Washington Post Starts an Online Magazine for Blacks

Abstract: In attempt to broaden its online audience, The Washington Post Company on Monday is to introduce an online magazine primarily for a black audience, with news and commentary on politics and culture, and tools for readers to research their family histories. Henry Louis Gates Jr. , a writer and a professor of African and African-American studies at Harvard, is the editor in chief of the magazine, called The Root, which he conceived with Donald E. Graham, chief executive of the company. The magazine is based in Washington , free to readers and will be found at www.theroot.com . Several well-known authors and scholars have agreed to contribute to The Root, including Malcolm Gladwell and William Julius Wilson. The managing editor is Lynette Clemetson, who was until recently a reporter in Washington for the The New York Times and previously was a national and foreign correspondent for Newsweek. The magazine they describe could be seen as a more highbrow, political alternative to established magazines like Ebony and sites like BlackAmericaWeb.com and BlackVoices.com . The Root’s emphasis on genealogy will set it apart from those competitors, which pay more attention to entertainment, lifestyle and consumption. Much of the news and commentary, Ms. Clemetson said, “will not have an explicitly black angle” but will address issues like health care and housing. The news segment of the site will collect reporting from other sources, sometimes picking up on stories that are not heavily covered by the mainstream media. In the section titled “Views,” Mr. Gates and Ms. Clemetson said, they want to present conflicting outlooks, countering the notion that there is a monolithic black point of view. “We didn’t feel there is a place right now where right-wing and left-wing and centrist black commentators can get together in one space,” Mr. Gates said. The third major part of the new site, titled “Roots,” will have online tools for people to build their family trees, link to or add information to other people’s trees and construct maps showing their ancestral trails. It will also urge people to have DNA testing, which can help them trace their backgrounds to specific ethnic groups and parts of the world. It will offer links to companies that do the testing. One such company the site will direct people to, www.AfricanDNA.com , is co-owned by Mr. Gates, a relationship that would be prohibited at some publications. “I don’t see a conflict of interest,” he said, because The Root will fully disclose his roles and will link to every company that does the DNA testing. Mr. Gates has developed a preoccupation with genealogy and helping black people reconstruct histories that were buried by the enslavement of people from Africa and by generations of illiteracy, families torn apart and exclusion from official records. He heads a project that collects and preserves black publications, some dating to the early 19th century, which he says are an invaluable source of information. “One of the things I want to create is a huge database of all the obituaries in all of these newspapers,” he said. Mr. Gates also sees The Root as a way of recreating the role of the black newspapers that once thrived in many major cities but have largely disappeared. In the small town in western Maryland where he visited his father's family as a child, “We would get in the black barbershops both The Pittsburgh Courier and The Baltimore Afro-American,” he said, and people would read the papers and argue about the news. Mr. Graham and Mr. Gates have known each other for years from serving together on the board of the Pulitzer Prizes at Columbia University. They said The Root grew out of a series of casual conversations between them. Each man credited the other with the original idea. The Root joins a small but rapidly growing roster of professionally produced publications that exist only on the Internet. This approach avoids printing and delivery costs but draws less advertising and circulation revenue. They are closely watched by newspaper and magazine companies, which are trying to envision what may be an all-digital future. The Washington Post Company has some experience in the field as publisher of the online magazine Slate, which Mr. Graham said provided some of the technology and expertise that has gone into The Root. Jacob Weisberg, editor of Slate, is one of the people who have advised the creators of the new magazine. “I know it’ll lose money at the outset, and I make no predictions about how long,” Mr. Graham said. “But obviously, we intend to make money eventually.”

Washington Post Co
Computers and the Internet
The Root
Gates Henry Louis Jr
Blacks
Washington (DC)
Magazines
Newspapers


In Rare Rebuke for Rikers Officers, Judge Urges Firing of 6 Who Beat Inmate

Abstract: In April 2012, on a cellblock for inmates with mental illnesses, five Rikers Island guards and a captain hogtied Robert Hinton, cuffing his hands behind his back and shackling his ankles, then carried him face down, by his arms and legs, into a solitary confinement cell. When they emerged 10 minutes later, Mr. Hinton’s nose was broken, his eyes were swollen shut, he was bleeding from the mouth and had a fractured vertebra. In past Rikers Island brutality cases, correction officers have frequently managed to escape serious punishment. But in a highly unusual legal decision published on Monday, Tynia Richard, an administrative law judge, wrote that the six officers had lied about what had happened; that Mr. Hinton had been handcuffed during the entire episode, and that because such “brazen misconduct” must be put to an end, she was recommending the most severe sanction available: termination of employment for all six. “Hopefully, it will help break the vise grip that silence and collusion played in this incident,” she wrote. The judge’s decision is a fresh indication that pressure by federal prosecutors, as well as scrutiny by the media, may be starting to have an effect on the way such brutality cases, long tolerated at the Department of Correction, are handled. Nevertheless, the fact that two and a half years elapsed between the episode and the judge’s decision underscores what continues to be a crucial issue at Rikers: the slow pace of internal investigations of guards accused in brutality cases. Image A decision on Monday indicated that pressure by federal prosecutors might be having an effect on the way Rikers Island brutality cases are handled. Credit Emmanuel Dunand/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images Last week, the United States attorney for the Southern District of New York, Preet Bharara, warned that he would sue the city if officials did not deliver quickly enough on promised overhauls. In August, his office released a scathing 79-page report that found a “deep-seated culture of violence” at Rikers toward adolescent inmates. And The New York Times in July documented 129 cases in which inmates, many with mental illnesses, were severely injured in altercations with guards last year. Both the federal report and the article in The Times highlighted how rare it was for officers to be punished for acts of brutality. In the Hinton case, even while the captain involved, Budnarine Behari, was awaiting disciplinary action, he was implicated in a second brutality case, eight months later, that was singled out in both the investigation by The Times and the federal report. In December 2012, in the same jail building where Mr. Hinton had been beaten, Captain Behari and several other officers handcuffed two inmates to a gurney, wheeled them into a clinic examination room unequipped with security cameras, and according to witnesses, beat the men so severely that their blood splattered over the walls, as the medical staff begged them to stop. The disciplinary process in that case has not yet been completed. Most enforcement is handled within the department, and although the results are not made public, correction officials say the outcome is typically a suspension of some sort. But if the officer chooses to contest the decision, the cases are sent to administrative trial. According to an analysis of 10 years of administrative trial data by The New York Times, however, in brutality cases, an average of 30 months elapses between an episode and a judge’s ruling. Judge Recommends Firing Officers in Rikers Beating Case A letter and report from Judge Tynia Richard to Joseph Ponte, commissioner of the New York City Correction Department, dated Sept. 25, 2014. Since 2009, 49 officers have been found guilty by an administrative judge in brutality cases. Job termination was recommended for nine. With the rest, the judge recommended only a variety of suspensions, from 5 to 60 days. The decision released on Monday by Judge Richard now goes to the correction commissioner, who decides whether to accept or modify the recommendations. After that, it can be appealed to the Civil Service Commission. “To put it mildly, it’s disappointing,” said Mr. Behari’s attorney, James Frankie. “Every favorable point was discounted, minimized or ignored.” Norman Seabrook, the president of the correction officers’ union, said the episode revealed the poor state of training and supervision at Rikers Island. Though he said he would continue to fight for the jobs of the guards involved, he also said he would again tell his members that such behavior would not be tolerated, even under a supervisor’s orders. Ultimately, he said, it is the correction officer’s job to make sure that an inmate “goes home the same way he goes in.” In her 69-page decision, Judge Richard gave a detailed accounting of the violence inflicted on Mr. Hinton, devoting more than two pages to an explanation of the legal definition of hogtying. Image Mr. Hinton in a photograph included with a legal statement. She wrote that the 6-foot-3 Mr. Hinton, who has since filed a lawsuit and says he takes medication for aggression and paranoia, had a history of violence as a member of the Bloods gang, with a conviction for attempted murder. Mr. Hinton, 27, is now being held at the Attica Correctional Facility, on a parole violation relating to that conviction. The six officers were formidable too, she wrote, describing several as “large, muscular men,” one with a yellow belt in jujitsu and another trained as a boxer. Indeed, during the trial, Officer Geronimo Almanzar demonstrated to the judge how he had used a series of uppercuts and hooks to the head to subdue Mr. Hinton. There had been bad blood between Captain Behari and Mr. Hinton, the judge wrote. As Mr. Hinton was being transferred to a new cell, he resisted, by sitting down, and at that point was hogtied. The officers’ accounts, the judge wrote, were riddled with inconsistencies. Officer Paul Bunton initially told an investigator that the encounter had been “a little incident,” but by the time he went to trial he was describing it as “the fight of his life.” He said that the inmate had locked him in a chokehold for a minute and a half, nearly killing him; at the hospital on the night of the episode, the judge wrote, “he made no mention of a chokehold or neck injury or neck pain.” Immediately after the encounter, Captain Behari told a doctor that he had been kicked in the left knee and right hand; at the trial, the judge said, he described being temporarily immobilized by two kicks to the groin. Image The Rikers Island jail complex in the Bronx. Credit Seth Wenig/Associated Press The officers’ injuries were “minimal,” Judge Richard concluded, writing that the only one given medication that night was Officer Bunton, who was “sent home with Tylenol.” Toward the end of the trial, on June 9, Judge Richard interrupted the legal proceedings to visit Rikers Island and examine the scene. As the judge toured the cellblock, the six officers, most of them dressed in suits, trailed behind her, along with their lawyers and union representatives. Inmates stared through the windows of their cells and officers whispered to each other as the six men who once controlled the block passed by. The judge examined cell No. 6, where Mr. Hinton had been housed, then walked over to No. 42, which had been occupied by an inmate who claimed to be a witness to the beating. As she stood in the cell, the judge made notes on a white legal pad. In her decision on Monday, she wrote that the inmate would have had “a direct line of sight into Hinton’s cell.” She ruled that Captain Behari, Officer Almanzar and Officer Vincent Siederman were guilty of using excessive force and of lying to investigators. She found Officers Bunton, Raul Marquez and Ramon Cabrera guilty of lying to investigators and writing false incident reports. On the final page of her decision, the judge took special note of Officer Cabrera, who was the youngest among the guards and still had probationary status. “His youth in the service shows how quickly the meaning of care, custody and control can be corrupted,” she wrote.

