Investigations Into Spending Lead Speaker to Hire Lawyer

Abstract: Christine C. Quinn , the speaker of the New York City Council, has hired a criminal defense lawyer to represent her in federal and city investigations into Council spending practices, an aide said on Friday. The move comes a week after disclosures that Ms. Quinn’s office had appropriated millions of dollars to organizations that do not exist, instead routing the money to organizations favored by individual council members. The lawyer retained by Ms. Quinn, Lee S. Richards III, a former federal prosecutor, will be paid with city funds, as will Sullivan & Cromwell, a firm that the Council has hired to assist in responding to the investigations. Asked why the speaker felt she needed her own lawyer, Jamie McShane, a Quinn spokesman, said in an e-mail message that the lawyer would assist “the speaker in her cooperation” with inquiries by the city’s Department of Investigation and the United States attorney’s office. Lawyers not involved with the matter said it was common for anyone approached in an investigation of this type, including witnesses, to hire a lawyer. "When individuals are asked to speak to agents or to testify before a grand jury, they typically desire counsel who can guide them through the process and ensure their interests are protected," said Michael G. Considine, a former federal prosecutor who is now a partner with the firm of Day Pitney. At a news conference on Friday called to announce proposed changes in the Council’s budgeting procedures, Ms. Quinn did not mention Mr. Richards’s hiring and emphasized that she was not a target of the inquiries. She has said that the Council’s use of fictitious organizations to hold money in reserve dated to 2001, five years before she became speaker, and that when she learned of the practice last year, she ordered that it be stopped. Appropriating the money to fake organizations allowed council members to later tap the funds for projects without getting approval from the mayor. Ms. Quinn called the news conference to unveil an overhaul that she said would impose new controls and oversight on how the Council spends its discretionary funds. The changes would significantly limit the speaker’s latitude over her own discretionary funds — which total $20 million to $25 million annually — by allocating grants through a competitive, merit-based process. The process would be overseen by the mayor’s Office of Contracts, which would have final say over the allocations, with input from the speaker and the Council. “They are a set of reforms I believe will give New Yorkers a full sense of faith in the idea that their taxpayer dollars are being distributed in an apolitical manner, a transparent manner and a manner which assures that their money is going to qualified organizations that are serving New Yorkers,” Ms. Quinn said. Under Ms. Quinn’s changes, individual council members’ items, known as earmarks, which last year totaled about $340,000 per member, would not be subject to competitive bidding. Ms. Quinn said that the earmarks are often doled out in relatively small amounts of $5,000 to $10,000 and that requiring competitive bidding for them would create too onerous a demand on the Little Leagues, churches and other community organizations that receive them. Ms. Quinn said the council members’ earmarks would, however, be subject to a more thorough review and certification process developed in consultation with the office of the New York State attorney general, Andrew M. Cuomo. A searchable database would also be created that could be reviewed by the public to easily identify how all member items are allocated. An independent compliance officer would be hired to ensure that the Council adheres to procurement rules and follows proper accounting practices; Ms. Quinn said she would seek a change in the City Charter to make the position permanent. To ensure independence, the speaker would appoint the compliance officer to a four-year term that would overlap speakers’ terms, and the officer could be removed only for cause. Many of the groups that criticized Ms. Quinn last week praised her proposed changes, some of which will require approval from the full Council. “Out of the public disclosure of this years-old inappropriate practice has come a good thing,” said Dick Dadey, executive director of Citizens Union, a government watchdog group. The changes, he said, “will bring an even greater level of transparency to the Council’s review, discussion and enactment of the city budget, particularly as it relates to the often unknown process by which member items have been rewarded over the years.” The competitive process, however, would also not apply to Council initiatives, a much larger pot of money given out primarily at the speaker’s discretion that goes to programs that reflect the Council’s broader priorities. The amount budgeted for those initiatives was $300 million last year, with the largest portion, $42 million, used to expand library service across the city to six days a week. But some of the money was distributed very much like earmarks were, eventually ending up with nonprofit groups chosen by council members for programs like anti-gang and immigrant assistance initiatives. For instance, the Council allocated $4 million last year for a domestic violence initiative. The speaker then distributed shares of that money to council members, in amounts ranging from $10,000 to $175,000, to give to organizations in their districts that deal with domestic violence. Mr. Richards, the lawyer hired by the speaker, is a founding member of the firm of Richards Kibbe & Orbe.

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


Senior Executive Leaving Google

Abstract: SAN FRANCISCO — Douglas Merrill, a vice president of engineering at Google , is leaving the Internet search company to become a president of digital at EMI Music, the recorded music division of EMI Group, according to an executive briefed on his move. Mr. Merrill is the second senior executive to leave Google in two months. In March, Sheryl Sandberg, who was vice president for global sales and operations, left to become chief operating officer at Facebook. Their departures, as well as those of several high-profile engineers and senior managers in recent months, are heightening concerns that as the company grows in size and its stock swoons, it risks losing a larger number of important employees. “It is very difficult to preserve the same kind of culture and energy that Google had as a startup,” said Scott Kessler, an equity analyst with Standard & Poor’s. “It is increasingly difficult for Google to be able to keep all the great people it has hired over the years. These people have a wide variety of great options at their disposal and a number of those people are seizing them.” The company dismissed concerns that it was threatened by an employee exodus. “We have a deep bench and work hard to grow leaders within the company,” Google said in a statement. “We are attracting immensely talented people around the world, every day.” Mr. Merrill did not respond to an e-mail message seeking comment. EMI Group declined to comment. At EMI, Mr. Merrill will assume a newly created role, the executive briefed on his move said. He is likely to report to Guy Hands, the chairman of EMI and the chief executive of Terra Firma Capital Partners, the London-based private equity firm that bought EMI in September. The company is going through the middle of a wrenching restructuring that, among other things, will put more emphasis on digital distribution. Mr. Merrill joined Google in 2003 as senior director of information systems. He was responsible for all internal engineering efforts and was involved with several other technology projects, including initiatives related to the company’s I.P.O. and the introduction of Checkout, an online payment system. Another senior Google executive, the chief financial officer, George Reyes, announced last August that he would retire. At the time, Google said it hoped to find a replacement for him by the end of the year but has yet to appoint a new C.F.O.

Google Inc
Executives and Management
Merrill Douglas
EMI Music
Computers and the Internet
Suspensions Dismissals and Resignations


Papers Show Moynihan in Full Voice Under Nixon

Abstract: He complained about the “Schrafft’s in the basement” color scheme proposed for the White House mess. He warned of the alienation of American blacks. He predicted the potential impact of global warming . He scoffed that anyone could seriously think the public still supported the Vietnam War. And he repeatedly chided his White House colleagues, saying they were making policy on the basis of unproved assumptions. In 90,000 pages of letters and memorandums released Friday by the Nixon Presidential Library, Daniel Patrick Moynihan , counselor and assistant to the president for urban affairs from January 1969 through December 1970 and a future senator from New York, prodded the president and his White House colleagues to deliver on a domestic agenda and expressed exasperation over the government’s entropy. He contended that Southern governors who doled out largess to poor whites and welfare rights leaders who supported poor blacks opposed the proposed Family Assistance Plan, which included a form of guaranteed income, for the same reason: they would be put “out of business.” In his memorandum suggesting that discourse on race would benefit from a period of “benign neglect,” he also warned about “the incidence of antisocial behavior among young black males,” and added: “Apart from white racial attitudes, this is the biggest problem black Americans face, and in part it helps shape white racial attitudes.” He apologized to Bayard Rustin, the civil rights leader, who had been criticized by a departing government official. “The issue is the intimidation by government of a private citizen because of his holding disapproved opinions,” Moynihan wrote. “I recall from my youth the observation that if fascism should ever come to the United States it would be in the guise of antifascism. I very much fear we see the tendency in this squalid enterprise.” On Oct. 1, 1969, he recalled that at an official meeting where he described the war in Vietnam as an unpopular political disaster, “there were at least a few persons who seem to think the war is some kind of presidential prerogative which we must not allow college boys or effeminate professors to infringe.” He was appalled by a British official who belittled the famine in Biafra because the rate of “malnutrition” was only 5 or 10 percentage points above the normal rate. “I really did feel I was talking to Sir Charles Trevelyan 122 years ago,” Moynihan wrote, “assuming all was well in Connaught, that the new potato crop was coming along nicely, and that in any event the Irish always were a bit disorganized.” And complaining that he was being demeaned in leaks, he wrote: “There is no great harm in having a few character assassins on the White House staff, but we should keep the number of madmen to a minimum.”

Moynihan Daniel Patrick
Nixon Richard Milhous
United States Politics and Government
Race
Nixon Richard Library and Birthplace


