, like Mr. Duda, is a member of Law and Justice, will go to Strasbourg, France, on Tuesday to defend her government’s recent actions before the European Parliament. “It’s an attempt at de-escalation of this conflict after some matters have been blown out of proportions,” Mr. Reiter said. “It’s not the beginning of love but rather a realization that, as things stand today, it will not be possible to resolve this conflict in a way that would benefit anyone.” Both of the biggest television channels in Poland — one government-controlled, the other private — mostly stressed the positive and conciliatory outcome of the meeting, though Mr. Tusk’s pointed, ironic comments did not go unnoticed. In its coverage of the meeting, Gazeta Wyborcza, one of the country’s leading newspapers and a supporter of the previous government, said Mr. Tusk had done as much as he could under the circumstances to telegraph his disapproval of some of the new government’s early moves. “During the press conference, the president of the European Council was as harsh as the convention and his office allowed him,” the paper said. However, the bulk of the story concentrated on how Mr. Tusk and Mr. Duda seemed eager to cool tensions and find some middle ground, appealing to officials in both Warsaw and Brussels to avoid further confrontation.

European Commission
EU
Donald Tusk
Poland
Andrzej Duda
Law and Justice Poland


West Tells Russia It Won't Press to Penalize Iran Now

Abstract: WASHINGTON, Jan. 18 - The United States and Europe, seeking Russia's help in bringing Iran's nuclear activities before the United Nations Security Council for review, have assured Russian officials that they are not pressing for sanctions against Iran right now, American and European diplomats said Wednesday. The diplomats said that instead they were pursuing a limited effort to convene a Security Council debate and send the matter back to the International Atomic Energy Agency, the United Nations' nuclear monitor, for further efforts to get Iran to suspend uranium activities that the West suspects are part of a nuclear weapons program. "We are not seeking a sanction mechanism at this moment," a European diplomat said. "We are pursuing a gradual approach. We are trying to tell Iran that what the I.A.E.A. is telling them is exactly what the Security Council thinks. It's an empowering process for the I.A.E.A." European diplomats said the Council could act either by passing a resolution or by allowing its president to issue a declaration in its name. The West's incremental approach is a response to Russian and Chinese reluctance to press for immediate sanctions, despite their concern that Iran has broken its commitment to suspend uranium enrichment activities. The Russians and Chinese say they do not want Iran to retaliate by breaking off talks and forcing international inspectors to leave the country. On the other hand, some diplomats eager to press Iran on nuclear matters said they were concerned that the steps being contemplated might be too small to be taken seriously in Tehran. The diplomats who described the situation, from several nations, spoke on the condition of anonymity so that they could speak more freely while the negotiations continue. The Bush administration has said for two years that its ultimate objective is to bring Iran before the Security Council for possible censure or sanctions. But it has proceeded slowly, deferring to European efforts to negotiate. That deference is still part of the American approach despite Iran's recent actions. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, after meeting with Javier Solana, the chief European Union envoy, said Wednesday that "it is now important for the I.A.E.A. board of governors to act so that Iran knows that the international community will not tolerate its continued acting with impunity against the interests of the international community." Afterward, Mr. Solana said the Europeans and the United States were considering a Russian proposal presented as an alternative to the possible referral of Iran's case to the Security Council by the atomic energy agency. The Russian proposal was to have the Security Council take up Iran, but without a formal "referral" from the agency. Whether or not there is a formal referral from the agency is technical but significant, Mr. Solana said. Without a referral, the Security Council could debate the matter but not consider sanctions. "A referral to the Security Council is in itself a very important decision," Mr. Solana said, suggesting that the Russian idea did not go far enough. He said that there was "nothing fundamentally wrong" with the Russian idea but that it implied too much of a delay. "Referral means something which has legal consequences for the relationship of this dossier to the Security Council," he said. The European and American approach has been codified in a draft resolution to be presented to the International Atomic Energy Agency for possible adoption at an emergency meeting on Feb. 2. The Western timetable is for Iran to be "referred" at that meeting and then considered at the Security Council and then referred back to the atomic agency. The Russian proposal, by contrast, calls for no formal action by the atomic agency on Feb. 2, but some kind of debate at the Security Council in February, possibly with the agency director, Mohamed ElBaradei, taking part. Then the agency could take up the subject of Iran in March. American and European officials said they did not feel comfortable putting off the entire matter until March. Iran, many Western experts say, is perhaps only a year or two away from developing the capacity to operate centrifuges that enrich uranium and take other steps enabling it to make a nuclear weapon. Mr. Solana and Ms. Rice also reiterated Wednesday that they would not accept Iran's latest offer to talk about its nuclear program unless it returned to a full suspension of its uranium enrichment activities. It was Iran that effectively cut off negotiations by breaking the moratorium on enrichment, Ms. Rice said, adding, "As that condition exists, I am sensing from the Europeans that there's not much to talk about." Britain, France and Germany, also representing Europe, have engaged in talks for a year with the objective of persuading Iran to suspend and then shut down its uranium processing and suspected weapons-making activities in return for economic, political and security benefits from the West.

RUSSIA
IRAN
UNITED STATES INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS
ATOMIC ENERGY


American Cyclist Sarah Hammer Wins Her Fifth Gold

Abstract: Sarah Hammer of the United States won her fifth career gold medal in the 3,000-meter individual pursuit at the track cycling world championships in Minsk, Belarus. Hammer had won consecutive titles in the women’s individual pursuit twice, in 2006-7 and in 2010-11.

Track Cycling
Belarus
Biking
Sarah Hammer


Jim Boeheim’s Best and Worst Season at Syracuse

Abstract: SYRACUSE — Jim Boeheim has been at Syracuse long enough to have played in the Orange backcourt with Dave Bing, Detroit’s mayor, and served as a resident adviser in Sadler Hall for Tom Coughlin, the Giants’ Super Bowl -winning coach. In 1962, Boeheim came to Syracuse University and essentially never left, going from invited walk-on to assistant to head coach. Along the way, he has won nearly 900 games and experienced the ecstasy-to-agony pendulum that has ranged from winning the national championship in 2003 to dealing with N.C.A.A. probation and a postseason ban in the early 1990s. When Boeheim leads top-seeded Syracuse into the Big East tournament quarterfinals against Connecticut on Thursday, he does so with what may be the best team in his 36-year tenure. But this sun-kissed 30-1 record, the best in Syracuse history and one that has produced a No. 2 national ranking, has been achieved against the backdrop of perhaps Boeheim’s most difficult season off the court. In November, Syracuse fired the associate head coach Bernie Fine , Boeheim’s lifelong friend and longtime assistant, after multiple accusations of child molesting surfaced, igniting perhaps the biggest sports scandal in Syracuse history. Boeheim initially had harsh words for Fine’s accusers, which became part of a lawsuit against Boeheim and the university, and he later delivered a long apology. The university also admitted this week, in the wake of a Yahoo Sports report , that it was under N.C.A.A. investigation for its handling of drug-testing issues. Boeheim, 67, made it clear in an interview two weeks ago that his future does not depend on the way this season ends — be it an N.C.A.A. tournament upset or another national title. “It would have no effect on it,” Boeheim said when asked if he would retire if the Orange won the national title this year. “No effect. Nothing that happens like that will have any effect on what I decide.” While he has evolved and adapted, Boeheim has done his best to keep things simple — from his team’s running just a handful of plays to his not having a computer and having never sent an e-mail. The Syracuse assistant Mike Hopkins, the Orange’s coach in waiting, said Boeheim had never discussed retirement with him. With four children, including three in junior high school, numerous charitable ventures and years of service to USA Basketball, Boeheim said he would not lack for activities when he does leave the bench. “If I retired, I’d have plenty to do,” he said. “That’s why I’m not worried about retirement. If I did retire, I know I’d have a lot to do. I just don’t think about it. It’s been there for 10 years, who knows how long.” With federal officials scrutinizing the program in the Fine investigation, a high-profile lawyer releasing unflattering information in the defamation lawsuit against him and the N.C.A.A. looking into how the university handled its drug tests, there is a juxtaposition between Syracuse’s juggernaut on the court and the uncertainty off it. When asked if the downfall of Joe Paterno’s coaching career or the problems that Connecticut Coach Jim Calhoun has endured this season had made him consider his own legacy, Boeheim soundly dismissed the notion. “Not at all,” he said. “I don’t worry about any of that. I don’t care what you think or anyone else thinks. When I leave, I’ll leave, and I don’t care if it’s good reviews or bad reviews. I think legacy and tainted and all that is a bunch of bull. All that matters is what you affected when you were there.” Boeheim said that Bobby Bowden having a bad final season, Willie Mays sputtering at the end of his career or Joe Montana playing a season in Kansas City should not affect how they are viewed. “That’s all media nonsense,” he said. “It doesn’t matter. You do the best you can for as long as you can. Whenever it ends, it ends. If it ends on a high note, that’s nice. If it ends on a medium note or a bad note, so be it. That’s the way that it is. I don’t even think about it.” The USA Basketball chairman, Jerry Colangelo , said he admired how Boeheim, one of that program’s most “loyal and consistent supporters,” handled this season. Hopkins said that in the midst of the allegations about Fine in November, Boeheim called an emotional 10-minute meeting in which he laid out what the team wanted and needed to do. Hopkins said that Boeheim was clear and concise, as if his message were “italicized, bold printed and underlined.” Hopkins said Boeheim’s message centered on sticking together: “All we have to do is bond together, play, and this isn’t about you guys.” Louisville Coach Rick Pitino said the result was what he saw as the best team in Boeheim’s career, calling it comparable to the 1986-87 national finalist that defeated Pitino’s Providence team three times. That Syracuse team included Derrick Coleman, Sherman Douglas and Rony Seikaly. “I think this is his best team,” Pitino said. “He’s never had such a great bench and never had a guy coming off the bench like Dion Waiters. He’s got great defense and shot-blocking and terrific guard play.” Boeheim is always hesitant to compare teams, saying that they are simply not as good as they were in the 1980s, when they could have three or four future N.B.A. players. What Boeheim did say was that this team, with Waiters, C. J. Fair, Brandon Triche, Scoop Jardine, Kris Joseph and Fab Melo, had a rare element of depth. “I think that we have six guys capable of scoring 20,” Boeheim said. “I don’t think many teams have that.” The Orange’s defense, an aggressive 2-3 zone, may be its strength. Syracuse ranks No. 10 nationally in field-goal defense (38.4 percent) and No. 22 in 3-point field goal defense (30.2 percent). Hopkins said that those numbers were on par with those of Syracuse’s title team in 2003 and that Boeheim does not get credit for how his zone has evolved. Boeheim said: “Things change every year. It may look simple, but it’s not.” As his 36th and perhaps most tumultuous season enters its final stretch, Boeheim said he was focused on only his team. “There’s nothing else,” Boeheim said, alluding to the Fine controversy. “This is the only thing that I’m thinking about. I haven’t thought about anything. That was a week. That’s it. It will play itself out.”