New York State Department of Corrections


A Johnston & Murphy Promotion Relies on Humiliating Stories

Abstract: ERIC saw a co-worker who normally wore pants wearing a dress one day, and jokingly asked her who died, to which she replied, “My grandmother.” Judith was called into the office of her boss, and as she stood there while he was speaking to her, the elastic of her half-slip gave out and it dropped to the floor. On a first date at a restaurant, Stephen noticed his fly was down, but it was not until he stood up from the table at the end of the meal and dishes crashed to the floor that he realized he had zipped the tablecloth into his pants. Eric, Judith, and Stephen are among more than 2,000 consumers who submitted humiliating stories to an online contest held by Johnston & Murphy, the footwear brand. To highlight a new line of men’s comfort shoes, the XC4 collection, the brand asked consumers, by way of juxtaposition, for their most uncomfortable moments. The brand developed a microsite for the line and contest, promoting it with banner ads on other Web sites. The ads, by Toth Brand Imaging, in Cambridge, Mass., underscore the theme, with one saying, “Uncomfortable is: Being selected for additional airport screening. Comfortable is: XC4.” For every week of the contest, which began Nov. 1 and ended Dec. 17, the brand gave away an iPad . The grand prize winner, based in part on online voting, will receive the “Ultimate Comfort in Your Own Home Package,” which includes a leather recliner, a 60-inch LCD television and a Blu-ray DVD player. The unofficial winner, Clay, who is from Texas, was reached by the brand on Wednesday, but Johnston & Murphy declined to provide his last name or hometown until lawyers confirmed he had met the contest requirements. They did, however, release his winning entry: “Uncomfortable is realizing that the macadamia nuts on the table used to be covered in chocolate until your father, who has no teeth, was finished with them. This realization occurs after having had a handful.” Based in Nashville, Johnston & Murphy, a division of Genesco, has made footwear for men since 1850, and provided custom shoes for every president since Millard Fillmore. It has 116 stores and 45 factory outlet locations, and sells about half of its shoes through department stores like Macy’s and Bloomingdale’s and online retailers like Zappos. Some styles have changed little over the last century, like wingtips or tasseled loafers, both retailing for about $375. Popular with those inclined to wear Brooks Brothers suits, the brand generally has advertised where men were more apt to be looking for stock tips than wingtips: in magazines like Fortune and Forbes and newspapers like The Wall Street Journal. In an era when business leaders like Steven A. Jobs or Mark Zuckerberg would not be caught in a suit, it has shifted its approach, according to Perdy Ticknor, group account director at Toth, which has worked on the shoe brand since 2002. “Over the course of the last seven years, we’ve been giving the brand a voice that’s more fashion conscious and style relevant,” Ms. Ticknor said. As for the tone of advertising, Toth has balanced revering the heritage of the brand with the fact that men tend to respond well to irreverence. “On the marketing-to-men continuum, from metrosexual to caveman, the Johnston & Murphy guy falls right in the middle,” Ms. Ticknor said. “He can appreciate that beer brand humor, and he’s a sports-loving guy’s guy, but that’s not an appropriate voice for a brand like Johnston & Murphy.” The contest marked the first Web-only campaign for the brand, and generated unprecedented traffic to its Facebook page, which has existed for about two years. During the six weeks of the contest, weekly traffic to the Facebook page rose from about 1,000 visitors to 18,000, while the number of Facebook users following the brand doubled, to 7,600 from 3,800. The brand, which declined to reveal the cost of the online campaign, spent $4.4 million on advertising in 2009, according to the research firm Kantar Media. Introduced in the spring, the letters in XC4 are meant to stand for “extreme comfort,” while the number alludes to four aspects of the shoes: they are moisture-wicking, light weight, have additional cushioning and include an extra removable insole to ensure proper fit. If XC4 sounds more like a new Volvo model than a slip-on, there is a reason. “Alpha numeric names in general tend to be more masculine, and guys gravitate to abbreviations and more techier sounding things,” said Jason Dasal, vice president for marketing at Johnston & Murphy. XC4 styles generally are less expensive than Johnston & Murphy’s dress shoes, with retail prices ranging from $135 to $150. Mr. Dasal said the so-called dress casual segment of men’s shoes, whose uppers resemble dress shoes but whose soles are rubber and cushioning is more like that of sneakers, is growing faster than other segments. Annual revenue in the United States for men’s fashion footwear in the 12 months ending Nov. 30 were $10.4 billion, compared with $20.7 billion for women’s fashion footwear, according to the NPD Group, a research firm. Marshal Cohen, chief industry analyst at NPD, said style came first for both sexes, with comfort a “close second.” Comfort, along with promising fitness benefits, has become more of a draw in recent years, as evidenced by such popular yet odd-looking footwear as toning shoes and Crocs, Mr. Cohen said. “If American consumers get any more casual, they’re going to be wearing pajamas to work,” Mr. Cohen said. “We don’t want to wear leather-soled wingtip shoes with our jeans and sports jacket.” From a branding perspective, Mr. Cohen said Johnston & Murphy was in a position similar to Cadillac’s in the mid-1990s. “The elder generation understood that Cadillac was a line of cars that performed well, but if you were in the younger generation, you just weren’t thinking about Cadillac,” Mr. Cohen. But models like the Escalade S.U.V., introduced in 1999, resonated with younger consumers, without alienating retirees. “Johnston & Murphy is the Cadillac of footwear, and they have to do the same thing, which is appeal to the younger generation with new styles and features that will appeal to the older generation as well,” Mr. Cohen said.

Johnston & Murphy
Shoes and Boots
Contests and Prizes
Advertising and Marketing
Shopping and Retail
Toth Brand Imaging


‘Very Sad’ Chris Christie Extends Apology in Bridge Scandal

Abstract: TRENTON — In a remarkable day of swirling political drama, Gov. Chris Christie tried on Thursday to control the damage from revelations that his administration ordered the revenge-closings of traffic lanes at the George Washington Bridge by firing a top aide, cutting ties with a longtime political adviser and repeatedly apologizing in a nearly two-hour news conference. Sounding somber and appearing contrite, the normally garrulous Mr. Christie said he had no advance knowledge of the lane closings and had been “humiliated” by the entire episode. “I am a very sad person today,” he said. “I am heartbroken that someone I permitted to be in that circle of trust for the past five years betrayed that trust.” His emotional news conference unfolded as the United States attorney in New Jersey began a preliminary inquiry and as — just down the hall at the State House here — a former associate who was involved in the lane closings refused to answer questions posed by Democratic legislators investigating the matter, saying he would tell his story only under immunity from possible prosecution. The Democrats promised to release more documents on Friday and issue more subpoenas of Christie aides. And the national news media that has so far bathed Mr. Christie in a distant, generally positive light descended on his doorstep here with a phalanx of television cameras and harsh speculation about whether the scandal would hurt his aspirations to be the 2016 Republican nominee for president. In the afternoon, Mr. Christie went to Fort Lee, N.J. — the borough affected by the lane closings, which tied up traffic for days — and apologized to the mayor. At least some residents cheered him as he arrived, even after his motorcade briefly created yet another traffic jam. During his news conference, Mr. Christie said he had been “blindsided” by emails made public on Wednesday that showed that staff members — also his close friends — had punished the Democratic mayor of Fort Lee in September by closing entrance lanes to the bridge because he did not endorse the governor for re-election. He said he had not realized the gravity of the situation even after officials from the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, which runs the bridge, testified a month ago that the closings had delayed emergency responders and had been done abruptly, secretively and against the authority’s protocols. His apologies were directed at the people of New Jersey and Fort Lee, and to reporters and Democratic legislators whom he had earlier dismissed as “obsessed” with finding out who closed the lanes and why. Mr. Christie fired Bridget Anne Kelly, the deputy chief of staff who sent an email approving the lane closings, whom he called “stupid” and “deceitful.” Her deception, he said, led him to mislead the public, but he did so unwittingly. Emails Between Top Christie Aides and Port Authority Officials Documents were released Wednesday in connection with an investigation into lane closings ordered at the George Washington Bridge by top aides to Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey. He also asked his two-time campaign manager, Bill Stepien, to step down as a consultant to the Republican Governors Association and to withdraw his name from consideration to lead the state’s Republican Party. Mr. Christie is the chairman of the association. Four weeks ago, Mr. Christie told reporters, he gathered his top staff members and asked them if anyone had anything to do with the lane closings. He said he gave them one hour before he publicly denied his staff’s involvement. “They all reported that there was no information other than what we already knew,” Mr. Christie said. He said he was “led to believe by folks around me that there was no basis to this.” But, he added, “I was wrong.” The governor at times took overall responsibility for those who work for him, but argued that he had 65,000 employees and could not monitor them all. Still, he displayed only occasional flashes of his usual pugnacity with reporters, whispering as he said he felt “sad” and “humiliated” by the crass, mocking tone of his employees’ emails. “I had no knowledge or involvement in this issue, in its planning or its execution,” Mr. Christie said. “And I am stunned by the abject stupidity that was shown here. Regardless of what the facts ultimately uncover, this was handled in a callous and indifferent way.” Mr. Christie’s apology seemed aimed at trying to preserve his carefully developed everyman image. His office sent out video clips of his saddest moments at the news conference. And he offered that he thought voters would forgive him, because they recognize that people sometimes make mistakes and get hurt by even close friends. Democrats argued that the increasing number of resignations and dismissals — two other aides resigned in December — and the names of the governor’s staff members on the emails made it hard to believe that the pettiness was, as the governor argued, “the exception and not the rule” of his administration. “I find it hard to believe that Bridget Kelly on her own came up with the idea to divert traffic lanes in Fort Lee,” said Assemblyman John S. Wisniewski, a Democrat who has been leading the investigation. “You have an administration that is very hands-on,” Mr. Wisniewski said. “It strains credibility to say that somebody in as high a position as a deputy chief of staff, somebody in as high a position as the governor’s principal spokesperson, somebody in as high a position as his campaign manager, all of whose names are in these emails, didn’t ever communicate this to the governor.” In the questions from reporters, Mr. Christie struggled to explain how his organization could be as close as family — they celebrated birthdays and had parties together — but would not include him in either the decision to close the lanes in September or tell him about it during the months of questions since then. Image David Wildstein, who quit his Port Authority job last month, declined to answer questions posed by Democrats investigating the Fort Lee traffic jam on Thursday. Credit Ángel Franco/The New York Times Even on Thursday, he continued to assert that he believed the lane closings might have been a traffic study in Fort Lee, and that he knew nothing about it. But one email shows him approving a Port Authority traffic study for the town of Springfield. Mr. Christie insisted that the email, from Ms. Kelly, was a misstatement of what he had said or who had approved it. For Mr. Christie, one of the leading figures in the Republican Party and a likely candidate for the party’s presidential nomination in 2016, the scandal represents the gravest challenge to his political career. It either suggests a failure of management skills or confirms what some critics have described as bullylike behavior. “This is not the tone I have set over the last four years in this building,” he said. “I am who I am. But I am not a bully.” The United States attorney for New Jersey, Paul J. Fishman, opened a preliminary inquiry after the matter was referred to his office by the inspector general for the Port Authority. Some legal experts, however, said it was difficult to imagine how the scandal could yield criminal charges. The fallout from the release of the emails, which are as brazen as they are blunt, reverberated nationally, threatening to undermine Mr. Christie’s carefully cultivated image. And political opponents were quick to seize on the governor’s troubles. “For nearly two hours today, Chris Christie stood up and repeatedly made himself out to be the victim,” said Mo Elleithee, a spokesman for the Democratic National Committee. “But Chris Christie is not the victim. The people of New Jersey who trusted him are.” The controversy is unlikely to abate anytime soon, with New Jersey Democrats vowing to subpoena everyone mentioned in the emails. The State Assembly on Friday will release an additional 900 pages of documents turned over by David Wildstein, a high school friend of Mr. Christie’s who worked at the Port Authority, which could produce more embarrassing revelations. Mr. Wildstein resigned on Dec. 6, saying that the bridge issue had become “a distraction” for the Christie administration. Mr. Wildstein had challenged a subpoena from the State Assembly demanding he appear at an inquiry on the matter. A judge on Thursday ruled that the subpoena was valid, and he appeared before the Legislature later in the day. He declined to answer questions, even to confirm his employment at the Port Authority, and the lawmakers voted to hold him in contempt for his silence. Bill Baroni — Mr. Christie’s top appointed staff member at the Port Authority and a longtime close friend who shared the same social circles with Mr. Stepien, Mr. Christie and Ms. Kelly — also resigned in December, after Port Authority officials testified in a legislative hearing that he had sought to hide plans for the lane closings from Fort Lee officials, the police and even other officials at the authority. Both Mr. Baroni and Mr. Wildstein figured prominently in the emails released on Wednesday. Ms. Kelly sent an email on Aug. 13 to Mr. Wildstein that called for Fort Lee’s mayor, Mark Sokolich, to be punished. “Time for some traffic problems in Fort Lee,” she wrote. One month later, on Sept. 9, Mr. Wildstein ordered traffic lanes from Fort Lee closed, causing a traffic nightmare that added hours to the commutes of thousands of drivers.

