GTT ★

Abstract: Our quirky, discerning picks for the most interesting things to do around the state this week. HOUSTON Revolutionary Score Fourteen pianos were placed around Austin last month for passers-by to showcase their skills. Graham Reynolds, a local composer, began playing one of the pianos, but eventually took a sledgehammer to it. Over and over again. It was performance art as avant-garde musical display — and another way for Mr. Reynolds, leader of Golden Arm Trio, an experimental jazz band whose member count hovers around a dozen, to push the boundaries of music. Consider the possibilities when Golden Arm Trio live-scores “Battleship Potemkin,” Sergei Eisenstein ’s 1925 tale of mutiny, as part of the KUHF Silent Film Concert Series. A lot of destruction can be done with a string quartet, bass, drums, a horn section and, of course, a piano. Mr. Reynolds’s scoring career began almost 15 years ago, with a rendition of “Potemkin” for Austin’s Alamo Drafthouse movie theater chain, and now Mr. Reynolds counts as credits numerous multidisciplinary projects, including Richard Linklater’s “A Scanner Darkly.” But familiarity with live-scoring this particular film does not breed comfort. “With ‘Potemkin,’ pacing is a tough one,” Mr. Reynolds said. “The film hits go and never stops.” Discovery Green , May 13, 8 p.m., grahamreynolds.com DALLAS Letters From Texas One of the great chroniclers of life in Texas doesn’t live in Texas. Bret Anthony Johnston, director of creative writing at Harvard University, calls Boston home. But he’s from Corpus Christi , which is also the title of his lauded debut collection of short stories. “The longer I’m away from Texas, the more moved I feel to write about the state,” Mr. Johnston said. This connection makes him eligible for Texas Bound , a program that pairs Tex-centric short fiction with actors who read it. “Caiman,” Mr. Johnston’s story selected for Monday’s reading, is about a father who buys a small alligator for his young son. Octavio Solis, a San Francisco playwright, actor and director, will read the story, which is Mr. Johnston’s third to be selected for Texas Bound. “Members Only,” the Austin author Sarah Bird’s seventh story to be chosen for the program, will be read by Reis Myers McCormick. That’s just two of the four authors, and already it’s one of the program’s most accomplished lineups. Dallas Museum of Art, May 16, 7:30 p.m. dallasmuseumofart.org SAN ANTONIO The Keys to Conjunto There will be a changing of the guard at the 30th annual Tejano Conjunto Festival en San Antonio. Joel Guzmán, a genre-bending accordionist who has played with Joe Ely, Little Joe y La Familia and T Bone Burnett, will introduce to the stage his 14-year-old accordionist son, Joel Gabriel Guzmán. Accordion is the glue between bass and bajo sexto in conjunto, a blues-driven, working-class brand of music. Conjuntazzo, Mr. Guzmán’s group with the singer Sarah Fox, translates as “conjunto music with great power.” “We take the traditional conjunto roots and cross-pollinate them with other styles as varied as the jazz stylings of Toots Thielemans, the African-influenced music of Panama known as ‘typical,’ and big band,” Mr. Guzmán said. A bevy of classic conjunto alone would make for quite a festival, but to pair that with Mr. Guzmán’s present-progressive take, and to allow a glimpse of its future through his son, is to not let the ages-old music vanquish into the history books. Rosedale Park, May 13-15, various times. guadalupeculturalarts.org HOUSTON Goodnight Moon Astronomers don’t get out much. They work the night shift, sequestered in solitude for long stretches, alone with their celestial bodies. Star Party, an evening of star-gazing paired with barbecue, beer and wine included in the price of admission, gets them away from their telescopes to teach the casual observer about what they are seeing up in the sky. On this occasion, the Houston Astronomical Society will be especially mindful of pointing out the details of the moon — three nights short of being full. That’s a lot of real estate to examine. It’s in these wistful, awe-inspiring, otherworldly conditions that people are drawn together. And making a random friend in a city of 2.5 million is about as common as seeing a shooting star, especially if that friend is an astronomer. Houston Arboretum and Nature Center , May 14 , 7 p.m., houstonarboretum.org SPRING Rock Fish Twenty-five tons of mudbugs sounds about right for a feast at the 25th anniversary of the Texas Crawfish & Music Festival, where scads of Texas rock and country bands will strike a chord of harmony with their zydeco-playing Cajun brethren. Preservation Park, May 13-22, various times. texascrawfishfestival.com DALLAS Point and Shoot It would be easy to prewrite and preproduce certain parts of an entry in the 24-Hour Video Race, a short-film competition in which the winners get their film screened at the Dallas Video Fest and on KERA, but that would be cheating — and cheaters never win. Angelika Dallas, May 13, 11:59 p.m. 24hourvideorace.com


Xinjiang, Tense Chinese Region, Adopts Strict Internet Controls

Abstract: URUMQI, China — The regional government of China’s far western region of Xinjiang, which has grappled with ethnic violence, has put into effect strict regulations that punish people for spreading “false information” online. The regulations appear to be aimed at criminalizing people living in Xinjiang who make online postings about ethnic conflict or tensions, as well as related violence and terrorism. In recent years, Xinjiang and central government officials have said they are concerned about the spread of online material that might incite attacks by citizens. In areas of Xinjiang where there is a significant population of ethnic Uighurs, there have been notable incidents of violence, including here in Urumqi, the regional capital. In 2009, ethnic rioting in Urumqi resulted in about 200 deaths — officials said most of the victims were ethnic Han, the dominant group in China — and a harsh security crackdown on Uighurs, a Turkic-speaking people who mostly practice Sunni Islam. Since then, violence has flared in southern oasis towns in Xinjiang, with Chinese officials attributing much of the bloodshed to “religious extremists” or “separatists.” Xinjiang Daily, an official newspaper, said Wednesday that the purpose of the new rules was to “prevent and punish the crime of spreading false information that disturbs social order, and to protect the legal interests of citizens, legal representatives and other organizations.” The central government has also been issuing regulations that try to control the spread of “false information.” In July, the Cyberspace Administration of China said it would punish website operators who post “directly as news reports unverified content found on online platforms such as social media.” Officials had already been punishing people in recent years for making a variety of posts said to be based on rumors. Critics of the Communist Party’s systems of control say such bans are an attempt to stop the spread of ideas that officials think may weaken the party’s rule or legitimacy. (In the United States, a different political conversation about the spread of “fake news” online has been unfolding since last month’s presidential election.) Officials in Xinjiang have been quick to clamp down on online communications in response to ethnic tensions. After the Urumqi rioting in 2009, officials shut down access to most outside websites for about a year, allowing Xinjiang’s residents to see only government-approved sites, essentially creating an intranet in a territory with about one-sixth of China’s land mass. The new rules appear to be tailored to issues in the region. A list of 11 criteria fleshes out the definition of “false information” that would result in punishment; “advocating religious fanaticism or undermining religious harmony,” “advocating terrorism or radicalism” and “advocating ethnic hatred or ethnic discrimination” are among them. The new rules also say that the Xinjiang government must strengthen its work on “cyber-information security” and “reinforce monitoring and management of internet service providers and internet users.” It also said internet service providers must be properly registered, must have the proper identification from all users and must perfect their “systems of content censorship.” Websites and companies that fail to censor and delete the “false and harmful” information would be warned, fined and in some cases shut down, the regulations say. If “circumstances are serious,” the companies could be fined up to about $72,000, and individuals such as executives or employees could be separately fined up to about $14,500. The rules were adopted by the People’s Congress of Xinjiang on Dec. 1 and enacted Wednesday.

