U.S. Jobless Claims Fell Last Week

Abstract: WASHINGTON (Reuters) — New claims for unemployment benefits fell more than expected last week, government data showed Thursday, pointing to some improvement in the labor market. Initial claims for state unemployment benefits fell 23,000 to a seasonally adjusted 452,000, the Labor Department said. Despite the drop, claims remain perched above levels usually associated with a strong job market recovery. Analysts polled by Reuters had forecast claims falling to 455,000 from the previously reported 462,000. The government revised the prior week’s figure up to 475,000. Last week’s claims data covered the survey period for the government’s October nonfarm payrolls report. A Labor Department official said only the Virgin Islands’ claims had been estimated in the most recent week and noted the previous week’s claims number had been pushed up by administrative factors. The labor market has stumbled as the economy’s recovery from the most painful recession in 70 years fizzled, leaving the jobless rate at an uncomfortably high 9.6 percent. Last week, the four-week average of new jobless claims, considered a better measure of underlying labor market trends, fell 4,250 to 458,000. Claims for jobless benefits have moved sideways for much of this year and continue to hold below a nine-month high touched in mid-August. The number of people still receiving benefits after an initial week of aid dropped 9,000 to 4.44 million in the week ended Oct. 9, the lowest level since the week ending June 26, from an upwardly revised 4.45 million the prior week. Analysts polled by Reuters had forecast so-called continuing claims edging up to 4.41 million from a previously reported 4.40 million. The number of people on emergency benefits increased 152,112 to 4.04 million in the week that ended Oct. 2.

Unemployment Insurance
United States Economy


Ruling on Kovalchuk Should be Quick, Says Devils Owner

Abstract: LONG BRANCH, N.J. — Jeff Vanderbeek, the Devils ’ owner, said Tuesday night that he thought an arbitrator would make a prompt decision regarding wing Ilya Kovalchuk ’s 17-year, $102 million contract with the team, which the National Hockey League rejected last week. “I see no reason why that won’t be done,” Vanderbeek said. The N.H.L. Players’ Association filed a grievance Monday over the league’s rejection of the deal. A person with knowledge of the terms of the contract said the league struck it down because it did not believe that Kovalchuk, 27, would still be playing hockey when he was 44. The contract called for Kovalchuk to make only $550,000 for each of the last five years, enabling the Devils to stretch out the contract and lower the annual hit to the team’s salary cap to $6 million. A 12-year, $102 million contract would have an $8.5 million annual cap hit. In an interview before a function for Devils fans at a beachside restaurant, Vanderbeek said he would not comment about the Kovalchuk matter either to the news media or to about 150 fans who attended the function. “They’d like to see closure,” he said of Devils fans. But the Devils benefited from last week’s news conference at Prudential Center in Newark when they announced that Kovalchuk, an unrestricted free agent, had re-signed. Vanderbeek said there had been a spike in season-ticket sales since then. The Devils were 20th in the N.H.L. in attendance last season, averaging 15,535 per game, or 88 percent of capacity. But Vanderbeek said Tuesday that the Devils had eclipsed last season’s season-ticket sales total by 4 to 5 percent even before Kovalchuk’s news conference. “We are making a proactive effort to market the team more,” he said. “I decided this year to really use this off-season and get out and tell our story,” said Vanderbeek, whose team has not won a Stanley Cup playoff series in three years. RANGERS SIGN FROLOV The Rangers added some offensive punch by agreeing to terms with the longtime Los Angeles Kings forward Alexander Frolov, who they hope will be a potent complement to Marian Gaborik on the Rangers’ top line. The 28-year-old Frolov, who spent his first seven N.H.L. seasons with Los Angeles, has scored more than 20 goals five times — including two 30-goal seasons — but is coming off a disappointing year in which he had only 19 goals and 32 assists in 81 games. Frolov and the Rangers agreed on a one-year deal worth $3 million. By signing on for just one season, Frolov will look to have a bounce-back year with the Rangers and turn that into a longer, more-lucrative deal next summer. In 536 regular-season N.H.L. games, Frolov — who can play on either wing — has 168 goals and 381 points. AROUND THE LEAGUE Los Angeles has signed left wing Alexei Ponikarovsky to a one-year deal after falling short in its pursuit of Ilya Kovalchuk. Ponikarovsky scored 21 goals last season with Toronto and Pittsburgh. (AP)

Kovalchuk Ilya
New Jersey Devils
Hockey Ice
National Hockey League


A Review of Appétit Bistro in Port Chester, N.Y.

Abstract: At the north end of Willett Avenue in Port Chester, Appétit Bistro shares a strip mall with the Nail Palace, the Super Primo Grocery and an Irish pub known for its karaoke night. From arm’s length, the name and the setting do little to set a diner’s heart aflutter, but close up, the sparkling plate-glass facade and two exuberant coleus plants (along with a flurry of five-star reviews on Yelp ) raise an expectation or two. The menu can throw you off again. The first item listed is a pu-pu platter, that cocktail-party staple of vaguely Hawaiian origins. And you might be forgiven for wondering what’s with the iceberg wedge, or the chicken scarpariello. Wasn’t that an accent aigu over the “e” in Appétit? Isn’t the single decorative element in the dining room a clock in the shape of the Eiffel Tower? Didn’t the executive chef, Edi Rivera, last cook at Le Penguin , an unequivocally French bistro in Greenwich, Conn.? You can calm down. Also on the menu are escargots en croute, an adorable, delectable starter of snails tucked into a traditional pocketed baking dish, swimming in pastis maître d’ butter and sporting little puff-pastry turbans. The waiter will bring a tiny fourchette à escargot to get at them, and a second basket of warm baguette slices to soak up the butter. Oh, and there are moules frites, just the way we like them — the petite mussels heaped in a bowl, the ones at the bottom bathed in a creamy saffron tomato broth, with thin, crisp fries stacked in a paper-lined cone, flanked by ramekins of ketchup and spicy aioli. And duck à l’orange! Neatly sliced and fanned out over an orange reduction, the pink-at-center breast rounded out with a delicate mix of wild and white rice, glistening fresh orange sections and shaved fennel. Image Left, escargots en croute. Right, duck à l’orange. Credit Andrew Sullivan for The New York Times Mr. Rivera, who also cooked at L’Escale in Greenwich, opened the bistro in May with his brother-in-law and business partner, Edwin Montoya, who manages the front of the house with aplomb. They describe their menu as “modern French” and “locally sourced”; tasty heirloom tomatoes and snappy beans attested to the latter (asparagus and brussels sprouts did not). The place is not undiscovered — a reservation would be prudent. On two visits, my dining cohorts — including two young Francophiles — extolled the octopus salad with celery crescents, meaty black olives, candy-sweet cherry tomatoes and itty-bitty arugula; impeccable tuna tartare in the shape of a trinket box, with avocado and soy-lime sauce; and rich ravioli aux champignons, finished with pearl onions, peas and Parmesan. Two salads could not compete: a pretty mix of mesclun and shaved vegetables with an oversharp sherry vinegar dressing; and frisée aux lardons, straying from the classic with the addition of limp baby lettuces and not-quite-crisp potato gaufrettes. But there was nothing not to like about just-right-for-summer entrees of lemon sole in a caper brown butter sauce, sautéed spinach and tender fingerling potatoes; and pan-seared red snapper with haricots vert, wax beans and tomato and truffle oil vinaigrette. Steak frites with peppercorn sauce, made with a full-flavored, fat-ribboned hanger steak, was described by a guest as “proper — and delicious.” Shrimp seasoned with cilantro and lime and served with lemon-lime grapefruit vinaigrette, whipped potatoes and wizened spicy green beans elicited shrugs; the dish, also incorporating tomatoes, red pepper, orange sections and scallions, was a bit of a muddle in contrast with better-focused entrees. An $11 banana split led the dessert lineup. The best of the lot were more suitably French: chocolate tart and a full-throttled crème brûlée, with a thick pane of burned sugar and butter-smooth custard. As we left one night, we couldn’t help but smile at a scene that captured the prevailing mood: a child perched at the counter between two adults, her legs swinging happily as she tackled a plateful of frites.