Chris Christie
2016 Presidential Election
Port Authority
Bill Baroni
Bridget Anne Kelly
David Wildstein
Fort Lee NJ
George Washington Bridge
New Jersey


Diplomat Back in Iran After Exile in the U.S.

Abstract: TEHRAN — One of Iran’s most prominent former diplomats, an ally of President Hassan Rouhani, has returned to the country, ending his unofficial exile in the United States, state news media reported on Tuesday. The former diplomat, Seyed Hossein Mousavian, who for many years was the spokesman of Iran’s nuclear negotiation team, left Tehran for Princeton University in 2009 after hard-liners accused him of espionage during earlier rounds of nuclear talks with European powers. “I have returned to Iran to stay,” he was quoted as saying by the state-run Islamic Republic News Agency, during a commemorative event for the death of the mother of Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif. It was unclear from the news accounts of Mr. Mousavian’s return what role, if any, he might play in the current nuclear negotiations or in other government affairs. But the publicity given to his homecoming suggested that Iran’s top leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, remained confident in Mr. Rouhani’s handling of the nuclear negotiations, which have resulted in a six-month partial freeze of Iran’s nuclear activities in exchange for the relaxation of some Western sanctions on the country. The six-month deal, reached on Nov. 24, was intended to give negotiators in Geneva more time to reach a more comprehensive agreement that could end the decade-long dispute over the Iranian nuclear program, which Iran contends is for peaceful purposes but the West and Israel contend is a cover for developing the ability to create weapons. Image Seyed Hossein Mousavian Credit Abedin Taherkenareh/European Pressphoto Agency Iranian negotiators and their counterparts from the United States, Russia, France, China, Britain and Germany, the so-called P5-plus-1 countries, ended a 23-hour meeting aimed at completing the technical details of the six-month deal, which is to be carried out in late January. One of Iran’s negotiators, Hamid Baeidinejad, was quoted by the Iranian Student News Agency as saying that a mutual understanding on the procedure to carry out the accord had been reached but that all parties now needed formal agreements from their governments. At Princeton, where Mr. Mousavian was a research scholar in the Program on Science and Global Security , he also acted as an unofficial Iranian government representative, answering queries or commenting for international news media about the nuclear program and the prospects for improved relations between Iran and the United States. It is unclear whether he also met with representatives of the United States government. Mr. Mousavian was a member of the 2003-5 nuclear negotiation team led by Mr. Rouhani, who was then the secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council. Mr. Mousavian’s future turned uncertain in 2007 when he was arrested after the president at the time, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, accused him of having leaked information to his European counterparts. He was sentenced to two years’ imprisonment for “endangering national security” but was allowed to travel to the United States. Two of his former close associates, sentenced to 10-year terms under similar charges, remain in Evin Prison in Tehran. Analysts expect Mr. Mousavian, who held several important posts, including that of ambassador to Germany, to remain an Iranian voice in its public diplomacy. “He has been wanting to return since June, since the election of President Rouhani,” said one acquaintance of Mr. Mousavian, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because Mr. Mousavian still has hard-line adversaries and the matter remains delicate. “The fact that he is back in Tehran now shows the political environment is perhaps more receptive to him.”

Seyed Hossein Mousavian
Princeton
Spying and Intelligence Agencies
Iran
Hassan Rouhani
Nuclear weapon


Closing Arguments Sound Familiar at 4th Trial in Freddie Gray Case

Abstract: BALTIMORE — The arguments were familiar, but the stakes for prosecutors perhaps as high as ever. Armed largely with the same narrative they employed unsuccessfully in three previous trials, prosecutors in closing arguments on Thursday tried to convince a judge that Lt. Brian Rice of the Baltimore police was criminally negligent for his conduct during the arrest of Freddie Gray, a 25-year-old black man who suffered a fatal injury in police custody in April 2015. Two of the three trials, of Officers Edward M. Nero and Caesar R. Goodson Jr., ended in acquittals. The third, of Officer William G. Porter, was declared a mistrial. With Officer Porter’s retrial pending and two more officers still to stand trial, another acquittal could further erode confidence in a prosecution that was welcomed by many after the disorder that followed Mr. Gray’s death. In the Rice case, prosecutors charge that the lieutenant showed reckless disregard for Mr. Bray by failing to restrain him with a seatbelt when he helped load him into a police van. “Lieutenant Rice’s decision on April 12 cannot be blamed on poor judgment or error,” said Jan Bledsoe, a deputy state’s attorney. “His decisions were intentional acts that formed when put together a chain. And that chain led to the death of Freddie Gray.” “If he had broken that chain,” Ms. Bledsoe said, “taken one small measure of compassion or humanity, Freddie Gray would still be alive.” Mr. Gray’s death spurred violent protests and pushed Baltimore to the center of a national furor over race and policing, a debate that took on renewed urgency last week after the deaths, captured on video, of two black men by police officers in Baton Rouge, La., and in Falcon Heights, Minn., and the shooting deaths of five police officers in Dallas. But, after a weeklong trial here, prosecutors found themselves relying again on the same facts — and on many of the same witnesses. “We were left with a case that looked remarkably similar to what we heard for Officer Goodson,” said David Jaros, an associate professor of law at the University of Baltimore, who has been following the trials. “If it goes differently, it’s going to be because this is the officer that is actually in the van that is in the best position to seatbelt Freddie Gray.” Lieutenant Rice faces charges of manslaughter, reckless endangerment and misconduct in office. On Monday, after the prosecution rested its case, the judge, Barry G. Williams, dismissed an assault charge, saying prosecutors had not shown enough evidence. Lieutenant Rice, 42, was the most senior officer present during Mr. Gray’s arrest. He called in the foot chase for Mr. Gray, who had fled after seeing the lieutenant that sunny April morning. Mr. Gray was apprehended by two officers on bicycles and eventually loaded into a prisoner transport wagon, with Lieutenant Rice climbing inside with Mr. Gray, to help pull him inside. With Mr. Gray shackled and handcuffed — but not in a seatbelt — the van stopped several times in West Baltimore before he was discovered, unresponsive and not breathing, at the Western District police station. He died of a spinal injury a week later. During his closing argument, Michael Belsky, a lawyer for Lieutenant Rice, said that Mr. Gray had died as a result of his standing up inside the van, and that there was no evidence that the lieutenant had a “corrupt motive” or expected that to happen. He said Mr. Gray was resisting arrest, kicking and flailing, and, with angry onlookers gathered, Lieutenant Rice had to make a quick assessment about how to proceed. “The state has failed to present a single witness or a shred of evidence to suggest what he did wasn’t reasonable,” Mr. Belsky said, adding, “This theory of prosecution and this idea is a very dangerous precedent.” Lieutenant Rice, like Officers Nero and Goodson, has chosen to waive a jury and place the case in the hands of Judge Williams, who interrupted the lawyers several times Thursday during the proceedings, as is his habit. For example, during the prosecution’s rebuttal, he pressed the chief deputy state’s attorney for Baltimore, Michael Schatzow, about the seatbelt. “You’re saying he could have done it, so the simple fact that he didn’t do it means he’s guilty of the crimes?” asked Judge Williams, who later restated the argument: “A failure to restrain equals a criminal act.” Mr. Schatzow said that it was, because it was a violation of Lieutenant Rice’s duty to ensure Mr. Gray’s safety. He also challenged the defense’s suggestion that the scene or Mr. Gray posed a danger. Prosecutors made a similar argument regarding the seatbelt during Officer Goodson’s trial, and Judge Williams ruled then that there was not enough evidence to show that the failure to use one had created a serious risk to Mr. Gray’s life and led to his death. Judge Williams said he would announce the Rice verdict on Monday at 10 a.m.