Deal for Big REIT Startles Some Experts

Abstract: First real estate specialists were surprised by the deal. Then they were surprised by the price. Archstone-Smith, a national apartment building real estate investment trust based in Englewood, Colo., confirmed yesterday that it had agreed to be acquired by Tishman Speyer of New York and its financial partner, Lehman Brothers , for $22.2 billion in what would be the largest public-to-private transaction to date in the multifamily sector. Though other apartment REITs have been mentioned as potential acquisition targets, few real estate specialists had expected the highly regarded Archstone-Smith — the second largest apartment real estate investment trust (after Equity Residential Properties) in terms of real estate value and market capitalization — to be among them. The all-cash deal of $60.75 a share, unanimously approved by Archstone’s board, represents a 22.7 percent premium over the stock price last Thursday, just before Barry Vinocur, the editor of REIT Wrap, a newsletter, reported that a merger might be imminent. Archstone-Smith’s shares closed yesterday at $61.42 a share, up $6.19 from Friday’s close. But several analysts said that while the price covered the value of Archstone-Smith’s buildings, it did not account for the high caliber of its management, its innovative computerized leasing system and its $4.4 billion development pipeline. In their announcement, Tishman Speyer and Lehman said that R. Scot Sellers, the chairman and chief executive of Archstone-Smith, had agreed to work for the new partnership. Some analysts suggested that Mr. Sellers might have a conflict of interest in pushing for approval. Craig Leupold, a multifamily REIT analyst at Green Street Advisors, a research company in Newport Beach, Calif., pointed out that Archstone-Smith shares reached their 52-week high, $64.77, in January. In the past, “the public market has had this company trading at premium,” he said, referring to the earlier price, which exceeded the value of the buildings alone. “I’m surprised that management and board are endorsing this deal.” Louis W. Taylor, a senior real estate analyst at Deutsche Bank, suggested that shareholders were likely to scrutinize the offer carefully, especially given the plan to retain Mr. Sellers. “At this price, we would not rule out other bidders,” Mr. Taylor said. But whether a bidding war will take place may depend on the size of the breakup fee that any new suitor would have to pay Tishman Speyer and its financial partner. Details like that were not disclosed yesterday, and both Tishman Speyer and Archstone-Smith declined requests for interviews. In its statement, Archstone-Smith said the transaction, which is subject to approval by shareholders, was expected to be completed by September. So far this year, 14 mergers and public-to-private transactions have been announced or are pending, compared with 23 for all of last year, according to SNL Financial, a research company in Charlottesville, Va. Since 2000, there have been 84 such transactions. Though this year appears to be keeping pace with last year, he said, the pool of available companies is shrinking. “Unless we think the REIT market is going away completely, it’s got to slow down at some point,” said Keven S. Lindemann, the director of real estate for SNL Financial. In buying Archstone-Smith, Tishman Speyer would be acquiring a company with a similar approach to real estate investing, concentrating on places that are attractive to educated workers and where available land is limited. As of March 31, Archstone-Smith had interests in 344 apartments buildings or complexes, with 86,014 units. Its portfolio is concentrated in some of the best neighborhoods in Washington, Southern California, New York, the San Francisco Bay area, Boston and Seattle. Tishman-Speyer owns office building in all those markets. Tishman-Speyer last year paid $5.4 billion for Stuyvesant Town and Peter Cooper Village, two sprawling apartment complexes along the East River in Manhattan with 11,232 apartments in 110 buildings. The company, which owns the Chrysler Building and Rockefeller Center, has acquired, developed and operated more than 230 properties totaling more than 100 million square feet and manages a property portfolio in excess of $40 billion in total value across the United States, Europe, Latin America and Asia. Archstone-Smith is itself the product of a merger. In 2001, Archstone spent $2.5 billion to buy Charles E. Smith Residential, a portfolio of apartment buildings in the Washington area. It recently won approval to develop 686 apartments in a mixed-use development on the site of Washington’s former convention center in a long-awaited project with Hines, a developer in Houston. Last year, Archstone-Smith greatly increased its presence in New York by buying five high-rise apartment buildings, with 1,382 units, making it the largest public owner of apartments in Manhattan, where many major landlords are private firms. Its buildings include the Gershwin on Eighth Avenue at 50th Street, with 550 apartments, and the recently completed 627-unit Archstone Clinton, on West 52nd Street, near the Hudson River. Mr. Leupold said that Archstone-Smith was known for innovations like its Internet-based system for checking a prospective tenant’s credit rating on the spot and for adapting the type of pricing used by airlines and hotels to the apartment market. Despite its reputation, Archstone-Smith’s stock has been battered recently, as investors have turned away from REITs on the theory that values cannot keep rising indefinitely, analysts say. Rod Petrik, a REIT analyst at Stifel Nicolaus, said that Tishman Speyer was likely to hold onto most of the Archstone buildings, unlike Blackstone, which wasted no time dismantling much of the portfolio it acquired when it recently bought Equity Office Properties for $39 billion. Mr. Petrik estimated the average value of an Archstone apartment — excluding the company’s investments in Germany and the units under development — was $262,000. Replacing them would cost about $500,000 a unit, he said. Though apartment REIT shares have been down for the past two quarters, James S. Corl, the chief investment officer for real estate at Cohen & Steers, a major holder of Archstone-Smith shares, said “the stock market has gotten it wrong on this one.” As home ownership increased in the early part of the decade, largely in response to low interest rates, apartment buildings struggled. But home ownership is now leveling off. “It’s the reverse of what happened in the early 2000s,” he said, “which was terrible for apartments.”

Office Buildings and Commercial Properties


Sad Performance Could Mark End for Wenger

Abstract: LONDON — Arsène Wenger’s once magnificent, now forlorn, course with Arsenal is almost run. After his team capitulated to a 4-0 Champions League defeat against A.C. Milan in the San Siro on Wednesday, even the urbane Frenchman could not find excuses. “What is more difficult to take,” he said, “is the performance we produced tonight. “It’s a big shock. We were never in the game. Very poor offensively and defensively. Slow to read the game, slow to respond, beaten in the challenges.” And his eyes, red around the edges, told the story. Milan’s Zlatan Ibrahimovic, a player often derided by professionals and experts in the English game, was far and away the most effective man on the field. He overpowered Arsenal’s meager defenses. He bullied them with his height, outwitted them with his touch, made them pay for all the taunts of the past. Wenger had told his men to look not at what the critics said about Ibrahimovic’s temperament, but to look instead at what he has won. With Ajax in Amsterdam, with Juventus, Inter and Milan in Italy, and in his one season at Barcelona, the 6-foot-5, or 1.95-meter tall, Swede has been on a league-championship winning side for each of the past eight seasons. Yes, he is mercurial. Yes he can sway from apparent disinterest to rebelliousness. But his good days, in Italy at any rate, outnumber his bad, and the younger players now being introduced into Milan’s team appreciate that he is the focal point of their attack. “If we are in trouble,” midfielder Antonio Nocerino said before the game Wednesday, “we give the ball to Zlatan. He holds it for us, gives us rest, makes us stronger.” Arsenal either didn’t pick up his movement, or fell about at his feet. It was already evident that Milan, itself a team in transition and in some financial downturn, simply had more structure, more certainty, and most surprising of all, more physicality than Arsenal. The first goal was a giveaway. The Arsenal goalie Wojciech Szczesny carelessly played the ball straight to Nocerino, who in the blink of an eye lobbed it forward to Kevin-Prince Boateng. Boateng turned that pass into an opportunity to show his own incredible improvement as an athlete and a striker since four years ago, when he left barely any mark on English soccer as a Tottenham Hotspur player. He controlled the ball on his chest, let it bounce on the ground, then struck a sudden, ferocious shot that cannoned down from the crossbar behind the beaten goalkeeper. From there it became the Ibrahimovic and Robinho show. The big man strode down the left flank and turned the ball back for the little Brazilian to ghost beyond sleeping defenders to nod the second goal. And Robinho scored again after Thomas Vermaelen slipped to the turf. The San Siro’s field was an eyesore unbefitting to top soccer. But if Arsenal could not stand up on it, Milan was creating enough chances to have doubled its score. Finally, Ibrahimovic worked himself into a one-against-one situation inside the penalty box with the hapless Johan Djourou. Two tall men, but one was nimble on his feet, the other clumsy. Djourou brought down Ibrahimovic, a clear penalty claimed, and scored, by the Swede. The contest, in theory, is unfinished. But even Wenger knows that his long attempt to win Europe’s most coveted trophy in his 16th season with Arsenal is dead and buried. So, alas, might be his time with the London club. In the beginning, and for the first seven years, he gave Arsenal a style and a beauty that was rare to behold on English fields. He imported talents, some barely out of school, and blended them in a fashion totally contrary to the old, grindingly efficient, Arsenal. However, when the club moved to a new stadium, with double the seating capacity and more than double the financial income from corporate boxes, the nature of Arsenal changed. It went up-market, it sold out to Russian and American shareholders. But it did not compete in the transfer market the way that big clubs, like Milan, like Manchester United, Chelsea, Manchester City, Barcelona and Real Madrid do. Thierry Henry’s presence on the field on Wednesday was a sorry reminder of his former glory. He was hired for a short stay, from his New York sinecure with the Red Bulls. Although Henry had produced match-winning goals in two of his brief appearances, this was no longer the young Thierry who could outpace almost any defender. It was an elderly soccer player, lending his experience but making a desperate last appearance in a lost cause. Arsenal lost Cesc Fàbregas and Samir Nasri to clubs that would pay more last summer. It lost Jack Wilshere, its emerging Englishman, to injury that has so far lasted this whole season. That represents its entire midfield creative unit. Replacements signed in haste last summer are but shadows of the past greatness. Henry produced one back-heeled pass that prompted the otherwise dormant Robin van Persie to force Milan’s goalkeeper, Christian Abbiati, into his one decent save of the night. The rest was embarrassing. Arsenal might not sack Wenger after the 16 years he has supervised. But he said himself, after the team’s 8-2 hammering against Manchester United last August, that he might have to go if his team was substandard by the end of the season. That call looks imminent.

UEFA Champions League (Soccer)
Arsenal (Soccer Team)
Milan (Soccer Team)


Judge Blocks California’s Low-Carbon Fuel Standard

Abstract: SAN FRANCISCO — A federal judge on Thursday blocked enforcement of a California regulation favoring producers of gasoline, diesel fuel and biofuels whose methods generate fewer greenhouse gas emissions. The ruling by the judge, Lawrence J. O’Neill of United States District Court in Fresno, said the rule unconstitutionally discriminates against out-of-state producers and tries to regulate activities that take place entirely outside state boundaries, from producers’ choice of farming methods to refiners’ use of coal -fired electricity. By granting a preliminary injunction, which had been sought by ethanol producers, the judge dealt a blow to the state’s much-trumpeted effort to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions to 1990 levels by 2020. The low-carbon fuel rule had been expected to account for 10 percent of the overall reduction in emissions, or about 16 million metric tons. California’s fuel standard “impermissibly treads into the province and powers of our federal government, reaches beyond its boundaries to regulate activity wholly outside of its borders,” the judge said. The federal Constitution grants Congress the power to regulate interstate commerce, and court rulings over the decades have interpreted that language to restrain states from interfering with interstate commerce. Judge O’Neill said that California’s fuel standard rule “offends” that doctrine, referred to as “the dormant commerce clause.” A spokesman for the California Air Resources Board , which issued the rule in 2009, said it would appeal the decision. The California rule is one of the first in the country to use a “life cycle” analysis to determine the total amount of greenhouse gases emitted in the course of producing and transporting a fuel, or its “carbon intensity.” By setting a carbon intensity standard, producers and distributors who emit less are rewarded with marketable credits; those who exceed the standard must buy credits, driving up the costs of their fuel. Separate lawsuits against the California regulation were brought by the ethanol producers and by refiners and truckers. The Air Resources Board had asked Judge O’Neill to dismiss the claims, saying that provisions of the Clean Air Act give California special authority to control air pollution. These provisions shield the state from any claim of interference with interstate commerce, the regulators argued. In three separate rulings issued Thursday, Judge O’Neill rejected the regulators’ defense, accepting the refiners’ claim that the state acted unconstitutionally and granting the injunction. The fuel refining industry welcomed the judge’s action. “Today’s decision is a victory for the millions of Californians,” said Charles T. Drevna, the president of the National Petrochemical and Refiners Association . “California’s low-carbon fuel standards would have raised gasoline and diesel fuel costs for all Californians, who already pay the highest fuel prices in the nation.”