Restaurant
Port Chester NY
Edi Rivera
Appétit Bistro


Labor Wants Its Say at Davos

Abstract: DAVOS, Switzerland — Philip Jennings, a union leader from working-class Wales, has been coming to this Alpine ski resort for two decades to rub shoulders with the bosses of the world. His message has not changed. “The world needs a pay rise,” Mr. Jennings said on a Davos panel last year. Some executives in the room rolled their eyes, others smiled politely. Did he want to go back to the 1970s, one journalist inquired. Did he understand basic economics? Mr. Jennings, who has a master’s degree from the London School of Economics, is general secretary of UNI Global Union, which represents 20 million service workers in 150 countries. This year, as he again carries labor’s message to Davos, he arrives with some rhetorical wind at his back. President Obama last month called the stalling of social mobility “the defining challenge of our time” and vowed to help unions “to organize for a better deal for workers and better wages for the middle class.” Pope Francis has questioned the idea of trickle-down economics. Even John Cridland, the head of Britain’s biggest business organization, the Confederation of British Industry, has scolded companies for not paying employees enough. The sponsor of the Davos convocation, the World Economic Forum, in its annual risk assessment released last week, cited the growing gap between rich and poor as its single greatest worry for 2014. And research by the International Monetary Fund suggests that the income disparity in some of the world’s richest countries is not only creating social problems but could sap economic demand, impede growth and even lead to the next financial crisis. “For too long, economists looked at growth alone, but not its distribution,” Christine Lagarde, the fund’s managing director, wrote in an email seeking comment on the cost of inequality. “We are now more keenly aware that a more balanced distribution of income leads to more sustained growth and greater economic stability.” The balance has been getting increasingly skewed. Real wages have stagnated or declined in recent years in most rich industrialized countries, even where productivity has grown. The chief executives who assembled at the first Davos meeting in 1971 would have earned an average of about 20 times what a typical employee made, according to data from the time. C.E.O.s today now make several hundred times more than their average worker. Mr. Jennings, 60, says the only way to reduce that wage gap is for working people to again have a voice. His father, he said, was a toolmaker in a Rover car factory in Cardiff who with co-workers successfully went on strike for better pay and work conditions back in the 1950s and ’60s. “We need to revisit some of the old struggles,” he said. “We need to rediscover collective bargaining.” But unions, a powerful force in improving wages and social welfare programs in the West in the 20th century, are struggling in the 21st. Their members now compete with cheap labor in emerging economies and with ever smarter, faster and cheaper machines. With the exception of the Nordic countries, union membership in most rich industrialized nations has plummeted, to 17 percent across the member countries of the Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development. Might inequality become a rallying cry? Many experts are skeptical. “An increasingly globalized and technology-intensive system can’t be counted on to bargain on behalf of labor” in Western countries, said Stephen Roach, a Yale economics professor and a former chairman of Morgan Stanley Asia. Indeed, at a time when not just the number of unionized workers but work itself may be getting scarcer, unions need to change as radically as the economy around them, said Andrew McAfee, a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. “All the old assumptions would have to go,” said Mr. McAfee, co-author of “The Second Machine Age,” a soon-to-be published book about technology’s effect on employment. He will be attending Davos this week for the first time. In coming years, he predicts, machines will be able to do many of today’s jobs, whether as driverless taxis, buses and delivery vans, or as lettuce-picking robots. Long term, the only way to keep people employed and socially mobile is to create an education system that produces digital-age workers whose skills are complementary to machine intelligence, Mr. McAfee said. Meanwhile, governments need to be open to new — and sometimes old — ideas of redistribution, he said. Maybe most important, he said, is an overhaul of a taxation system that in most countries still overwhelmingly relies on revenue from labor sources like income and payroll tax. “There is a very simple rule of economics,” Mr. McAfee said. “If you want less of something, tax it. If you want more of something, subsidize it.” The Rover factory where Mr. Jennings’s father worked was closed long ago. A supermarket opened in its place. It is ever harder to organize workers, Mr. Jennings acknowledged. His group, UNI Global Union, is an umbrella for 900 unions representing various categories of service workers. Most of its growth has been in emerging economies, where worker activism is on the rise, echoing earlier stages in western development. Mr. Jennings still remembers his first Davos cocktail party, in 1995. He huddled in a corner with a couple of other unionists, one from Germany’s IG Metall and one from Britain’s Trade Union Congress. So exotic was their presence amid the capitalist clamor, he recalled, that journalists would follow them even “into the gents.” Since then, about a dozen unionists have attended each year and have become more adept at “Davos speed-dating,” he said. In 1999, he said, he got involved with the United Nations Global Compact Initiative, whose corporate members have committed to health, environment and labor standards. UNI Global Union affiliates have organized workers subsidiaries of Western multinationals, like the retailing giant Walmart in countries like Brazil and South Africa. But so far, the union has gotten nowhere with Walmart in the United States, Mr. Jennings said. Every time he has tried to corner a senior Walmart executive at Davos in recent years, he said, “they run the other way.” This year, though, he is scheduled to come face to face with Dan Bartlett, the company’s top brand executive and former communications director for the White House under George W. Bush. Mr. Bartlett, Walmart confirmed, has agreed to participate with Mr. Jennings in an invitation-only workshop on leadership and trust. “Here in Davos,” Mr. Jennings said, “we do actually have a seat at the table, and they have to listen to us. At least once a year.”

Davos World Economic Forum
Davos
Jobs
Labor Unions
Income Inequality


Commander Says U.S. Still on Schedule to Leave Iraq

Abstract: Despite a recent spate of attacks, the United States will leave Iraq on schedule, the top American commander in Iraq said on Sunday. Appearing on CNN’s “State of the Union,” Gen. Raymond T. Odierno said that he would continue to monitor the situation on the ground, but that overall violence in Iraq remained at its lowest levels since just after the United States began the war in March 2003. “If we believe that we’ll need troops to maintain a presence in some of the cities, we’ll recommend that,” he said. “But ultimately it will be the decision of Prime Minister Maliki.” When asked by John King, the host of the show, what the chances are — on a scale of 1 to 10 — that the United States would leave Iraq on schedule by the end of 2011, General Odierno said, “I believe it’s a 10.” President Obama has said that American soldiers will leave Iraq’s major cities by June 30 and that all United States. troops will withdraw from the country by the end of 2011, a timetable agreed to by both countries. In Baghdad on Saturday, a suicide bomber killed 13 members of the Sunni Awakening Councils , the erstwhile groups that have helped quell violence across the country. In Mosul on Friday, a bomber killed two Iraqi policemen and five American soldiers. On Sunday, a roadside bomb killed another American soldier. Last week, a series of cars bombings in Baghdad killed at least 33 people. Nine Americans have been killed in March, the lowest number of deaths since the United States, along with a multinational force, invaded Iraq in 2003. Yet the recent attacks have brought attention to the country’s persistent violence and the lasting tension between the Awakening Councils and the Iraqi government. They have also called into question whether reduced levels of violence can be maintained after an American military withdrawal. On Easter morning, there was no overarching themes to the Sunday talk shows, whose subjects included the state of the economy, the issue of marijuana legalization and the American ship captain, Richard Phillips, who was being held captive by Somali pirates. On ABC’s “This Week,” Rick Warren , the pastor and author of “The Purpose-Driven Life,” was scheduled to address seemingly contradictory statements he has made about whether he supported Proposition 8, a measure that banned gay marriage in California. Just moments before interview, however, Mr. Warren canceled, citing exhaustion. In a video newsletter he sent out to members of his congregation last fall, Mr. Warren said: “We support Proposition 8. And if you believe what the Bible says, you need to support Proposition 8.” Yet on “Larry King Live” earlier this month, Mr. Warren said: “I am not an anti-gay, or anti-gay marriage, activist. Never have been. Never will be. During the whole Proposition 8 thing I never once went to a meeting, never once issued a statement, never once even gave an endorsement in the two years prop 8 was going. The week before the vote, somebody in my church said, ‘Pastor Rick, what do you think about this?’ And I sent a note to my own members that said: ‘I actually that believe marriage is really — should be defined — that that definition should be say between a man and a woman.’ And then all of sudden out of it, they made me something that I really wasn’t.” In December, President Obama selected Mr. Warren to give the invocation at his inauguration in a move widely seen as a peace offering to conservatives. Mr. Warren, a prominent evangelical leader, has been vocal about the need for Christians to do more to combat global poverty, AIDS, genocide and climate change .

United States Defense and Military Forces


New York City Councilman Martinez, Facing Criminal Charges, Quits

Abstract: City Councilman Miguel Martinez resigned abruptly on Tuesday as federal prosecutors, who are investigating a nonprofit group to which he directed city funds, prepared to file criminal charges against him. Such an action would make Mr. Martinez, a Democrat first elected in 2001, the first councilman to be implicated in a nearly two-year-long investigation by the United States attorney’s office in Manhattan and the city’s Department of Investigation into the Council’s use of discretionary funds to support favored nonprofit groups. Prosecutors filed a document in United States District Court in Manhattan that would allow them, with Mr. Martinez’s agreement, to charge him without obtaining a grand jury indictment. The charges — the details of which are unknown — are expected to be filed as early as this week. Mr. Martinez, who represented Washington Heights and Inwood, in Upper Manhattan, ended his time in the Council with a one-sentence letter to city officials. “Dear Speaker Quinn,” Mr. Martinez’s letter began, addressing City Council Speaker Christine C. Quinn. “Effective today, July 14, 2009, I am submitting my resignation to the New York City Council.” A staff member at Mr. Martinez’s district office said the councilman was not immediately available for comment on Tuesday. His lawyer, G. Michael Bellinger, did not return phone messages. In March, investigators raided the offices of the Upper Manhattan Council Assisting Neighbors, a group founded in 1998 to help small businesses and underserved immigrant and Latino populations in Washington Heights and Inwood. It received little city support until 2006, after Mr. Martinez’s sister, Maria, joined the board in an unpaid position. Since then, it has received more than $1.4 million in City Council funds, including more than $400,000 sponsored directly by Mr. Martinez, according to Council records. City officials expressed dismay over the charges. “This is a sad day for the City Council, for the 10th Council District and for the City of New York,” Ms. Quinn said in a statement. “The Council and I take this matter very seriously and we will continue to be fully cooperative with authorities.” Scott M. Stringer, the Manhattan borough president, called it a “tragedy” that Mr. Martinez had “somehow lost his way.” Elected and appointed officials facing criminal charges will sometimes resign their posts as part of a plea deal with prosecutors. A spokeswoman for the United States Attorney’s Office in Manhattan declined to discuss whether such negotiations were taking place involving Mr. Martinez. The Upper Manhattan Council Assisting Neighbors was one of dozens of nonprofit groups investigators have been closely examining as part of a sprawling inquiry into the City Council’s discretionary funding. The investigation led to the indictments of two former council aides on embezzlement charges. The aides, Asquith Reid, the former chief of staff for Councilman Kendall Stewart, and Joycinth Anderson, who also worked for Mr. Stewart, pleaded guilty last month to embezzling more than $145,000 that Mr. Stewart had earmarked for a foundation run by Mr. Reid. They are awaiting sentencing. Mr. Stewart was not implicated. City Councilwoman Maria del Carmen Arroyo’s nephew and another person were charged last month with embezzling $200,000 from a nonprofit group closely affiliated with Ms. Arroyo and her mother, Assemblywoman Carmen E. Arroyo. And investigators issued subpoenas to landlords who leased space to Councilman Larry B. Seabrook and several nonprofit groups closely linked to him after reports that the groups had billed New York City more than $100,000 in inflated rent payments over two and a half years. Mr. Martinez took office in January 2002 and was chairman of the Fire and Criminal Justice Services Committee, a post that added a $10,000 stipend to his $112,000 salary. He has kept somewhat of a low profile in the Council the last few months, even skipping a press conference held by Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg in his district last month, a highly unusual absence for a Council member. But he appeared at meetings, continued to vote and has raised more than $46,000 for a re-election campaign. He had a fund-raising lead over all but one of his nine rivals. Ydanis Rodriguez, who lost to Mr. Martinez in 2001 and again in 2003, has raised $50,000.