Police Brutality,Police Misconduct,Police Shootings


Former Westminster Winners Do Not Seem Past Their Prime

Abstract: The beagle, the colored bull terrier, the miniature poodle, the bichon frisé and the English springer spaniel stood and sniffed together, a gathering of elite old-timers as estimable, dog-wise, as the first class of baseball Hall of Famers in 1936. Their best-in-show victories at the Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show started with J. R., the bichon frisé, in 2001, and continued through to Uno, the beagle, last year. This all-century team (minus three colleagues) acted less like retirees and more like active stars ready to trot around breed and group rings on Saturday afternoon, two days before the start of this year’s show. None had grown fat from table scraps. Before J. R. entered the Affinia Hotel ballroom, across from Madison Square Garden, he performed a nearly lifelong task: he gnawed on the shoes his handler, Scott Sommer, wanted to wear. Uno, wearing the collar given to him at the White House, howled regularly, and the leather-chewing J. R. waved merrily with his front legs. James, the English springer spaniel, moved silkily while occasionally whimpering when he could not spot his co-owner Teresa Patton. Rufus, the bull terrier, greeted admirers with a mellow attitude but left the Cat in the Hat costume he wears in therapy work at home in Holmdel, N.J. “Lots of teenage girls and children fall in love with him,” said Barbara Bishop, one of Rufus’s co-owners. Rufus is distinctive for his triangular eyes and football-shaped head. “These dogs are just cute. They’re clowns.” Spice, the black poodle, held still at times — without being asked to strike the show-ring pose — as if flashing back to a memory of being at the Garden in 2002, awaiting the best-in-show judge’s final word. “Spice is being awfully good,” said Ron Scott, her pleasantly surprised co-owner. “She’s a real dog, a real pet.” The gathering of best-in-show winners at a fund-raiser for Angel on a Leash, a nonprofit therapy-dog program, was the largest ever, said David Frei, Westminster’s director of communications and the analyst on the show’s two-night broadcast (Monday, 8-9 p.m. Eastern on USA and 9-11 on CNBC; Tuesday, 8-11 on USA). “We’ve done three at a time once before,” said Frei, whose new television partner is Mary Carillo. “J. R. was there for that; he’ll live forever, so he’ll be here the next time.” At age 11, J. R., a white fluff ball with expressive black eyes, is the team’s most mirthful member (and father to more than 60 champions). Spice is 10; James, 9; Rufus, 8; and Uno will be 4 on May 5. Each winner emerges annually from a field of about 2,500. This year, the 170th breed or variety to join the show, the dogue de Bordeaux, will compete in the working group. Also known as the French mastiff, it is the same breed as the dog that appeared in the Tom Hanks film “Turner and Hooch.” Only 44 breeds have won, more than a third of them terriers. The wire fox terrier alone has won 13 times. One terrier, Charmin, the Sealyham who won his group last year, is ranked fifth among all dogs heading into the show, according to Dog News. A giant schnauzer, Spirit, is the nation’s No. 1 dog, followed by Holly, a pointer, and Taser, an affenpinscher. The recession has cut entries to the show by only 30 or 40, Frei said. “People cut back on activities in a hobby, and showing dogs is a hobby,” he said. “It’s tough to afford four or five days in New York City.” He said that ticket sales might be down Monday. For Westminster, 2008 was an unusual year because it received a year’s worth of publicity from Uno’s Beagle Across America tour. The first of his breed to win at Westminster, Uno was a road warrior, appearing at the White House and riding the Peanuts float at the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade. He appeared Friday on NBC’s “Today” show, walked downstairs in Rockefeller Plaza to the NBC Experience store (USA and CNBC are owned by NBC Universal) and posed for pictures for two hours with fans at Saks Fifth Avenue. Uno’s size (only 28-29 pounds); the willingness of his owner Caroline Dowell to let him travel regularly from his home on a ranch in Austin, Tex., to appearances; his easy temperament; and the popularity of beagles has kept demand for him continual. Kellie Fitzgerald, who guided James to the 2007 best in show title, said, “I don’t think James’s owner would have sent him off with anyone else,” as Dowell allowed Frei to travel nationwide as her Uno proxy. “He’s a stud dog,” she said. “He had things to do.” James is also a therapy dog. A man who died of cancer at 20 had a picture of him with James displayed at his wake to honor the comfort the dog provided. “With children, he’s very interactive,” said Patton, James’s co-owner. “But with Alzheimer’s patients, he’ll just sit there and be with you.” Fitzgerald said: “He’s very much in tune with what’s around him. When I’ve watched videos of him doing therapy work, he brings me to tears.”


In These Portraits, a Challenge to Labels of ‘Sitter’ and ‘Artist’

Abstract: The people have spoken, and the Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum listened. Research conducted by the museum found that community members would like to see more exhibitions linked together by a common theme. And while giving the people what they want is not always a successful strategy — either for increasing museum attendance, or for art in general — it works well in the first exhibitions under the new plan, a group of six solo projects by contemporary artists titled “Portraiture at the Aldrich Contemporary Museum.” Portraiture itself is an ancient, and often rather conservative, practice. Oxford Art Online, a widely accepted academic source, cites a 1974 British Museum catalog that defines a portrait as an image “in which the artist is engaged with the personality of his sitter and is preoccupied with his or her characterization as an individual.” Putting aside the old-school gender designation of artists as men, the artists at the Aldrich challenge most of these assertions. In this group of projects, the “sitter,” the “individual,” the “personality” and even the “artist” are contested labels. The most conventional and commercial of the works on view is a selection of large-scale celebrity portraits by Timothy White . Mr. White has worked for movie studios, record companies and glossy magazines, and his photographs follow a millenniums-old model for portraiture: They make famous people look good — or, more important for our era, interesting. There isn’t much room to have a three-dimensional personality with this formula, so the celebrities are presented as we already know them: Bjork and Liza Minnelli as zany oddballs; Raquel Welch and Sophia Loren as aging sirens (and Angelina Jolie as a young one); Julia Roberts as the affable girl-next-door; and Paul Newman, eternally handsome and sporty, cruising through Central Park on a mini-motorcycle. The only celebrity who defies easy packaging is Elizabeth Taylor, shown laughing as she flips off an imagined paparazzo — just as she flouted Hollywood protocol in her lifetime, supporting fellow actors with AIDS, or an embattled Michael Jackson, who is shown here in a soft-focus image that assuages the jolting peculiarity of his surgically transformed face. Hope Gangloff also traffics in cultural signs and signifiers, but of a completely different sort. Her paintings of Brooklyn bohemians borrow heavily from late 19th- and early 20th-century expressionists — Van Gogh, Egon Schiele, Gustave Klimt, Suzanne Valadon — creating a sympathetic link between the historic avant-garde and post-postmodern hipsterism. Humor is an important element in Ms. Gangloff’s works: “Beauty and the Beasts” shows a lovely, bearded young man reading short stories in a bed of hay, surrounded by farm animals; “The Trouble with Paradise” features a female nude scowling at her uncooperative cellphone as she sits on a dock among water and pine trees. Soy-milk containers, beer cans, tattoos and cool books are all a part of Ms. Gangloff’s lexicon, in which a community, rather than an individual, is deftly characterized. Shimon Attie ’s contribution is theatrical and just this side of bombastic, but it also includes strains of humor and lightness. At the center of a darkened room, a circle of video screens displays various Palestinians and Israelis recruited from the ranks of New York’s seemingly endless supply of actors. Mr. Attie videotaped his subjects posing like Greek choristers in their everyday and work clothing (two are falafel makers, one Israeli, the other Palestinian; another two are pregnant), reciting passages from the 1948 Israeli Declaration of Independence and the 1988 Palestinian Declaration of Independence. Several ideas are thus highlighted: The similarity of the texts; the disparity between “enlightened” charter-writing and everyday reality; and the way political differences are at least partially neutralized when individuals from conflicted regions are recast as immigrant Americans. Questions of politics and artistic identity are equally intricate in James Esber ’s project, in which he invited people — mostly artists and art world types — to “translate” (that is, redraw) a pen-and-ink portrait of Osama bin Laden that Mr. Esber had drawn. Mr. Esber’s original portrait, based on an unspecified media image, is not on view, but we can guess from the hundred-plus copies here that it’s a mass of lines and squiggles, more of an elaborate doodle than a faithfully rendered portrait. As in many old master paintings, where the hand of the artist becomes a mark of authentication, the signatures on the drawings around the room practically supersede the images themselves, becoming — like Ms. Gangloff’s paintings — a collective portrait of the artistic community Mr. Esber inhabits. The individual identities of artist and sitter also become complicated in the contributions by Thilo Hoffmann and Jenny Dubnau . Mr. Hoffmann’s photographs of local teenagers call into question the concept of authorship, since the youths were given full agency to mastermind and title the portraits (Mr. Hoffmann, however, is listed as the artist in the press and publicity materials). Unlike Rineke Dijkstra , the Dutch photographer famous for depicting teenagers as mute, awkward ducklings undergoing pubescent transformation, Mr. Hoffmann portrays the young people here as self-determined, opinionated and rather diverse (although, befitting the region, most seem financially well-off). Art students are shown alongside musicians, dreamers, slackers, a skateboarder — even a young man in a military uniform, posing in a corporate office, who titled his portrait “Order.” Ms. Dubnau takes the opposite tack, requiring the sitters in her painted portraits to sign waivers stating that they won’t interfere with the results. They are good sports, however: Most are other artists in the exhibition, or members of the museum staff, painted from snapshots that capture them mid-sentence, mid-blink or mid-grimace. Mónica Ramírez-Montagut, the curator of “Portraiture,” suggests that Ms. Dubnau’s paintings might be called “anti-portraits.” But they aim toward a kind of micro-realism that is conceptually truthful (Ms. Dubnau goes further, calling it “political”). The artist also includes herself in the lineup — the only self-portrait in the whole Aldrich show — in a painting that shows her with her mouth slightly open, mid-syllable, perhaps. If anything, Ms. Dubnau effectively captures the way time has sped up over the last century, affecting our perceptions of everything, including the nature of portraits. Unlike the ancients, who depicted their rulers as eternally young, we no longer accept the idea of a “timeless” portrait. Contemporary portraiture can be even more provisional, immaterial and high-tech than anything on view here, and the Aldrich falls short of exploring the phenomena of Facebook and the billions of cellphone portraits that have become our latest ways of imaging the self. Few artists have taken on the task of cataloging these reservoirs of imagery. It is easier, for the time being, to stick with what art is prone to do: focus on single images and singular individuals before they become multiplied by science and technology into something verging on the post-portrait condition.