Greenhouse Gas Emissions
Interstate Commerce
California Air Resources Board
Regulation and Deregulation of Industry
California
Oil (Petroleum) and Gasoline
Biofuels


Afghan Leader Deflects Talk of Future

Abstract: KABUL, Afghanistan — President Hamid Karzai on Saturday deflected calls from political rivals to cede authority to an interim government before an election in August, and refused to even say whether he would run for re-election — the latest signs that the country may be headed for a constitutional crisis even as the Taliban insurgency continues to gain strength. Afghanistan now faces the critical question of who will run the government between May 21, when Mr. Karzai’s term expires, and the presidential election on Aug. 20. The Taliban usually stage their most intense offensives during those months. Under the Afghan Constitution, an election is supposed to be held 30 to 60 days before the end of Mr. Karzai’s term. But the country’s election commission has instead set the date for August, saying poor security and the bitter early spring weather usual in April would disenfranchise many voters. The United States, NATO and the United Nations have all endorsed the August date. A week ago, Mr. Karzai abruptly issued a decree calling for an election by late April. But on Saturday he said he would accept the election commission’s decision for an August ballot. Now, leading opposition politicians say that Mr. Karzai should step aside in May and be replaced temporarily by some sort of executive authority agreed to by a consensus of political and judicial leaders. They say they fear that Mr. Karzai’s continued rule would be illegitimate and that he might try to use his power to gain unfair advantage in the election. But in a confusing stream of comments to reporters at the presidential palace on Saturday, Mr. Karzai dismissed the notion of a transitional government. “The transitional term does not exist in the Constitution,” he said. “The Constitution says the election should be held in order to elect the new president. No other circumstance has been anticipated in the Constitution.” He also stated that “it is clear as long as there is no election, the president will stay.” Yet he also said that he wanted a national consensus about a post-May 21 government and that he would not stay president if doing so made him an illegal leader. At one point he declared he would run again only if he could be a “factor for stability.” But as he walked out of the news conference, he said he had decided whether to run, but did not say what that decision was. In the past, Mr. Karzai had said he intended to run for a second term. Other leading politicians expected to run for president said Mr. Karzai should declare whether he would run and agree to step aside in May if he did run. “The Constitution does not give the president the authority to interpret the Constitution,” said Ashraf Ghani, a former Afghan finance minister under Mr. Karzai. “There is not trust in a level playing field,” he said. “We need to create the mechanism for a campaign where, if the president is a candidate, there is a level playing field, where the machinery of government is not used for or against the other players.”

Karzai Hamid
Afghanistan
Politics and Government
Elections


Report’s Author Is Former Football Player Known Best as Trial Lawyer

Abstract: Over the course of his nearly 40-year legal career, Theodore V. Wells Jr. has defended a cross section of Washington politicians and Wall Street financiers, becoming one of the best-known trial lawyers in public corruption and insider trading cases. In recent months, his focus shifted to a much different sort of wrongdoing: deflated footballs. On Wednesday, Wells and his colleagues at the law firm of Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison released their much-anticipated report on the New England Patriots’ deflated footballs, concluding that team personnel intentionally deflated them to gain an advantage in the A.F.C. championship game last season. Wells and Paul Weiss — perhaps best known for defending the likes of I. Lewis Libby, the chief of staff to former Vice President Dick Cheney; Michael Espy, the former agriculture secretary; and Steven A. Cohen, the billionaire Wall Street investor — might not seem the obvious choice to lead an investigation into, of all things, deflated footballs. Even in his personal life, Wells has emphasized politics and civil rights, having served as national treasurer for former Democratic Senator Bill Bradley’s presidential campaign, chairman emeritus of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund and as pro bono general counsel to the New Jersey N.A.A.C.P. But the N.F.L., which has hired Paul Weiss on and off since the 1980s, has recently become one of the firm’s biggest clients. It hired the firm to investigate accusations of bullying on the Miami Dolphins, which led to a 144-page report from Wells, and negotiate a settlement with former players who accused the league of hiding the dangers of concussions. In the case of the deflated footballs, Wells worked alongside Paul Weiss’s chairman, Brad S. Karp, and a former senior federal prosecutor, Lorin L. Reisner. Although Wells wrote the report along with his colleagues, who also happen to be fellow Harvard Law School graduates, the report is synonymous with his name. Wells, himself a towering figure who played offensive and defensive line on a football scholarship at Holy Cross, was name-checked throughout the Super Bowl broadcast, with the announcers referencing the looming “Wells Report.” “Normally you see him in these high-profile financial cases, but Ted is no stranger to these types of sports investigations,” said Tony West, the former high-ranking Justice Department official who squared off against Wells in a number of cases. “What makes Ted so good is he’s able to strike a very difficult balance between being a hard-charging advocate for his client while also engendering respect and even admiration from his adversaries.” The N.F.L. cases highlight a push at Paul Weiss — and in the broader legal world — to capture a piece of the lucrative market for sports litigation. Once a cottage industry of entertainment firms and labor specialists, these cases now attract New York’s biggest white-shoe firms. Investigative Report on A.F.C. Championship Game Footballs The investigative report into accusations that the New England Patriots improperly deflated game balls in last January’s A.F.C. championship game. That dynamic reflects the changing economics of sports leagues, which have become multibillion-dollar enterprises thanks to lucrative television and merchandise deals. It can also be traced to a heightened awareness of concussions — and the litigation that results — as well as public blunders by teams, leagues and even players associations. Paul Weiss, for example, represented the National Basketball Players Association in an internal investigation into the union’s chief. And in addition to handling the N.F.L. concussion litigation, the firm is representing FIFA, soccer’s international governing body, in its concussion cases. The work is not limited to litigation; the firm handled the acquisition of the N.B.A.’s Milwaukee Bucks by Wall Street executives. It helps the firm’s cause that, as one government official put it, “Brad Karp is the most connected lawyer in the country.” Yet all these billable hours could translate into potential conflicts when the firm is asked to investigate a scandal like the deflated balls. The firm must maintain the integrity of the investigation without losing a client like the N.F.L. The inquiry was particularly fraught with challenges. The owner of the Patriots, Robert Kraft, is a close ally of Commissioner Roger Goodell. And it took more than three months to finalize the report, in part because of the exhaustive nature of the review. Paul Weiss conducted interviews, pored over text messages and consulted scientific experts. At one point, a Columbia professor posted the firm’s request for a physics expert onto Facebook, causing a brief stir in the legal and academic worlds. But the involvement of Wells helped mitigate concerns about the outcome of the investigation. Reisner, known as an aggressive former prosecutor before joining Paul Weiss as a partner last year, did the same. As head of the criminal division at the United States attorney’s office in Manhattan, Reisner helped oversee some of the biggest investigations into Wall Street banks and hedge funds. In one of his biggest cases — the investigation into Cohen and his hedge fund, SAC Capital Advisors — one of the defense lawyers was Wells.

Theodore V Wells Jr
Football
Cheating
Paul Weiss
NFL
Super Bowl
Super Bowl 2015
Patriots


Collage Show in Newburgh Appropriates Sounds as Well as and Sights

Abstract: In Newburgh, art galleries are few and far between. Though there is some noticeable upscale development along the river, much of the city, with its blocks of rundown working-class homes and storefronts, remains a far cry from its 19th-century status as “the gem of the Hudson.” The architecture here dates back to the 1600s; this was once a beautiful place. Ann Street Gallery is the city’s only nonprofit art space. Two years old, it occupies a portion of the basement of a 19th-century hotel recently renovated by a local nonprofit group, Safe Harbors of the Hudson, which is devoted to providing affordable housing for the indigent, veterans and artists. Safe Harbors also sponsors the gallery. The gallery is small but nicely fitted-out, with polished concrete floors and crisp white walls. There is a main gallery and a back room used for video and sound art. The emphasis is on emerging and midcareer artists from the Hudson River Valley, but works by artists from New York and further afield are also shown here. The current exhibition at the gallery is “Collage Logic,” a group show of 13 artists from New York and the wider region. It explores “the use of collage techniques and methodologies in contemporary art,” according to Virginia Walsh, the exhibition’s curator and gallery director. This is a rich and fertile area of artistic expression. What is so interesting about this show is that few of the artists selected by Ms. Walsh make conventional collages. John Morton, for instance, has made an arresting sound installation using appropriated sounds from along the Hudson River. You hear fishermen talking, pipes clanging, water lapping, even a train speeding by. Joel Carreiro appropriates images from art history and medieval manuscripts to create pastiche paintings. The source material is printed on heat-transfer paper, which he cuts into little strips and squares and then recombines to form interesting patterns. I like these works a lot, as much for their formal ingenuity as for their obvious beauty. Thomas Weaver presents a terrific conceptual collage made of paintings, stencils, drawings, watercolors and writing, mostly on paper, bunched together on a wall. Across them, he has painted the outline of the frame of a house, suggesting a collection of ideas and thoughts gathered together under one roof, a metaphor for the artist’s mind. Other artists work with found materials. Jackie Shatz fuses together ceramics, paint, cloth and other found materials to make colorful, abstract wall sculptures. Imelda Cajipe Endaya collages together maps, candy wrappers and a variety of textiles to create works that reflect on childhood and, somewhat more obliquely, feminist issues. The term collage comes from the French word coller, which means to glue. Not surprisingly, the show includes work by some artists who affix paper or other objects to a two-dimensional surface — the traditional form of collage. Among them are Jonathan Talbot and Vivien Collens, both of whom have clearly mastered the technique. Mr. Talbot appropriates mostly black and white imagery from old books and magazines which he pastes together to create scenes that look like historical photographs. “The Stationmaster” and “The Bachelors Visit New York” depict arrangements of people against hybrid architectural structures. They are about dreams as much as memories. Pablo Picasso probably produced the first modern collage, “Still Life With Chair Caning” (1912), consisting of a piece of oilcloth printed with a caning pattern and glued onto a canvas. By incorporating real objects into his picture, he blurred the distinction between painting and sculpture and opened up a whole new area for art making. Collage has been put to many uses since then, as this show testifies. Perhaps the most ambitious use of it is Yeon Jin Kim’s video “Dreams,” which might be described as a travelogue of the subconscious. Much of the imagery was taken with a spy camera inserted inside an elaborate paper model of a city, also on display. All told, this show contains a remarkably diverse and thoughtful group of works by artists who, though not household names, probably deserve to be better known. Collage may be a century old, but this show suggests that it will be around for a lot longer.