Tebow Pledges to Put Team First With Jets

Abstract: There was a moment during the Jets ’ internal discussions about Tim Tebow when General Manager Mike Tannenbaum looked at his coach, Rex Ryan, and his new offensive coordinator, Tony Sparano, and a thought washed over him. Both coaches were left dazed last season by a patented last-minute comeback by the Tebow-led Denver Broncos , Ryan on Nov. 17, and Sparano, formerly of the Miami Dolphins, on Oct. 23. “They both felt, ‘Hey, this is our type of guy,’ ” Tannenbaum said. That feeling was so intense that the Jets on Wednesday surrendered two draft picks and, eventually, about $2.5 million to acquire Tebow, who by the end of what he characterized as a long and interesting day sounded intrigued about accepting a lesser role. Late Wednesday night, in a conference call, Tebow commended Ryan, whom he said he has admired ever since the Jets were featured on HBO’s “Hard Knocks.” He praised Mark Sanchez, with whom he shared a “great conversation” over the phone. And he said he was looking forward to seeing how the Jets intend to use him — in short yardage, in the red zone and, perhaps most prominently, in the Wildcat formation. “I always try to put the team first, and however I can help the team, that’s what matters,” he said. Tannenbaum mentioned the Wildcat several times during the conference call. Ryan is a big proponent of the gadget formation, particularly because it complicates the opposition’s preparation. “For us to run an effective Wildcat is not a pipe dream,” Tannenbaum said. “We’ve done it here for a couple years here. When you see what Coach Sparano has done in Miami, it’s not a projection. And then to see what Tim Tebow has done with the ball in his hands, it’s not a projection.” In their discussions, Tannenbaum said the Jets talked about Tebow’s “magnetic following” but dismissed any speculation that Tebow would threaten Sanchez’s grasp on the starting job. “We understand the popularity of any backup quarterback,” Tannenbaum said, “and this one is a little more unique than others.”

Tebow Tim
Tannenbaum Mike
New York Jets
Denver Broncos
Football


Ghailani Fights Conviction in Embassies Bombing Case

Abstract: Lawyers for Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani , the former Guantánamo detainee who was acquitted of more than 280 counts of murder and conspiracy last month in a terrorism trial in Manhattan, asked the trial judge on Friday to dismiss the sole count on which he was convicted. The lawyers argued that because Mr. Ghailani was acquitted of so many charges stemming from the bombings in 1998 of two United States Embassies in East Africa, there was insufficient evidence to support his conviction, for a single count of conspiracy to destroy government buildings and property. The lawyers cited what they called “the irreconcilability between the sole count of conviction and Ghailani’s acquittal on all other counts of the indictment, which, without dispute, all arose out of the exact same conduct and evidence.” The only way such a conviction could stand, they argued, would be if Mr. Ghailani had conspired to destroy government buildings other than the two embassies. “However, there simply was no proof — nor even argument — linking Ghailani to conduct exclusive of the embassy bombings,” the lawyers said in a motion filed in United States District Court. Mr. Ghailani, 36, the first former Guantánamo detainee to be tried in a civilian court, is scheduled to be sentenced on Jan. 25. He faces a term of 20 years to life. His lawyers also asked the judge, Lewis A. Kaplan , to dismiss a separate jury finding; if he does so, that could reduce Mr. Ghailani’s maximum sentence to 20 years. The charge Mr. Ghailani was convicted of carries a sentence that can vary, depending on whether a defendant’s conduct is found to have caused deaths or injuries. The jury, in its verdict on Nov, 17, said the government had proved that Mr. Ghailani’s conduct “directly or proximately caused death to a person,” a finding that made him eligible for a life sentence. But Mr. Ghailani’s lawyers argued that there was not enough evidence to support that finding, according to the motion, submitted by one of those lawyers, Michael K. Bachrach. A spokeswoman for Preet Bharara, the United States attorney for the Southern District of New York, had no comment on the defense’s arguments. Mr. Bharara’s office is expected to respond in court papers, and he has said the government will seek a life sentence. The verdict in Mr. Ghailani’s trial has deepened the debate over whether terrorist detainees should be tried in civilian courts, with some critics charging that the overwhelming number of acquittals for Mr. Ghailani shows how risky civilian trials can be. Mr. Ghailani, who was captured in 2004, was held for nearly five years, first in a secret overseas prison run by the Central Intelligence Agency and later at the naval base at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. He was moved into the civilian system last year. At his trial, prosecutors argued that he had played a key role in Al Qaeda ’s plot to bomb the American Embassies in Nairobi, Kenya, and Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. The bombings killed 224 people and wounded thousands. Prosecutors said Mr. Ghailani had helped in the logistical preparations for the Tanzania attack, including buying the truck that was used to carry the bomb and gas tanks that were placed inside it to increase the force of the blast. Mr. Ghailani’s lawyers contended that he was duped into assisting in the conspiracy. The government has also said Mr. Ghailani later trained with Al Qaeda and worked as a bodyguard for Osama bin Laden, but those accusations were not included in the criminal charges, and the jury was not told about them. In seeking the dismissal of the conviction, Mr. Ghailani’s lawyers described what they called “the overwhelming statement of the jury acquitting” him on the other counts. As an alternative, the lawyers asked Judge Kaplan to grant Mr. Ghailani a new trial on the conspiracy count. But Daniel C. Richman, a Columbia University law professor, said that attacking a conviction as inconsistent with acquittals of the same defendant was rarely successful. “The bottom line is that inconsistent verdicts make us uncomfortable but we completely wrap our doctrine around them and accept them,” said Professor Richman, who is a former federal prosecutor. “In large part because the government is unable to complain about inconsistent acquittals,” he added, “the Supreme Court has made clear that inconsistent convictions will generally pass muster.”

Terrorism
Al Qaeda
Ghailani Ahmed Khalfan
Dar es Salaam (Tanzania)
Kaplan Lewis A
Guantanamo Bay Naval Base (Cuba)
Crime and Criminals
Manhattan (NYC)


The Black-Capped Chickadee, Curious and Congenial

Abstract: On a recent walk along the edge of a young Bronx woodland, I looked up to find that I was not alone. About six black-capped chickadees had turned a bare gray birch into a sort of Christmas tree. As additional birds flitted in, they chattered and jockeyed for position. Clearly investigating my activities, within a few seconds a dozen birds were no more than a yard or two away. It struck me that I’ve received holiday cards that looked a lot like this. The black-capped chickadee seems to be universally admired. Perhaps it is the striking color pattern that attracts attention — a black cap and throat always play nicely against white cheeks. Or perhaps it is the tiny size and disproportionate boldness; chickadees appear to actively seek out human company. I have often had chickadees briefly accompany me on winter walks; their antics and familiar “chickadee-dee-dee-dee” calls are particularly welcome in the otherwise silent woodlands of late fall and winter. It could be that the birds are hoping to drive me from their territory — and that I am misperceiving what is actually a threat. It has also occurred to me that my activities are disturbing the few remaining insects in my path, and the birds could simply be looking for a meal. Chickadees’ natural curiosity has sometimes been the source of well-intentioned entertainment at nature centers. A dummy is placed in an old chair near a bird feeder, and each time the feeder is refilled, some seed is also placed on the dummy’s hand or head. The dummy is then removed, and a visitor who has been invited to sit in the chair is sprinkled with seeds. It is generally not long before the first chickadees land on the person to feed. Of course, encouraging undomesticated animals to associate humans with food is usually frowned upon, but I have yet to see any direct harm result to either human or bird through this very old-school ploy. Baba Dioum, a Senegalese forester, perhaps articulated it best: “In the end we will conserve only what we love; we will love only what we understand; and we will understand only what we are taught.” Indeed, smiling children covered in chickadees have reminded me to appreciate wildlife more instinctively than intellectually. Occasional contact with a chickadee might do more toward this end than a dozen books on the subject. The black-capped chickadee (Poecile atricapillus) can be found in our area year round. Their amusing antics, however, often play out — at least for me — along the edges of leafless winter woods. I cherish seeing them on my cold-weather hikes, as they forage in mixed flocks with nuthatches, titmice and other woodland birds.


Memphis Grizzlies Win 5th in Row, Beating Miami Heat

Abstract: The reserve Wayne Ellington had career bests with 7 3-pointers and 25 points, leading the Memphis Grizzlies over the visiting Miami Heat , 104-86, on Sunday for their fifth straight win. “I didn’t know he could shoot the ball like that,” the Heat’s Chris Bosh said. “We know now.” The Grizzlies snapped Miami’s four-game winning streak while extending their own franchise-record home winning streak to 14 dating to last season. Rudy Gay added 21 points and Zach Randolph had his sixth double-double with 18 points and 12 rebounds for Memphis. Mike Conley had 18 points and 9 assists, and Marc Gasol added 10 rebounds and 6 assists. Bosh scored 22 points and LeBron James had 20 for Miami. Dwyane Wade, who missed Friday’s night win at Atlanta with a cold, was held to 8. THUNDER 106, CAVALIERS 91 Russell Westbrook banked in a half-court shot during a 27-point outing, and Kevin Durant added 26 points as Oklahoma City beat visiting Cleveland. Westbrook, a career 29 percent shooter from 3-point range, had made just 6 of 24 behind the arc to start the season and Coach Scott Brooks suggested before the game that he needed to start making more if he was going to keep taking so many. Westbrook responded with a few well-timed connections, one a desperation shot at the end of the third quarter. Kyrie Irving led the Cavs with 20 points. CLIPPERS 89, HAWKS 76 Blake Griffin scored 16 points, Chris Paul contributed 15 points and 8 assists and host Los Angeles beat Atlanta. COUSINS SUSPENDED The N.B.A. suspended Sacramento Kings center DeMarcus Cousins for two games without pay for confronting the San Antonio announcer Sean Elliott in a hostile manner. The exchange followed the Spurs’ 97-86 victory in Sacramento on Friday night. Cousins will lose about $70,500 of his $3.9 million salary. Elliott, a former Spurs player and the team’s television analyst, made remarks critical of Cousins. TIMBERWOLVES INJURY Minnesota Timberwolves swingman Chase Budinger will be out indefinitely with a torn meniscus in his left knee. Budinger was injured in a game against the Chicago Bulls. The Wolves said he would have surgery later this week.