Xinjiang
Urumqi China
Computers and the Internet
Tech Industry
Censorship
Uyghur


Sorenstam Makes Last L.P.G.A. Championship Charge

Abstract: HAVRE DE GRACE, Md. — An extreme heat warning was issued Saturday for the third round of the L.P.G.A. Championship. How did the meteorologists know that Annika Sorenstam would be breathing down the necks of the leaders? Sorenstam posted a four-under-par 68 to pass five of the six golfers who began the day ahead of her. She moved to two strokes behind the 54-hole leader, Jee Young Lee. Lee, a South Korean, fashioned a 65, tying her for the lowest round of the day with Maria Hjorth of Sweden, who climbed to second, and the rookie Yani Tseng of Taiwan, who is tied for fifth. Sorenstam is tied for third at 10-under 206 with Lorena Ochoa, who began the day with a one-stroke lead over Lindsey Wright but had a round as sloppy as her previous day’s 65 was sublime. Ochoa missed four fairways and took 32 putts on her way to a 72, prompting her to describe her round as “very hard, the opposite of yesterday.” Sorenstam, 37, who is retiring at the end of this year, is trying to win her 11th major and her first since the 2006 Women’s United States Open. “I’m going to be very, very focused,” she said. Her main target will be Lee, 22, who was one of 10 women to make the cut in all four majors in 2007. She has three top-10 finishes this year and ranks sixth in driving distance at 267.7 yards. Her length off the tee has been a boon this week on Bulle Rock Golf Course. Heavy rain earlier in the week left the grounds so soggy that the golfers have played all three rounds under lift-clean-and-place rules, which guarantee perfect lies to anyone who finds the wide fairways. “I think it’s the right thing to do,” Sorenstam said of extending the rule to Saturday’s round, which was delayed three hours by morning fog. “It’s still wet out there, and the course is so beat up.” Midway through the third round, as the temperatures climbed into the high 90s, Hjorth, Wright and Brittany Lang were tied for the lead at 10-under. They were unlikely pacesetters, with Wright and Lang winless in 157 L.P.G.A. events. Wright is 0 for 84, and her best finish in a major was a fourth in last year’s L.P.G.A. Championship. Lang’s closest brush with a tour victory came when she was still an amateur in 2005, after her sophomore year at Duke, when she tied for second at the Women’s United States Open. Hjorth ended an eight-year title drought on the L.P.G.A. Tour last year in Birmingham, Ala., where she earned her third career victory and ended an Ochoa winning streak at three. “The heat is tough,” Hjorth said. “But I think as long as you don’t think about it too much, I think it works out really good. I was just out there trying to play the game of golf that I know I can.” Hjorth, 34, will be playing in the final group in a major for the first time. Because fog is expected to be in play again Sunday, the golfers are going to be sent out in threesomes, as they were Saturday. Ochoa’s and Sorenstam’s playing together in the final round of a major would have been riveting theater, but Sorenstam will play in the final group, and Ochoa in the one right in front of them. “I enjoy playing with Lorena,” Sorenstam said. “That would be fun, but I have a big task ahead of me. I have to focus on that.” After her round on Saturday, Ochoa dwelled on the positive. “I’m just glad that I came back and I finished with that same number, 10 under, and I’m only two shots behind,” she said. Being paired with Sorenstam on Sunday would have been fun, Ochoa said, “for us and for all of you.” “But it’s O.K., I guess, in a way, I have a little bit of an advantage,” she said, adding: “It’s better when they know what I have done if I’m playing in front of them. And that will be important, to get a good start and to put my name up there.” That was what Sorenstam did Saturday. She applied the heat, and a few golfers wilted.

Sorenstam Annika
Golf
Ladies Professional Golf Assn


Irish Billionaire Family Given a Reprieve on Data

Abstract: An Irish judge on Monday heard pleas from members of the family of the bankrupt billionaire Sean Quinn and agreed to give them three more weeks to provide information about offshore assets a state-owned bank is demanding as it tries to recover €2.8 billion in loans to the Quinns. Mr. Quinn’s youngest daughter and two of his sons-in-law spoke on their own behalf in the Dublin court, because their legal team formally withdrew from the case Monday. Mr. Quinn, 65, a former tycoon bankrupted in the Irish economic crisis, had been scheduled to provide affidavits to the court about a byzantine portfolio of properties that stretch from Russia to Belize, whose ownership structure examiners have had trouble unraveling. Peter Charleton, a High Court judge, gave family members until Sept. 24 to produce the documents, which are sought by the former Anglo Irish Bank and the receivers appointed to control the frozen accounts of Mr. Quinn’s five adult children and their spouses. A judicial order for the documents was issued in July, but since then family members reported that computer memory sticks containing some data had been stolen. Receivers are now controlling the assets of the Quinn children, as a means of preventing them from putting any remaining wealth beyond the bank’s reach. The three family members in court included Mr. Quinn’s youngest daughter, Brenda Quinn, and her sisters’ husbands, Niall McPartland and Stephen Kelly. The family has been waging a highly public media war with the bank, now named the Irish Bank Resolution Corp. They accuse the bank of double-dealing in giving loans in 2008 to Mr. Quinn, who used much of the money to acquire shares in Anglo Irish. The Quinns contend that his purchases helped prop up the stock, enabling the bank to mask hidden problems. The Quinns say their lawyers have withdrawn because the family no longer has enough money to pay them. But the bank, in a statement Friday, said the court had allocated sufficient money for the family’s legal bills. “The family has simply run out of money,” said Aoife Quinn, who is married to Mr. Kelly. The family does not have the funds to pay law firms in Cyprus, Sweden and Ireland to examine huge number of documents and e-mails in its portfolio, she said. In July, a key member of the Quinn’s legal team, Rossa Fanning, withdrew from the case amid speculation in the Irish press that it was due to a disagreement with the family. Mr. Fanning, reached by telephone Monday, declined to comment.