Six Are Killed in a House Fire in Newark

Abstract: NEWARK — An 11-year-old boy and five of his relatives died on Sunday in an early morning fire that swept through the family’s house here, killing everyone inside and leaving a neighborhood in mourning. Throughout the afternoon, congregants from a nearby church and people who lived on the surrounding blocks gathered on South 15th Street to take stock of the home’s charred frame and to pay homage to a family whose generosity was well known. One neighbor proudly lifted a red plastic truck that one of the fire’s victims had given to her children. Another neighbor listed items, such as pencils, books, toys and a skateboard, donated by one of the victims who would load her van with supplies for schoolchildren. On Sunday evening, what was known to neighbors became official, as the Essex County prosecutor’s office released the identities of the six victims. The three who lived in the house were Reginald Stewart, 58; his wife, Salome Stewart, 58; and her daughter, Natasha Kinsale, 35. The other three were Zion Forbes, 11, who lived in nearby East Orange, and Noreen Johnson, 43, and her son, Stephen Sydney, 15, who were visiting from Crawford, Ga. Their bodies were found inside the wreckage of the three-story single-family home at 818 South 15th Street after the fire was reported around 4 a.m., said Anthony Ambrose, the chief of detectives for the prosecutor’s office, which is investigating the fire. As flames engulfed the front of the home, neighbors tried to come to the family’s aid and went to the back door, said a neighbor named Leo, 47, who declined to give his last name. But they found the door blocked by a cabinet or some other obstruction, he said. Hours later, firefighters were still surveying the scene, occasionally tossing debris into the yard where a charred couch frame had already been deposited. The white siding of the home had melted and peeled to reveal a blackened interior. Residents of the neighborhood stood outside the police tape. They recalled the bright artificial flowers and welcome signs that cluttered the home’s porch and brought a bit of cheer to the block. “It’s a very tragic and sad situation on Father’s Day,” said Thomas Ellis, a minister at God’s Deliverance Praise and Outreach Center in Newark. “There’s a father somewhere that lost his kids.” A witness, Carol Valentine, said her fiancé lived next door to the home that caught fire. When they saw the fire early Sunday, her fiancé was among those who tried to break down the back door of the home. His home also sustained damage from the fire, she said. Leo, the neighbor, said the fire station is only about a block away from the home, giving the Fire Department quick access. “Of course they’re going to be here quick,” he said of the firefighters, “but the fire’s quicker than them.” Standing cater-corner from the scorched home, Leo added: “I feel like it’s my house. It’s so close.”


Charlie Hebdo’s Defiant Muhammad Cover Fuels Debate on Free Speech

Abstract: PARIS — Immediately upon unveiling its new cover — a depiction of Muhammad — the French satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo on Tuesday reignited the debate pitting free speech against religious sensitivities that has embroiled Europe since 12 people were killed during an attack on its Paris offices by Muslim extremists a week ago. The cover shows the bearded prophet shedding a tear and holding up a sign saying, “I am Charlie,” the rallying cry that has become synonymous with support of the newspaper and free expression. Above the cartoon on a green background is the headline “All is forgiven.” While surviving staff members, at an emotional news conference, described their choice of cover as a show of forgiveness, most Muslims consider any depiction of their prophet to be blasphemous. Moreover, interpretations quickly swirled around the Internet that the cartoon also contained disguised crudity. One of Egypt’s highest Islamic authorities warned that the cartoon would exacerbate tensions between the secular West and observant Muslims, while death threats circulated online against staff members. A preacher, Anjem Choudary, the former leader of a radical group that was banned in Britain, was quoted by a British newspaper, The Independent, as saying that the image was “an act of war” that would be punishable by death if judged in a Shariah court. Beyond new threats — and the potential for more violence after a week in which both mosques and Jewish sites were attacked — the persistence of what many Muslims see as continuing provocations opened complaints about a double standard in European countries, whose bans on hate speech some see as seeming to stop short of forbidding ridicule of Islam. “If freedom of expression can be sacrificed for criminalizing incitement and hatred, why not for insulting the Prophet of Allah?” Mr. Choudary wrote last week on Twitter on the same day as the massacre at Charlie Hebdo, during which the attackers indicated they were avenging Muhammad for the newspaper’s insults. Supporters of the iconoclastic newspaper defended the cover as a fitting and defiant tribute to Charlie Hebdo’s slain cartoonists. “I have no worries about the cover,” the cartoonist who drew it, Renald Luzier, who uses the pen name Luz, told assembled reporters at the offices of the newspaper Libération, which the Charlie Hedbo staff has used since the attack. “We have confidence in people’s intelligence, and we have confidence in humor. The people who did this attack, they have no sense of humor.” “I’m sorry we’ve drawn him yet again,” he added, “but the Muhammad we’ve drawn is a man who is crying.” Laurent Léger, an investigative journalist with Charlie Hebdo, shrugged off the idea, circulating on social media, that the cartoon contained one or even two hidden renderings of male genitals. “People can see what they want to see, but a cartoon is a cartoon,” he said. “It is not a photograph.” Muslim leaders as far away as Egypt condemned Charlie Hebdo, recalling threats received by a Danish newspaper in 2005 after it, too, published cartoons satirizing Muhammad. Elsa Ray, the spokeswoman of the Paris-based Collective Against Islamophobia in France, declined to react specifically to the new cartoon, but said that cartoons that lampooned Muhammad breached the limits of decency and insulted Muslims. “The freedom of expression may be guaranteed by the French Constitution, but there is a limit when it goes too far and turns into hatred, and stigmatization,” she said. Moreover, she argued that the failure of French courts to clamp down on cartoons satirizing Muhammad was a double standard, given the robustness of action taken when Jews were insulted by cartoonists or artists, including Dieudonné M’bala M’bala, a comedian, who in 2013 came under the scrutiny of courts, which banned a series of his shows . Mr. M’bala M’bala has said it was a shame that a Jewish journalist had not been killed in the gas chambers. He has also come under fire for popularizing a gesture that strongly resembles a Nazi salute. In a statement on his Facebook page after Sunday’s enormous unity march in Paris, Mr. M’bala M’bala expressed his admiration for Amedy Coulibaly, the gunman behind the killings at a kosher supermarket. “As far as I am concerned, I feel I am Charlie Coulibaly,” he wrote, alluding to the “I am Charlie” rallying cry. The Paris prosecutor’s office said Monday it had opened an investigation to determine if Mr. M’bala M’bala should be charged with promoting terrorism. Mr. M’bala M’bala said he was being unfairly targeted. French laws safeguard the freedom of speech, but there are many exceptions to the rule. Prime Minister Manuel Valls told the National Assembly on Tuesday that “blasphemy” was not in French law and never would be. But he refused to draw any analogy between the satirists of Charlie Hebdo and Mr. M’bala M’bala. “There is a fundamental difference,” he said. Some cultural observers praised Charlie Hebdo for upholding Western values of liberal democracy, even at risk of violence. Flemming Rose, the former cultural editor of the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten, whose 2005 publication of cartoons lampooning Muhammad — including one with his turban depicted as a lit fuse — drew violent recriminations that reverberated across the world, recalled that the publication of the cartoons resulted in a fatwa against him by a radical cleric, threats against the newspaper and one of its cartoonists , and attacks against Danish embassies in the Middle East. Mr. Rose said in an interview that Jyllands-Posten had decided not to publish the latest Charlie Hebdo caricature for fear the newspaper would be targeted again. Still, he said it was imperative that Western newspapers not surrender to Islamic radicals. “We aren’t republishing the Charlie Hebdo cartoons because we are afraid,” he said. “But I know well that if you give in to intimidation, it works.” His comments reflect the debate that last’s week attacks have ignited in newsrooms and in the streets and cafes in Europe. Jérôme Fenoglio, the managing editor of Le Monde, said his paper had decided to publish the Charlie Hebdo cartoon on its cover because “it is an important document that we wanted to show to everybody.” The cartoon, Mr. Fenoglio said, “didn’t carry any insulting message.” “We defend our right to be able to publish any cartoon, but never those which would be aggressive,” Mr. Fenoglio said. Though he said that some of Charlie Hebdo’s caricatures were “not funny” and could “uselessly” offend people, “each paper makes its own judgment.” “Freedom of the press is an absolute right,” Mr. Fenoglio said, “but each paper has its own free will, and chooses what seems pertinent or not.” Some American newspapers, including The New York Times, did not reproduce the Charlie Hedbo cartoons that mocked Islam. The Times called the decision an editorial judgment that reflected its standards for content that is deemed offensive and gratuitous. The decision drew criticism from some free-speech advocates who called it cowardly in the face of a terrorist attack, which the newspaper disputed. “Actually, we have republished some of the Charlie Hebdo cartoons, including a caricature of the head of ISIS, as well as some political cartoons,” Dean Baquet, the executive editor of The Times, said in a statement. “We do not normally publish images or other material deliberately intended to offend religious sensibilities.” The Washington Post, which published a single previous Charlie Hebdo cartoon of Muhammad on its printed op-ed page last Thursday, republished the new cover on its website on Tuesday. Martin Baron, the newspaper’s executive editor, said the images did not violate its editorial standards. “It has to be deliberately, pointedly, needlessly offensive,” Mr. Baron said. More publications have published or plan to reproduce Charlie Hebdo’s newest cover online. Three million copies of the newspaper will be published on Wednesday in 16 languages. The proliferation of the cartoons is heightening concern that the already precarious climate in Europe will worsen, with the possibility of more violence. Some newspapers that reproduced the cartoons in solidarity after last week’s attack have themselves been threatened or targeted already. A Belgian newspaper, Le Soir, received an anonymous call Sunday from someone threatening that “it’s going to blow in your newsroom.” The same day, in Germany, stones and an incendiary object were thrown through the windows of the headquarters of a newspaper, Hamburger Morgenpost, damaging the archive but causing no injuries. Khalil Charles, spokesman for the Muslim Association of Britain, said free speech had been allowed to defy common sense and had given way to insults. Referring to last week’s attacks, he added: “Muslims are appalled, like everyone, about what happened. But this is criminality that should not be attached to Islam, and the Prophet should not be attacked as a result.”