Art
Connecticut
Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum
Museums


Karzai Is Warned Over Release of Detainees

Abstract: KABUL, Afghanistan — American senators visiting Kabul on Thursday intensified pressure on President Hamid Karzai to sign a long-term security deal with the United States. And responding to a new crisis between the allies this week, they warned the Afghan government away from plans to summarily release dozens of detainees accused of attacking American forces. “If these releases go ahead, it will do irreparable damage to the relationship,” said Senator Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina. “There will be a backlash in the U.S. Congress.” Mr. Graham and Senator John McCain of Arizona, a fellow Republican, have been frequent visitors to Afghanistan since well before the United States invasion in 2001, and they are still among the most ardent congressional supporters of a continued American role in the country. But the two lawmakers, along with another visiting Republican, Senator John Barrasso of Wyoming, told reporters here on Thursday that they had expressed grave concerns to Mr. Karzai over a lunch meeting, warning that American will to stay involved with Afghanistan was dwindling, and that actions like the planned prisoner release were adding further strain. American officials want the prisoners to be prosecuted and say the men are members of the Taliban or allied militant groups that are suspected in the deaths of 117 members of the Afghan or international security forces. The men are being held near Bagram Air Base, in what was the main American prison in Afghanistan until it was transferred to the Afghan government last year. That transfer of authority over detainees seemed to have settled one of the most corrosive disputes between Mr. Karzai and his American supporters, and it cleared the way for talks to secure a broader deal, known as the bilateral security agreement, that would allow for continued aid and a small American troop presence beyond 2014. But the troop deal is now in limbo, derailed after its initial approval in November when Mr. Karzai said he would wait to sign it until after elections this coming spring. A long succession of American officials warned him that the delay could scuttle the entire deal, and billions of dollars in international aid. But Mr. Karzai then began issuing new demands , alienating some of his own Afghan supporters and infuriating American officials. Now, the new flare-up over the potential prisoner release has revived the entire detainee issue, and the acrimony has escalated in a matter of days to the point where some of the staunchest American supporters of a continued troop presence in Afghanistan are openly warning that the deal may collapse if the Afghan government frees the prisoners without hearings. Mr. Graham suggested as much on Thursday, though he made no direct threats. “It will be devastating to any future negotiations with the United States,” he said after the senators’ meeting with Mr. Karzai. Though Mr. Graham does not speak for the Obama administration, he and Mr. McCain are among the dwindling number of elected officials in Washington who are willing to advocate for keeping the United States engaged in Afghanistan. If their support were to cool, it would probably bolster the position of those inside and outside the administration pushing for a complete withdrawal when the NATO combat mission ends this year. Mr. McCain appeared to acknowledge as much, saying he had told Mr. Karzai of a recent poll by CNN and ORC International that found only 17 percent of Americans support the war . Still, Mr. McCain was publicly more measured on the prisoner release issue. In his comments, he focused on what he described as the narrowing differences over the security deal, and said of the prisoners: “We’re going to have to see what happens, how it happens and what the situation is before we make a judgment. We can’t go any further in our comments.” The releases were ordered by a commission Mr. Karzai appointed to review the cases of those detained at the prison next to Bagram Air Base, a coalition hub north of Kabul. American officials believe freeing the men would be a violation of the prison deal struck in March. They say Mr. Karzai personally assured them no prisoners implicated in attacks on NATO-led troops would be set free without a trial when Afghanistan took control of the prison. “If this agreement is dishonored, how can you expect future agreements to be honored?” Mr. Graham asked. Figuring out where Mr. Karzai stands has proved more difficult. His office issued an ambiguous statement after his lunch with the American senators. “Afghanistan wants the innocent prisoners to be released based on Afghan laws, and criminals must be punished,” it said. The Afghan commission reviewing the cases has said the prisoners — American officials say there are 88, the Afghan commission says 86 — are innocent, or that there is not enough evidence to justify holding them until trial. The men are among the 650 detainees the commission has ordered freed since beginning its work last year, and the remaining ones could begin being freed as early as Saturday. The commission has also ordered more than 100 other detainees to stand trial, a fact that commission members have cited as evidence they are willing to keep people suspected of being killers in prison. In a statement, Mr. Karzai’s office suggested that the Americans were being hypocritical on the issue of detainees. It was at the behest of American officials, after all, that a system of imprisoning battlefield detainees without trial was established in Afghanistan, over the criticism of many Afghan and international officials. And now, the office said, the Americans are holding themselves up as protectors of Afghan justice. “President Karzai stressed that many arrests have been made in violation of Afghan laws since the Bagram prison was built,” said the statement from his office. As a result, “a number of our innocent countrymen are imprisoned there.”

Afghanistan
Hamid Karzai
John McCain
Lindsey Graham
John Barrasso
Prison
Taliban
US Military
International relations
Afghanistan War


David Cameron, Urging Against ‘Brexit,’ Focuses on Security

Abstract: LONDON — Prime Minister David Cameron of Britain warned on Monday that isolationism has historically led to war in Europe and urged his country to stay in the European Union, saying it has helped keep the Continent at peace. His argument, by focusing on security and not just economics, brought his campaign to persuade his country to remain in the 28-nation bloc into a new phase. The European Union “has helped reconcile countries which were at each other’s throats for decades,” Mr. Cameron said, and Britain “has a fundamental national interest in maintaining common purpose in Europe to avoid future conflict between European countries.” While he said he recognized that some Britons’ “heads and hearts are torn,” Mr. Cameron said that threats from a “newly belligerent Russia” and from the Islamic State meant that cooperation and “unity of purpose” with allies were vital to the nation’s security interests. The referendum on a British withdrawal from the European Union, known as “ Brexit ,” is scheduled for June 23, and Mr. Cameron’s speech, which was widely previewed in the British news media and delivered at the British Museum, was timed to precede a competing address from Boris Johnson, the former London mayor who is a leader of the campaign to leave the bloc. Mr. Johnson, free of mayoral duties , said that Mr. Cameron had failed to bring home significant overhauls of the European Union, which is “ratchet-hauling us ever further into a federal structure” that is more centralized and unitary. He charged that European leaders were using “subterfuge” for their integrationist plans to create a country called “Europe,” and that Britain, as a trading nation, would have no trouble replicating trade deals with the world, including with the nations of the Commonwealth. In a Johnsonian flourish, he concluded, “We will win for exactly the same reason that the Greeks beat the Persians at Marathon — because they are fighting for an outdated absolutist ideology and we are fighting for freedom.” The government also seized on the admission on Sunday by Michael Gove, the intellectual leader of the campaign to leave, that a British exit from the bloc would also mean leaving the single market of the European Union. Mr. Gove, who is also the justice minister, ruled out a deal like the one that Norway has, which gives the country duty-free access to the 500 million consumers of the European Union in return for financial contributions to the bloc’s budget and agreements to allow European Union citizens freedom of travel and labor. One of the strongest arguments of the campaign to leave centers on immigration: Only if Britain is free of the Brussels bureaucracy, the argument goes, can it truly control its borders. That is why Mr. Gove ruled out the Norway model, although the campaign to leave has not been consistent on this issue. Mr. Gove asserts that Britain could retain duty-free access to the bloc, which some European Union member states have said would not be possible. ‘Brexit’: Explaining Britain’s Vote on European Union Membership Britain will hold a referendum on Thursday on whether to leave the European Union, a decision nicknamed “Brexit.” George Osborne, the chancellor of the Exchequer and the most powerful government official after the prime minister, said that Mr. Gove’s plan “would be catastrophic for people’s jobs, their incomes and their livelihoods.” Mr. Osborne said that “some people think wrecking the economy is a price worth paying — I absolutely reject that.” On Monday, Mr. Cameron called Mr. Gove’s plan “reckless and irresponsible.” The Gove-Osborne clash dominated coverage in The Financial Times, which editorialized that “ Brexit is too high a price to pay over migration .” Most other newspapers, like The Times of London, focused on early excerpts from the Cameron speech. That newspaper published its story under the headline : “Brexit will raise risk of world war, PM claims.” Paul Waugh, in the British edition of The Huffington Post, wrote that Mr. Cameron’s speech was more subtle, but that he “won’t be upset with the bloodcurdling headlines.” Proponents of leaving the bloc have argued that the campaign to remain has been resorting to a “Project Fear” to scare voters into staying. Daniel Hannan, a British member of the European Parliament who favors leaving the bloc, said on Twitter : “Remainers like to think of themselves as sensible moderates. But this hysterical language is coming from their side.” In another bit of political symbolism, Mr. Cameron was introduced on Monday by David Miliband, a former foreign secretary who in 2010 lost a Labour Party leadership contest to his brother, Ed. Ed Miliband then lost last May’s general election and quit, replaced by a left-wing activist, Jeremy Corbyn. David Miliband, who now runs the International Rescue Committee, a humanitarian group based in New York, returned to Britain to urge voters to remain in the European Union. He called leaving “political suicide.” On Sunday, he gave a speech in Sunderland, in northeastern England, saying that the manufacturing jobs of the region would suffer if Britain were to leave the bloc. He called the campaign to leave the bloc “Project Fantasy,” saying that the argument that Britain could renegotiate its own trade deals with large countries is “risible.” He said his “temporary political alliance” with Mr. Cameron stemmed from their agreement on the importance of the issue.