Ireland
Banking and Financial Institutions


Germany, Like France, Questions Place of Islamic Veils in Its Society

Abstract: BERLIN — Europe’s battle over public attire for Muslim women moved on Friday from the outcry over banning “burkinis” in France to a strong call from Chancellor Angela Merkel’s governing conservative bloc for a ban in Germany on face veils in schools and universities and while driving. The German proposal, announced by the interior minister, Thomas de Maizière, was clearly driven by an intensifying political season and a surge in support for the far right since Germany accepted more than a million migrants last year. There has been mounting public anxiety over integrating the newcomers, who are mostly from Muslim countries, particularly after a series of terrorist assaults and a gun rampage last month. The German plan arrives on the heels of a heated debate in France over the burkini — a full-body swimsuit with a head covering — since a handful of cities joined the mayor of the French Riviera town of Cannes in banning the garment from city beaches. Prime Minister Manuel Valls of France supported the move, calling the swimsuit a sign of the enslavement of women. In Germany, there have been only isolated disputes over the burkini, and the reaction to the controversy in neighboring France might best be summed up by the comment on Mr. Valls’s statement in the business newspaper Handelsblatt: “Does the man really have no other problems?” Yet the proposals now being floated in Germany around restricting the burqa make it clear that France is not the only European country grappling with whether some Islamic coverings amount to a barrier to the full participation of women in Western society. Image There are no official statistics in Germany on the number of women who wear the burqa, which covers the face and body, or the niqab, which covers the hair and face, except for a narrow slit for the eyes. Neither form of attire is seen much on German streets. Credit Boris Roesseler/European Pressphoto Agency Ms. Merkel had sent a signal about the partial ban on face veils on Thursday, when she told a group of provincial newspapers that “from my standpoint, a fully veiled woman scarcely has a chance at full integration in Germany.” Mr. de Maizière said the same day that “the burqa doesn’t fit with our country and does not correspond to our understanding of the role of women.” Mr. de Maizière and Ms. Merkel stopped short of calling for an outright ban on the burqa, but the proposal put forward on Friday tiptoes along a path that the French traveled down with a 2010 law that barred any covering that hides the face. The French, too, put forward the law ostensibly on the grounds of public safety. Yet they have since found that defining a face covering and enforcing the law are challenging, at best. As of the spring of 2015, it had resulted in about 1,000 fines, but many of them were for repeat offenders. Many Muslims in France criticize the law as further marginalizing Muslim women, effectively forcing them to stay home, rather than easing their integration. Germany’s system of government, carefully constructed after the Nazi era to prevent the accumulation of state powers, means the authorities interfere less than officials in neighboring France, where the preservation of secularism is a long-established norm. The German plan would not ban shawls or abayas that cover the body and are often worn with a hijab, a head scarf that does not cover the face, which German officials acknowledge would not win approval from the country’s constitutional court. How Far Is Europe Swinging to the Right? Right-wing parties have been achieving electoral success in a growing number of nations. It would ban full face veils in schools and colleges, and while driving, appearing before courts or at public registry offices, or when going through passport control. Women who want to wear face veils in public should not teach or become civil servants, Mr. de Maizière said in announcing the plan on morning television. “We want to make it a legal requirement to show your face in places where that is necessary for the cohesion of our society,” he said. He was flanked by the conservative leaders of two states with elections next month: Lorenz Caffier of the northeastern state of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, and Frank Henkel of the city-state of Berlin. Both men are running on strong law-and-order platforms and had called for a ban on veils. “The burqa does not belong to Germany,” Mr. Caffier said this week, and Mr. Henkel called the covering “a cloth cage.” Calls by conservatives for at least a partial ban on face coverings have swelled as the governing bloc — Ms. Merkel’s Christian Democrats and a sister party in Bavaria — has lost ground to the anti-immigrant Alternative for Germany. The far-right party has called for a ban on veils and even on minarets on mosques, and it views Islam as incompatible with the German Constitution. One of the leaders of Alternative for Germany, Jörg Meuthen, told the German news agency DPA on Friday that the conservatives’ proposal was an attempt to thwart the rise of the far right. He conceded that the burqa was rarely seen in Germany, but he said his party’s call for a ban was an attempt to pre-emptively address the matter before it became a wider issue. It is not clear if the proposal will become law. Ms. Merkel governs in a coalition with the center-left Social Democrats, several of whom have questioned the need for a ban and have expressed concerns that it will contribute to what they see as increasing xenophobia. But some Social Democrats have supported a ban on full-face coverings. “The operative effect of a ban is close to zero,” said Heinz Buschkowsky, a Social Democrat who gained national attention when he was mayor in the heavily immigrant Berlin district of Neukölln. “But the burqa ban would send a social signal,” he told the newspaper Bild. “The burqa says the woman is property of the man, who can be seen by no one else,” he continued. “That is darkest Middle Ages, the opposite of self-determination. A burqa ban shows what does, and does not, work in our country.” Germany is home to about four million Muslims, including three million from Turkey. Many of the more than one million migrants who arrived recently in the country are Muslims, often fleeing war in Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria. There are no official statistics on the number of women in Germany who wear burqas or head scarves that cover their faces, but neither is seen much on German streets. Similarly, the controversy over use of the burkini has been rare here. A woman of Lebanese origin from Berlin reportedly summoned the police to a thermal spa in the neighboring state of Brandenburg last weekend after she and her young daughter were asked not to swim in burkinis. Berlin, which has a large Muslim community, allows burkinis; Brandenburg has no regulation. In the Danube River town of Melk, Austria, the burkini was suddenly banned late last month from a city swimming pool although officials had earlier rebuffed a far-right party calling for a ban. But in an illustration of how opinions differ over the Muslim bathing attire, the Ruhr town of Dreieich reported having 12 burkinis to rent, either for swimming or for Muslim mothers who want to go poolside to watch their children swim.