Charlie Hebdo
Terrorism
Newspaper
France
Freedom of speech
Islam
Freedom of the press
Cartoons
Paris France


Ohio Steel Mills Expand to Meet Demand in Energy and Auto Industries

Abstract: CANTON, Ohio — The Ohio steel industry, led by a drilling boom in the gas and oil industry and a resuscitated demand for cars and light trucks, is growing again. Steel makers across the state are racing to keep pace with plans to add a total of two million square feet of production space at a cost of $1.5 billion. At the Timken Company ’s mill here on Faircrest Street, orders for steel from domestic and export markets plunged so low in May 2009 that the plant operated just four days that month. Nearly three years later, with demand for steel soaring and the Faircrest mill operating around the clock, Timken has started building a $200 million, 83,000-square-foot addition that will increase the plant’s production. “The need for specialty steel, much of it for oil and natural gas producers, is high in the United States and around the world,” said Salvatore J. Miraglia Jr., the president of Timken’s steel group. “We see demand in that market continuing to be healthy for quite some time.” That optimism is reflected in Timken’s new building, which will rise 26 stories high and will sharply expand the plant’s capacity to cast steel billets to be made into parts for drilling platforms, heavy equipment, and other oil and gas industry tools. Two other new buildings also are under way at the 27-year-old mill, one of which will house a new forge press and a facility where minerals and other compounds that strengthen finished steel will be added to molten metal. In October, United States Steel opened a $100 million, 325,000-square-foot mill at its Lorain plant to manufacture steel pipe for the drilling industry. Vallourec & Mannesmann , a French company, is completing a $650 million, 1.1 million-square-foot steel pipe mill in Youngstown , and is building a separate 200,000-square-foot mill nearby to add threads to the pipes. Both plants serve the oil and gas sector. United States Steel is collaborating with a Japan-based partner, Kobe Steel , to build a $400 million, 454,000-square-foot addition to what is known as the Pro-Tec plant in Leipsic, south of Toledo, to serve the growing market for high-tensile lightweight steel used by makers of fuel-efficient vehicles. “We haven’t had this kind of expansion in steel since the 1980s,” said Eric Burkland, the president of the Ohio Manufacturers’ Association . “It’s a tremendous turnaround.” When all the projects are completed this year and next, those plants alone are expected to add roughly 630 new manufacturing jobs. The unemployment rate in Ohio was 7.5 percent in March, below the 8.2 percent national rate in March, and down from a statewide peak of 10.6 percent in July 2009. The projects also will help Ohio’s steel industry, the nation’s second-largest behind Indiana’s, to exceed the annual production figures of 14 million to 15 million tons that were achieved in the years before 2009, when production dropped to 4.8 million tons and investment in plants was just $166 million, according to the Ohio Steel Council , a state trade group. One reason for the industry’s revival, said Mr. Burkland, was anticipated: the recovery of the auto industry. “People feel more confident and they are buying cars again,” he said. Auto manufacturing in the United States is a big buyer of steel. Carmakers expect this year to sell 13.8 million cars and light trucks in the United States, and could reach 14 million to 15 million sales by 2014, according to monthly sales figures and industry estimates. Sales peaked at 17 million vehicles in 2005, but plunged to 10.9 million sales in 2009 in the depths of the recession . The Ohio Department of Development, in a February 2011 report , said 72,000 people were employed in the state’s car and light truck vehicle assembly plants, and dozens of parts manufacturing plants. But the surge in oil and gas drilling and the swift rise in the market for steel pipes and oil field equipment has come as a surprise. The clanging of long lengths of steel pipes being heated and cooled, pounded and straightened inside a new finishing plant at United States Steel in Lorain provides a rare inside view of the industry’s revival in Ohio. The bright lights and charged furnaces, the powerful hiss of cold water on hot steel, and the jarring din that makes ear plugs mandatory safety equipment describe a company and an industry making investments few thought possible only a few years ago. “We’re shipping pipe to drilling operations in Pennsylvania, North Dakota, Texas, China,” said John Wilkinson, United States Steel’s interim plant manager. “All over the country. All over the world. Some of it is being used here in Ohio.” New production practices have made it practical to tap the dense and deep hydrocarbon-rich shale beneath much of the Great Plains, the Gulf Coast, the Rocky Mountain West and the mid-Atlantic states, and they are being tapped at a frantic pace. Last year, according to the Energy Information Administration of the Department of Energy, a monthly average of 1,876 oil and gas rigs were in operation, the highest count since 2008. More than 45,000 oil and gas wells were drilled in 2011, and a third of the nation’s natural gas is now generated from shale. In eastern and central Ohio, drillers focus on two layers of deep gas- and oil-bearing shale, the Marcellus and Utica. Early production results indicate the Utica wells alone are capable of producing millions of cubic feet of gas and hundreds of barrels of oil daily. It takes a lot of steel to tap reserves that generally lie a mile or more beneath the surface. Each of the drilling pipes rolling off the production line in Lorain is 4.5 inches in diameter, 50 feet long and weighs 850 pounds. Drilling vertically to the depth of the shale in Ohio, and horizontally through it to tap gas and oil, typically takes 200 to 250 lengths of pipe — or some 100 tons of steel. As of April 8, Ohio had issued 207 shale drilling permits. David Mustine, the general manager of JobsOhio , a state economic development group, said that natural gas was a favored fuel for heating steel and that the new supplies were lowering prices, saving steel plants millions of dollars a year. “Drilling for natural gas has given Ohio steel producers a larger market for their products and a competitive advantage on cost,” Mr. Mustine said. In Canton, Timken executives said they expected to complete the Faircrest mill’s additions by 2014, and production will increase to 925,000 tons annually from 750,000 tons this year. Mr. Miraglia said 425 people worked at the plant and that automation in the new buildings most likely meant that few if any jobs would be added. Behind him, long, rectangular slabs of steel the color of the sun were being poured, turned and pounded in a fury of smoke and flame. “This is the largest investment made in this plant since we built it,” he said.

Ohio
Steel and Iron
Automobiles
Economic Conditions and Trends
Drilling and Boring
United States Economy
United States Steel Corporation
Timken Company
Factories and Manufacturing