In Los Angeles, Vintage Houses Are Giving Way to Bulldozers

Abstract: LOS ANGELES — For 50 years, the science fiction writer Ray Bradbury lived and wrote at 10265 Cheviot Drive, a bright yellow stucco home built in 1937 that is tucked away on a winding street in an eclectic and charming, affluent neighborhood on the West Side of Los Angeles. Or rather, that was once tucked away. Early one January morning, a team of demolition workers, armed with crowbars and backed by a bulldozer, showed up to begin a methodical dismantling of this piece of history in Cheviot Hills, fending off neighbors alarmed by the racket. By the end of the month, all that was left were two chimneys and a few stucco walls. The loss of the Bradbury home was the latest in a tidal wave of teardowns that has spread across Los Angeles over the past two years. Developers, seeing the potential for high profits in this housing-starved region, have been bulldozing vintage homes in middle-class enclaves — Arts and Crafts cottages, Spanish Mission-style bungalows — to replace them with lot-filling, towering modern homes that typically sell for over $2 million. Fights over this kind of redevelopment have broken out in communities across the nation, but the battle has become particularly pitched in Los Angeles, with its rich diversity of architectural styles, abundance of wealth and streets that look like movie sets. This is in no small part because many of the most striking neighborhoods here were built, or are lived in today, by a sizable contingent of set designers, movie producers and actors. For builders, the teardown frenzy is a welcome sign of a recovering Los Angeles economy. They see a market response to the demands of people who want bigger homes with the kinds of amenities that were not even imagined when houses were built 80 years ago — media rooms, sprawling bathrooms, elaborate kitchens. “All of this comes down to a matter of personal choice,” said Scott Ouellette, president of the Los Angeles-Ventura chapter of the Building Industry Association of Southern California . “Some people want a neighborhood to never change; other people want larger, more modern housing. There needs to be some balance.” But the destruction of thousands of classic homes is disrupting and dividing neighborhoods, raising alarm among civic leaders about potentially irreparable damage to handsome, historic and architecturally distinctive communities that they argue define Los Angeles as much as Hollywood or Venice. Image The Bradbury home last year. The stucco house was built in 1937. Credit Byron Espinoza/Results Real Estate Group The phenomenon has left some homeowners living under the shadow of looming block houses that push up against their property lines. Often, the first warning that a neighbor’s home is about to vanish comes from the beep-beep-beep of bulldozers that arrive overnight and can turn a home into a pile of wood and stone by lunchtime. “At this point, we’ve reached a broad civic consensus that mansionization is harmful to the character and livability of Los Angeles,” said Shelley Wagers, head of the Beverly Grove Alliance , a neighborhood group that has fought such development. “The damage they do to our neighborhoods is irreversible. Our residential neighborhoods are the heart of the city’s character.” Under rising pressure from neighborhood groups, the Los Angeles City Council is moving to toughen regulation of home construction — and destruction. A law that was passed in 2008 in response to an earlier wave of teardowns is now viewed as full of loopholes. “This is already out of hand, but it could clearly get a lot worse,” said Paul Koretz, the City Council member pushing the legislation. “We are trying to respond to it as quickly as we can.” But the effort has been slow, as the proposed changes are reviewed by city planners, fueling suspicion among neighborhood groups about the influence of developers on City Hall. “This is not a complex process that should take two years,” said Dick Platkin, an urban planner who used to work for the city. “It could be done for three or four or five months if it was a high priority, which it’s not.” The Los Angeles Department of Building and Safety said it had issued 1,728 single-home demolition permits in 2014, up from 1,323 the year before. By contrast, just 709 were issued in 2010. The evidence can be seen in strolls through neighborhoods from Hollywood to Hancock Park: Large new homes dwarf smaller cottages, dusty lots stand where homes once did, and telltale green fences and Dumpsters are set in front of houses. At a time when Los Angeles continues to struggle with homelessness and a lack of affordable housing, this subject is dominating conversations in many neighborhoods. Image A new house going up in Los Angeles. Under rising pressure from neighborhood groups, the Los Angeles City Council is moving to toughen regulation of home construction — and destruction. Credit Monica Almeida/The New York Times “It’s one of the hottest issues in the whole district,” said Teddy Davis, a Democrat running for City Council who has pledged not to take developer contributions. “I hear about it from Toluca Lake to Silver Lake, from Sherman Oaks to La Brea-Hancock. It really rattles people: They feel like here are these 100-year-old homes, and they are gone in two hours. And then they have a giant aircraft carrier parked next to their homes.” Los Angeles has always been known for its tear-it-down, build-it-up ethos, to the concern of preservationists. The intensity of the current opposition has challenged the notion that this is a city with little interest in preserving its past. “The biggest issue in this is the loss of community character,” said Adrian Scott Fine, the director of advocacy for the Los Angeles Conservancy , a historic preservation group. Clark T. Carlton, a screenwriter who lives in North Beverly Grove, said, “The growing populist movement to save these neighborhoods of charming prewar homes is evidence that Los Angeles is finally becoming a world-class city, and its people realize they do have a beautiful and interesting history to preserve.” Still, this is a debate about both the future of neighborhoods and the rights of property owners. “Some people like big, ostentatious boxes; other people don’t,” Mr. Ouellette said. “When you live in a neighborhood and own a property, whether it’s for one year or 40 years, your rights are coequal. Neither of them really have the right to tell the other what to do.” The opposition is far from unanimous. Many families want bigger homes, particularly in Orthodox Jewish neighborhoods with large families. Some homeowners say they welcome developers who take down older, dilapidated homes and replace them with sleek, modern homes that they argue increase property values for all. Whatever the historic resonance of the Bradbury home — people were lining up to grab chunks of the yellow stucco as mementos — it was hardly considered a work of architectural distinction. It was purchased by a well-known architect, Thom Mayne, who told the book blog Melville House that he viewed the home as banal and wanted to replace it with something architecturally distinct. “There are two camps. There’s one camp that doesn’t want to see a historical home come down,” said David Roberts, 69, a retired businessman who lives up the street from the Bradbury home. “The other camp says it’s O.K. to build new things. We’re in the second camp.” Mr. Roberts glanced at his wife, Sandy, and added a caveat: “Unless they build a monstrosity.”

Real Estate
Housing
Demolition
Historic preservation
Los Angeles
Urban Planning


Despite City’s Objection, Court Lets Health Insurers Combine

Abstract: A federal judge yesterday rejected New York City’s attempt to block the union of HIP and G.H.I., allowing the two companies to join forces today and create the largest health insurer in the metropolitan region. In a hearing in Federal District Court in Manhattan, lawyers for the city argued that the combined company would be a monopoly, covering more than 90 percent of the municipal work force. But Judge Kenneth M. Karas refused to grant a temporary restraining order to block the union. The city will get a second chance to make its case, perhaps in early January, when the judge will hear arguments on the city’s attempt to unravel the combination. Lawyers for HIP and G.H.I. argued that the court should not look at their dominance in covering city employees and transit workers but at their much smaller pieces of the overall health insurance market for all big employers, like Verizon and Citibank. The city contended that municipal workers should be considered a distinct market, because most of them belong to plans that in some ways are unlike those available to private-sector employees. Judge Karas said he was open to the city’s presenting more evidence. But at first blush, he said, “I think that there are substantial questions about the market definition the plaintiffs have used here.” The companies said their new arrangement would be an affiliation, not a merger, retaining separate identities and operations under a single governing foundation — at least at first. But when the arrangement takes effect, they will be able to share information on finances and operations, which, as competitors, they have been forbidden from showing to each other. The city’s lawyers argued that allowing information-sharing would inhibit competition, even if the court later decided to dissolve the companies’ union. “I think at this stage, that claim is simply too speculative,” Judge Karas said. He added, “I think the fact that they will remain separate entities is significant because it makes it somewhat easier to unscramble the egg.”