Basketball
Los Angeles Clippers
Atlanta Hawks
Memphis Grizzlies
Miami Heat


JPMorgan Unit Is Sued Over Mortgage Securities

Abstract: The federal mortgage task force that was formed in January by the Justice Department filed its first complaint against a big bank on Monday, citing a broad pattern of misconduct in the packaging and sale of mortgage securities during the housing boom. The civil suit against Bear Stearns & Company, now a unit of JPMorgan Chase , was brought in New York State Supreme Court by Eric T. Schneiderman , the attorney general who is also a co-chairman of the task force, known as the Residential Mortgage-Backed Securities Working Group. The complaint contends that Bear Stearns and its lending unit, EMC Mortgage, defrauded investors who purchased mortgage securities packaged by the companies from 2005 through 2007. The firms made material misrepresentations about the quality of the loans in the securities, the lawsuit said, and ignored evidence of broad defects among the loans that they pooled and sold to investors. Moreover, when Bear Stearns identified problematic loans that it had agreed to purchase from a lender, it was required to make the originator buy them back. But Bear Stearns demanded cash payments from the lenders and kept the money, rather than passing it on to investors, the suit contends. Unlike many of the other mortgage crisis cases brought by regulators such as the Securities and Exchange Commission , the task force’s action does not focus on a particular deal that harmed investors or an individual who was central to a specific transaction. Rather, the suit contends that the improper practices were institutionwide and affected numerous deals during the period. A spokesman for Mr. Schneiderman declined to comment on the filing. A representative for JPMorgan, which acquired Bear Stearns in a fire sale in March 2008, said it would contest the allegations. “We’re disappointed that the New York A.G. decided to pursue its civil action without ever offering us an opportunity to rebut the claims and without developing a full record — instead relying on recycled claims already made by private plaintiffs,” said Joseph Evangelisti, the bank’s spokesman. He added that the allegations predate JPMorgan’s acquisition. The allegations in the suit against Bear and EMC are not new. The task force complaint closely echoes legal arguments made in recent years by numerous private litigants trying to recover losses in mortgage securities. Most of these cases continue to inch their way through the courts. Late last week, for example, JPMorgan lost a round in one of these battles when Jed S. Rakoff, a federal judge in Manhattan, rejected the bank’s request to dismiss a complaint brought by Dexia, a Belgian-French bank. The European bank had bought $1.6 billion in mortgage securities issued by Bear Stearns and Washington Mutual, another institution taken over by JPMorgan during the credit crisis. Nevertheless, some lawyers who are battling the large banks and investment firms on behalf of mortgage investors said they welcomed the action by the task force. Gerald H. Silk, a lawyer at Bernstein Litowitz Berger & Grossmann in New York, said: “The government’s action represents a complete validation of the cases brought by investors who were duped by the fraudulent sale of mortgage-backed securities by JPMorgan, WaMu and Bear Stearns.” The suit encompasses work begun by Mr. Schneiderman’s office in the spring of 2011, according to people briefed on the investigation. The attorney general subpoenaed documents from JPMorgan Chase and from large mortgage insurers that had also brought cases against the banks for failing to live up to their promises about the types and quality of mortgages placed in loan pools and sold. New York investigators also capitalized on a cooperation agreement struck by Andrew M. Cuomo, the previous attorney general, with Clayton Holdings, a major firm in the business of evaluating mortgages. The firm provided documents and e-mails showing that Bear Stearns routinely ignored major defects on loans it was purchasing and pooling so that it could preserve its relationship with mortgage originators. After the mortgage fraud task force was created in early 2012, Mr. Schneiderman’s office combined its efforts with the Housing and Urban Development Department, the S.E.C., the inspector general of the Federal Housing Finance Agency, the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Justice Department. The lawsuit’s filing, just days before the first presidential debate and a little over a month before the election, may be a way for the Obama administration to try to convince voters that it is working to hold mortgage miscreants accountable for wrongdoing. But, lawyers say, filing a case is not the hard part; winning it is. The complaint contends that Bear Stearns defrauded investors when it assured them of the stringent reviews being made of the loans the firm was bundling. “Rather than carefully reviewing loans for compliance with underwriting guidelines,” it said, “defendants instead implemented and managed a fundamentally flawed due diligence process that often, and improperly, gave way to originators’ demands.” Bear Stearns and EMC took other steps to keep mortgages flowing and their originators happy. Even after the loans it was bundling began failing at monumental rates, the complaint said, Bear Stearns did not require originators to buy them back as they were obligated to do. Instead, the firm allowed the originators to settle the put-back claims confidentially “by making cash payments that were a fraction of the contractual repurchase price,” according to the lawsuit. The suit was brought under New York’s Martin Act, the state law that gives the attorney general wide latitude to bring fraud cases without demonstrating a defendant intended to defraud. The suit does not seek specific damages but asks for restitution for investors victimized by the deceptive practices and disgorgement of money received in connection with the fraud.

Mortgage-Backed Securities
Suits and Litigation
Bear Stearns Cos
Securities and Exchange Commission
JPMorgan Chase & Company
Schneiderman Eric T
EMC Corporation
Subprime Mortgage Crisis


In a Game as Thrilling as a Circus, the Jets Hold Off the Dolphins

Abstract: MIAMI GARDENS, Fla. — Sun Life Stadium was filled with manic energy, bordering on mayhem. LeBron James saluted, pop stars sang, fans swayed in the building’s dance club, reality stars dotted luxury boxes, and thousands of orange towels twirled madly in the stands. Sunday night felt like a circus, which meant the Jets felt right at home. The Jets are steeped in turmoil, seemingly adding one controversy each week. In fact, lately they seem fueled by chaos, boosted by distraction. Recent events included an N.F.L. investigation into the unprofessional treatment of a female reporter at team headquarters and receiver Braylon Edwards’s arrest last week on suspicion of drunken driving. The Jets traveled here to face the Miami Dolphins , winners of the three previous games in this rivalry. They arrived without Darrelle Revis, Calvin Pace, Kris Jenkins and Santonio Holmes, four starters and four of their best players. Yet the Jets still triumphed, 31-23, against logic, in a performance both striking and convincing. “We can’t give people a reason to shoot bullets at us,” linebacker Bart Scott said. “We can’t give them ammunition. You can’t say anything if we win.” Cornerback Antonio Cromartie then interrupted Scott by shouting across the visitors’ locker room. Cromartie wanted to remind his teammates of the first speech delivered by Coach Rex Ryan, back in late July. That speech would put into context the 363 passing yards the Jets allowed the Dolphins, would help ease the pain of the country mile of total offense compiled against a defense that considers itself tops in the N.F.L. “Remember what Rex said,” Cromartie yelled. “All we want to do is lead the league in wins.” Ryan likes to say that division matchups are worth a game and a half in the standings, so by his own math, the Jets (2-1) now lead the Dolphins (2-1) by more than just the early tie-breaker this win provided. With back-to-back wins over the Patriots and the Dolphins, the Jets are one victory at Buffalo next week from sweeping the first half of their games in the American Football Conference East. The Jets needed much to topple the Dolphins. They needed Ryan, fed up with his team’s behavior, to unleash a tirade in a team meeting on Wednesday morning. They needed Edwards to shake off his arrest with a 67-yard touchdown. They needed the call that overturned a late interception by quarterback Mark Sanchez. They needed another career day from tight end Dustin Keller (6 receptions, 98 yards, 2 touchdowns). They needed Drew Coleman to seal the game with an interception in the end zone. Mostly, the Jets needed a long drive late in the fourth quarter, needed a long, steady, debilitating march, needed 80 yards in 12 plays capped by a 1-yard touchdown from LaDainian Tomlinson, the resurgent running back. That score extended the lead to 8, the final margin. “It just shows what type of guys we have,” safety Jim Leonhard said. “It was a rough, rough week for a few days. But we did what we could to get a win.” The latest frenzy came from Edwards, who spent Tuesday morning in jail in Manhattan. After the game Sunday, Edwards said he called Commissioner Roger Goodell to express remorse for his actions, and he confirmed an earlier report that he had been taking antibiotics for his ankle, though he declined to explain how that accounted for a 0.16 breathalyzer reading. By then, fortunes had already turned. The Jets, criticized for their lack of discipline, now find themselves a one-point loss to Baltimore from opening the season undefeated. Instead, by Ryan’s math, they surged into first place. “This is a tough team,” Ryan said. “It’s a resilient team.” The boos started before the game, when the former fan favorite wearing the familiar No. 99 jersey marched slowly toward midfield. Only Jason Taylor wore a white Jets jersey, and he walked alone, the only captain, a message from his new coach, Rex Ryan, to Taylor’s former teammates — he is one of ours now. Taylor made his own statement late in the first quarter, barreling around a blocker and dropping quarterback Chad Henne for an 8-yard sack. Taylor, who played 12 of his previous 13 seasons in Miami, pumped his right fist, then spread his arms wide in celebration. Fans showered him with boos. Yet if the Jets were distracted against the Dolphins, they were distracted in a good way. Especially quarterback Mark Sanchez and tight end Dustin Keller, who each game seem less like mere teammates and more like kindred spirits. Keller and Sanchez hooked up six times in the first half against the Dolphins, including once for a 31-yard gain and twice for touchdowns. On the first score, Sanchez threw off his back foot, a 24-yard lob that Keller secured in the front corner of the end zone. On the second, Sanchez found Keller on a 12-yard slant. Those touchdowns boosted the Jets to a 14-0 lead — and this was with Edwards benched for the first quarter because of his arrest. Distraction? Not on this night. The Dolphins scored the next 17 points, reclaiming the lead. Ryan and his players admitted later that they had thought back to last season, when the Dolphins scored three times in the fourth quarter for their comeback win. Henne kept finding Brandon Marshall, who kept knifing through the Jets’ secondary, eventually grabbing 10 passes for 166 yards and a score. Afterward, linebacker David Harris said, “It felt like the defense lost.” But while Harris said he feared the next defensive meeting, where Ryan and the coordinator Mike Pettine will surely rip into their charges while watching film, that same defense will soon return Revis, perhaps the best cornerback in football, and Pace, their leading pass rusher last season. Holmes will be back, too, after the Bills game. Most important, Sanchez has yet to record a single turnover this season, a streak he kept alive against the Dolphins, while throwing for three touchdowns for the second consecutive game. “Well, not throwing it to the other team, that’s huge,” Sanchez deadpanned. And if that does not work, another distraction, or four, should help.