Hip Injury Forces Kyrgios to Withdraw; Journeyman Challenges Murray

Abstract: Nick Kyrgios could not jump and could not move forward, and the hip injury he had struggled with through his first two matches at the United States Open had finally caught up with him. “I guess it’s just a matter of time,” Kyrgios, of Australia, said after retiring from his third-round match Saturday night against Illya Marchenko. The No. 14-seeded Kyrgios was trailing, 6-4, 4-6, 1-6. He had dejectedly muttered about his injury and its effects through much of the third set, but had waited until the set ended to finally concede defeat. “It’s never easy, of course,” Kyrgios, 21, said of stopping. “I’ve got a lot of belief in my game to still win matches when I’m not feeling great.” Marchenko, a 28-year-old Ukrainian ranked 63rd, had never before reached the third round of a Grand Slam, and is now into a fourth. “Nobody wants to win this way,” Marchenko said. “But I’m still happy to be in next round.” Players who toil away on the lower tiers of tennis are often called journeymen, but few have had as long a journey to reach the upper echelons of the sport as Paolo Lorenzi of Italy. Nick Kyrgios’s Explosive Forehand Nick Kyrgios of Australia combines athleticism and a distinctive technique to deliver one of the most explosive forehands in the current game. Lorenzi, a 34-year-old from Rome, is playing in his 22nd Grand Slam main draw, but he only just reached the third round for the first time at this United States Open. His reward for persevering was an appointment on Saturday night with second-seeded Andy Murray, one of the most in-form players in the sport, at Arthur Ashe Stadium. Lorenzi battled admirably, serving well and pushing Murray in many long rallies, but lost, 7-6 (4), 5-7, 6-2, 6-3. “I was feeling good on the court,” Lorenzi said. “I was focused on the match, and I enjoyed it.” Lorenzi’s perseverance is record-setting. By winning a small tournament in Kitzbühel, Austria, in July, Lorenzi became the oldest first-time champion in ATP history. The win helped propel him into the top 40 for the first time in August. Lorenzi, who has won 18 tournaments on the sport’s lower Challenger circuit, said his method for success there has been able to translate to victories on larger stages. “Many things are completely different, but in the end it’s the same: You wake up in the morning, you warm up, and you try to win your match,” he said. “The setting changes, but the life is the same.” Image Andy Murray, seeded No. 2, beat Paolo Lorenzi, 7-6 (4), 5-7, 6-2, 6-3. Credit Geoff Burke/USA Today Sports, via Reuters Lorenzi, who used to study medicine in addition to playing tennis, said he hoped his new position higher in the rankings would give him some clout to help improve conditions for lower-ranked players struggling to make ends meet. “It’s very difficult, because there is no money in this type of tournament,” Lorenzi said of the Challenger events. Lorenzi said that although results had been slow to come, his drive and love of the sport have not wavered. “The key is to try to work, to try to do something more every day,” he said. “For me, I think the key is that I love tennis. It’s my passion, so I’m happy that I can go train and that I can still enjoy this life.” Murray was impressed by Lorenzi’s tenacity. “To come out and move like he did and work as hard as he did out there, you know, shows that that’s a huge quality of his,” Murray said. “It gets you a long way.” Image Third-seeded Stan Wawrinka serving in his 4-6, 6-3, 6-7 (6), 7-6 (8), 6-2 win over Daniel Evans. Credit Andy Lyons/Getty Images Murray next faces No. 22-seeded Grigor Dimitrov, who beat João Sousa, 6-4, 6-1, 3-6, 6-2. Murray’s compatriot Daniel Evans has been weak where Lorenzi is strong, with his commitment to the sport often questioned as his ranking has fluctuated wildly. But Evans came closer than Lorenzi to pulling off the major upset on Saturday, holding match point in the fourth-set tiebreaker against third-seeded Stan Wawrinka before ultimately falling, 4-6, 6-3, 6-7 (6), 7-6 (8), 6-2. Evans said he felt the pressure. “I’ve never been in that situation before, especially against someone as good as him,” Evans said. “Yeah, it’s just not easy, is it? I mean, being that close, I was thinking about winning the match.” The night session was cut short when No. 14-seeded Nick Kyrgios withdrew during the third set of his match against Illya Marchenko because of a hip injury. He was trailing, 4-6, 6-4, 6-1. Marchenko, who had never before reached even the third round of a Grand Slam, will next face Wawrinka. The biggest upset of the day, by rankings only, was delivered by the wild card Juan Martín del Potro, the 2009 champion here. With his signature forehand firing, he blasted through the feisty defense of No. 11-seeded David Ferrer, 7-6 (3), 6-2, 6-3. Del Potro next faces No. 8-seeded Dominic Thiem, who won, 1-6, 6-4, 6-4, 7-5, over Pablo Carreño-Busta. No. 6-seeded Kei Nishikori beat Nicolas Mahut, who struggled with a wrist injury, 4-6, 6-1, 6-2, 6-2. Nishikori next faces No. 21-seeded Ivo Karlovic, who ended the run of the qualifier Jared Donaldson, a Rhode Islander, 6-4, 7-6 (3), 6-3.

Tennis
US Open Tennis
Andy Murray
Paolo Lorenzi
Stan Wawrinka
Daniel Evans
Nick Kyrgios
Illya Marchenko
Sports injury


How Countries Like the Philippines Fall Into Vigilante Violence

Abstract: When campaigning for the Philippine presidency last spring, Rodrigo Duterte promised to kill so many criminals that “fish will grow fat” in Manila Bay from feasting on their corpses. Since taking office on June 30, Mr. Duterte appears to be making every effort to meet that grisly goal. Over 1,800 people have been killed by the police and vigilantes since then, and the wave of killings shows no sign of subsiding. Many of the victims appear to have been innocent by any definition, and none had been proved guilty in a court of law. But the crackdown has struck a chord with the public, and Mr. Duterte’s popularity has been soaring . What drives this explosion of extrajudicial violence — which, far from unique, bears striking parallels to previous waves of killings in Colombia, Mexico, Guatemala, Thailand and elsewhere? It would be tempting to reduce this to a simple story of good versus evil, with the villain — whether that means enforcers like Mr. Duterte or the criminal elements they claim to be expunging — solely responsible. But social scientists who study extrajudicial killings say the real story is more complicated, and more tragic. It is often the affected communities themselves that unwittingly help create the circumstances for this violence. It tends to begin, the research suggests, with a weak state and a population desperate for security. Short-term incentives push everyone to bad decisions that culminate in violence that, once it has reached a level as bloody as that in the Philippines, can be nearly impossible to stop. The Spark It might seem that the Philippines’ trouble began when it elected Mr. Duterte, a brash provincial politician who has for decades embraced extrajudicial killings as a legitimate method of crime control. But the true roots of the problem can be traced to the administration of Mr. Duterte’s predecessor, Benigno Aquino III. That is because, experts say, the true cause of this kind of extrajudicial violence is the public’s loss of confidence in state institutions and its turning instead to more immediate forms of punishment and control. Mr. Aquino, elected in 2010 on promises to support the rule of law and human rights, failed to fix the Philippines’ corrupt and ineffective justice system. His administration also faced a series of security-related scandals, including a hostage crisis in Manila in 2010. And, perhaps most critical, Mr. Aquino was perceived as lazy and soft, unwilling to take the necessary steps to solve the country’s problems. Frustration with the government’s inability to provide basic security led to rising public demand for new leaders who would take more decisive action to provide security. “The fact is that the judicial system, the court system, is broken in the Philippines,” said Phelim Kine, a deputy director of the Asia Division at Human Rights Watch. Image Filipino demonstrators mimicking an extrajudicial killing crime scene as police officers stood guard last month in front of the Philippine National Police headquarters in Camp Crame, Quezon City, northeast of Manila. Credit Mark R. Cristino/European Pressphoto Agency Powerful people, Mr. Kine said, are often able to evade justice entirely. “When you factor in elements of corruption, and perceptions that people can buy themselves protection from the police or buy themselves out of trouble,” he said, “this adds up to a lot of frustration among Filipinos who sense that government and the judicial system is part of the problem, not the solution.” The Demand When people begin to see the justice system as thoroughly corrupt and broken, they feel unprotected from crime. That sense of threat makes them willing to support vigilante violence, which feels like the best option for restoring order and protecting their personal safety. Gema Santamaria, a professor at the Mexico Autonomous Institute of Technology in Mexico City who studies lynchings and other forms of vigilante killings, and José Miguel Cruz, the research director at Florida International University’s Latin American and Caribbean Center, used survey data from across Latin America to test what leads people to support extrajudicial violence . The data told a very similar story across all of the countries in their sample. People who didn’t have faith in their country’s institutions were more likely to say vigilante violence was justified. By contrast, in states with stronger institutions, people were more likely to reject extrajudicial violence. People turn to vigilante violence as a replacement for the formal justice system, Ms. Santamaria said. That can take multiple forms — lynch mobs in Mexico, for instance, or paramilitary “self-defense” forces in Colombia — but the core impulse is the same. “When you have a system that doesn’t deliver, you are creating, over a period of time, a certain culture of punishment,” she said. “Regardless of what the police are going to do, you want justice, and it will be rough justice.” Surprisingly, that includes increased support for the use of harsh extralegal tactics by the police themselves. “This seems counterintuitive,” Ms. Santamaria said. “If you don’t trust the police to prosecute criminals, why would you trust them with bending the law?” But to people desperate for security, she said, the unmediated punishment of police violence seems far more effective than waiting for a corrupt system to take action. And so, over time, frustration with state institutions, coupled with fear of crime and insecurity, leads to demand for authoritarian violence — even if that means empowering the same corrupt, flawed institutions that failed to provide security in the first place. The Supply Leaders like Mr. Duterte have a political incentive to exploit this sentiment, marketing their willingness to go around the system to prove that they are willing to do whatever it takes to solve the country’s problems. “When you have a weak government that faces a security crisis and also a crisis of trust of the people, the issue of promising more punishment is a shortcut to gain citizens’ confidence, to gain support,” Ms. Santamaria said. Why not instead promise to fix the real underlying problems? First, because institutional reform isn’t as politically appealing as identifying villains — in the case of the Philippines, criminal gangs — and promising to take them down. Second, because the very state weakness that created the problems often means that leaders are incapable of fixing the underlying issues. A number of developing countries struggle to deliver security, said James Robinson, a professor of public policy at the University of Chicago and an expert on state failure. State weakness creates the “demand” for better security by any means, he said, “but there’s also a supply side.” “And the supply side,” he continued, “is that the state encourages this kind of informalization of violence, this kind of informalization of security.” A result is that politicians who embrace extralegal violence gain public support, and those who oppose it are often painted as weak and ineffective. “Rule of law does not sell well,” Ms. Santamaria said. The Escalation This dynamic can drive leaders like Mr. Duterte to encourage vigilante violence, even if the bloodshed only worsens insecurity and its targets are largely innocent. The point is demonstrating a willingness to go to any length to get results. By portraying the victims as criminals, Mr. Duterte can claim success, and local communities might believe things are improving. But the extrajudicial killings, though intended to provide security, instead end up provoking a self-reinforcing cycle of ever-worsening insecurity and retaliation. Once the government makes it clear that no one will face legal repercussions for extrajudicial killings, Mr. Kine of Human Rights Watch said, “then anybody with a gun and a grudge has free license to go and victimize people without worrying about the consequences.” That fuels public demand for more extralegal violence to quell the problem. Eventually, the situation spirals out of control. Mr. Kine pointed to the Philippine city of Tagum on the island of Mindanao. There, the city government encouraged off-duty police officers and collaborators to murder petty criminals, including street children, in the name of being tough on crime. Once its ability to operate with impunity was established, Mr. Kine said, that death squad began engaging in contract killings for money. People who opposed the death squad, including some police officers, were deemed enemies and often targeted. The city became more dangerous and lawless, with devastating results for ordinary citizens. The real problem, Ms. Santamaria said, is not just the violence. Rather, it is the way it alters the rules of society itself: what is acceptable, and what is necessary to survive. People whose relatives have been unjustly killed see violence as a legitimate way to right that wrong, Ms. Santamaria said. Once violence becomes an acceptable means for settling disputes and exerting power, it is difficult for people to trust any other system, she added. States, locked in that escalating cycle, struggle to re-establish order. A culture of vengeful punishment takes hold, crowding out the rule of law. State officials have little standing to demand that people follow the rule of law when the state itself has been encouraging lawless violence. In Guatemala, decades of extrajudicial violence have left thousands dead, opened space for ruthless street gangs and sent tens of thousands of child refugees north in search of safety. In Colombia, vigilante “self-defense” groups grew, in the 1970s and ’80s, into large paramilitary organizations. They joined with state-supported counterinsurgency groups and became major players in the country’s drug trade and a party to its civil war, in which they were known for particularly gruesome attacks on civilians they perceived as enemies. This is perhaps the most worrying lesson of the social scientists’ research: that it does not take evil to destroy a community’s peace and safety. Rather, ordinary human desire for security, coupled with weak institutions and desperate short-term thinking, can lead a country into an escalating disaster.