Health Insurance and Managed Care
Mergers Acquisitions and Divestitures
New York City


Human and Technical Errors Cited in Blast That Killed 3

Abstract: NEWARK, Jan. 26 - The explosion that killed three men and injured a fourth at an acetylene gas plant in Perth Amboy last year was caused by a combination of human and technical failures, federal investigators said on Thursday. The blast could have been avoided, said Stephen J. Selk, the lead investigator for the United States Chemical Safety and Hazard Investigation Board, with newer equipment, checklists for safety procedures and better training of employees. The explosion, on Jan. 25, 2005, occurred after a check valve in one of the plant's water pipes failed, allowing highly volatile acetylene gas to flow backward and out an open drain valve into a shed. The gas apparently ignited when it came in contact with the shed's propane space heater, according to the board. The explosion, heard miles away, killed three workers -- Enio Perez, 34; Pablo Morillo, 29; and German Gonzalez Vasquez, 46 -- who were shoveling snow. Another worker, Jiovai Pena Gomez, was injured. Another factor, according to the board, was the failure of plant operators to send water into the water pipe when switching between its supplies of city water and the plant's own recycled stores of water. The water pressure would have been sufficient to prevent the gas from backing up, the board said. The check valve was an added precaution. Mr. Selk said that the check valve, designed in the 1930's and bought new about 20 years ago by the plant's owner, Acetylene Supply Company of Woodbridge, was a primary safeguard against explosion. He said that the rubber stopper in the valve tilted, caught on the lip of a pipe, and left space for acetylene to escape. "We consider it a design that really needs to be replaced," he said. The company that produced the valve, Rexarc, of West Alexandria, Ohio, said in a statement that its products "were consistent with industry standards and properly designed." The Chemical Safety Board's conclusion, it said, "is incorrect and any implication of wrongdoing by Rexarc is unjustified." A woman who answered the phone at Acetylene Supply said the company had no comment on the case. Relatives of the victims, however, said in interviews that they agreed with the Chemical Safety Board's recommendations, which included more training for workers and designs that would minimize the risk of acetylene being ignited. "It angers me," said Emilia Perez, 25, Mr. Perez's sister. "They didn't have any safety measures. They didn't train the workers about the dangers they were working with." In July, after its own investigation, the federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration fined Acetylene Supply $237,600 for 40 alleged violations of federal safety standards.

OCCUPATIONAL SAFETY AND HEALTH ADMINISTRATION


Jewish Groups Revive Rituals of Caring for Dead

Abstract: The volunteers are taught to begin at the head, washing the face before proceeding to the neck and right shoulder. The right side is to be washed before the left side, the front before the back. There are prayers to say. Small talk is forbidden. The Jewish protocol for tending to the dead governs almost every interaction between the living and the deceased from the moment of death until burial. The ritual, which has been part of religious law for two millenniums, mandates the protection of the physical and spiritual remains. But for many decades, most Jews in the United States have lost touch with those protocols — if they have ever heard of them — in favor of conventional funeral home services that replace volunteers with professionals who, by their nature, skip the more metaphysical and personal elements of the process. Now, a movement to restore lost tradition has motivated a new generation of Jewish volunteers to learn a set of skills that was common knowledge for many of their great-grandparents: the rituals of bathing, dressing and watching over the bodies of neighbors and friends who have died. It is a nationwide revival propelled in almost equal parts, experts say, by an emerging sense of mortality among baby boomers, a reaction against the corporate character of the funeral home industry and a growing cultural receptivity to past spiritual practices, even some that make many people squeamish. Rabbi Elchonon Zohn, the founder and director of Vaad Harabonim of Queens, a national association of rabbis who promote traditional burial, has crisscrossed the country in recent years teaching the philosophy and technique . He described the approach as attending not just to the bodies, but also to “the feelings of the dead.” “We don’t think of this being we are preparing for burial as a ‘body,’ ” said Rabbi Zohn, an Orthodox Jew whose knowledge of burial tradition is mainly sought after by the non-Orthodox. “It’s a person; and that person in our view is still alive in a parallel world, very much aware of what’s happening.” People who can approach a deceased person in that spirit, he said, are potential members of a “chevra kadisha,” translated variously as a burial or sacred society. In the New York region and on Long Island, where he has concentrated his efforts, Rabbi Zohn estimates that 25 percent of Jewish burials today incorporate the burial rituals, compared with about 2 or 3 percent 15 years ago. His estimates are consistent with national trends, said David Zinner, executive director of Kavod v’Nichum , or Honor and Comfort, a Washington center for information on Jewish burial practice. “From approximately zero in the 1970s and ’80s, we now have literally hundreds of chevra kadishas operating in New York, New Jersey, Chicago, San Francisco, you name it,” Mr. Zinner said. Two books, he added, are considered among the revival’s seminal influences: “The American Way of Death ,” Jessica Mitford’s 1963 exposé about the funeral industry, and “A Plain Pine Box ,” a 1981 work in which Rabbi Arnold M. Goodman describes a Minneapolis synagogue’s return to traditional burial practices. For the most part, the volunteer tradition has been maintained in Orthodox communities, which make up about 20 percent of the American Jewish population, and lost among the others — Reform, Conservative or unaffiliated. Members of the Park Slope Jewish Center , a Conservative congregation in Brooklyn that did not have a burial society within anyone’s memory, started a society about seven years ago, after the deaths of two congregation members in quick succession, both young mothers. Rabbi Carie Carter, the synagogue’s spiritual leader, said the emotional aftershock of those deaths seemed to reveal a missing link in the chain of the community’s ties. There were temple groups organized for visiting the sick, and others for visiting families when a relative died. “But we were missing that space in between, caring for the dead themselves,” Rabbi Carter said. In 2003, she and a member of the congregation, Rabbi Regina Sandler-Phillips, a social worker whose interest had evolved from her work in 9/11 disaster relief, organized the Park Slope chevra kadisha with a handful of volunteers. There are now 70, about one in seven members of the congregation. Like most, the Park Slope burial society is roughly divided into two groups. The first, and smaller, is composed of those trained in preparing the dead for burial. The second contingent of volunteers is organized — usually two people at a time, for two hours at a time — to keep vigil beside the deceased every moment until burial. Both rituals are based in the notion of treating the dead as one would the most helpless member of one’s community, Rabbi Sandler-Phillips said. “What we do with the body at the end of life is very much like what we do with a child when it is born,” she said. “We wash it carefully, we wrap it in clean swaddling, and we watch it around the clock.” Gathering one evening recently in the basement of an Orthodox funeral home in Borough Park, Brooklyn, Rabbi Sandler-Phillips and some volunteers reviewed the ritual of preparing someone for burial. The society has mobilized a dozen times in the past five years, but most members of the synagogue still use conventional funeral home services. The most recent burial in which the chevra kadisha participated took place in September. “We will always address the person by name,” the rabbi said, standing with the others in a fluorescent-lighted room of white tile furnished with a stainless-steel table and a large, rectangular stone bath tank filled with water. “We begin with a prayer asking for forgiveness in advance if anything we do offends the honor of the deceased.” The walls are covered in prayers to be said during the washing, lifting, immersion, drying and dressing of the body. Men prepare the bodies of men; women, those of women. No one outside the burial society may observe its work; and beyond the circle of those directly involved, volunteers may not discuss any individual’s rites. Rabbi Sandler-Phillips said that during preparations, some people, herself included, prefer to sing rather than speak the prayers, which are mainly psalms and readings from the biblical Song of Solomon. Her favorite is the song that starts: “How beautiful you are, my beloved friend.” At all times, she said, the emphasis is on the dignity of the deceased, and respect for the irreducible reality of death. Embalming is forbidden by Jewish law — one of the practical reasons for requiring burial within 24 hours — and so is the use of airtight coffins, or anything that impedes natural disintegration. Ilene Rubenstein, 57, one of the volunteers, said most people in her congregation remained cautious about committing their remains to the care of neighbors and friends because of a kind of modesty, a sense that privacy is less disturbed if remains are handled by strangers and professionals, she said. For some volunteers, there is also the fear of death. “I have to admit, the first time, I wasn’t quite ready for what a dead body looks like,” Ms. Rubenstein said. “But you get over that quickly,” she added, receiving nods of assent from the others. “And for myself, knowing that I will be in the hands of people who care about me,” she continued, glancing around her, “that’s what I want when it’s my turn.”

Jews and Judaism
Death and Dying
Funerals
Brooklyn (NYC)


Eric J. Massa Says He Tickled House Staff Member

Abstract: Former Representative Eric J. Massa of New York, who resigned from Congress amid allegations of sexual misconduct, vehemently denied any wrongdoing during a television appearance on Tuesday, even as he described having tickle fights with staff members in a house they shared. But he insisted that that was as far as it went. “No, no, no!” he said when asked during an interview with Glenn Beck on the Fox News Channel. “I did nothing sexual.” Mr. Massa made the comments as new reports surfaced that the House ethics committee was investigating allegations, reported in The Washington Post on Tuesday, that he groped several male aides in his office. The paper said that the behavior dated back a year. It did not say how many staff members were involved. That is at odds with an account provided by Mr. Massa, who on Monday described an inappropriate exchange he had with an aide during another staff member’s wedding in January. He said he grabbed the aide while the two were seated at a table, joked about having sexual relations with him and mussed his hair before getting up and leaving. In the interview with Mr. Beck, Mr. Massa acknowledged exercising poor judgment in his interactions with his staff on another occasion. He recalled tickling an aide during a birthday party in a town house he shared with five of his staff members. “Now they are saying I groped a male staffer,” he told Mr. Beck. “Yeah, I did. Not only did I grope him. I tickled him until he couldn’t breathe, and then four guys jumped on top of me. It was my 50th birthday. It was kill the old guy. You can take anything out of context.” Mr. Massa suggested he had been warned about how his conduct was being perceived. “My chief of staff had a conniption and said: ‘You can’t live there; it’s not Congressional,’ ” he said. Mr. Massa, who is married, explained that he and his aides — “all bachelors” — lived together because they could not afford the rents in Washington. “I should not have allowed myself to become so familiar with my staff,” he said. Last week, Mr. Massa, who represents the 29th District in upstate New York, abruptly announced that he would retire from politics after the allegations against him became public. At the time of the announcement , Mr. Massa cited a “cancer reoccurrence scare” as the reason for his decision, even as he acknowledged that he was guilty of using “salty” language in the privacy of his home and office. But in a radio interview on Sunday, Mr. Massa said that Democratic leaders, including White House officials, had orchestrated a campaign against him because of his opposition to health care legislation in the House. Democratic leaders have denied Mr. Massa’s claims. On Tuesday, Robert Gibbs, the White House press secretary, dismissed Mr. Massa’s assertions as “crazy allegations,” pointedly noting how Mr. Massa’s story had changed in recent days. “Last week, he on Wednesday was having a recurrence of cancer,” Mr. Gibbs said during an appearance on “Good Morning America” on ABC. “On Thursday,” Mr. Gibbs continued, “he was guilty of using salty language. On Friday, we learned he’s before the ethics committee to be investigated on charges of sexual harassment.” Mr. Massa’s resignation leaves Democrats working to maintain their hold on a hard-won seat, in a district where Republicans outnumber Democrats by more than 45,000. Gov. David A. Paterson could call a special election for the seat as soon as next month, although he could also let it remain vacant until the November election. A Republican who switched to the Democratic Party because of his opposition to the Iraq war, Mr. Massa lost in his first try to win the House seat in 2006. He was successful two years later, defeating the Republican incumbent, John R. Kuhl Jr. He was a proponent of a single-payer health care system and was among 39 House Democrats to vote against health care legislation, saying it did not do enough to rein in costs. Mr. Massa already had one Republican challenger, Mayor Tom Reed of Corning; his withdrawal could prompt others to enter the race, including Mr. Kuhl and Maggie Brooks, the executive of Monroe County.