Middle East and Africa Migrant Crisis,European Migrant Crisis


Mob in India Kills Muslim Man Over Rumors of Cow Slaughter

Abstract: NEW DELHI — A 52-year-old Muslim man died this week after he was beaten with bricks and sticks by a mob in a village outside New Delhi in response to rumors that he had slaughtered a cow and eaten beef. Murder charges have been filed against at least 10 people in connection with the attack on the man, Mohammad Ikhlaq, and his son Danish. The two were dragged out of their home in the village, Bisada, shortly after 11 p.m. on Monday, the police superintendent for the region, Sanjay Singh, said. The son, 20, was in critical condition. The mob “dragged my father and brother out, pulling them by the hair,” said Shaista Ikhlaq, Mr. Ikhlaq’s daughter, who denied that the family had slaughtered a cow or had been eating beef. “My father’s head was smashed. His lips tore and his teeth were broken as they beat him with bricks and sticks.” Hindus consider cows to be sacred, and it is illegal to slaughter the animals in Uttar Pradesh, the state where the attack took place. At least two other Indian states have adopted or tightened bans on the slaughter and consumption of beef since Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party won parliamentary elections last year. A court in Jammu and Kashmir, where Muslims are a majority, recently ordered the authorities to strictly enforce a law that had been in place since the 1930s. Superintendent Singh said Wednesday that before the attack, a resident of the village asked a priest to announce that a slaughtered cow had been found near an electrical transformer and to request that residents gather at a temple. The police said villagers had also used social media to assemble the crowd. Shortly after about 100 men assembled there, someone in the crowd said Mr. Ikhlaq was responsible for the slaughter. Ms. Ikhlaq said the mob tried to attack her and her mother before they turned to the men. “What we want is justice,” she said. “This was preplanned. If they suspected we had slaughtered a cow, why did they not file a police complaint against us with the proof? We would have happily taken the punishment as laid out in the law. But who gave them the right to kill my father?” Six men from the area, ages 22 to 25, have been arrested, and the police are seeking four others. Meat found at the Ikhlaq family’s house has been sent to a laboratory for forensic testing, and the results are expected in about two weeks. The police did not search the area near the transformer. “What we had in the fridge was mutton,” Ms. Ikhlaq said. “We did not even slaughter or make any offering this festival season. Not even a chicken, let alone a cow.” Muslims in India traditionally sacrifice goats or buffaloes for Eid al-Adha, which was celebrated last week. There are only about 50 Muslim families in Bisada, which has a population of 20,000, and Mr. Ikhlaq’s family was the only one attacked.

Murders and Homicides
India
Islam
Hinduism
Bharatiya Janata Party
Uttar Pradesh
New Delhi


Australia Blocks a Deal for Unit of AXA

Abstract: National Australia Bank’s ambitions to substantially increase its position in Australia’s wealth management and life insurance market were dealt a major setback on Monday, when the country’s competition authority blocked its $12.2 billion bid for the Asia Pacific operations of the French insurance giant AXA. The decision opens the way for a new offer by the Australian asset management company AMP. The firm had bid for AXA Asia Pacific in November but its offer was trumped by the National Australia Bank a month later. The National Australia Bank offer was worth 13.3 billion Australian dollars, making it one of the largest attempted takeovers in the financial services sector lately. AMP had increased its initial bid to 12.9 billion Australian dollars. The battle for AXA Asia Pacific underlines the attraction that the region holds for financial institutions, who see it as a promising growth market for wealth and savings management and insurance services. The fact that both AMP and National Australia Bank have been able to bid for AXA Asia Pacific highlights also how Australia’s financial sector has survived the financial crisis of the last two years relatively unscathed, with none of the spectacular bailouts and multibillion-dollar losses seen in the United States and Europe. The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission said in a statement that it had determined “that a merger between N.A.B. and AXA would result in a substantial lessening of competition in the market for retail investment platforms for investors with complex investment needs. However, the ACCC found that an independent AXA or a merger between AMP and AXA would not have this effect.” The commission’s chairman, Graeme Samuel, added: “At the heart of the ACCC’s decisions are concerns about innovation, and as a consequence future rigorous and effective competition between retail investment platforms.” AMP welcomed the competition authority’s decision as “a great outcome for Australian consumers,” and signaled it would make a fresh offer for the unit. “AMP continues to believe it can put forward a proposal that is financially disciplined and will create value for its shareholders, and which the independent directors of AXA AP will be able to recommend to their minority shareholders,” it said. AXA Asia Pacific said that the National Australia Bank could enter into further discussions with the competition authority about its offer. But National Australia Bank itself issued only a brief statement saying that it would review the decision in detail before commenting.


Peter Chernin Aims New Streaming Service at Social Media Users

Abstract: LOS ANGELES — Peter Chernin, who has made a career of beating Hollywood at its own game, is moving deeper into a crowded corner of the entertainment industry: streaming services. Mr. Chernin and AT&T unveiled plans on Wednesday to turn their jointly owned Fullscreen, a YouTube-based video supplier, into a subscription-based streaming service. For $5 a month, the Fullscreen channel will offer 800 hours of advertising-free programming, including new scripted and unscripted series and episodes of throwback television shows like “Dawson’s Creek” and “Saved by the Bell.” The service, which will be available worldwide and have a user interface designed for viewers to interact with one another in real time, will debut on April 26. It will focus on what is sometimes called the “social-first generation,” or people 13 to 30 years old who spend significant time on social networks like Snapchat and Instagram. “There are a lot of broad-based SVOD services,” Mr. Chernin said by telephone, referring to streaming video on demand, “but none that target this audience — it’s one of the great white spaces out there.” Although Mr. Chernin’s company already operates several niche streaming services, including the anime-focused Crunchyroll, Fullscreen is more akin to the cable television networks of the past: MTV for the social media age. Referencing his extensive experience in traditional television — he helped build the Fox network in the late 1980s and introduce the Fox News Channel in the 1990s — Mr. Chernin added: “I certainly see this as a better opportunity than creating the fourth broadcast network or yet another cable channel. People thought we were out of our minds.” Still, Internet-based streaming services have proliferated in recent years. To some extent at least, Fullscreen will be battling the likes of Netflix, HBO Now, Hulu Plus, Go90 from Verizon and NBCUniversal’s digital comedy service , Seeso — not to mention YouTube Red , an ad-free paid video and music offering, and a profusion of free online video. Image Peter Chernin last May in New York. About Fullscreen, he said, “It needs to feel like a destination, and it will.” Credit Craig Barritt/Getty Images Mr. Chernin, whose company, the Chernin Group, has been behind films like “Dawn of the Planet of the Apes” and “Spy,” said he believed that the “liveliness” of Fullscreen’s programming, which will be updated daily, and its “extremely rich” user interface, would make the service stand out from the pack. “It needs to feel like a destination, and it will,” he said. Mr. Chernin declined to say how much money the long-in-the-works service cost to create. The participation of AT&T also gives Fullscreen a formidable lift. The communications giant will support the service with a major marketing campaign, including promotion of Fullscreen to its mobile and broadband customers. “We look at this as a fundamental and crucial building block as we transition to a premier mobile entertainment company,” said David Christopher, AT&T’s chief marketing officer. The Fullscreen service will heavily feature Internet personalities like Grace Helbig, who has 2.9 million followers on YouTube and will be a co-star in a remake of the 1970s-era “ Electra Woman & Dyna Girl .” Other new series will include “Filthy Preppy Teen$,” which essentially needs no further description; a docu-series called “My Selfie Life,” which will deal with topics like gender transition; and “Shane and Friends,” a comedic series starring Shane Dawson . “These are creators who have already used the social web to develop an audience, which is now eager to see them do more,” said George Strompolos, Fullscreen’s chief executive. Mr. Strompolos founded Fullscreen in 2011 as a type of agency, production company and incubator for YouTube stars, or “video creators.” The company now has a roster of 75,000 of them. Their video output generates five billion views across the web each month, Mr. Strompolos said. Otter Media, a company created by Mr. Chernin and AT&T and funded with $500 million to invest in video services, bought Fullscreen in 2014. The arrival of Fullscreen’s subscription offering reflects the way that this corner of digital media is trying to mature into more meaningful businesses. AwesomenessTV , which started as a collection of YouTube channels aimed at teenage girls, now has merchandising, TV and film divisions and is majority owned by DreamWorks Animation . And Disney is trying to turn its Maker Studios , a YouTube-based network that has struggled with management upheaval, into a supplier and distributor of Disney-themed short-form content . “With this step,” Mr. Strompolos said, “Fullscreen is becoming a true brand.”