Basketball (College)
Boeheim Jim
Syracuse University
Coaches and Managers
Basketball
College Athletics


Vitamin-Packed With Promises

Abstract: In the late 1800s a disfiguring and often fatal disease became epidemic in the South. Called pellagra (Italian for “rough skin”), it caused diarrhea, mental confusion, and severe scaling and flaking of the skin. By 1911, pellagra had become the leading cause of death in asylums. Eventually, the Public Health Service dispatched the physician Joseph Goldberger to determine its cause. At the time, a “pellagra germ” was the leading suspect, but Goldberger dismissed this hypothesis after observing that the cases didn’t fit an infectious disease pattern. Pellagra was prevalent among people who depended on corn as a staple, and he proposed a dietary cause. Goldberger became so sure of his theory that he hosted “filth parties” where he and a few of his medical colleagues downed pills filled with urine, feces and dried skin flakes taken from people with pellagra to prove that the disease was not contagious. Despite such experiments (which sickened none of the participants), scientists and politicians remained unconvinced. It wasn’t until 1937 — eight years after Goldberger’s death — that niacin, or vitamin B3, was isolated and identified as the cure. Diets reliant on corn make people susceptible to a deficiency of niacin. Catherine Price recounts the story of how science cracked the pellagra mystery in “Vitamania,” her absorbing and meticulously researched history of the beginnings and causes of our obsession with vitamins and nutrition. After more than a century of research, “scientists still don’t fully understand all the nuances of what vitamins do in our bodies, how they do it, or what the long-term effects of moderate deficiencies might be,” she writes. One thing is certain: No matter how poor your diet, it is virtually impossible to become truly vitamin-deficient in the United States these days, Ms. Price says, because our processed foods are so universally enriched and fortified with synthetic vitamins. The majority of these additives are manufactured in China, and without them, much of our food would be devoid of nutritional value. Vitamins are typically flavorless and invisible, so we depend on experts and product labels to tell us which ones are contained in an item and which foods we should consider healthy. Our dependence on labels “has primed us to accept the amazing array of health claims, advertisements and advice that we encounter each day,” Ms. Price writes. We eagerly gobble up foods claiming that added vitamins and dietary chemicals will “support a healthy metabolism,” but few stop to ask what that means or how it has been proved: “As long as advertisements employ the magic word science, we are willing to accept claims that otherwise might crack under the pressure of common sense.” Image Vitamania: Our Obsessive Quest for Nutritional Perfection By Catherine Price. Penguin Press. 318 pages. $27.95 Credit Alessandra Montalto/The New York Times On a trip to her local GNC store, Ms. Price finds Natural Curves, a product that promises to deliver “natural bust enhancement” with a “100% natural” “balanced formula for maximum results.” A search of the medical literature turns up no evidence that the proprietary blend of herbs listed on the bottle could make good on the product’s promises. Nor are there rigorous studies to support claims made by a sea buckthorn product to soothe the author’s sensitive skin. Despite the paucity of evidence, even medical experts can fall into marketing traps. Ms. Price’s physical therapist is flabbergasted when she tells him that his favorite supplement pills aren’t approved by the Food and Drug Administration, and he is not alone. A study in 2007 found that a third of doctors didn’t know that dietary supplements aren’t subject to F.D.A. approval or safety testing. Given the lack of oversight, it is not terribly surprising that a recent investigation by the New York attorney general’s office found that a large number of the herbal supplements on store shelves did not contain the ingredients listed on the label. Several incidents have highlighted a need for greater oversight: In the 1990s, contaminated L-tryptophan supplements killed 40 people and harmed more than 1,550 others. But even toothless regulatory proposals have met fierce pushback from the supplements industry. An amendment to the Federal Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act in 1976 prohibits the F.D.A. from limiting the potency of vitamins and minerals or regulating them as drugs. The Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act of 1994 helped ensure that supplement makers would not be required to demonstrate that their products were safe or effective. When the F.D.A. attempted to ban unsubstantiated claims from supplement labels, a trade group called the National Health Alliance organized a huge — and, Ms. Price argues, deceptive — letter-writing campaign, despite the fact that the proposed rules would have regulated only the labels, not the products themselves. The campaign enlisted employees and customers of 10,000 or so health food stores to write Congress. An estimated two million letters were sent. Ms. Price understands why. Doctors she had seen for her skin problem couldn’t agree on a diagnosis, “let alone a treatment,” she writes. The promises made on the sea buckthorn packaging, by contrast, were confident and comforting. What supplement peddlers are really selling is hope, Ms. Price argues — a counter to the uncertainty that so often accompanies real science.

Diet and Herbal Supplements
Vitamin
Joseph Goldberger
Niacin
Books
Catherine Price
Vitamania


Eastern Skiing Benefits From Tight Times and Plenty of Snow

Abstract: LINCOLN, N.H. — The economy may be in the doldrums, but New England ski resorts are having a great year, buoyed by plenty of snow and proximity to major metropolitan areas. “With the financial crunch, I think we’re actually benefiting in that people aren’t going on longer vacations or getting on an airplane,” said Karl Stone, a spokesman for Ski New Hampshire, which represents the state’s ski areas. “Because the snow has been so good, people are saying, ‘Why should I fly out West when we just got 17 inches of snow in New Hampshire.’ ” Most ski areas in the East are reporting near-record skier visits and hotel bookings well above average. But in the West, many resorts are reporting a drop in visitors. Snowfall in the Northeast was above average this year, including a large storm in early March, conditions that historically drive up skier traffic. Michael Berry, president of the National Ski Areas Association, and Eastern ski-area operators say that New England ski country’s proximity to major metropolitan areas — two hours by car from Boston, four hours from New York and six hours from Philadelphia — coupled with ski and stay deals, have also made skiing an attractive, less expensive winter getaway. “What’s been most surprising is how strong the season has been,” said Patrick Corso, president of the Mount Washington resort in Bretton Woods , N.H. During the third week in February the resort was up 14 percent in skier visits and 9 percent in revenue over last year, which set records thanks to ample snow. At Cannon Mountain in Franconia, N.H., sales of season passes were up 100 percent before the ski season started — and while gas prices were still high. The resort is enticing budget-conscious skiers with a deal offering two lift tickets for the price of one that is valid Tuesdays and Thursdays. At Sugarbush in Warren, Vt., revenue is up 15 percent this year, a “shocking” figure, said J. J. Toland, a resort spokesman. Sales of season passes are up 11 percent, and traffic to the resort’s Web site jumped 28 percent during a week in which the mountain received two feet of snow. “For some,” Mr. Toland said, skiing and snowboarding “are a passion, versus an amenity or an indulgency.” “People will go out one night less, or they won’t go out to dinner or they won’t go to the movies so they can go skiing for a day,” he said. “I think people are tightening their belt in that regard.” Skiers staying closer to home is having an adverse affect on some resorts in the West. In Colorado, Vail Resorts reported this week that skier visits were down 5.1 percent for the year, and lodging occupancy dropped by 13.9 percent. Rob Katz, the chief executive of Vail Resorts, is forgoing a salary next year and will take a 15 percent pay cut the following year. Skier visits are down about 7.5 percent at Colorado resorts, said Ari Stiller-Shulman, a spokesman for Colorado Ski Country USA, which represents 22 of the state’s resorts. Not all Eastern resorts are without a few trouble spots. Here at Loon Mountain, even though the lift lines were jammed on a recent Saturday, overall skier visits are down, but a strong February vacation week helped save the season. Mr. Corso said he expected to end the season on a positive note, as the resort received new snow in the first week in March. “I don’t think any of us predicted this,” he said. “The season isn’t over, but, boy, has it been a surprise.”