Massa Eric J
Sexual Harassment
Ethics
United States Politics and Government


Q. and A. With Stuart Elliott

Abstract: Stuart Elliott, the advertising columnist, answers questions from readers each week. Questions can be sent to stuarte@nytimes.com . Q. Are the AT&T commercials with the grown-up interviewing the kids at the elementary schoolroom table scripted? A. The commercials, which use the phrase “It’s not complicated” to extol the virtues of AT&T’s wireless service, began with prepared scripts “just in case,” says Steven Schwadron, a spokesman for AT&T who is a senior vice president and partner at the Fleshman-Hillard division of the Omnicom Group. “But the kids always came up with better unscripted answers to questions like ‘Why faster is better’ than we could ever write,” Mr. Schwadron writes in an e-mail. “It gave the spots a more natural feel and is one of the reasons why the ‘It’s not complicated’ campaign has been a such a success.” The commercials are created by the Atlanta office of BBDO North America, part of another Omnicom agency, BBDO Worldwide. Image Q. There’s a lovely commercial for Subaru, I believe, that depicts a father putting his daughter on the school bus for the first time. He is concerned about her and drives alongside the bus, only to see her laughing with other children. The problem is that he is driving along the right side of the bus. I believe that this is illegal throughout the United States, and not just in New York State, where I live. A. Yes, dear reader, the commercial , called “Cut the Cord,” is indeed for Subaru. The spot is part of the “Confidence in motion” campaign for Subaru of America that features drivers saying: “Love. It’s what makes a Subaru a Subaru.” According to Michael McHale, a spokesman at Subaru of America, what the driver does in the commercial “is not an illegal activity” because “you can pass a bus in one lane while you are in the other lane of a four-lane highway.” What you cannot do is “pass a parked bus with its sign out,” he adds, which he learned last year, much to his chagrin, when he was ticketed for doing just that. The creative agency for Subaru of America is Carmichael Lynch in Minneapolis, part of the Interpublic Group of Companies.


Justices Favor Lesbian Adoptive Mother in Visitation Case

Abstract: WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court on Monday sided with an adoptive mother who had split with her former lesbian partner, who is the birth mother, staying a decision of the Alabama Supreme Court. That court refused to recognize the woman’s adoptions of three children, although a Georgia court granted the adoptions in 2007. Monday’s three-sentence order said the stay of the Alabama decision would expire once the United States Supreme Court took final action in the case by declining to review it or by ruling on it. The adoptive mother’s lawyers said the decision restored her visitation rights while the Supreme Court considers what to do. The two women now at odds in the case, V. L. v. E. L., No. 15-648, were in a committed relationship for 17 years, beginning in 1995. They shared a last name. One of them, identified in court papers as E. L., gave birth to a child in 2002 and to twins in 2004, both times by insemination from an anonymous donor. They raised the children together until they broke up in 2011, and the adoptive mother, V. L., continued to see the children for a time afterward. When a dispute about the visits arose, V. L. turned to an Alabama court, which granted her visitation rights based on the Georgia adoption judgment. The Alabama Supreme Court reversed that ruling, saying in an unsigned opinion that the Georgia court had misunderstood Georgia law in allowing the adoption. “Georgia law makes no provision for a nonspouse to adopt a child without first terminating the parental rights of the current parents,” the opinion said. The Alabama Supreme Court reasoned that the Georgia judgment was not entitled to the “full faith and credit” ordinarily required by the Constitution “to the public acts, records and judicial proceedings of every other state.” In a concurrence, Justice Tom Parker of Alabama wrote that “the state has a legitimate interest in encouraging that children be adopted into the optimal family structure, i.e., one with both a father and a mother.” In an earlier opinion , Chief Justice Roy S. Moore wrote that “the homosexual conduct of a parent” is sufficient justification for denying that parent custody of his or her own children or prohibiting the adoption of the children of others. In urging the Supreme Court to restore the visitation order while the justices consider whether to hear the case, lawyers for the adoptive mother said her children “are on the cusp of adolescence,” at ages 10 and 12, “a very important period in a child’s life, and V. L. will never be able to regain this time with her children once it is lost.” They added that Alabama was alone in refusing to recognize another state’s court judgment allowing the adoption of a child by a member of a same-sex couple. A court-appointed lawyer for the three children also asked the court to restore the adoptive mother’s visitation rights, saying the Alabama Supreme Court’s ruling “already is working a pernicious harm” and is “antithetical to the children’s best interests and the reality that they have known their whole lives.” Lawyers for E. L., the biological mother, said the case was not important enough to warrant the Supreme Court’s attention. They added that the Georgia adoption order was not entitled to respect because the women had only pretended to live in Georgia, which has a six-month residency requirement for adoptions.

Adoption
Supreme Court,SCOTUS
Gay and Lesbian LGBT
Alabama
Georgia


E.U. Plan Could Lead to Lower Cost International Calls

Abstract: BERLIN — The European Commission will urge the 27 European Union countries Wednesday to reserve a uniform slice of broadcast spectrum for a pan-European mobile broadband network, one that could enable flat-rate, international voice and data calling plans. A copy of the proposal, reviewed by the International Herald Tribune, sets out technical guidelines for E.U. countries that choose to redeploy part of their low-frequency spectrum, a bandwidth that has been used exclusively by television broadcasters since the inception of the industry more than 50 years ago. Whether E.U. countries heed the advice of its executive body and lay the groundwork for a blocwide wireless market remains to be seen. But an architect of the plan and an analyst who follows the industry said they expected most E.U. countries to embrace the recommendation. “I think in the end most, if not all, E.U. countries will follow this,” said Daniel Pataki, the chief telecommunications regulator of Hungary who is chairman of a technical advisory panel to the commission called the Radio Spectrum Policy Group, which helped draft the proposal. But a spokesman for European television broadcasters said the proposal did not address the main concerns of broadcasters — that they would be left with too little spectrum to broadcast in high definition, or to sell two-way services. “I don’t think this proposal is a good compromise,” said Lieven Vermaele, the technical director of the European Broadcasting Union, based in Geneva. The bandwidth is being freed as E.U. countries convert television broadcasts from analogue to digital, which requires less spectrum, in a process that is to be completed by the end of 2012. Larger countries like Germany, France and Spain are considered likely to redeploy their spectrum to bring high-speed mobile broadband to rural areas, where service does not exist or is spotty and slow. Densely populated countries that already have blanket coverage, like Denmark, Luxembourg and the Netherlands, are also likely to redeploy the spectrum because it would enable wireless operators deliver services at lower cost. Sweden, Britain and France are considering diverting some spectrum to mobile use and Germany is planning to auction off spectrum by the end of next June. The proposal by the European Commission lays out technical guidelines for countries to redeploy spectrum in the 790-862 megahertz range. A year ago, plans to redeploy spectrum to mobile operators drew strong opposition from E.U. broadcasters, some of which are state-owned. But, according to a member of the advisory panel, who did not want to be named for fear of jeopardizing the fragile negotiations, a compromise was reached over the past year with broadcasters to limit the amount of bandwidth diverted to mobile operators to 72 megahertz, down from the 120 megahertz initially sought by the mobile industry. That should leave enough spectrum for broadcasters and mobile operators, the panel member said. Lower-frequency spectrum has great commercial value to mobile operators and TV broadcasters because signals in this range can penetrate buildings and other man-made objects, reducing the need for more base stations. Broadcasters say they need the spectrum for new, bandwidth-intensive high-definition TV and interactive services they are planning. But political momentum swung toward the mobile industry over the past year, according to one analyst, as the commission began looking to the wireless industry as a jobs generator during the economic slowdown. According to the commission, an E.U.-wide wireless broadband network would generate €20 billion to €50 billion, or $30 billion to $75 billion, in new economic activity through network construction and on-line businesses set up by residents in rural areas. The established mobile operators are seen as the most likely to bid for lower-frequency spectrum. “I think most countries are going to evaluate how to open up their ‘digital dividend’ spectrum to mobile broadband because it will be a more cost-effective way to serve their customers in the future,” said Luis Enriquez, an analyst at McKinsey in Brussels. In the end, said Mr. Pataki, each E.U. country must decide for itself whether to redeploy spectrum for mobile broadband. The commission’s proposal is not binding on E.U. countries, Mr. Pataki noted. “But I think that most will see the benefits outweigh the disadvantages,” he said.

European Union
Wireless Communications
Cellular Telephones
Computers and the Internet
Telephones and Telecommunications