Peter A Chernin
Fullscreen
AT&T
Video Recordings
Downloads and Streaming
Web television
TV
Chernin Group


House Members Unite to Read Stanford Rape Victim’s Letter

Abstract: WASHINGTON — Hoping to dramatize the issue of campus sexual assault, 18 members of the House took turns on Wednesday night reading portions of the 7,200-word letter a woman known as Emily Doe wrote to the former Stanford University student who raped her. The letter — which the victim read at the sentencing of the former student, Brock Turner — described her anguish after the assault and during Mr. Turner’s trial, and went viral after it was published on BuzzFeed. It attracted attention to the case and to the light sentence that a California judge gave Mr. Turner, causing national outrage and leading to a petition campaign to remove the judge , Aaron Persky. Reading the letter in its entirety on the House floor was an attempt to share the voice of sexual assault victims and to build support for legislation that would require the Department of Education to provide a list of institutions under investigation for sexual assault, said Representative Jackie Speier, the California Democrat who organized the reading and is the sponsor of the bill. “We don’t sweep murder cases under the rug, but we have for decades been sweeping rape cases under the rug,” Ms. Speier said in an interview Wednesday night. Twelve of the 18 readers were women, but the group was bipartisan, bringing together lawmakers who rarely cooperate. They included liberals like Ms. Speier and three Republicans. Representative Paul Gosar of Arizona, a conservative Republican, said he had been horrified when he read Emily Doe’s statement. “People need to learn from this,” Mr. Gosar said. “I’m a father too. I have two daughters. This should matter to everyone.” Mr. Gosar said that he was not sure whether adding a rape victim’s testimony to the Congressional Record would lead to legislation to better address campus sexual assault, but that he thought it would at least help promote awareness. Previous attempts to pass legislation related to sexual assault on college campuses and in the military have not ended well. Court Statement of Stanford Rape Victim The Santa Clara County government released the more-than-7,000-word statement read by the victim in the courtroom. She detailed the shock of finding out what happened to her after the attack, and the wrenching aftermath. The Fair Campus Act and the Safe Campus Act never made it past committee in 2015. An amendment that would have transferred decisions on whether to prosecute military sexual assault cases from commanders to military prosecutors — introduced by Senator Kirsten E. Gillibrand, Democrat of New York — was blocked during a recent vote. Representative Cheri Bustos, Democrat of Illinois, who helped Ms. Speier organize the reading, blamed the lack of diversity in the House for the inaction. “This is why we need more women in Congress,” Ms. Bustos said. “If the makeup of Congress truly represented the full makeup of the public, the issue of sexual assault would be on the forefront.” The House members who took turns reading Wednesday night promised that there would be more efforts to keep sexual assault in the spotlight. Representative Ann McLane Kuster, Democrat of New Hampshire, plans to host another special order in the House on Tuesday, at which members of Congress will share personal stories related to sexual harassment and assault. “We are all Emily Doe,” Ms. Kuster said. “Everyone, of course, knows someone who has been sexually assaulted. We need to demonstrate that this is a bipartisan issue, and we need to make progress on this urgently.” Representative Anna G. Eshoo, Democrat of California, said she had watched as outrage over the sentencing of Mr. Turner spread from her district, which includes Stanford, across the nation. “Stanford is accustomed to being No. 1 at a lot of things, but this is not a source of pride,” Ms. Eshoo said. She said she was appalled that so many cases of rape resulted in sentences equivalent to those for a misdemeanor, when sexual assault is a felony in all states. Ms. Bustos said she hoped that a few members of Congress could amplify the voice of the woman who was attacked by Mr. Turner. “This is a horrible, horrible epidemic,” Ms. Bustos said. “I so admire this woman, who had the guts to expose what she is going through and share it with the world. We’ve had many wake-up calls, but this one has really done a service to prevent other rapes.”