New York Jets
Miami Dolphins
National Football League
Football


Taliban Seize Police Force in a Hamlet

Abstract: KABUL, Afghanistan — The few hundred people of Kala Khel, a village in southern Afghanistan, on Thursday got some of the best news they had heard all year: the entire Afghan Local Police unit posted to the hamlet had disappeared the night before, apparently betrayed by two of their own and abducted by the Taliban. The police, villagers said, had been beating people and stealing from them nearly every day since they arrived five months ago, and few in Kala Khel seemed sorry to see them gone. “People are happy they have been kidnapped,” said Mahmadullah, a villager who uses a single name. The abduction, and the villagers’ apparent indifference to the fate of the men, is another stormy chapter for the Afghan Local Police. The militia force has found itself the target of frequent Taliban attacks , as well as criticism from human rights advocates and ordinary Afghans, who say some of the militias are made up of nothing more than common criminals, village toughs and sometimes even Taliban sympathizers. The American-led military coalition began raising the militias three years ago to protect remote villages and, it was hoped, give Afghans a stake in fighting the Taliban. In some areas, the militias have indeed given the fight a local imprimatur, persuading villagers to stop aiding the insurgents and start helping Afghan and coalition forces. Elsewhere, though, the local police have earned a thuggish reputation. That appears to have been the case in Kala Khel, where the local 14-man unit was sent to protect a stretch of unpaved road that bisects the village, in Zabul Province. The officers arrived five months ago and quickly began to take what they wanted, bloodying anyone who got in their way, villagers said. “They were not good — they are illiterate and morally corrupt people,” said Hajji Asham, one of a handful of Kala Khel residents reached by phone on Thursday. The abuse worsened after the Taliban began attacking the post, apparently using the village as a staging ground and for cover. Villagers said no one in Kala Khel aided the Taliban. But the local police, perhaps not without reason, appear to believe villagers did support the insurgents. “Anytime they were attacked from anywhere within the village, they would go there and beat people and confiscate their belongings, especially motorcycles,” Mahmadullah said. The latest beating was meted out on Wednesday, he said. The victim was a farmer whose tractor accidentally collided with a motorcycle ridden by a local policeman. After being beaten, Mahmadullah said, the farmer was fined $30, a vast sum for most Afghans. One of the problems seems to have been that the local police unit was made up of people from different areas of Zabul and other provinces. In general, the most successful local police units have often been drawn directly from the villages they patrol. Afghan officials said that they were investigating, and that what exactly happened had not yet been determined. Villagers said two policemen spiked the food of their 12 colleagues with crushed sleeping pills. The Taliban then came in and took away the near-comatose men along with a pair of police pickup trucks and all the weapons in the post. The sleeping-pill ploy is often cited by Afghans in cases of infiltration or betrayal, though hard evidence backing it up is rarely produced. The Taliban, for their part, claimed responsibility for the abduction, which they said was aided by two infiltrators. Qari Yousuf Ahmadi, a Taliban spokesman, said the original plan was to kill the policemen outright. But “the cowards did not resist,” he said, so the Taliban “blindfolded them and led them away to a safe location.” He said the men would be tried under Islamic law and then the Taliban would “punish them.” He did not elaborate.

Afghan Local Police
Taliban
Kidnapping
Afghanistan
Terrorism
Zabul Province Afghanistan
Afghanistan War
Police


Despite Gains, Night Raids Split U.S. and Karzai

Abstract: WASHINGTON — For the United States, a recent tripling in the number of night raids by Special Operations forces to capture or kill Afghan insurgents has begun to put heavy pressure on the Taliban and change the momentum in the war in Afghanistan. For President Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan, the raids cause civilian casualties and are a rising political liability, so much so that he is now loudly insisting that the Americans stop the practice. The difference — and a flare-up over the raids between Mr. Karzai and Gen. David H. Petraeus , the top American commander in Afghanistan — is likely to be a central focus at a NATO summit this week in Lisbon, where the United States and NATO are to present a plan that seeks to end the combat mission in Afghanistan by 2014. Publicly, the Obama administration took a diplomatic tone so as not to further inflame the situation before the Lisbon meeting, which will include President Obama , other NATO leaders and Mr. Karzai. “On President Karzai’s concerns, we share these concerns,” Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton told reporters on Monday. “We’ve discussed them on a number of occasions.” But she stressed that “these operations are conducted in full partnership with the government of Afghanistan.” At the center of the public debate — the latest chapter in the tense relationship between the United States and Mr. Karzai — is an American military tactic that, while used for years, has become a cornerstone of General Petraeus’s strategy to reassert NATO and Afghan control over contested parts of Afghanistan since the American troop buildup reached its peak at the end of the summer. More than a dozen times each night, teams of American and allied Special Operations forces and Afghan troops surround houses or compounds across the country. In some cases helicopters hover overhead. Using bullhorns, the Afghans demand occupants come out or be met with violence. In the majority of cases — about 80 percent, according to NATO statistics — the occupants are captured rather than killed. As recently as early July, Special Operations forces were carrying out an average of five raids a night, mostly in southern Afghanistan. But in a 90-day period that ended Nov. 11, Special Operations forces were averaging 17 missions a night, conducting 1,572 operations over three months that resulted in 368 insurgent leaders killed or captured, and 968 lower-level insurgents killed and 2,477 captured, according to NATO statistics. Many Afghans see the raids as a flagrant, even humiliating symbol of American power, especially when women and children are rousted in the middle of the night. And protests have increased this year as the tempo has increased. In one high-profile encounter in February, 23 Afghan male civilians were killed and 12 Afghan women and children were wounded in a helicopter attack when Army Special Forces were operating in a village in Oruzgan Province. An Air Force investigation concluded that a Predator drone operator had dismissed two warnings about the presence of youths in the area before military commanders ordered the helicopter to attack. Mr. Karzai told The Washington Post on Sunday, in the interview that created the latest outbreak of controversy, that the raids were undermining support for the American-led war effort. “The Afghan people don’t like these raids. If there is any raid, it has to be done by the Afghan government, within the Afghan laws,” he told The Post. Secretary Clinton and other American officials insist that Afghan troops have participated as full partners. NATO officials in Kabul say that representatives from the Afghan ministries of defense and interior, and from Mr. Karzai’s own national directorate of security, work inside the operations center and approve each mission. They also say that new rules have significantly decreased the chances of civilian casualties, and are intended to make the American-led raids seem less like an affront to Afghan sovereignty. For one thing, Afghans are the first ones in to search any homes or compounds, and female Afghan police officers accompany the missions in case female detainees must be searched. “They check the due-diligence box in very credible ways,” said Bill Harris, a retired senior Foreign Service officer who recently wrapped up a yearlong tour leading the State Department’s provincial reconstruction team in Kandahar. With a major increase in surveillance planes, more cellphone monitoring and a rise in informers as local residents gain confidence in their security, the Americans say the compounds and the people in them are now more precisely pinpointed. They say the raids are focused on Taliban shadow governors, midlevel insurgent commanders and people who handle finances and logistics for the Taliban. That, in turn, puts pressure on senior Taliban leaders operating in the safe havens of Pakistan, according to a strategy outlined by General Petraeus, who hopes they may be forced to the bargaining table. Administration officials said they are hoping Mr. Karzai will temper his comments on the raids at the NATO summit in Lisbon, where the way ahead in Afghanistan is a main topic. “He wants to get to the point where the south and east of the country don’t have dozens of raids every night,” said an administration official involved in Afghan policy, acknowledging that the raids pose a political problem for the Afghan president. “He wants to drive a return to normalcy. It’s not normal to have night raids happening in your village. I just think when he does these things he speaks less precisely than we would like. If he had said the same thing in the context of transition and where he hopes and expects the international effort to go, it wouldn’t have been a crisis.” Senator Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina, said he was baffled by Mr. Karzai’s comments. He said the topic of the night raids never came up during a dinner he attended last week with Mr. Karzai and other senators in Kabul. The raids, he said, were crucial to the military strategy. “If you took the night raids off the table,” Mr. Graham said in an interview on Monday, “it would be a disaster for the Petraeus strategy.”