Police Brutality,Police Misconduct,Police Shootings


Polio Crisis Deepens in Pakistan, With New Cases and Killings

Abstract: LONDON — Pakistan’s polio crisis has reached new depths this year, health officials say, intensified by a deadly mix of ruthless militant violence, large-scale refugee displacement and political chaos that has cemented the country’s role as the central global incubator of a disease that other conflict-torn countries have managed to hold in check. The number of new Pakistani polio cases this year hit 260 this week , four times as many as at the same point last year, making a mockery of promises by Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif and other politicians from across the spectrum to halt the galloping progress of the disease. Even as domestic vaccination drives and extensive international aid have put huge numbers of anti-polio workers in the field, Pakistan’s militants have seen it as an opportunity to strike at symbols of authority, portraying the workers as agents in a sinister Western plot . On Wednesday, four more health workers were gunned down, bringing the death toll among anti-polio workers to 65 since the first targeted attack in December 2012. The attackers, who struck in Quetta, the capital of Baluchistan Province, opened fire on the workers’ vehicle after demanding to know if they were involved in the anti-polio campaign. Television footage showed emergency workers carrying three other wounded workers from a van that contained abandoned slippers and blood-smeared iceboxes with polio vaccines. The wounded, and three of the dead, were women, whose greater access to private households in conservative rural areas of Pakistan have put them in high demand as health workers. The attackers escaped, and there was no claim of responsibility, although a Taliban splinter group said it had carried out a gun attack near Peshawar on Monday that wounded a polio worker and a student. Polio vaccinations are “dangerous to health and against Islam,” a spokesman for that group, Jamaat-e-Ahrar, said after the attack, echoing longstanding claims that Western countries are using immunization to sterilize Muslim children. But the power of such conspiracy theories has been diminished by hundreds of millions of dollars in donations from Gulf countries and Islamic organizations toward the immunization campaign. Many here believe the militants simply see the attacks as another way to challenge authority. “It’s not just polio — they want to disrupt all government activities,” said Aziz Memon, who leads Rotary International’s immunization efforts in Pakistan. War and politics accelerated the surge in polio infections this year. A sweeping military offensive against the Pakistani Taliban and other militant groups in the North Waziristan tribal district caused at least a million civilians to flee into neighboring areas and across the border into Afghanistan. But few of the children in that outpouring of refugees had been immunized for polio, because vaccinators had been unable to reach the area, which for years has been the main target of American drone strikes. “It wasn’t even an underimmunized area; it was nonimmunized,” said Dr. Elias Durry, the World Health Organization’s polio coordinator in Pakistan. As fleeing families reached refugee camps and then often moved beyond, polio infection rates soared, and the virus spread to new areas, including the country’s largest city, Karachi. The number of districts infected by polio increased to 22 this year, from 10 before, and almost three quarters of the new cases came from the tribal districts of North Waziristan, South Waziristan and Khyber. As the disease has spread, Pakistan’s political leadership has been consumed by security crises and power games. Much of the political chaos has centered on a high-stakes confrontation between Mr. Sharif and his political nemesis, Imran Khan, who since August has helped lead a protest rally in Islamabad that has demanded the prime minister’s resignation and brought the government to a standstill. Mr. Khan and another protest leader, the cleric Muhammad Tahir-ul Qadri, have accused Mr. Sharif of corruption and ineptitude, even as they, in turn, have been accused of exploiting chaos for political gain. Mr. Khan intends to hold another rally in Islamabad on Sunday, offering the prospect of fresh political drama. Meanwhile, political and sectarian violence has heightened in Karachi, in the Pakistani heartland of Punjab, and in war-torn Baluchistan Province. The interlocking crises surrounding Pakistan’s polio emergency have had another effect: acute embarrassment among many Pakistanis who, after years of seeking to shake off Western perceptions of their country as an incubator of global terrorism, now also find it painted as a global disease hub. Regulations introduced this year require air travelers from Pakistan of all ages to produce a certificate proving that they have been vaccinated for polio. One newspaper called the epidemic Pakistan’s “badge of shame.” In contrast, the other two countries where polio is endemic have recorded more modest infection rates. So far this year, Afghanistan has registered 21 new cases, many of which are a result of refugees fleeing Pakistan. And Nigeria, which is battling the Boko Haram insurgency and, more recently, a small outbreak of Ebola, has had just six cases. Meanwhile, officials say Pakistan has exported the polio virus to China, Egypt and Syria — in some cases, experts believe, via militant families traveling to the battlefields of the Middle East. In a bid to address the problem, Mr. Sharif last month constituted an emergency response committee and administered polio drops to children at a ceremony in Islamabad on Oct. 24. Immunization was an issue of “utmost importance” and the right of every Pakistani child, he said. Mr. Sharif said he hoped that the health authorities and international donors could use the coming six months, considered to be the low season for polio transmission, to reverse the tide of infections. Experts say that, even if militant violence continues, immunization is still possible provided there are adequate security precautions. Since the first death of a polio worker two years ago, health workers have delivered 450 million doses of vaccine, said Dr. Durry of the W.H.O. In an interview, Mazhar Nisar Sheikh, a spokesman for the Health Ministry, said the virus was mostly being contained. “Ninety percent of cases are limited to parts of the country where security has been compromised,” he said. Still, Baluchistan Province offers a stark illustration of polio’s resurgence. Baluchistan had been polio-free for two years until July, when it recorded a case in Kila Abdullah, a remote district on a route to South Waziristan. Since then health officials have recorded another nine polio cases in the province — more than in Somalia, which has also suffered an outbreak this year. That caused health experts to start a targeted vaccination drive in 11 districts of Baluchistan this week, including the effort in Quetta, where the health workers were killed Wednesday. Despite the dispiriting numbers and the violence, those at the forefront of immunization efforts in Pakistan say this is one battle the country cannot afford to lose. “We are committed,” said Mr. Memon, of Rotary International. “The children of this country should walk, not crawl. We promised to end this, and we will.”

Polio
Pakistan
Vaccines Immunization
Terrorism
Obituary
Taliban
Baluchistan Pakistan


British Man Admits Past in Terror Cell in Yemen

Abstract: A man who prosecutors say received military training in Yemen from Anwar al-Awlaki, the American-born radical Muslim cleric who was later killed by the United States in a drone strike, pleaded guilty on Friday in Manhattan to three terrorism-related counts. In 2010, prosecutors have said, the defendant, Minh Quang Pham, traveled secretly to Yemen, swore allegiance to Al Qaeda’s affiliate there and also helped the group prepare its online propaganda publication, Inspire. Mr. Pham was extradited to the United States from Britain about a year ago and was scheduled for trial on Feb. 1 in Federal District Court in Manhattan. But on Friday, he pleaded guilty to providing material support to the terrorist group — Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula , or A.Q.A.P. — which carries a maximum prison term of 15 years; conspiring to receive military-type training from the group, for which he could face five years; and using a firearm in furtherance of crimes of violence, which carries a maximum life prison term and a mandatory minimum of 30 years. “Pham provided material support to the highest levels of A.Q.A.P.,” Preet Bharara, the United States attorney for the Southern District of New York, said on Friday. Mr. Pham, who is in his early 30s, was born in Vietnam, lived in Britain since childhood, converted to Islam and is a practicing Muslim, his lawyer, Bobbi C. Sternheim, has said in court papers. Addressing the judge, Alison J. Nathan, in a soft English-accented voice, Mr. Pham admitted his guilt, saying that at the time he agreed with others to receive training from the group, “I knew that A.Q.A.P. was an organization engaged in terrorist activity.” Image Minh Quang Pham “I entered into this agreement knowingly and willfully,” he said. A prosecutor, Sean S. Buckley, told Judge Nathan that had the case gone to trial, the government would have presented proof that included Mr. Pham’s own statements to the Federal Bureau of Investigation, after he was administered his rights, in which he admitted that Mr. Awlaki taught him how to build an explosive device using household materials. “And al-Awlaki directed Pham to return to the United Kingdom, where he was to construct and detonate the device” at Heathrow Airport, in London, specifically “targeting arrivals from the United States and Israel,” Mr. Buckley said. In court on Friday, Ms. Sternheim said there was “no proof” that Mr. Pham, after he returned to Britain in July 2011, took any steps to cause harm at Heathrow. If true, the allegation that Mr. Awlaki provided explosives training to Mr. Pham would add a new operational element to the government’s case against the cleric, who in September 2011 became the first American deliberately killed in a drone strike. Prosecutors noted in court papers that A.Q.A.P. distributed a 2010 interview with Mr. Awlaki in which he urged his followers to kill American citizens and said that the man who tried to bring down an airplane on Christmas 2009, the so-called underwear bomber, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, had been one of his students. Mr. Pham is to be sentenced on April 14. The case garnered attention recently after Ms. Sternheim argued in a filing that it would be hard to find unbiased jurors for the trial because of inflammatory statements by Donald J. Trump in his Republican presidential campaign, as well as the terrorist attacks in Paris and San Bernardino, Calif. “The defense believes that it will be difficult, if not impossible, to seat a truly impartial New York City jury in the current climate of Islamophobia and hatred of Muslims,” Ms. Sternheim wrote. Ms. Sternheim asked that each side’s lawyers be allowed 30 minutes of additional questioning, with the goal of “rooting out prejudice and bias” among prospective jurors. Typically, federal judges in Manhattan do the questioning themselves. Mr. Bharara’s office opposed the motion, which the judge had not yet ruled upon.