Rape
House of Representatives
Congress
US Politics
Brock Allen Turner


Portrait Emerges of Anthrax Suspect’s Troubled Life

Abstract: FREDERICK, Md. — Inside the Army laboratory at Fort Detrick, the government’s brain for biological defense, Bruce Edwards Ivins paused to memorialize his moment in the spotlight as the anthrax panic of 2001 reached its peak. Dr. Ivins titled his e-mail message “In the lab” and attached photographs: the gaunt microbiologist bending over Petri dishes of anthrax, and colonies of the deadly bacteria, white commas against blood-red nutrient. Outside, on that morning of Nov. 14, 2001, five people were dead or dying, a dozen more were sick and fearful thousands were flooding emergency rooms. The postal system was crippled; senators and Supreme Court justices had fled contaminated offices. And the Federal Bureau of Investigation was struggling with a microbe for a murder weapon and a crime scene that stretched from New York to Florida. But Dr. Ivins was chipper — the anonymous scientist finally at the center of great events. “Hi, all,” he began the e-mail message. “We were taking some photos today of blood agar cultures of the now infamous ‘Ames’ strain of Bacillus anthracis. Here are a few.” He sent the message to those who ordinarily received his corny jokes and dour news commentaries: his wife and two teenage children, former colleagues and high school classmates. He even included an F.B.I. agent working on the case. Dr. Ivins, who had helped develop an anthrax vaccine to protect American troops, had spent his career waiting for a biological attack. Suddenly, at 55, he was advising the F.B.I. and regaling friends with scary descriptions of the deadly powder, his expertise in demand. One recipient of his e-mail message, however, a graduate-school colleague, looked at the photograph of Dr. Ivins and leapt to a shocking conclusion. “I read that e-mail, and I thought, He did it,” the fellow scientist, Nancy Haigwood, said in a recent interview. Nearly seven years and many millions of dollars later, after an investigation that included both path-breaking science and costly bungling, the F.B.I. concluded that Dr. Haigwood had been right: the anthrax killer had been at the investigators’ side all along. Prosecutors said they believed they had the evidence to prove that Dr. Ivins alone carried out the attacks, but their assertions immediately met with skepticism among some scientists, lawmakers and co-workers of Dr. Ivins. With the F.B.I. preparing to close the case, The New York Times has taken the deepest look so far at the investigation, speaking to dozens of Dr. Ivins’s colleagues and friends, reading hundreds of his e-mail messages, interviewing former bureau investigators and anthrax experts, reviewing court records, and obtaining, for the first time, police reports on his suicide in July, including a lengthy recorded interview with his wife. That examination found that unless new evidence were to surface, the enormous public investment in the case would appear to have yielded nothing more persuasive than a strong hunch, based on a pattern of damning circumstances, that Dr. Ivins was the perpetrator. Focused for years on the wrong man, the bureau missed ample clues that Dr. Ivins deserved a closer look. Only after a change of leadership nearly five years after the attacks did the bureau more fully look into Dr. Ivins’s activities. That delay, and his death, may have put a more definitive outcome out of reach. Brad Garrett, a respected F.B.I. veteran who helped early in the case before his retirement, said logic and evidence point to Dr. Ivins as the most likely perpetrator. “Does that absolutely prove he did it? No,” Mr. Garrett said. With no confession and no trial, he said, “you’re going to be left not getting over the top of the mountain.” The Times review found that the F.B.I. had disproved the assertion, widespread among scientists who believe Dr. Ivins was innocent, that the anthrax might have come from military and intelligence research programs in Utah or Ohio. By 2004, secret scientific testing established that the mailed anthrax had been grown somewhere near Fort Detrick. And anthrax specialists who have not spoken out previously said that, contrary to some skeptics’ claims, Dr. Ivins had the equipment and expertise to make the powder in his laboratory. F.B.I. agents, moreover, have shown that Dr. Ivins, a church musician and amateur juggler whom colleagues cherished, hid from them a shadow side of mental illness, alcoholism, secret obsessions and hints of violence. Still, doubts persist. The case will be reviewed this year by the National Academy of Sciences and by Congress. If the F.B.I. is wrong, then a troubled man was hounded to death and the anthrax perpetrator is still at large, as many of Dr. Ivins’s colleagues at Fort Detrick believe. When institute scientists began their own review of the evidence, nervous Army officials ordered the inquiry dropped. In November, four of Dr. Ivins’s closest co-workers wrote a glowing obituary of their “valued collaborator” for Microbe, the leading microbiology journal. It did not mention the anthrax accusations and was a singular protest by the four scientists against the F.B.I.’s conclusion. “His colleagues and friends will remember him not only for his dedication to his work,” the obituary said, “but also for his humor, curiosity and great generosity.” Fearing an Attack The Sunday night after the Sept. 11 attacks, Dr. D. A. Henderson, who led the global campaign to eradicate smallpox and had long been a lonely Cassandra warning of the bioterrorism threat, was summoned to an emergency meeting with the secretary of health and human services, Tommy Thompson. Fearing a germ attack, officials had grounded crop dusters. Apocalyptic warnings were all over the news media: one study said 100 kilograms of anthrax released over Washington could kill 1 million to 3 million people. Now, Dr. Henderson was told, intelligence reports indicated that there might be a second attack by Al Qaeda, most likely biological. Dr. Henderson gave Mr. Thompson and his aides a disturbing tutorial on anthrax and smallpox. As the meeting ended, an aide thanked him. “I just hope we’re not too late,” Dr. Henderson replied. Days later came word of the anthrax letters. First, the death of a tabloid photo editor in Florida, Robert Stevens. Then the poison letters mailed to NBC News and The New York Post with notes declaring “Death to America! Death to Israel!” And finally the letters to Senators Tom Daschle, Democrat of South Dakota, and Patrick J. Leahy, Democrat of Vermont, spewing deadly spores through the postal system and across official Washington. Whoever had ignited panic with a tablespoon of anthrax powder, officials assumed, would not stop there. Dr. Henderson wondered if the powder came from the tons of anthrax weaponized by the Soviet Union. Some assumed Al Qaeda was behind the letters; others suspected Iraq. “My fear was that this first mailing was the tip of the iceberg,” said Bill Raub, a senior official at the Health and Human Services Department. “We feared we would be at their mercy.” Then — nothing. Within days, investigators were piecing together clues pointing to a domestic source. First, there were the notes. One warned, “We have this anthrax,” and advised the recipients to take penicillin. Al Qaeda, F.B.I. agents reasoned, would hardly reduce the death toll with an alert that might have saved lives. Then there was the strain of anthrax. Dr. Paul S. Keim, an anthrax geneticist at Northern Arizona University, identified the spores as Ames, a lethal strain most common in United States research. “It was chilling,” Dr. Keim recalled, but also puzzling. “How in the world did Stevens get a lab strain?” An alternative theory of a possible perpetrator took shape: the bioevangelist. An American obsessed by the bioterrorism threat — maybe a biodefense insider who might gain in pay or prestige from an attack — had decided to alert the nation. That meant the potential suspects included the very Army scientists now working so closely with the F.B.I. And at the core of that group was Bruce Ivins . In 21 years at the Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases, Dr. Ivins