Over a Decade, Maureen O’Connor Spent $1 Billion on Bets

Abstract: LOS ANGELES — A former mayor of San Diego spent the last decade wagering more than a billion dollars at casinos across the country, eventually liquidating her savings, auctioning her belongings, selling off real estate, borrowing from friends and taking more than $2 million from a charity set up by her late husband, a fast-food tycoon. The former mayor, Maureen O’Connor, 66, blamed an addiction to gambling aggravated by a brain tumor for the gargantuan spree. Her lawyers said that while she had made well over a billion dollars in bets at casinos in Las Vegas, Atlantic City and San Diego, her actual net losses were around $13 million. Federal prosecutors said it was impossible to know precisely how much Ms. O’Connor had lost over those years, but she emerged with her fortune gone and her health shattered. She took out second and third mortgages on her La Jolla, Calif., home to pay for the gambling. The former Southern California political power broker, whose husband, Robert O. Peterson, founded the Jack-in-the-Box fast-food chain, appeared in court in San Diego on Thursday to answer to charges that she had stolen money from her late husband’s foundation to fuel her addiction. She walked unsteadily into court, leaning on a cane and appearing wobbly and distraught. She teared up as she told reporters, “Those of you who know me here would know that I never meant to hurt the city that I love.” Ms. O’Connor was not accused of taking money from the city, but the money in her husband’s trust would probably have gone to local charities. “I always intended to pay it back and I still intend to pay it back,” she said. It was a rapid fall from grace for the former mayor once described as a “goody two shoes” by a reporter covering her campaign. Ms. O’Connor came from a working-class family in San Diego, one of 13 children of a part-time bookie. When she was a child her family was once so poor that her parents could not afford turkey on Thanksgiving and instead molded a bird out of hamburger meat, she once said in an interview. She became wealthy only after she married Mr. Peterson. Her lawyers said she had between $40 million and $50 million before her gambling problems began. Ms. O’Connor started her career as a teacher at a Catholic school and was mayor from 1986 to 1992. Under an agreement with federal prosecutors, she will receive treatment for gambling addiction and has two years repay the money to the foundation, as well as taxes owed to the government. Prosecutors cited her health as the main reason for the deal.“Right now she is in a very poor financial state,” said Eugene Iredale, her lawyer. He said, “This is a woman who has been through real trauma.” Image Maureen O’Connor Credit Peggy Peattie/UT San Diego, via Associated Press Mr. Iredale said Ms. O’Connor had surgery for a brain tumor in 2011. That was just one of many problems she is said to have suffered since leaving office. According to documents filed in court by her lawyers, she turned to gambling to deal with the death of her husband in 1994 and of other close friends and family members. “She began to seek an outlet in gambling,” her lawyer wrote. “The pattern fits the syndrome known as grief gambling.” Ms. O’Connor spent hours at video poker, prosecutors said. In 2009 she sold a luxury hotel she owned in Mendocino County, Calif., for $7 million, but she is suing a German bank and three buyers saying they defrauded her. Banks later foreclosed on the hotel — and on several other properties. Prosecutors say that she took $2,088,000 from her husband’s foundation, which was established in 1966, taking all of its assets and leaving it bankrupt. The foundation gave millions of dollars over the years to organizations like the Alzheimer’s Association and San Diego Hospice. As jaw-dropping as the amounts that Ms. O’Connor wagered — and lost — she is far from being on the top of the list of all-time casino losers. Terry Watanabe, a businessman, lost more than $205 million in Las Vegas, including more than $120 million in 2007 alone. The British media mogul Robert Maxwell once lost £1.5 million, about $2.3 million, in less than three minutes at a London casino. Still, to wager a billion dollars over the course of her nine-year gambling spree, Ms. O’Connor would have had to bet the equivalent of more than $300,000 a day, seven days a week. Phillip L. B. Halpern, the chief of the major frauds and special prosecutions section for the United States attorney’s office in San Diego, said the case was first brought to prosecutors’ attention by the Internal Revenue Service, which receives reports of winnings from casinos. Friends and former colleagues of Ms. O’Connor said that while they knew she gambled at local casinos, they had no idea how much time or money she spent there. “It seemed totally out of character with everything I knew about Mayor O’Connor,” said Ben Dillingham, who was her chief of staff. Gerry Braun, a journalist who covered Ms. O’Connor’s campaigns, said that she rarely drank and that a little Champagne on election night to celebrate her victory went straight to her head. “She had a reputation for slipping away from City Hall to watch movies,” said Mr. Braun, a former reporter for The San Diego Union Tribune. “That was considered her great vice.”

Maureen Frances O'Connor
San Diego
Gambling
Robert O Peterson


Cellphone Alerts Used in New York to Search for Bombing Suspect

Abstract: Across New York City, cellphones blared on Monday morning with the dissonant but familiar tone of an emergency alert, typically used for weather-related advisories or abducted children. But this was different. For what is believed to be the first time, the nation’s Wireless Emergency Alerts system was deployed as an electronic wanted poster, identifying a 28-year-old man sought in connection with the bombings in Manhattan and New Jersey over the weekend. Suddenly, from commuter trains to the sidewalks of the city, millions were enlisted in the manhunt. The message was simple: “WANTED: Ahmad Khan Rahami, 28-yr-old male. See media for pic. Call 9-1-1 if seen.” In an instant, the reach and ubiquity of law enforcement in an age of terrorism and digital technology became apparent. The system, in place for several years, has been used to assist the authorities in moments of chaos and potential danger: after the Boston bombing in 2013, when the Boston suspects were still at large, and last month in Los Angeles, during an active shooter scare at the airport. In both cases, those receiving the message were told to shelter-in-place or were given safety updates. The “wanted” message sent Monday appeared to be the first widespread attempt to transform the citizens of a major American city into a vigilant and nearly omnipresent eye for the authorities. It added new meaning to the notion of “see something, say something,” even as it raised some concern that innocent people could be mistakenly targeted. “This is a tool we will use again in the future,” Mayor Bill de Blasio of New York said at a news conference. “No more wanted posters on the precinct house wall. This is a modern approach that really engaged a whole community.” The alert messages are targeted to a cellphone’s location using nearby towers, so the alert on Monday was received by people in and around New York City, including some in New Jersey. Image A cellphone alert in the search of Ahmad Khan Rahami on Monday was sent to those in New York City, but not to those in all parts of the state. Frank DiGirolamo was stepping out of a Manhattan deli on 37th Street and Seventh Avenue on his way to work when the alert went out. “All of a sudden, I heard the phones from people walking in every direction,” he said. “Even the fruit stand guy’s went off.” There are three broad types of alerts in the national system: emergency alerts for storms and other threats to public safety; so-called Amber Alerts, which seek to enlist people in a search for an abducted child ; and those issued by the president. Cellphone users can opt to block all but the presidential alerts. To date, the president has not sent an alert using the system. The system has been used in New York City several times since 2012, according to officials: three times during Hurricane Sandy, once for a travel ban during a winter storm in 2015 and twice during the Chelsea bombing — the broad alert on Monday, and a more limited one on Saturday night, warning people in the Chelsea area to stay away from windows as the police cleared an unexploded device from 27th Street. Eric F. Phillips, a spokesman for Mr. de Blasio, said the decision to send the alert on Monday required a high degree of evidence that Mr. Rahami was connected to the bombing. By early Monday, the authorities were confident enough to publicly identify Mr. Rahami. Around 7 a.m., John J. Miller, the deputy commissioner for intelligence and counterterrorism at the New York Police Department, directed his public affairs office to disseminate the information. The office then contacted the city’s emergency management agency; staff members there quickly decided to send out a Wireless Emergency Alert, or W.E.A. “This was somebody they considered to be extremely dangerous,” Nancy Silvestri, press secretary for the emergency management agency, said. It took about 15 minutes for officials to agree on the language for an alert, and give approval for the message that was sent across the city at 7:57 a.m. Brittany Rocco was in a kinesiology class at Manhattan College in the Bronx when seemingly every phone sounded at once. “I thought, ‘Oh wow, I guess I should pay attention today,’” she said. Xinyue Zhang, a pianist who lives in New Brunswick, N.J., said she and her fiancé were planning to go to New York City’s Marriage Bureau on Monday to get married when the alert made her family concerned for their safety. They decided to postpone the wedding until Tuesday. How the Manhunt for the Chelsea Bombing Suspect Unfolded Ahmad Khan Rahami, 28, the suspect in a bombing in the Chelsea neighborhood of Manhattan that injured 29 people Saturday night, was arrested in Linden, N.J. Not everyone believes the use of such cellphone alerts is appropriate. “It was very troublesome,” said Bandana Kar, a professor of geography at the University of Southern Mississippi who has studied the alert system. “The alert was very unspecific and open-ended,” she added. “By encouraging people to go to the media to look at a picture, what if someone had identified the wrong person?” When Shuja Haider heard the alert in his home in the Bushwick section of Brooklyn, he initially panicked, wondering if his building was on fire or under imminent threat. His parents called from Pakistan, concerned that he might have been in the area of the blast. But they had also expressed concern that their son might be affected by racial targeting in the aftermath of the episode. When Mr. Haider saw the man’s name and age, he immediately searched for an image — to see if the suspect looked like him. He was relieved to see no resemblance. “Today, brown guys like me are walking around worrying about the threat of terrorism like everyone else,” Mr. Haider said. “But we’re also worried about being blamed for it.” The emergency alerts can be sent to the national system by federal, state or local authorities who have been authorized to do so. In a paper recently published in The Journal of Contingencies and Crisis Management, a group of professors investigated how people interpreted the W.E.A.s during an unfamiliar event, such as a fictional situation in which a dirty bomb went off. The results were not encouraging : Study participants found the messages — which are limited to 90 characters — confusing as well as fear-inducing. The key to success is to use the alerts at the appropriate times and not to overuse them, said Josh Gottheimer, who was a point person at the Federal Communications Commission during the creation of the alert system in New York City, which started in 2011 . “Obviously if we have a lone-wolf terrorist on the loose, I consider that an exigent circumstance,” said Mr. Gottheimer, who is now running for Congress in New Jersey. By late morning, Mr. Rahami had been captured . By then, nearly every New Yorker, and many others around the country, already knew his face.

Chelsea Bombing
Security
Chelsea
Text messaging
Ahmad Khan Rahami
Terrorism
Wireless
Mobile phone


Newark: Two Arrested in Triple Killing

Abstract: Authorities in Indianapolis arrested two men yesterday on charges they took part in an attack in Newark on Sept. 2 in which three people were shot to death in an apartment that investigators say was then set ablaze to try to conceal the crime. Kwame Smith, 21, and Raheem Clay, 23, were found at a home on the north side of Indianapolis and arrested without incident, said Mark Robinett, a spokesman for the United States Marshals Service. Both are charged with three counts of murder, two counts of attempted murder and weapons violations in the Sept. 2 attack. A third suspect, John Wessells, 24, of Newark, was arrested on Sept. 12.

Accidents and Safety
Police
Automobiles
New Jersey


Ohio: Aircraft Crash Over Suburban Cincinnati

Abstract: Two small planes collided over suburban Cincinnati, raining debris onto roads and backyards and killing three people on board, federal investigators said. The Federal Aviation Administration had no information about the aircrafts’ flight plans. The planes’ pilots were not required to file plans and apparently were not in contact with air traffic controllers, the agency said. The victims included two people aboard a Cessna 172, and the pilot of the other plane, a Beechcraft Bonanza. No injuries were reported on the ground, but several roads were closed because of the debris.