Skiing
Travel and Vacations
New England Patriots
Recession and Depression


On Avandia, a Niche Strategy Now Under Stress

Abstract: Could a widely praised approach to drug marketing now be at risk of backfiring? That is a question confronting GlaxoSmithKline and its diabetes treatment Avandia, which is now clouded by concerns over the drug’s safety. Della Reese, the jazz singer and actress, seemed a natural choice to star in ads for Avandia, when Glaxo signed her on in 2004. Not only does Ms. Reese have broad appeal, known most recently for her role in the television series “Touched by an Angel,” but she has Type 2 diabetes. And while she was Avandia’s main spokeswoman, from 2004 to 2006, Ms. Reese represented an important target in Avandia’s marketing: African-American consumers. Because Type 2 diabetes is a disease twice as likely to affect black Americans as non-Hispanic white people in this country, Avandia’s maker, GlaxoSmithKline, has long placed a marketing focus on African-Americans — much more so than any other maker of diabetes drugs, according to industry executives. In the eight years that Avandia has been for sale, becoming a $3-billion-a-year worldwide best seller, Glaxo’s African-American focus in the United States has won the company praise in the advertising industry and from some black doctors. They credit the campaigns for putting a friendly face on a drug for a disease that too often goes untreated, particularly among minority groups. But now that Avandia is dogged by safety questions — a Congressional hearing today will address concerns that the drug may increase the risk of heart attacks — some black advertising executives wonder if Glaxo’s advertising strategy could end up working against the company. “Avandia has such a large African-American niche, I’d expect competitors now to step up their outreach to African-Americans,” said Howard Buford, the founder and chief executive of Prime Access, a multicultural advertising agency in New York. Alternatives to Avandia include Byetta, which is marketed by Amylin Pharmaceuticals and Eli Lilly. It and others could benefit if doctors started encouraging patients to drop Avandia. So far, though, many doctors seem to be playing wait and see. Avandia’s main competitor in this country is a drug called Actos, which had a comparable number of total prescriptions written last year, about 11.3 million, according to Verispan, a health care information company based in Yardley, Pa. Actos is made by Takeda Pharmaceuticals of Japan, which does not conduct significant consumer advertising in the United States. A spokesman for Takeda said the company had no plans to increase its advertising to consumers in light of safety concerns about Avandia. So, the competitive issue raised by Mr. Buford could be largely theoretical. Still, Mr. Buford said it would be incongruous if Glaxo’s black outreach did come back to haunt the company, because Glaxo had worked to overcome what he described as a deep distrust of the drug industry among many African-Americans, particularly older people. He said the skepticism traces in part to the notorious Tuskegee syphilis experiment from the 1930’s to 1970’s in which the federal government allowed black sharecroppers to go untreated in order to study the disease’s physical effects. “There’s still a lot of distrust,” Mr. Buford said. And yet, some other ad industry executives said that because Glaxo had helped raise diabetes awareness in recent years among African-Americans, the company might now have a reservoir of good will that it could draw upon. “For them to advertise a drug to African-Americans that could help save lives and provide information, that is important,” said Jo Muse, the chairman and chief creative officer of Muse Communications, a multicultural agency in Hollywood. “Thousands of African-American men, in particular, have been affected in a positive way by direct-to-patient advertising.” A spokeswoman for Glaxo said she could not comment on the company’s marketing strategy. Ahead of today’s hearing by the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform where Moncef Slaoui, Glaxo’s chairman of research and development, is scheduled to testify, the company has been scrambling to address safety questions about Avandia that were raised on May 21 in a New England Journal of Medicine article. The company has posted a video on its Web site featuring an executive, Dr. Anne Phillips, addressing the health concerns. And on Tuesday, the company ran a full-page ad in more than a dozen newspapers, including The New York Times, with an open letter to patients from Dr. Ronald L. Krall, its chief medical officer. “As leaders in diabetes, we understand that managing your Type 2 diabetes is not easy,” the letter said, in part. “We also understand the confusion and concern you may have experienced following recent press coverage about the safety of Avandia. GlaxoSmithKline stands firmly behind Avandia.” Glaxo, which spent a total of $25.7 million on Avandia advertising last year, according to TNS Media Intelligence, has by no means ignored potential white customers. After all, black Americans represent only about 13 percent of the population. And although they are more likely to develop Type 2 diabetes, the number of non-Hispanic white Americans in this country with the disease outnumbers African-American patients, 13.1 million to 3.2 million, according to the American Diabetes Association. Latinos have been another important group for diabetes drugs, and an audience that Glaxo has also made a target with some of its Avandia advertising. The American Diabetes Association does not have national figures on the percentage of Type 2 diabetes patients in this country who are Hispanic. Caucasians featured in Avandia ads have included the actress Jane Seymour, who was in a 2001 television spot, just a few years after she starred in the TV series “Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman.” And currently, a Glaxo-sponsored Web site about health, www.stepitupdiabetes.com , features the white fitness coach Bob Harper, who is the exercise guru on the NBC reality series “The Biggest Loser.” Various Avandia advertisements depicting everyday people feature Caucasians. But there is no disputing that Glaxo has made a special effort to reach African-Americans with its Avandia advertising, ad executives say. “You see in the broad diabetes category an acknowledgment or nod toward the African-American community, but GlaxoSmithKline was definitely a leader and one of the first groups to really use a more targeted effort,” said Croom Lawrence, the vice president for strategy and insight at RTC Relationship Marketing, a direct marketing advertising agency in the WPP Group. “That was really the face of this brand.” And it was a brand-building effort that at least until now had been considered generally effective, as evident in the awards for multicultural marketing in 2001 and 2002 that Glaxo won at the DTC National Conference, an annual conference about marketing drugs to consumers. Generally among marketers, efforts to reach black audiences often include ads featuring African-Americans that run in magazines like Ebony, Essence and Jet or on the Black Entertainment Television network. But those ads do not always run in mainstream media. With Avandia, however, ads featuring a black couple or a black grandfather with his grandson also ran in mass-market magazines like Sports Illustrated, Reader’s Digest and Ladies’ Home Journal. Direct mail and outdoor advertising have also promoted Avandia to potential black patients. And African-Americans appear as prominently, if not more so, than any other group on Avandia’s Web site. Whenever safety questions start clouding a drug, pharmaceutical companies tend to expend most of their crisis-control effort trying to persuade current customers to keep refilling their prescriptions. Any thought of acquiring new patients tends to be deferred until the controversy is resolved. And so, for Glaxo, maintaining Avandia customers will probably involve continuing its strategy of mainstream ads, with an African-American emphasis, outside ad executives said. And some advertising industry executives say Glaxo may now be able to build on a reputation with Avandia for having provided important information to black consumers. “This is an audience that has not had the benefit of advertising in the past,” said Byron E. Lewis, chairman and chief executive of the Uniworld Group, an agency in New York that created the multicultural ads for Avandia from 2001 to 2004. Pharmaceutical companies in general have been seeing a higher return on direct-to-consumer advertising for minority groups, because many of the people in those audiences might not otherwise go to a doctor about a problem, said Mr. Muse of Muse Communications. Dr. Gerald L. DeVaughn, president of the Association of Black Cardiologists, said he was awaiting more evidence before deciding whether to advise his patients to stop taking Avandia in light of the concerns about potential cardiac risks. Patients have not been asking him about the news reports about the suspected risks, Dr. DeVaughn said. While some ad executives said the new concerns about Avandia’s level of cardiac risk may cause Glaxo to lose customers, others said that the company could hold onto many of its black customers if Glaxo is now seen as having effectively communicated the pros and cons of Avandia over the years — and having encouraged people to seek out medical help in their decisions. “None of this exists in a vacuum,” said Mark A. Robertson, the director of business development for UniWorld, the former Avandia agency. “Glaxo has always promoted and motivated people to see their doctors to ask what is best for them.”