Minh Quang Pham
Terrorism
Yemen
Anwar al-Aulaqi,Anwar al-Awlaki
Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula
Great Britain
US


Harrison Plays On, but the Fines Still Sting

Abstract: PITTSBURGH — The letter from the N.F.L. is taped to the wall beside James Harrison’s locker, an olive branch that gives no solace. The N.F.L. fined Harrison, the Steelers linebacker and a leading defensive player of the year candidate, four times this season for a total of $125,000 for what it considered dangerous and banned hits to the head. The note, which came at the end of December, told Harrison that the priciest of them — $75,000 for a hit that knocked Cleveland Browns receiver Mohamed Massaquoi from an October game — was being reduced to $50,000. Harrison was unmoved. “A token,” Harrison said of the reduction, adding that he took no satisfaction from it. “Not at all. I shouldn’t have been fined a dime for that hit.” Harrison became the face of the league’s crackdown on hits to the head this season, an odd twist for a former defensive player of the year. In recent weeks, as the Steelers have mounted their playoff run, leading to the A.F.C. championship game Sunday against the Jets, the focus has shifted again to Harrison’s play. He had 10 ½ sacks this season, making it the third year in a row he had at least 10 sacks, and he finished the regular season with 100 tackles. Harrison, 32, is indisputably one of the best linebackers in the N.F.L., but it is the other reputation he developed this season that troubles him still. Even as the fines have stopped, the smear on his reputation has lingered. “Yeah, it bothers me,” Harrison said. “For the most part, all the way around, more people see and feel that I’m not a dirty player as opposed to those who do. They weren’t concentrating on how I played. I had 100 tackles this year, third year with 10 or more sacks. That’s not something they concentrated on.” Sunday, in a game in which the Steelers have made no secret of the need for more pressure on Jets quarterback Mark Sanchez — they sacked him just once in the teams’ regular-season game — Harrison’s play will probably be critical. At 6 feet, he is compact and fearsome, allowing his scowl to paint the public picture of his personality. He does not talk much to the news media. But Harrison is also playful about his persona. When he turned abruptly to face a reporter Thursday, he asked him, with a smile: “Did I scare you? Yeah, I did.” And despite the early bluster that the rules crackdown might force him to retire , Harrison said he knew there was a need to eliminate the head shots. “There’s a need for rules,” he said. “You can’t go in there and hit someone in the head like you’re trying to injure someone. But you have to be able to interpret what is actually happening. When a guy is going to make a hit and he lowers his aiming point, and the guy lowers his head, and you still fine him. ...” His voice trailed off, and then he said: “The receiver is going to curl up. It’s not real cut and dried.” Harrison then grew tired of talking about his troubles and cut off any more questions about them, demanding only topics relating to the Jets. He would leave the criticism to his teammates Hines Ward and Troy Polamalu, who have both fiercely defended Harrison and decried the N.F.L. Polamalu said player complaints about the fines had fallen on deaf ears. “I think a lot of players have said a lot of things, and I guarantee he heard everything everybody said,” Polamalu told reporters in November. “But he’s got all the power, and that may be part of the problem, that there needs to be some type of separation of power, like our government.” Later, after the crowd dispersed Thursday, Harrison motioned toward Polamalu’s locker just a few feet away. “Troy has been outspoken, too, but he has that soft voice,” Harrison said. “He can get away with it. If I said that, they’d be fining me again.”


Bob Forsch, Former Cardinals Pitcher, Dies at 61

Abstract: Bob Forsch, who threw two no-hitters and won 163 games for St. Louis, more than any other Cardinals pitcher except the Hall of Famers Bob Gibson and Jesse Haines, died Thursday at his home near Tampa, Fla. He was 61. His death, which was reported on the Cardinals’ Web site, came less than a week after Forsch threw the ceremonial first pitch before the seventh game of the World Series, in which the Cardinals defeated the Texas Rangers in St. Louis. No cause of death was specified. A lanky right-hander — he was 6 feet 4 inches and weighed about 200 pounds — Forsch was a durable innings-eater who became a fixture in the rotation for a Cardinals team that went to three World Series (winning once, in 1982) in his 15 years with them. A control specialist who averaged fewer than three walks per game for his career, he had neither a blazing fastball nor befuddling breaking stuff, and he was never an All-Star, but he was capable of sterling performances. He was one of fewer than 30 pitchers to have thrown more than one no-hitter. His first was against the Philadelphia Phillies in 1978; five seasons later he no-hit the Montreal Expos. Forsch’s World Series record was 1-3, but his overall postseason record was 3-4, and in the 1982 National League Championship series he threw a shutout against the Atlanta Braves. Forsch was known for his savvy, tenacity and competitive fire, qualities that made him the kind of pitcher that is always in short supply: a reliable starter. In 10 seasons, he started more than 30 games; in seven he pitched more than 200 innings. He reached double figures in victories 11 times; he won at least 15 games three times; and in his best year, 1977, he won 20 and lost only 7. His career won-lost record was 168-136, with an earned run average of 3.76. Having begun his professional baseball life as a third baseman, he was also, for a pitcher, a good hitter. He slugged 12 home runs in his career and batted higher than .290 in three seasons. Like Matty Alou, the batting champion who died this week, Forsch was part of a baseball brother act. Ken Forsch, four years his senior, pitched 16 years in the big leagues, winning 114 games for the Houston Astros and the California Angels. Although their victory total, 282, trails far behind those of brother tandems like Phil and Joe Niekro (539) and Jim and Gaylord Perry (529), the Forsch brothers won more games than Dizzy and Paul Dean (200). And after Ken held the Atlanta Braves without a hit in 1979, the Forsches became the only pair of brothers in baseball history to each toss an official no-hitter. Robert Herbert Forsch was born in Sacramento on Jan. 13, 1950. He was acquired by the Cardinals in the amateur draft of 1968 and started in the organization as an infielder before beginning the transition to the mound in 1970. He made his major league debut in 1974 and pitched for the Cardinals until 1988. He finished his career with the Houston Astros the next year. For the last three seasons, he was the pitching coach for the Billings Mustangs, a minor league affiliate of the Cincinnati Reds. In addition to his brother Ken, who was until recently the assistant general manager of the Los Angeles Angels, his survivors include his wife, Janice, and two daughters, Amy and Kristin.

Forsch Bob
Baseball
Deaths (Obituaries)
St Louis Cardinals


To Save Fuel, Emirates Airline Takes Polar Route

Abstract: SAN FRANCISCO GRANTED, the environmental credentials of a man whose airline features in-flight showers are subject to question. Nevertheless, Sheik Ahmed bin Saeed al-Maktoum, the chairman of Emirates Airline, said his airline had demonstrated that smarter preparation and flight-routing could help reduce carbon emissions in air travel. “The whole world is going in this direction” in at least giving consideration to the effects of air travel on the environment, Sheik Ahmed said last week as Emirates introduced nonstop service between Dubai and San Francisco. “And everybody should be doing more.” The first Emirates airplane flying the route to San Francisco from Dubai was a Boeing 777-200LR, which landed here after a 8,100-mile flight that took 15 hours and 20 minutes. Emirates said it was the “world’s first cross-polar green flight.” By that, Emirates meant that the aircraft, already known for having better fuel-efficiency than older long-range planes, was routed near the North Pole to save about 2,000 gallons of carbon-emitting fuel. Making the trip required special clearances from Canada, Iceland, Russia and the United States, and from the Emirates home state of Dubai, where the plane received priority clearance for departure. There is nothing particularly innovative about airlines tracking near the North Pole to save time and fuel on long-haul flights, though the routes can be tricky because communications and navigation technology are not yet as extensive as they are for standard transoceanic flights. For decades, the North Pole routes were scarcely used, partly because of the cold war, a time when the Soviet Union was suspicious about aircraft of any type flying over its far northern airspace. With the end of the cold war, tension abated just as long-haul aircraft became available to serve the growing demand for nonstop travel between cities a half-world apart. United Airlines, for example, had more than 1,400 flights on the polar route last year, up from a dozen in 1999. Emirates is not alone among the world’s airlines in promoting better environmental thinking. Continental Airlines, for example, plans to conduct a demonstration flight in Houston on Jan. 7 using a 737-800 equipped with engines designed to be powered by a special fuel blend that includes some components derived from plants. (The flight will not carry passengers.) Emirates, which depends on long-haul Boeing and Airbus jets and heavily promotes its luxurious business-class and first-class cabins on the 12- to 16-hour flights it is known for, clearly wants to position itself as a leader in the industry’s incipient environmental initiatives. But what about those showers? I’m referring to the latest over-the-top innovation, the recent introduction of two showers for use by first-class passengers on Emirates A380 superjumbo jets. The showers are obviously not an environmental step forward, given the additional fuel needed to carry enough water to let all 14 first-class passengers have two showers, if they want. In fact, said Andrew J. Parker, an Emirates senior vice president whose duties include the carrier’s environmental affairs, first-class passengers have not been using the showers to the extent Emirates originally anticipated when it allotted 500 kilos (slightly more than half a ton) of weight for the additional water. Usually, he said, the first-class cabins have been full. But passengers “are using half the allotment” of water. Emirates still carries the full load, but Mr. Parker said that the airline was re-evaluating the requirements and looking into ways to “reprocess water” on board to cut down on the weight and the extra fuel required. Emirates, by the way, has three A380s in service and another 55 on order from Airbus. Sheik Ahmed said that the airline intended to fly them all configured into three classes, with no more than 500 passengers. (The A380, if flown in an all-coach configuration, is certified to carry almost 900 passengers, but none of the airlines that have ordered the plane have indicated they were considering doing that.) Meanwhile, it isn’t clear whether the first-class A380 passengers have cut back on showers because of environmental concerns, or merely because they don’t want to take themselves out of their private compartments and away from the free Champagne. Nor is it clear whether they might object to showering in the future with recycled water on that long flight to the other side of the world. But hey, everybody has to sacrifice.

Airlines and Airplanes
Emirates Airlines
Business Travel