Airlines and Airplanes
Accidents and Safety
Cincinnati (Ohio)
Federal Aviation Administration
Ohio


Jets Step Into the Past With Their Uniforms

Abstract: FLORHAM PARK, N.J. — Rex Ryan likes to make references to the long-gone American Football League every chance he gets. On Friday, he was asked to compare Maurice Jones-Drew, the stocky and elusive Jacksonville Jaguars running back, to other ball carriers. Ryan thought about it. He decided Jones-Drew was a little like Jim Nance , who spent most of his career with the Boston Patriots (and was actually 6 inches taller and 25 pounds heavier than the 5-foot-7, 209-pound Jones-Drew). But wait. Ryan said Jones-Drew was also like Emerson Boozer , the 5-foot-11, 195-pound ex-Jet. “We’re in throwback mode,” Ryan said. “We’ll go back a little bit.” Nance and Boozer stopped roaming gridirons more than 30 years ago, but the A.F.L., in which Ryan’s father, Buddy, coached, is never too far away. This week, to hear Ryan tell it, the early days of the A.F.L. will come back to haunt Jets fans in the guise of throwback uniforms. For the first time in two years and the only time this season, the Jets will wear replicas of the blue and gold uniforms worn from 1960-62 by their predecessors, the Titans of New York, when they host Jacksonville on Sunday. Ryan said Wednesday that he knew what most fans thought of that idea. “I know with our fans there is some grumbling with us wearing the Titans’ stuff, the blue,” said Ryan, who happened to be wearing a blue Titans hooded sweatshirt at the time. “Let me just explain it to you this way: We are 4-1 in those blue uniforms. So anything for a win.” He continued: “It doesn’t matter if it was purple, we’d be wearing the purple. Anyway, I think our players kind of like it. The fans, I understand, are not really happy by it, but just bear with us for just this one game. Let’s make it 5-1, and we’ll all be happy.” Reader comments about the throwback uniforms on the Jets’ Web site this week have been decidedly negative. Blue and gold are Cub Scouts colors, one wrote. Another wrote the uniforms should be buried in the Meadowlands with Jimmy Hoffa. Ryan is correct. The Jets have won four of five games since introducing the blue throwback jerseys in 2007. (They are 1-1 in white Titans jerseys.) If the Jets wear throwback uniforms, the fans say, they should use the green uniforms and helmets from the 1980s. But Ryan is also correct about something else: His players like the throwbacks. “I love them,” Mark Sanchez said this week. “They give us some sweet gear and sweatshirts and all that. It’s really cool. I love those jerseys.” They are, the players say, a nice change of pace. They do not seem to hamper the Jets’ ability to win games. The Jets practiced in their blue helmets Thursday and Friday, tight end Dustin Keller said, and no one appeared to be confused. “Everybody likes a little throwback every once in a while,” defensive tackle Sione Pouha said. When told that the Titans were not a very good or popular team, winning only 19 of 42 games in their three seasons, Pouha said: “I don’t know that much about them. I know they used to be the Titans. It adds a little scenery, a little color.” Keller had heard that the Titans were not good. They finished 7-7 in each of their first two seasons, then were 5-9 in 1962. The team was renamed the Jets in 1963 and adopted green and white as their colors. Weeb Ewbank became their coach, and they won the Super Bowl six years later. “You’ve still got to pay your respects to the past,” Keller said of the Titans era. Keller likes the throwback uniforms, too. So does the 37-year-old receiver Derrick Mason, who played for the Tennessee Titans, whose forerunners were the Houston Oilers, then spent six years with the Baltimore Ravens, who used to be the Cleveland Browns. “I like these colors — I wish we’d wear them all of the time,” Mason said. “Baltimore didn’t have throwbacks, but that’s good, because the uniforms they used to wear were ugly.” He said of the throwback uniforms, “It’s history, a tradition.” Told that the Titans of New York were not such a good team, Mason smiled and said: “I know. But, luckily, we are.” EXTRA POINTS Rex Ryan said linebacker David Harris (toe), receiver Santonio Holmes (knee and quadriceps muscle) and safety Eric Smith (ankle) were limited in practice Friday and were questionable for Sunday’s game. “I do feel good about David,” he said of Harris’s chances of playing, but he was not as optimistic about Holmes and Smith.

Football
New York Jets
Uniforms
Ryan Rex
Sanchez Mark
Jacksonville Jaguars


Sallie Krawcheck’s ‘Divorce’ From Citi

Abstract: ON a Saturday in late September, at a corporate retreat at the Phoenician resort in Scottsdale, Ariz., Sallie L. Krawcheck gave a speech thanking her troops at Citigroup for their hard work, and then returned to her room. Ms. Krawcheck, a 43-year-old executive at the bank, checked her BlackBerry and found an e-mail message that enraged her. A friend had written to warn her that within a few days Citigroup would announce that it was stripping her of most responsibilities as head of the bank’s wealth management unit. That she was being shunted aside was not a surprise to Ms. Krawcheck. Once one of the fast-rising female stars on Wall Street, she had spent the better part of the previous year battling with Vikram S. Pandit , the new chief executive of Citigroup, and his hand-picked managers over a number of business issues. What infuriated Ms. Krawcheck was that the bank moved up its announcement without telling her, according to a person with direct knowledge of her thinking who, like top Citigroup officials, would not agree to be quoted by name. This person requested anonymity in order to preserve professional relationships with Citigroup. Returning to her Manhattan office the next Monday, Ms. Krawcheck listened to a voice-mail message formally notifying her that the timing of the announcement was being accelerated. She immediately told the bank she was leaving. Within minutes, the news was on CNBC. The chaos on Wall Street has claimed many careers, including those of two of its highest-ranking women: Zoe Cruz, a former co-president at Morgan Stanley, and Erin Callan, the former chief financial officer of Lehman Brothers. But Ms. Krawcheck was perhaps the best known. In an era when the executive suite is still dominated by men, it’s tempting to attribute Ms. Krawcheck’s downfall to the ruthless vagaries of the glass ceiling. As it turns out, however, her departure from Citigroup was largely the result of an old-fashioned corporate bar brawl at a bank already notorious for dysfunctional management. And the turmoil continues at Citigroup, a bank that appeared formidable 10 years ago when Sanford I. Weill and John S. Reed created it with a megamerger. Since then, despite the guiding hand of Mr. Weill’s successor as chief executive, Charles O. Prince III, and the presence of luminaries like the former Treasury secretary Robert E. Rubin, Citigroup has been humbled by lackadaisical oversight, financial scandal and tens of billions of dollars in write-offs and losses related to the credit crisis . Concerns about Citigroup’s management and its grim business prospects pummeled the bank’s stock last week. Its shares closed at $9.52 on Friday, its lowest price in years and far below its 52-week high of $37.50. Ms. Krawcheck believes her exit from Citigroup is the result of pressures she faced from Mr. Pandit to be a team player and to follow his lead on the best way to deploy talent at the bank — and not related to her sex. The two also sparred over how to compensate clients who lost money by following the bank’s investment advice. Ms. Krawcheck gained national attention in 2002 when Fortune magazine put her on its cover. She was a largely unknown research director at Sanford C. Bernstein then, and the magazine called her one of the “last honest analysts” — at a time when Wall Street was plagued with conflict-of-interest scandals. When Mr. Weill recruited her to Citigroup that year in a bid to burnish the bank’s tainted reputation, her $15 million-plus pay package made headlines. She gained even more prominence two years later when Citigroup, then the world’s biggest bank, appointed her its chief financial officer. A subsequent reshuffling landed her atop the wealth management group. An outspoken advocate for her own beliefs, Ms. Krawcheck had good relationships with some members of Citigroup’s board. Those relationships, and her stellar résumé, may have helped lull her into assuming her conflicts with Mr. Pandit would have to be resolved, according to those who know her. Mr. Pandit declined to comment. “After a number of discussions about the best management structure for our wealth management business, Sallie suggested to Vikram that she take an entirely client-facing senior role as chairman of the business,” said a Citigroup spokeswoman. “Vikram agreed that such a role would be terrific given his view that Sallie has extraordinary client skills. Later, Sallie changed her mind about this role and ultimately decided to leave the company. We were disappointed that she made that decision.” Several sources close to the bank say that Citigroup did not oppose some of Ms. Krawcheck’s ideas but that it needed more time to consider them. And they say the bank had to move up the announcement of Ms. Krawcheck’s revised role because news of it was already spreading. One executive in the wealth management unit, who requested anonymity because he is not authorized to speak publicly about the bank, said she was seen as counterproductive. “I think they thought she carried her advocacy too far,” he said. These days, Ms. Krawcheck, a native of South Carolina, spends a lot of time running in Central Park. Leaving Citigroup felt “like I got a divorce,” she has told friends. The emotional toll of her departure caused her to lose seven pounds within a few weeks. Though she has made enough money to live comfortably the rest of her life, she has no desire to slow down. An addict of the fast-paced, take-no-prisoners New York lifestyle, she has told friends: “They kicked me out of the South. I only know one speed.” THE fall of Ms. Krawcheck’s career was closely followed in large part because her ascent had been so meteoric. She majored in journalism at the University of North Carolina but was drawn to Wall Street, initially to learn business with an eye toward becoming a reporter. She landed a job in investment banking at Salomon Brothers in New York in 1987. After short stints at other companies, she joined Sanford C. Bernstein & Company as a senior analyst in 1994. Within seven years she was the firm’s chief executive. “She was capable and skilled as a research analyst,” recalled Lewis Sanders, chief executive of AllianceBernstein. “That led us to promote her to the manager of the research business itself.” Ms. Krawcheck has told friends that growing up in Charleston, S.C., as the daughter of a Jewish businessman and a Protestant mother taught her about being an outsider and toughened her for a career in a cut-throat, male-dominated industry. She took only a short time off for the birth of her first child, and no time off for the second. Over the years, her increasing professional responsibilities never tempted her to rein back and spend more time with family. She has told friends that her drive was partly “insecurity” and partly the joy she took in her work. After she leapt into Wall Street’s upper ranks, however, some of her appetites might have outpaced her abilities. When she first arrived at Citigroup, she oversaw an area with which she had deep familiarity — the brokerage business. But just two years later, Mr. Prince, Mr. Weill’s heir, promoted her to a substantially more complex job, chief financial officer. Many analysts came to believe that Ms. Krawcheck did not handle that post well, especially after the bank began posting titanic losses and suffering downturns in some of its key businesses. “There was not an appropriate amount of understanding of the risks they bore,” said Gary B. Townsend, who heads Hill-Townsend Capital, a firm that invests in the financial services industry, when asked about Ms. Krawcheck’s tenure. “The chief financial officer has to be able to assess the myriad risks that a large financial institution faces.” In March 2007, Mr. Prince pushed Ms. Krawcheck out of the C.F.O.’s office and sent her back to lead the wealth management division — a very public demotion. “Being moved down a peg makes it hard to move back up,” said Jeffrey Harte, a banking analyst at Sandler O’Neill. “It probably meant that the promotion ladder at Citi had come to an end for her.” Then Mr. Pandit arrived, and things only got worse. FROM the beginning, their relationship was tense. “She could always get to Sandy and Chuck,” recalled one top wealth management executive who requested anonymity because he is not authorized to speak about the company. “But we sensed that her relationship with Vikram never jelled.” Mr. Pandit, who grew up in India and came to the United States as a teenager, joined Morgan Stanley’s investment banking team in 1983. Passed over for a promotion that might have led to the top job, he quit in 2005 to start his own hedge fund. When Citigroup later acquired his fund, he joined the bank. In December 2007, after Mr. Prince’s ouster from the bank during a wave of losses, Mr. Pandit was named chief executive. The wealth management unit was a relatively small component of the bank. Last year it contributed $12.9 billion of the bank’s $81.6 billion in revenue. Still, in the fourth quarter of 2007, when the bank was already facing losses, Citigroup cited Ms. Krawcheck’s unit as one of its bright spots. The next year was another matter, and Ms. Krawcheck and Mr. Pandit began to feud. The first dispute occurred in February, when two Citigroup-sponsored hedge funds, Falcon and Asta/Mat, ran into trouble. An investment in Falcon would have lost 80 percent of its value by February, and an investment in Asta/Mat would have been almost entirely wiped out. Ms. Krawcheck believed that investors should be compensated for some losses, said the person acquainted with her thinking. She argued that these were extraordinary declines in the value of the funds and she thought the risks in one fund had been misrepresented to investors. She feared that angry clients would leave the bank, which could deal a serious blow to revenue (particularly that of her own unit). She also felt compensation would keep the bank from facing lawsuits. On March 5, Ms. Krawcheck got a call from Gary Crittenden, the bank’s chief financial officer, the person with knowledge of her thinking said. Mr. Crittenden told her the bank would not reimburse any money because hedge funds were risky products sold to sophisticated investors. Mr. Crittenden declined to comment for this article. But others at Citigroup familiar with the discussions said that Mr. Crittenden believed that the bank had no legal obligation to customers but that he had not ruled out a payment. Ms. Krawcheck had also sent an e-mail message to Mr. Pandit saying that she regretted that the bank had made its decision about the hedge fund clients without her input. He told her, according to those familiar with the exchange, that if the bank could come up with a creative solution to help investors, maybe the parties could work things out. By the end of March, Citigroup had agreed to make some financial amends to investors in the funds. Even as the hedge fund crisis was unfolding, investors were shaken again when the market for auction-rate securities froze and they could not get access to their money. Citigroup was one of many firms that ran auctions for these securities. Ms. Krawcheck wanted to offer a way for customers to recover funds despite the market freeze, but a person acquainted with her thinking says she was unable to reach Mr. Pandit for a discussion. So her unit improvised by offering clients loans equal to the value of the frozen securities. In mid-April, Attorney General Andrew M. Cuomo of New York began to investigate the sale of auction-rate securities. Citigroup agreed to buy back $7.3 billion of the troubled securities. It also reached a settlement with the state of New York, other state regulatory agencies and the Securities and Exchange Commission that included a $100 million fine. There was another sticking point between Ms. Krawcheck and Mr. Pandit: he wanted Citigroup investment advisers to push largely Citigroup products; she thought they should be free to pitch products from a variety of companies to give clients greater choice. As these conflicts emerged, Ms. Krawcheck felt that the fact that she was a woman and not part of Mr. Pandit’s inner circle made her situation particularly difficult. AWARE that her future at the bank was growing fragile, Ms. Krawcheck asked Mr. Pandit for a performance review. At a meeting on Aug. 1, he praised her work, according to the person with direct knowledge of her career. But he added that she needed to be a better partner with the investment banking division. Bank officials said that the meeting went differently but declined to be specific. Later that month, she checked her BlackBerry to find a message from Lewis B. Kaden, Citigroup’s vice chairman. The message said that people in the investment research unit would report to the chief of the investment bank rather than to her. With that, her power base, which included Smith Barney and the research and wealth management units, began to shrink. In a series of meetings in early September, Mr. Pandit proposed that Michael L. Corbat, head of the global relationship bank, assume some of her management responsibilities. Ms. Krawcheck argued that she was too young to give up so much, but wavered about whether to stay on in a role in which she had no operating responsibility, as chairman of the wealth management unit. Meanwhile, Citigroup told its board about the pending changes. Shortly after that, Ms. Krawcheck made the trip to Scottsdale, where she learned that the company had changed its plans for announcing her new position. “Everyone knew it was going to happen, but I was sort of hoping and I thought the situation could change,” she has told friends. “For a while it got better, but when it was over I still couldn’t believe it, and I feel like I got a divorce. You still mourn and remember the good times.” While she has said that most women at Citigroup are treated as “a condiment” rather than “a main course,” she also has saidthat she has no regrets about her experiences there. Ever restless, she’s also hesitant to stay on the sidelines. From her apartment in Manhattan, where she lives with her husband, a fund manager, and their teenage son and daughter, she is putting out feelers, looking for another job in wealth management.