Avandia (Drug)
Advertising and Marketing
Blacks
GlaxoSmithKline
Diabetes
Drugs (Pharmaceuticals)
Medicine and Health


Shootout in Acapulco Leaves 18 Dead

Abstract: ACAPULCO, Mexico (Reuters) — Eighteen people were killed in a shootout between drug gangs and soldiers in the Mexican beach resort of Acapulco, the army said Sunday. The gun battle, near tourist hotels in the Pacific Ocean resort, was a further blow to Mexico’s tourism industry, already reeling from cancellations by foreigners scared away by the swine flu epidemic. Gunmen battled troops from a cartel safe house, throwing hand grenades at soldiers who had surrounded them and spraying gunfire into military vehicles and nearby homes. The shooting began late Saturday and ended after midnight. “There were grenade and rocket explosions, and weapons like AK-47s,” said an employee of a nearby hotel. “The fight lasted almost two hours.” Sixteen people suspected of being members of the Beltrán Leyva drug gang were killed, as were two soldiers, including a captain. President Felipe Calderón has staked his presidency on crushing drug gangs, whose turf wars have killed about 2,300 people this year. Some 45,000 troops and federal police officers have been deployed across Mexico. While the clash was several miles away from the main area of high-rise hotels, a resurgence of violence in Acapulco is bad news for the tourism industry. Several years ago rival gangs fought over territory in Acapulco, home to about a million people, but the resort has been relatively free of drug violence in recent years.

Mexico
Drug Abuse and Traffic
Defense and Military Forces
Calderon Felipe
Acapulco (Mexico)
Violence


Elaine's Restaurant Jammed on Its Closing Night

Abstract: Alec Baldwin ate dinner in a packed corner, one table over from the actress Linda Fiorentino, a few steps from the author Gay Talese and dozens of bent elbows away from producers, journalists and others lucky enough to get inside. So it went on Thursday, on the last night at Elaine’s . Elaine Kaufman scraped together $5,000 to buy an Austro-Hungarian bar on Second Avenue that nobody had ever heard of, and transformed the restaurant she opened there in April 1963 into one of the most famous night spots in America, a saloon salon that once attracted the likes of Woody Allen (Table 8), Jacqueline Kennedy (Table 10) and William Styron (Table 4). Forty-eight years later — and nearly six months after Ms. Kaufman’s death at the age of 81 in December — Elaine’s prepared to shut its doors early Friday morning, following a final farewell on Thursday evening that might have felt like a wake, were so many people not having such a good time. The closing of Elaine’s represented the end of not just a restaurant but of something more — an era of the city when writers were as famous as movie stars, when the goings-on at a little spot at 1703 Second Avenue just north of 88th Street became the stuff of legend, or at least headlines. Elaine’s was a place for writers who liked to drink with people who had actually read their books, for actors who liked to drink with writers and for drinkers who liked to drink with writers and actors. Mr. Talese, a longtime regular, once saw gangsters, police commissioners and clergymen order dinner on the same night, though at separate tables. “This is not about Elaine’s,” Mr. Talese said on Thursday, seated at a table with friends. “We’ve said goodbye to Elaine’s. That’s over. This is saying goodbye to one another. The circles of New York, of which there are numerous — one of those circles was Elaine’s, and it brought together people who had next to nothing in common except that they came to Elaine’s.” Elaine’s had struggled in recent years — both in the years before Ms. Kaufman’s death and in the months after it — and there was a bitterness among many on Thursday that the restaurant was bustling on its final night. “For the first 10 days after Elaine’s death, the place was extremely busy,” said the manager who inherited the restaurant, Diane Becker. “Then we went back to the struggle. Customers were gone. As soon as we announced that Elaine’s would close, the restaurant was filled again for the next 10 days, with people joyfully mourning and questioning why, when in reality, it was because they hadn’t been around.” One Saturday night in April, there were fewer than 10 dinners served. This month, Ms. Becker announced that Elaine’s was closing because it was no longer a “viable business,” and that its last night would be Thursday. The two five-story buildings that the restaurant occupies are on the market for $9.5 million. Several offers are being considered, said Neal Sroka, a broker with Prudential Douglas Elliman, which is handling the sale of the buildings. Ms. Becker said that if Elaine’s were to continue, it would have to be in a licensing deal for the trademarked name that would be separate from the purchase of the two buildings. Elaine’s had been the site of weddings (David Black, the novelist and screenwriter), wedding receptions (George Plimpton) and wrestling matches (Norman Mailer and Jerry Leiber, who co-wrote early hits of Elvis Presley). For decades, what happened in Elaine’s not only never stayed in Elaine’s, but often found its way onto the pages of newspapers, magazines and books. At Elaine’s, Frank Sinatra refused to shake the hand of Mario Puzo, the author of “The Godfather.” The New York Post columnist Steve Dunleavy punched Phil Spector, the music producer, in the nose. But much of what made Elaine’s special never made the gossip columns. One night in 2005, Carmine Izzi, a business executive and regular, met Jenine Lepera at Table 1. They married two years later, became close friends of Ms. Kaufman’s and were at Elaine’s on Thursday. By about 11:30 p.m., the mood had shifted. No one was being allowed inside. An angry employee stood on a chair behind the bar, announced that he was quitting and berated Ms. Becker for refusing to allow him to hand out T-shirts he had made. The shirts read: “I closed Elaine’s, 1963 — 2011.” He passed them out anyway, to applause. Early in the evening, two people finished their dinner at a table near Mr. Talese’s and walked past the crowd gathering outside the doors. They were Penny McCool, 48, and Susan Borsellino, 50. Some in the line wondered who they were, or whom they knew. They knew no one: they were tourists from Fort Worth and had never been to Elaine’s before. They just had a reservation.


Union Supports Decision to Impose Tire Tariffs

Abstract: PITTSBURGH — As China and some American companies denounce President Obama ’s decision to impose tariffs on Chinese tires, the Obama administration can take solace that at least one important Democratic constituency is enthusiastically applauding the move. At the A.F.L.-C.I.O. convention in this city haunted by the ghosts of shuttered steel mills, Thea Lee, the labor federation’s chief economist, praised Mr. Obama’s decision, saying it would help preserve American manufacturing. She said a surge in Chinese tire exports had contributed to the shutdown of several American tire factories and the loss of thousands of jobs. “The trade decision was the president’s first down payment on his promise to more effectively enforce trade laws, and it’s very much appreciated,” Ms. Lee said on Monday, a day before Mr. Obama is to speak here at the convention of the nation’s main labor federation. But while union leaders are hailing Mr. Obama for, as they see it, finally standing up to China, he is having to navigate pressures from China, corporate America and the labor movement that are likely to recur in coming trade issues. Mr. Obama’s balancing act will be especially delicate as some of the most vocal unions, like the steelworkers and auto workers, are politically powerful in Midwestern swing states. Last Friday night, Mr. Obama, responding to a complaint by the United Steelworkers , imposed a 35 percent tariff on Chinese tires for cars and light trucks. China quickly responded by threatening to retaliate against American auto products and chicken meat, raising fears of a possible trade war, an especially unwelcome prospect just as the global economy is struggling to recover. But organized labor, having tasted success in this case, is pressing Mr. Obama to take tougher stances on a number of upcoming trade issues. Manufacturing unions, in particular, are pushing for penalties on China’s steel exports, for strong Buy America provisions in future green jobs legislation and for rejecting trade pacts with Colombia and South Korea. The prospect that labor might succeed scares many American companies. For one thing, any of these policies — bound to vex America’s trading partners — could increase chances of a trade war. “Retaliation is definitely a concern,” Jeremie Waterman, senior director for China at the United States Chamber of Commerce, said of Mr. Obama’s tires decision. “Our view is that there are many more American jobs at stake if the United States fails to adopt forward-looking policies on free trade agreements and fails to resist policies like Buy America.” China has deplored the administration’s decision, suggesting it caved to domestic support for protectionism . The Tire Industry Association, which represents American tire retailers, said the decision was ill-advised and would lead to higher prices for consumers. Asserting that the decision would hurt tire retailers, the association said it “believes this was a politically motivated decision that will end up costing more jobs than it saves. These tariffs will not bring back the jobs that the union claims have been lost.” In a speech he gave Monday on Wall Street, Mr. Obama took a nuanced view of trade, saying a healthy economy “depends upon our ability to buy and sell goods in markets across the globe. And make no mistake, this administration is committed to pursuing expanded trade and new trade agreements.” He added, “When, as happened this weekend, we invoke provisions of existing agreements, we do so not to be provocative or to promote self-defeating protectionism. We do so because enforcing trade agreements is part and parcel of maintaining an open and free trading system.” Leo Gerard, president of the United Steelworkers, which filed the trade action over Chinese tires, asserted that trade policy helped the nation lose 5.6 million manufacturing jobs this decade, or nearly a third of the total. His union, which represents steel, tire, paper and chemical workers, has brought repeated trade actions. The steelworkers union got 78,000 workers to write letters to the White House on the China tires issue and more than 50 members of Congress to speak out on it. “We’ve watched almost every major sector we’re privileged to represent get decimated by unfair trade,” Mr. Gerard said. “I hope this position that President Obama took reflects his view that we need to go back to redesign an overall trade policy that works for American workers and not just for American multinationals and Wall Street.” Mr. Obama ordered the tire tariffs after the United States International Trade Commission, an independent government agency, determined that a more than tripling of Chinese tire imports had disrupted the $1.7 billion tire market. It called for imposing tariffs on Chinese tires for three years. President George W. Bush had rejected four similar recommendations from the trade commission, angering organized labor. Last week the Commerce Department, concurring with a commission finding of improper subsidies, said it was imposing duties ranging from 10.9 percent to 30.6 percent on imports of Chinese pipes used to transport oil. The department is also investigating a complaint that Chinese steel manufacturers are selling pipe in the United States at unfairly low prices, with a decision due in November. Fred Bergsten, director of the Peterson Institute for International Economics, an independent think tank, criticized Mr. Obama’s tires decision, partly because he said it came when the administration had taken few steps to expand trade. Even so, he said China had violated trade rules by requiring some foreign-owned tire factories to export a high percentage of their output. “The administration has not really enunciated a trade policy,” Mr. Bergstein said. While noting that “they have indicated rhetorically their opposition to protection,” he added, “I don’t think you can resist backsliding on trade unless you’re moving forward.”