supplied Hershey’s Kisses to office visitors and always showed concern when a colleague was ill. He toasted departing colleagues with humorous poems. He livened up parties with his juggling act and led songs from a portable keyboard at his Catholic church. Colleagues knew Dr. Ivins, whose e-mail Christmas card one year spelled out “Happy Holidays” in anthrax spores, was an oddball, wearing outmoded bellbottoms and lunching on concoctions of tuna, peas and yogurt. But in a place where red tape and petty rivalry often darkened spirits, he was a bright spot. “He actually thought of other people,” said Melanie Ulrich, who worked with him on an anthrax project and invited him to the house she shared with her husband, Ricky Ulrich, also an Army scientist. “He was fun.” Arthur O. Anderson, the top ethicist at the institute, bonded with Dr. Ivins in the 1980s over their shared experience of adopting children. After that, every corridor encounter led to a long, probing talk on adoption or the ethical conundrums of biodefense. Dr. Anderson said Dr. Ivins had relished provocative conversation. “If you didn’t bite at one of his emotionally laden questions, he’d find another way to shock you,” he said. They often discussed what they considered groundless criticism of the anthrax vaccine Dr. Ivins had helped produce, which some soldiers blamed for their illnesses. “Bruce was thin-skinned,” Dr. Anderson said. In the emotional days after Sept. 11, friends were not surprised when Dr. Ivins signed up as a Red Cross volunteer. On Sept. 22, 2001 — a date, it would turn out, between the two anthrax mailings — he attended a Red Cross class, Introduction to Disaster Services. He liked the atmosphere, he told friends, and three months later, as the crushing workload created by the anthrax letters began to ease, he applied for more training. Noting that he worked at the Army institute, he wrote in his December 2001 application, “Perhaps I could help in case of a disaster related to biological agents.” Odd and Pressing There was more to Bruce Ivins than his Army colleagues imagined, and Nancy Haigwood knew it. She met him in 1976 in the biology department at the University of North Carolina, where he was a post-doctoral fellow and she was a graduate student. She found him odd and tried gently to disengage, but he kept in touch, pressing her with questions about her sorority, Kappa Kappa Gamma. Dr. Ivins’s boss at U.N.C., Dr. Priscilla B. Wyrick, received similar queries about her sorority, Chi Omega. “He’d say, ‘What’s your secret password? What’s your secret handshake?’ ” she recalled. “I thought he was intellectually interested in secret things.” Dr. Wyrick said she thought of him then as “a goody-two-shoes, aggressive about his science but very sensitive about how he was portrayed by other people.” She kept up a correspondence with him, and after the letter attack, arranged for him to give a talk at her current university, East Tennessee State. Dr. Haigwood’s experience with Dr. Ivins was not so benign. Outside her home in Maryland in 1982, a vandal spray-painted her sorority’s Greek initials, “KKG,” on her fence, sidewalk and fiancé’s car window. A year later a letter she had not written appeared under her name in The Frederick News-Post, defending Kappa Kappa Gamma and the hazing of recruits. She was certain Dr. Ivins was responsible. She said she had found Dr. Ivins’s attentions creepy. She never told him her Maryland address, but he found it anyway. Later, in e-mail messages, he mentioned details about her sons that she had not shared with him. “He damaged my property, he impersonated me and he stalked me,” said Dr. Haigwood, now director of the Oregon National Primate Research Center. In November 2001, when she got the e-mailed photograph of Dr. Ivins working with anthrax in the laboratory, she noticed that he was not wearing gloves — a safety breach she thought showed an unnerving “hubris.” That fed her hunch that he had sent the deadly letters. Knowing her suspicion was an extraordinary leap, she kept it to herself. But three months later, the American Society for Microbiology sent an appeal from the F.B.I. to its 40,000 members. “It is very likely that one or more of you know this individual,” the message said. F.B.I. profilers thought the killer might have made the anthrax during “off-hours in a laboratory.” Dr. Haigwood called the bureau, and two agents visited her. After that, they called periodically but gave no hint that they had tried to confirm the vandalism and stalking. Soon after Dr. Haigwood’s call, there was another reason for investigators to scrutinize Dr. Ivins. The Army found that in December 2001 he had secretly swabbed for anthrax spores outside his secure laboratory space. Suspecting a technician’s desk was contaminated, he later told an Army investigator, he had tested and found a bacillus, the class of bacteria that includes anthrax. He scrubbed the desk with bleach but did not report the spill, though he mentioned it several weeks later to Dr. Anderson, his ethicist friend. “I had no desire to cry ‘Wolf!’ ” Dr. Ivins wrote to Army investigators in April 2002. “I would have been agitating many people for no real reason.” Yet Dr. Ivins wrote that he could not recall whether he had retested the desk for anthrax after his cleanup, as regulations required. His conduct was a flagrant violation of biosafety standards. Anthrax spores outside containment areas could endanger anyone who was not vaccinated. When the spill was properly investigated, three strains of anthrax were found outside the laboratory, including the Ames strain on Dr. Ivins’s desk. By then, too, the bureau had detailed records showing when scientists entered and left the secure laboratories. The documents showed that Dr. Ivins had worked unusually late hours in his laboratory for several nights before each of the anthrax mailings, a pattern that stood out even at an institute where night hours were common. Yet neither the spill nor the night hours sparked the suspicions of the anthrax investigators. They were intently focused on another suspect. Focus on Hatfill Dr. Ivins’s modest bungalow was across the street from Fort Detrick, and he often walked to work. If he did so on June 25, 2002, a sunny Tuesday, he would have noticed the hubbub as he passed by the Detrick Plaza apartments. F.B.I. agents and postal inspectors trudged in and out of one unit, toting away items for inspection. A horde of reporters milled around nearby; television helicopters circled overhead. It was one of the most heavily publicized searches in the history of criminal investigations. Dr. Steven J. Hatfill, who had given permission for the search, never imagined this media circus. It was just the beginning of an intrusion into his life by the F.B.I. and the news media that would show just how tantalizing a case could be built against a man the government would, six years later, officially clear. For months, agents had been growing more focused on Dr. Hatfill, a physician and virologist who had worked from 1997 to 1999 at the Fort Detrick institute. He had earned a medical degree but had forged his Ph.D. diploma, written an unpublished novel about a covert bioattack on Washington and bragged on his résumé of a “working knowledge” of biowarfare pathogens. In his apartment, agents found a harmless bacteria commonly used as an anthrax simulant and a notebook on anthrax dissemination. Then there was the timing. One month before the anthrax attacks, the government suspended Dr. Hatfill’s security clearance after questionable results on a polygraph test, and he told friends he expected to be fired from his job as a bioterrorism consultant. Two days before each of the two anthrax mailings, Dr. Hatfill filled a prescription for Cipro, an antibiotic that protected against anthrax. Could it all be a coincidence? F.B.I. officials did not think so. Desperate to find something more definitive against Dr. Hatfill, lead investigators — who had to brief the F.B.I. director, Robert S. Mueller III, on their progress every week — ordered round-the-clock surveillance. Meticulous study of tiny brown fibers found stuck to the envelopes led nowhere. Handwriting comparisons proved useless