Krawcheck Sallie L
Citigroup Incorporated
Suspensions Dismissals and Resignations
Pandit Vikram S
Subprime Mortgage Crisis
Executives and Management


Arizona: Mistrial for Firearms Magazine Ex-Editor

Abstract: The murder trial of the former editor of Guns & Ammo magazine was declared a mistrial when the jury could not reach a verdict on Wednesday. A new trial for the former editor, Richard Erick Venola of Golden Valley, is scheduled for Feb. 26. He is charged with second-degree murder in the May 2 shooting death of an unarmed neighbor, James Patrick O’Neill, 39. The prosecutor, Rod Albright, said during the trial that both men were drunk and argued before the shooting. Ron Gilleo, a lawyer for Mr. Venola, said his client shot Mr. O’Neill in self-defense, believing that Mr. O’Neill was going to get a gun to shoot him.

Murders
Decisions and Verdicts
Guns
Arizona
James Patrick O'Neill
Richard Erick Venola


Whistle-Blower Case Deserved a Fuller Examination

Abstract: Carmen M. Segarra, a former bank examiner, made waves when she claimed that the Federal Reserve Bank of New York had gone soft in its supervision of Goldman Sachs. She secretly recorded meetings between regulators and the bank to try to prove it. The resulting uproar prompted hearings in the Senate and widespread media coverage. She arguably influenced the policy debate more than you would think any low-level, briefly employed bank examiner ever could. Ms. Segarra also filed a lawsuit, arguing that after raising concerns about a transaction between Goldman Sachs and Banco Santander, and about whether Goldman Sachs had a conflict-of-interest code in place, she was fired by the New York Fed. She filed the claim under the bank whistle-blower statute. The United States District Court for the Southern District of New York dismissed the suit, a decision that was affirmed last month by the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. Neither court offered very persuasive reasons for doing so. Financial whistle-blowers are enjoying something of a moment, with the Securities and Exchange Commission’s new program paying out big rewards, and Congress seemingly happy to pass laws protecting them. Ms. Segarra may consider herself an unlucky outlier in this trend. The bank whistle-blower statute was part of the changes passed after the savings and loan crisis of the 1980s, when hundreds of financial institutions had to be “resolved” – that’s bank terminology for taken through a quick bankruptcy – by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation. The statute covers a “person who is performing, directly or indirectly, any function or service on behalf” of the F.D.I.C. The appeals court said that it was “frankly silly” to suggest that Fed employees were working for the F.D.I.C. But I don’t think it is frankly silly. The purpose of the statute is to protect whistle-blowers who work at, among other places, Federal Reserve banks who bring information to light about mismanagement in a way that performs a service to the F.D.I.C. Moreover, the statute is supposed to be broadly construed. Goldman Sachs is a bank holding company, but it does not have depositors. Nonetheless, the F.D.I.C. is a full voting member of the Financial Stability Oversight Council, which has designated Goldman a systemically important financial institution, subject to heightened supervision and its particular attention. Moreover, the F.D.I.C. would play a role in resolving Goldman, if it came to that, under the Dodd-Frank law’s overhaul of the government’s resolution powers. So I do think that supervising Goldman counts as performing a service to the F.D.I.C. The other main argument against Ms. Segarra’s case is that her concerns about Goldman’s conflict-of-interest policy would mean that, at most, the bank would be ignoring a recommendation from supervisors that banks have elaborate versions of these in place. Ignoring a recommendation is not the same thing as a bank violating the law, and the trial court relied on this distinction . But banking regulation is generally informal – it mostly consists of recommendations that banks must, in fact, take seriously. It isn’t clear to me that Congress didn’t want whistle-blowers to police this sort of supervision. There may be less to Ms. Segarra’s case than meets the eye (I’m not sure if she named the right defendants, but one of them is the New York Fed, and I don’t know about her other legal claims), but you wouldn’t know it from the appelate court’s decision, which did not have the support of all three judges. One issued a terse, “I concur in the result.” Courts do not like to second-guess bank supervisors. They suspect, with reason, that they may not be good at it. And one of Ms. Segarra’s claims – she has said that Goldman Sachs did not have a conflict-of-interest policy at all – must have struck the judges as implausible, to say nothing of only marginally related to the stability of the bank, which is what the F.D.I.C. cares about. The courts must also worry about construing the whistle-blower statute too capaciously. No one wants every bank examiner reporting, quitting and suing, in the hopes of a payout of millions for doing their job – a phenomenon that may be a concern, given the reports of corporate compliance officers benefiting from the S.E.C.’s whistle-blower program. But Ms. Segarra was entitled to a more careful hearing from the courts.

Carmen M Segarra
Whistleblower
Federal Reserve Bank of New York
Goldman Sachs Group
SEC
Dodd Frank