American Federation of Labor-Congress of Industrial Organizations


Testimony Begins in Police Rape Trial

Abstract: By the time Kofi Owusu pulled his yellow cab up to the front of an East Village apartment building early one December morning in 2008, the passenger in the back seat had already vomited twice — once inside the taxi, he said in court on Tuesday. The passenger, a 27-year-old woman, asked for help getting out of the car. Mr. Owusu told her he could not help. Instead, Mr. Owusu called 911, leading two police officers, Kenneth Moreno and Franklin Mata, to cross paths with the woman. Prosecutors say Officer Moreno, 43, raped the woman in her apartment while Officer Mata, 28, stood guard. How the woman came to be seemingly incapacitated in the back of Mr. Owusu’s taxi, and in need of assistance to get out of the car, was described Tuesday on the first day of testimony in the officers’ trial in State Supreme Court in Manhattan. Prosecutors said surveillance footage showed that after the officers initially helped the woman into her apartment, they returned three more times that night. Among the first prosecution witnesses to testify were two friends of the woman who were at the party she held at Southpaw, a club in Park Slope, Brooklyn, on the evening of Dec. 6, 2008, to celebrate her promotion at The Gap, where she was a fabric researcher and designer. The promotion required the woman to relocate to San Francisco, said Kendra Taylor, a former co-worker who was at the party. The woman and her friends danced and drank at the bar, witnesses said. “Everybody was happy,” said Laure Simi, another friend who was at the party and testified Tuesday. “It was a celebration. She was going away. She’s getting a new job. It’s good energy.” The festive mood was memorialized in photographs shown in court. In one, the woman, in a bright fuchsia top, is dipping to the right, holding a glass with a yellow liquid in her left hand, with her mouth open and two friends dancing behind her. The joy, however, quickly subsided, Ms. Taylor explained, when the woman said she was feeling sick at about 11:45 p.m. and wanted to go home. Ms. Taylor said she escorted the woman, arm in arm, to the top of a staircase near the coat check and told her to wait there while she recovered the woman’s coat. “I didn’t find that she was intoxicated to the point where she was not coherent,” Ms. Taylor said. In the meantime, Ms. Simi said, she saw the woman leaning against a wall while someone tried to hold her up. “You could definitely tell she was intoxicated,” Ms. Simi said. The woman asked Ms. Simi to put her in a taxi, she said, so she escorted the woman outside, flagged down Mr. Owusu’s taxi and, not knowing the woman’s exact address, told him to take her to the Lower East Side. Ms. Simi said the woman left without her coat. Mr. Owusu testified that one of the woman’s friends told him her address as she helped her into the taxi. But defense lawyers brought up Mr. Owusu’s grand jury testimony, in which he indicated that the woman directed him to her apartment and told him where to stop. The defense was trying to establish that even though the woman may have been intoxicated, she was coherent enough to think and have normal conversations. Officer Moreno’s lawyer has said that his client, a former alcoholic, was counseling the woman about her drinking problem that morning and that he had returned to her apartment at her request to check on her. They did not have sex, the defense has argued. Mr. Owusu testified that as he turned the taxi onto Flatbush Avenue, the woman asked if he had a plastic bag she could vomit in. He did not, so he pulled over so she could stick her head out of the door to vomit, he said. A short time later, as they went over the Manhattan Bridge, Mr. Owusu said, the woman vomited in the car. When they arrived at her apartment, Mr. Owusu said, she asked him to help her out of the car, but Taxi and Limousine Commission rules prohibited him from doing so. He called 911 instead and said, “I have somebody in my cab that is so drunk that I need assistance,” according to a recording of the call played in court. When the operator asked if the woman was passed out, he responded, “Yeah, something like that.” About five minutes later, Officer Moreno and Officer Mata showed up, Mr. Owusu testified, and they helped her into the apartment. One of them brought out a $20 bill to pay him for the $17.40 fare, he said.

Sex Crimes
Police
Taxicabs and Taxicab Drivers
Moreno Kenneth
Mata Franklin L


Dead Victim’s Brother Testifies in Hate-Crime Trial

Abstract: On the witness stand, Romel Sucuzhañay sat up straight and calmly answered the prosecutor’s questions, one after the other. He wore only one expression on his face, a determined scowl that hinted at rage. But then, after a half-hour, he stumbled, over just two words. “I go to see my brother,” Mr. Sucuzhañay began, as his head bowed and his shoulders sank. “My brother,” he tried again. He stopped and stumbled some more, finally managing to put together a complete sentence. “I only saw blood,” he said. A few moments later, his head dropped again. It has been 16 months since Romel Sucuzhañay and the brother he was referring to, José O. Sucuzhañay, were attacked on a street near José Sucuzhañay’s home in Bushwick, Brooklyn. Romel Sucuzhañay suffered relatively minor injuries from shattered glass, but José Sucuzhañay, 31, who was repeatedly beaten with an aluminum baseball bat, died less than a week later. Two Bronx men have been charged with murder as a hate crime ; prosecutors say the suspects assaulted the brothers because they were Hispanic and because the suspects mistakenly believed that the brothers were gay. Since the attack, Romel testified, he has been under the care of psychologists. He left New York to return to his native Ecuador because of “what happened to my brother,” he said. “I have problems.” About two weeks ago, he returned to Brooklyn, and on Thursday, he testified against the murder suspects, Keith Phoenix, 30, and Hakim Scott, 26, in State Supreme Court in Brooklyn . Prosecutors said Mr. Phoenix and Mr. Scott shouted anti-Hispanic and anti-gay slurs at the Sucuzhañay brothers, whom they saw walking arm in arm early in the morning of Dec. 7, 2008. Romel’s bracing testimony on Thursday added few details to the emerging account of what happened that night. Speaking Spanish translated by an interpreter, Mr. Sucuzhañay said he remembered only parts of what happened, and at times, he gave conflicting information. But the pain his few memories caused him hushed the courtroom, leaving defense lawyers little to do but apologize for questioning him or offer him condolences. The testimony caused several jurors to become emotional as well. The trial is expected to last three weeks. Two separate juries are hearing the case, and on previous days, they heard from three witnesses, including a relative of one of the defendants, a livery-cab driver who was passing by, and an emergency medical technician who lived at Bushwick Avenue and Kossuth Place , where the attack occurred. On Thursday, Mr. Sucuzhañay said he lives with his mother in Ecuador. He and a few of his brothers — there are 12 siblings in all — became well known to New Yorkers in the days after José was attacked, mostly for the sad vigil they kept at Elmhurst Hospital Center in Queens. As their mother made the journey from Ecuador to see José, who was on life-support machines, his heart stopped. At the time, Romel had been visiting from Ecuador. José, who was younger, owned a real estate firm and several buildings. Romel worked with him, and testified that on the day of the attack, they collected rent from the buildings and finished work about 10:30 p.m. Then they went out drinking, at a church party and later at a bar. Romel testified that he had three beers and a Long Island iced tea. His brother drank 10 or 11 beers, and half of the same cocktail. As they walked home from the bar, José was “shaking from the cold,” he said. Romel gave him his jacket. Then they saw a sport utility vehicle at the corner of Bushwick and Kossuth. In Romel’s account, the altercation started with a look: The driver of the S.U.V., who prosecutors said was Mr. Phoenix, stared at him. “We did not stop,” Romel said. Then two men got out of the vehicle, and Romel said he heard one or both of them — he could not say for sure — yelling insults about Hispanics. It all happened “in a second, like a flash,” Mr. Sucuzhañay testified. A few minutes later, he shifted his attention from the interpreter, stared at Mr. Phoenix and pointed his finger at him. Just then, a prosecutor, Josh Hanshaft, handed Mr. Sucuzhañay a photograph, and asked him to identify the man in the picture. “My brother,” he said confidently. “My brother José.”

Hate Crimes
Sucuzhanay Jose O
Sucuzhanay Romel
Phoenix Keith
Scott Hakim


Italian Banks Continue to Lend to Stagnant Companies as Debt Pile Mounts

Abstract: In Italy, where two decades of economic stagnation have created a long line of barely breathing companies, Feltrinelli, one of the country’s largest booksellers, stands out. Since 2012, the company has chalked up three consecutive years of losses totaling nearly 11 million euros ($12.4 million). Even so, late last year, Feltrinelli was able to secure a fresh €50 million line of credit from a syndicate that included two of Italy’s largest banks, UniCredit and Intesa Sanpaolo, at an interest rate below what top-rated companies in Europe were paying. As Italy and Europe more broadly struggle to come to grips with an escalating problem with bad loans, a new paper by economists connected to the Center for Economic Policy Research, a European policy shop, highlights the extent to which Italy’s main banks — known to be the weakest in the eurozone in terms of cash reserves — have stepped up their lending to the country’s most troubled companies. In recent weeks, Italian bank stocks, down 70 percent for the year, have rallied, buoyed by recent stress-test results and, for some, earnings that were better than expected. But with the International Monetary Fund estimating the size of Italy’s bad loan pile to be €360 billion — or about a third of the total amount in the eurozone — economists contend that any improvement in the debt situation will be short-lived. At the heart of the problem, the research paper concludes, is a nexus of inert banks lending to inert companies that has kept a lid on the recovery of Italy’s economy, the third largest among countries that use the euro. The bank-driven slowdown recalls the zombie lending cycle that Japan entered in the 1990s, leading to its own lost economic decade. Then, instead of biting the bullet and taking losses, large Japanese banks kept credit lines open to borrowers even when they had slight chance of making good on the loans. “Europe has not learned anything from Japan — it has just repeated the same mistakes,” said Tim Eisert, a German economist at Erasmus University in the Netherlands who participated in the study. “Mario Draghi may have saved the euro, but we still have undercapitalized banks in Europe.” In their report, the economists calculate that if European banks were subjected to a scrubbing similar to what United States banks experienced, they would need to raise €125 billion in new capital. At a time when investors across Europe have become deeply skeptical of investing in banks, and governments are loath to offer bailouts, achieving such a number borders on the impossible. Moreover, since the onset of the debt crisis, Europe’s leaders have been slow to address their banking problems. In the regulators’ latest stress test, only one European bank, Monte dei Paschi di Siena of Italy, came out as needing more capital. Feltrinelli is just one example of a number of highly indebted Italian companies receiving loans at below-market interest rates over the last three years, a period when aggressive policies by the European Central Bank freed extra cash for European banks to dole out credit. Other companies cited in the paper include the clothing retailer Benetton, which has lost €240 million since 2012, yet also received a below-market-rate loan in that year, according to data collected by the economists. Massimiliano Tarantino, a public relations executive at Feltrinelli, said that the company had suffered during the recent crisis and was now shifting its strategy, making new investments in television, electronic publishing and book sales over the internet. In their paper, the researchers found that of the €540 billion in syndicated European Union loans that they tracked, 8 percent went to companies that they classified as zombie institutions. In Italy, however, the proportion of new loans that have gone to struggling companies like Feltrinelli over the last three years is much higher at 17 percent. Italy is not the only country in Europe plagued by dud loans. In Greece, Yannis Stournaras, head of the country’s central bank, said recently that nonperforming loans were still on the rise and had reached a level of €108 billion — roughly one half the size of the overall economy. In his speech, Mr. Stournaras said that 67 percent of the loans made to small and medium-size companies, the life blood of the Greek economy, were nonperforming, a statistic that explains in blunt terms why the Greek economy continues to stagnate. As with Greek banks, Italian banks are similarly exposed to small private companies, many of which have been hit hard by the sluggish economy. According to a paper on troubled Italian loans put out by the I.M.F. last month, three-quarters of the €360 billion bad loan figure are owed by Italian companies — most of which are small or medium-sized. While such an amount, about 18 percent of total Italian loans outstanding, is certainly arresting, Italian government officials argue that sufficient steps have been taken to address the problem. They say that banks have set aside cash to cover nearly half of the loans and that all of the exposures are backed by sufficient collateral. They also point to the recent formation of a €4 billion fund that will buy some of the bad loans from the banks. Still, €4 billion does not rise to the level of a bazooka that would give the markets confidence. And as the I.M.F. report lays out, Italian banks are among the least profitable in Europe, which gives them little incentive to write off their loans, especially when there are tax incentives for bankers to not take such a step. Banks also have little incentive to pursue debtors in Italy’s courts. The I.M.F. study says that liquidations of troubled Italian companies last, on average, eight years, with preferred creditors likely to claw back just 29 percent of their claim. So, instead of taking a hit, many Italian banks have decided to keep the liquidity flowing in the hope that a company might turn its fortunes around. But with growth averaging about 0.3 percent for the last two decades and now threatening to dip back into negative territory, a spate of corporate recoveries seems unlikely. And the lesson for global regulators is a powerful one, the economists involved in the study argue. Before using unconventional measures to inject cash into lending markets, central bankers must ensure that their large banks are sufficiently capitalized — as was the case in the United States, when one of the first steps regulators took was to force banks to increase their capital cushions. Without this extra layer of security, banks have little incentive to write down bad loans and focus on healthier companies. “These zombie loans are just bad for the economy,” said Viral V. Acharya, one of the report’s authors and a specialist in European debt at New York University’s Stern School of Business. “The problem is that Europe never injected capital into its banks like TARP in the U.S.”

Italy
Euro Crisis
Banking and Finance
Center for Economic and Policy Research
IMF
Monte dei Paschi di Siena
EU


Jets to Hold Season-Ending News Conference a Little Late

Abstract: The Jets will hold their season-ending news conference with Coach Rex Ryan and their owner, Woody Johnson, on Tuesday — nine days after the end of their season. Much has happened since Ryan last spoke, on Sunday after a 28-9 defeat at Buffalo that secured a 6-10 record for a team that spoke of 16-0 perfection. The Jets fired their general manager, Mike Tannenbaum, but have maintained silence about the status of their embattled offensive coordinator, Tony Sparano. Also continuing is the search for Tannenbaum’s replacement, who will inherit both a coach and a quarterback, Mark Sanchez, he might not want but will probably have little choice but to retain. The Jets have been lampooned for demonstrating a lack of accountability since Tannenbaum’s dismissal. The revelation that Ryan is recharging for a few days in the Bahamas has only fed that perception. Only players available in a one-hour period of locker-room access Monday could speak to the chaos surrounding the team. Many did, with running back Joe McKnight saying, “It kind of messed with us a little bit.” By delaying Ryan’s and Johnson’s availability until Tuesday, the Jets are violating N.F.L. policy, which requires every team to conduct a news conference during the week after the season “with its head coach, and/or owner, and/or club president and/or general manager” to “respond to fan interest.” None of the other 19 teams that failed to make the playoffs violated the policy, according to the N.F.L. spokesman Greg Aiello, who said the league was investigating the matter. THE CARDINALS’ SEARCH The Arizona Cardinals have completed an extensive interview that spread over two days with their defensive coordinator, Ray Horton, in the search for a replacement for the team’s fired coach, Ken Whisenhunt. Next up is Andy Reid, the longtime Philadelphia Eagles coach, who was among seven N.F.L. head coaches who were fired on Monday. Reid’s interview, while not formally scheduled, could come on Thursday. Michael Bidwill, the Cardinals’ president, has identified Horton, Reid and Mike McCoy, the Denver Broncos’ offensive coordinator, as candidates to replace Whisenhunt, who was dismissed after six seasons. The Cardinals plan to interview McCoy in Denver this weekend. (AP) COORDINATOR SIGNS CONTRACT Atlanta Falcons Coach Mike Smith said that Dirk Koetter, the team’s offensive coordinator, had signed a contract extension to stay with the franchise through next season. Koetter’s name surfaced this week as a head coaching candidate in Cleveland, Kansas City and Philadelphia. Koetter has overseen an offense that ranks second in third-down efficiency; seventh in scoring and fewest sacks allowed; and eighth in total yards. (AP) LIONS STANDING PAT Detroit Lions General Manager Martin Mayhew said at a 45-minute news conference that as far as he knew, both he and Coach Jim Schwartz would be back next season. Mayhew added that he had spoken with ownership and discussed his plans. The Lions lost their final eight games and finished 4-12. (AP)


Ex-Spy Sits Down With Islamists and the West

Abstract: BEIRUT, Lebanon TALKING to Islamists is the new order of the day in Washington and London. The Obama administration wants a dialogue with Iran, and the British Foreign Office has decided to reopen diplomatic contacts with Hezbollah, the Shiite militant group based here. But for several years, small groups of Western diplomats have made quiet trips to Beirut for confidential sessions with members of Hamas , Hezbollah and other Islamist groups they did not want to be seen talking to. In hotel conference rooms, they would warily shake hands, then spend hours listening and hashing out accusations of terrorism on one side and imperial arrogance on the other. The organizer of these back-door encounters is Alastair Crooke, a quiet, sandy-haired man of 59 who spent three decades working for MI6, the British secret intelligence service. He now runs an organization here called Conflicts Forum , with an unusual board of advisers that includes former spies, diplomats and peace activists. Mr. Crooke has spent much of his career talking to Islamists. In the 1980s, as a young undercover agent in Pakistan and Afghanistan, he helped funnel weapons to jihadists fighting the Soviets. Later, he spent years working with Hamas and Fatah as a negotiator for the European Union , and helped broker a number of cease-fires with Israel between 2001 and 2003. He earned a reputation for courage and tenacity, but in person he is disarmingly polite and mild-mannered, a slight-figured man with a beaky, impish smile. The mission of Conflicts Forum, which he founded in 2004, resembles a kind of blueprint for the Obama administration’s current outreach efforts: to “open a new relationship between the West and Muslim world” through dialogue and better mutual understanding. Yet Mr. Crooke, who is legendary for his deep network of contacts among Islamist groups across the Middle East, is not sanguine about the prospects for mere dialogue, especially with Iran. “I think there is a real fear there will be a process of talking past each other,” Mr. Crooke said. “The Iranians will say, ‘we want to talk about justice and respect.’ The U.S. will say, ‘are you willing to give up enrichment or not?’ ” To get past that impasse with Iran, and with Islamist groups generally, the West will need to change its diplomatic language of threats and rewards, Mr. Crooke said, and show more respect for their adversaries’ point of view. Mr. Crooke has spent the past few years trying to explain that to suspicious Westerners, in a stream of articles, speeches and conferences. Although not an Arabist by training, he has developed a deep knowledge of modern Islamist movements, and launches easily into analyses of Palestinian politics, or even of medieval Islamic philosophy. Recently, he has taken his explanatory efforts a bit further. In a new book, “Resistance: the Essence of the Islamist Revolution,” he deliberately avoids the most controversial subjects, like Israel and the status of women in the Islamic world. Instead, he focuses on what he calls the core of the Islamist revolution, which he defines as a metaphysical resistance to the West’s market-based definition of the individual and society. He invokes European social critics like Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer, endorsing their critiques of Western thinking and arguing that Islamism offers a more holistic model. NOT surprisingly, the book has received some stinging reviews, and renewed accusations that Mr. Crooke has gone native. Even some of his fellow board members at Conflicts Forum say they are a little baffled — not by his sympathy for Islamists, but by the book’s broad philosophical themes. Mr. Crooke says the book grew out of his own efforts to find common ground with Islamists, and to look beyond the usual stumbling blocks. “It seemed to me there was a real need to understand what was happening inside Islamism better, and to valorize what they were saying in ways that could be understood in the West,” he said. That project seems inseparable from his broader argument about dialogue. To illustrate it, Mr. Crooke describes an episode from the conflict in Northern Ireland in which the British put two opposing factions into a room for talks, “naïvely imagining that talking would help.” It did the opposite, reinforcing their anger. So the negotiators tried another approach: they asked both sides to write down their history and vision for the future on a piece of paper. After three more years of talks, the factions finally reached the point at which they acknowledged the legitimacy of the other side’s piece of paper. “George Mitchell once said to me, ‘you don’t even have a political process until you accept that the other side has a legitimate point of view,’ ” Mr. Crooke said, referring to Mr. Mitchell’s landmark 1998 Good Friday Agreement in Northern Ireland and relating it to the many obstacles between the United States and Iran. “Does America have the will and the patience for that?” he said. “I’m not sure we’re there yet.” Patience, by all accounts, is something Mr. Crooke possesses. Mark Perry, the co-director of Conflicts Forum, describes an episode in Gaza in 2002 when the two men tried to establish a cease-fire between Israel and Palestinian factions. After weeks of negotiations, Israel dropped a bomb on the Hamas leader whose signature they needed, shattering their efforts. “We were exhausted,” Mr. Perry recalled. “The next day in the hotel room, I looked at Alastair and said ‘what do we do now?’ He just said, ‘We try again.’ ” It is not entirely clear where that steadfastness comes from. He is a little evasive about his own life and career, perhaps by training. Born in Ireland, he grew up mostly in Rhodesia, today Zimbabwe, and was educated at a Swiss boarding school and at St. Andrew’s in Scotland, obtaining a degree in economics. Before joining MI6, he worked in finance in London. “It’s a dangerous area to work in,” he said of his years as a banker, without apparent irony, “because it’s so easy to get caught up in enrichment.” He is barred by law from discussing his service with MI6, which included years of diplomatic work on the Israel-Palestine issue. As a negotiator in the Palestinian territories, he is said to have traveled alone, by taxi, eschewing the armed security convoys of many Western diplomats. Colleagues who worked with him say Yasir Arafat and the leaders of Hamas trusted Mr. Crooke completely, as did some high-level Israeli officials. SOME Israelis, however, apparently complained that he was too close to Hamas. In late 2003, he was recalled to London — he had reached retirement age — and quietly ushered out of government service, with a commendation. He says he has no regrets, but some of his colleagues in Conflicts Forum say he retains some bitterness about the way he was treated. In 2005, he moved to Beirut, where he lives with his partner, Aisling Byrne, and their 1-year-old child, Amistis, in an elegant, old French mandate-era apartment, working out of a home office. Mr. Crooke smiles at the suggestion that Conflicts Forum may offer him a back-door route back to diplomacy, but does not entirely deny it. “We’re not implementers," he said. “What we’re trying to do is catalyze and create ideas. The second part is, how do you multiply something done by a small number of people in one room into something larger?”

Islam
International Relations
Crooke Alastair
Conflicts Forum
European Union
Hamas
Fatah Al
United States International Relations


Backer of City Hall Openness Trips on a Budget Maneuver

Abstract: In her evolution from a campus activist nicknamed Mad Dog to the first female speaker of the City Council and a likely candidate for mayor, Christine C. Quinn has taken care to project an image of reform and an openness about the workings of government. Since taking office in 2006, Ms. Quinn has devised a more public system for reporting pork-barrel spending and has muscled tough new restrictions on lobbyists through a resistant Council. But Ms. Quinn, facing her first significant embarrassment as speaker, has spent much of the last 48 hours trying to explain how the Council ran what many government experts have called a strange and even disturbing system for stashing away taxpayer dollars. For years, the Council budgeted millions of dollars for dozens of fictitious community organizations and used the money later for grants to favored neighborhood groups. The Citizens Budget Commission, an independent watchdog organization, was bluntly critical of the practice on Friday: “There is no excuse for fictional items in a budget,” the commission said in a statement. “All elected officials bear responsibility for the budgets that they adopt, and Speaker Quinn, in particular, should be held accountable for the City Council’s fiscal practices.” Ms. Quinn, despite her reputation as a focused manager with an understanding of the levers of city government, has said she knew nothing of the unorthodox budgeting practice. She and her staff have gone to great lengths to show that she had tried to put an end to it but was stymied by staffers she forced out. For the moment, no one has stepped forward to contradict her account, and there is no evidence that anything about the system was illegal or that any money was misspent. Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg has expressed confidence in her, calling her “the most honest person I know.” But Ms. Quinn’s defense hinges largely on her assertion that when she learned about the practice she immediately ordered it to cease, only to learn that her staff disobeyed her and carried it on for several more months. “There were meetings, there were oral conversations,” Ms. Quinn, a Manhattan Democrat, said Thursday. “There were many people in the numerous meetings with myself and the finance staff during the budget process, with many people in the room who can confirm that.” On Friday, however, when Ms. Quinn’s office was asked to produce some of the “many people” who could confirm it, only her chief of staff stepped forward, saying he had remembered her noting in one meeting that they would no longer use the reserve system. And numerous former and current City Council officials said Ms. Quinn had during her tenure taken an unusually active role in overseeing the budget, leaving them wondering how she could not have known or, if she had truly objected to the practice, authoritatively ended it. “It’s an off-line extra budget slush fund within the city’s budget, and it’s used at the discretion of the speaker,” said Dick Dadey, executive director of the Citizens Union, who joined Ms. Quinn to overhaul the lobbying rules and is now calling for all future Council appropriations to be monitored by an outside agency. “Given the speaker’s drive to create more transparency about the Council’s own budget and member items, it would have been appropriate to go public with this bad practice even if it did shine a bad light on the Council.” Indeed, the revelations have been particularly troubling for Ms. Quinn, consultants said, in part because she has made open government a mantra of her tenure as speaker. “She’s no Eliot Spitzer,” said Kellyanne Conway, a Republican political consultant, “but we have a very recent example in the governor’s precipitous fall from grace that the more you crusade as someone having a transparent budget, open to the public, governing according to ethics, then the higher those accountability standards will be.” Councilman Tony Avella, who has pushed for more disclosure in Council spending practices and is also planning a run for mayor, asked Attorney General Andrew M. Cuomo in a letter sent Friday to investigate the practice. Ms. Quinn declined to comment on the matter Friday. Whether she will be able to survive and pursue higher office, analysts said, will depend on the results of the current investigations into Council finances by the United States attorney’s office and the City Department of Investigation. But already, she has suffered some damage. “It’s a lose-lose situation,” said Douglas A. Muzzio, a professor at the Baruch College School of Public Affairs who once worked for the Council. “Either she knew what was going on and condoned it or she thought she had taken care of it but didn’t. If I’m running against her, I’m saying, she can’t keep track of her office, how can she keep track of a $60 billion budget?” Ms. Quinn, who worked for five years as chief of staff to Thomas K. Duane, a former councilman, before winning a Council seat in 1999, said she had been vaguely aware that money was put aside in some sort of reserve accounts before becoming speaker in January 2006. But she maintained that it was not until the spring of 2007, well into her second budget cycle as speaker, that she learned that money was being parked in reserve accounts known as holding codes. She said she made it clear in a series of budget meetings and conversations with her staff that the practice was to stop. But last fall, she said, she learned that not only was the practice continuing but that the money was being parked in accounts named for fictitious groups. On Friday, Ms. Quinn’s staff was pressed to produce people who were in the meetings and who could corroborate the speaker’s account. By late afternoon, however, only Charles Meara, the chief of staff, came forward, saying in a statement that he had “attended several meetings with Council Speaker Quinn, members of the City Council Finance Division and other senior staff regarding the city budget.” “At one of those meetings,” the statement continued, “I clearly recall Speaker Quinn stating that we will no longer use holding codes to keep reserve funds.” James McShane, Ms. Quinn’s communications director, said late Friday they could not provide other people to confirm the speaker’s account at this time. It would be inappropriate “to comment further on who attended the meetings,” he said, given the ongoing investigation. A person close to the speaker who said they were not authorized to speak about the matter, said Thursday that Ms. Quinn forced out two of her top finance staffers, Michael Keogh and Staci Emanuel, after the discovery of the problems. Attempts to reach Ms. Emanuel were unsuccessful, and Mr. Keogh, now with Bolton-St. Johns, a lobbying and consulting firm, has not responded to several requests for comment. But Norman Adler, president of Bolton-St. Johns, sharply denied accounts that Mr. Keogh was pushed out. He had been pressing Mr. Keogh to join his firm for a year and half, he said, but was told that he was committed to stay with Ms. Quinn through the end of the budget cycle, and then had some unrelated issues that prevented him from moving over sooner. Mr. Keogh submitted his resignation letter on Jan. 3 — about six months after the budget for the 2008 fiscal year was completed. “I aggressively recruited this guy,” Mr. Adler said. “He’s one of the most talented people in government.” Ms. Quinn has also stressed in her defense that the use of fictitious groups to hold money in reserve dates back to her predecessors, Peter F. Vallone Sr. and Gifford Miller, a claim that records and former staff members under those speakers confirmed.

Quinn Christine C
Frauds and Swindling
City Councils
New York City
Budgets and Budgeting


Amid Violence, Returning to Elections in Sri Lanka After a Void

Abstract: JAFFNA, Sri Lanka — The thugs first appeared around 11:20 on Thursday night, a dozen or so men lurking outside her house. Two wore army uniforms. Ananthi Sasitharan — a Tamil candidate in the first provincial elections to be held in 25 years in the former insurgent stronghold here — said she had woken up her three daughters and prepared for the worst. She called a few friends, who soon appeared and persuaded her and her daughters to sneak out the back. It was a good thing they left. Ten of her supporters stayed behind to watch the house. A few started playing a Sri Lankan card game called Monkeys and Donkeys, but before they could finish even a few hands, four trucks pulled up outside and disgorged more than 100 men. Most of them were wearing army uniforms and carrying guns and wooden clubs, according to the accounts of several witnesses. “Where’s Ananthi?” the thugs started shouting. “Where’s Ananthi?” And then they attacked. Four years after Sri Lanka’s long civil war came to a bloody end, the first provincial council elections since 1988 are being held Saturday in the country’s Tamil-dominated north amid sporadic reports of violence and intimidation. There are many Tamil parties vying for seats under the flag of the Tamil National Alliance, competing with candidates from the governing coalition, the United People’s Freedom Alliance, which controls more than two-thirds of the national Parliament. The council is fairly toothless, because President Mahinda Rajapaksa of Sri Lanka has centralized much of the government’s powers in his and his family’s hands. But the election has become an important symbol to the Tamil people as well as to international monitors about whether the Rajapaksas are willing to countenance even cosmetic steps toward reconciliation with the Tamils. “The military has been visiting houses all over the area and telling people not to vote for the Tamil National Alliance,” Mavai S. Senathirajah, deputy leader of the Tamil alliance, said in an interview. “We will not be intimidated.” The war’s end has been beneficial to Sri Lanka, an island of about 20 million people split between the dominant Singhalese and the minority Tamil. Roads have been rebuilt, tourists have returned to its crystalline beaches and tea estates, and the pervading sense of unease that gripped the country for decades has largely evaporated. New train tracks have nearly reached Jaffna, at the northern tip of the island. Yet, signs of the violent past remain. Destroyed houses, burned-out churches and the broken carcass of a water tower still litter the landscape in once war-torn areas. There is growing evidence that in the course of war the Sri Lankan government may have killed as many as 40,000 people — many of them innocent civilians — particularly at the close of the war. The United Nations Human Rights Council has voted repeatedly to condemn the government’s failure to investigate potential war crimes even as a string of shocking videos that appear to show the murders of innocents leaks out of the country. The Rajapaksa government, meanwhile, has undermined the independence of both the judiciary and the news media. Navi Pillay, the United Nations high commissioner for human rights, accused the government last month of “heading in an increasingly authoritarian direction.” On Friday, Ms. Pillay accused the Sri Lankan government of waging a disinformation campaign against her. For the Rajapaksa government, the international criticism is worrisome. The Sri Lankan economy depends on tourism and foreign investment, and in November the country will host a summit meeting of Commonwealth leaders, a diplomatic coup. Many of the top hotels in the capital, Colombo, are undergoing renovations to ready themselves for the delegations. An election in the northern province that is judged as free and fair could help improve the country’s international reputation. But it is far from clear that election monitors will bless the effort. Image More than a hundred men, most wearing army uniforms, on Thursday attacked the home of Ananthi Sasitharan, above, a Tamil candidate, according to the accounts of several witnesses. Credit Kuni Takahashi for The New York Times On Friday, Rohana Hettiarachchie, the executive director of the People’s Action for Free and Fair Elections, a domestic independent monitoring group, confirmed in a telephone interview that those who had attacked Ms. Sasitharan’s house had been wearing uniforms “similar to those worn by the army.” But Brig. Ruwan Wanigasooriya, a military spokesman, said by telephone that “there was no involvement on the part of the army.” He said the army was cooperating in an investigation of the matter. Ms. Sasitharan is contesting the elections in part to pressure the government to release her husband, a political officer for the Tamil Tigers who she believes has been in government custody for four years, a charge the government has denied. “Earlier this month, there were several others who were released, and they told me that they have seen my husband in custody and that I needed to keep pressing for his release,” she said in an interview. But she keeps being attacked, Ms. Sasitharan said, in an intimidation campaign aimed at getting her to drop out. Two weeks ago, army officers stoned her car while she was still in it, and she barely escaped injury, she said. And then there was the attack Thursday. Pakeerathan Sriskantharajah, 22, was among those who stayed behind to watch Ms. Sasitharan’s house. When the mob struck, he raced upstairs and hid in a passageway between the roof and ceiling. But he put his foot through the ceiling just as the intruders entered the house, and they beat him badly. “They kept asking where Ananthi was,” he said in an interview, his hands and head bandaged. “We didn’t tell them, so they beat me on my legs, back, head and hands. They broke my fingers.” The Tamil National Alliance is expected to win control of the northern provincial council, but the margin of victory could prove crucial to the alliance’s efforts to push for greater autonomy over police and land decisions. President Rajapaksa remains popular in much of the country, where he is still given credit for ending the war successfully. Two other provinces are also holding elections Saturday, and in those the governing coalition is expected to win. At the Temple of the Tooth in Kandy, the holiest place in Sri Lanka, Nanda, 80, who has one name, said Thursday that she would give her vote to the governing alliance. “I feel the president has brought stability to the country, and that’s what we need,” Nanda said. In 1998, the Tamil Tigers attacked the temple, which is said to hold one of Lord Buddha’s teeth, and killed 16 people. The attack shocked the nation, and Nanda said she could still remember being horrified by it. But just outside the temple, W. J. Wijeratne, owner of P & A Jewelers, said he planned to vote for the United National Party, the principal opposition, even though he suspected that the government would steal the results. “Everything in this country is being given to the president’s family,” he said.

Sri Lanka
Election
Tamils
United National Party Sri Lanka
Tamil National Alliance
Navi Pillay
Mahinda Rajapaksa
Ananthi Sasitharan