because the perpetrator had printed in block letters. DNA found on the outside of the Leahy anthrax envelope turned out to be inadvertent contamination by a laboratory worker. Ignoring the grave doubts of some F.B.I. scientists, agents used bloodhounds to try to link the letters by scent to Dr. Hatfill. They sent divers into a pond outside Frederick, and when that did not turn up anything, they drained two ponds hunting for discarded anthrax-making equipment. Agents were excited when they dredged from the mud a plastic box that they thought might have been a homemade biological “glove box,” built to work safely on dangerous germs. The excitement lasted only until a Fort Detrick scientist with a rural Southern upbringing took one look and recognized what the $20,000-a-day pond-draining had turned up: a turtle trap. Soon after the pond debacle, Dr. Hatfill began fighting back, filing lawsuits and dragging F.B.I. officials to all-day depositions. But investigators did not want to give up on him as a suspect — in part because overwhelming scientific evidence was tying the mailed anthrax to Fort Detrick. By early 2004, F.B.I. scientists had discovered that out of 60 domestic and foreign water samples, only water from Frederick, Md., had the same chemical signature as the water used to grow the mailed anthrax. By late 2005, genetic analysis by top outside experts had matched the spores to a flask of anthrax at the Army institute. Dr. Ivins had custody of the flask, but some agents were still convinced Dr. Hatfill was the culprit. The science alone could not close the case. “We could get to a lab, to a refrigerator, to a flask,” said Dwight E. Adams, the F.B.I. laboratory director until 2006. “But that didn’t put the letters in anyone’s hand.” Sudden Interest Early in 2006, with the investigation largely stalled, Nancy Haigwood heard from two different F.B.I. agents. Four years after she had reported her suspicions of Dr. Ivins, the bureau suddenly seemed interested. “They said, ‘We need your help,’ ” Dr. Haigwood recalled. She was frustrated by the delay, but when the agents asked her to strike up a new correspondence with Dr. Ivins, she reluctantly complied. “I was afraid of this man,” she said. “I was convinced he had done it, and I was afraid he’d send me an anthrax letter.” Some agents believed that their bosses were stuck on Dr. Hatfill, and an internal F.B.I. investigation confirmed their complaint. In mid-2006, Mr. Mueller, the F.B.I. director, quietly moved Richard Lambert Jr., who had led the anthrax investigation since 2002, to a new job running the bureau’s office in Knoxville, Tenn. His replacement, Edward Montooth, a veteran of security and intelligence cases who had worked overseas in places from the Balkans to Indonesia, ordered a fresh look at the evidence. For four years, Dr. Ivins, like others at Fort Detrick, had simultaneously been a trusted F.B.I. technical consultant and a possible suspect. Now the balance was tipping. As the bureau’s undercover informant, Dr. Haigwood struck up a breezy e-mail correspondence about scientific grants, pets and travel. Dr. Ivins complained about psychological screening and other “rather obnoxious and invasive measures” imposed at Fort Detrick since the anthrax attacks. “I got so tired of the endless questions that I finally got a lawyer, after almost three dozen interviews,” he wrote in late 2006, referring to interviews by the F.B.I. agents. One session, he said, was “virtually an interrogation.” In another message, Dr. Ivins complained about feeling “thoroughly beaten down” but said his volunteer work with the Red Cross had provided welcome relief. “The Red Cross is my fraternity/sorority,” he said. For Dr. Haigwood, the reference carried disturbing overtones, reflecting the old obsession with sororities, and with certain women, that Dr. Ivins had hidden from family and colleagues. Dr. Ivins still carried resentment from four decades earlier at Lebanon High School in Ohio, where he had been a nerdy, awkward teenager devoted to photography and, even then, to the study of bacteria. In recent years, said Rick Sams, a pharmacologist who had been among Bruce Ivins’s few school friends, Dr. Ivins “shared with me feelings about how he’d been treated in high school. He was bitter about being excluded.” When Dr. Sams urged him to attend their 40th class reunion, Dr. Ivins refused. “He said, ‘Why should I go? Look how they treated me,’ ” Dr. Sams said. The agents learned, in part from Dr. Ivins himself, that he had in his post-college years made uninvited visits to Kappa Kappa Gamma sorority houses at U.N.C., the University of Maryland and West Virginia University, once making off with a sorority’s ritual book and cipher device. That was more than 20 years ago. But more recently, agents discovered, Dr. Ivins had left a long trail of online postings about Kappa Kappa Gamma. There were inquiries about arcane details of sorority rituals and a bitter editing battle over the KKG entry on Wikipedia. Dr. Ivins hid behind the online handles he used for his proliferating e-mail addresses — KingBadger, Jimmyflathead, goldenphoenix. Once, on GreekChat.com , he described what he said was a family history of mental illness, calling his mother “an undiagnosed paranoid schizophrenic.” The agents learned that Dr. Ivins had long maintained a post office box to receive mail without his family’s knowledge and took long walks or drives on sleepless nights. Once, he admitted, he drove all night to Ithaca, N.Y., and back to leave gifts for a young woman who had left her job in his laboratory to attend Cornell University. The agents also found e-mail messages in which Dr. Ivins confessed to alarming psychiatric problems. During paranoid episodes, he wrote, he felt like “a passenger on a ride.” Even as he worked at his desk, he wrote, “I’m also a few feet away watching me do it.” Of his group therapy program, he wrote on Sept. 26, 2001, between the two anthrax mailings, “I’m really the only scary one in the group.” On the face of it, Dr. Ivins’s strange secret life seemed less relevant to the case than Dr. Hatfill’s boasts about his bioweapons expertise. But anthrax was the core of Dr. Ivins’s working life. “He was in charge of producing large quantities of wet spores for research,” said John W. Ezzell, a Fort Detrick colleague whose anthrax expertise rivaled that of Dr. Ivins. “So if anybody could have produced a lot of spores without arousing suspicion, it was him.” Though a public debate had raged for years over whether the mailed anthrax had been “weaponized” with sophisticated chemical additives, the F.B.I. had concluded early on that it was not. Dr. Ezzell agreed, as did Jeff Mohr, an expert on anthrax and other pathogens at the Army’s Dugway Proving Ground in Utah. Without giving an opinion of Dr. Ivins’s guilt or innocence, both Dr. Ezzell and Dr. Mohr said they believed that any experienced microbiologist could have grown and dried the anthrax using equipment Dr. Ivins had in his laboratory. The trickiest step, they said, was producing anthrax with the letters’ high concentration of spores per gram, a skill Dr. Ivins had mastered. Evidence Problems But even if Dr. Ivins could have made the anthrax, did he? “It’s been difficult for a lot of us to accept this,” Dr. Ezzell said. “He was a loyal friend. He was a diligent worker.” The agents were building what they thought was a prosecutable case against Dr. Ivins, but gaping holes remained. No evidence placed him in Princeton, N.J., where the letters were mailed. No receipt showed that he had bought the same type of envelopes. No security camera had caught him photocopying the notes. Nor, in his e-mail messages and conversations with confidants, could agents find any hint of a confession. One colleague who knew Dr. Ivins well told them, “If Bruce had done this, he never would have been able to keep quiet about it.” Yet the agents knew he led a compartmentalized life. He went on vacation with his brother, Charles, each year, but Charles had no idea Bruce had a drinking problem for which he had been in residential treatment and Alcoholics Anonymous. Dr. Ivins spent hours in online exchanges about sororities, but his family knew nothing about it. Some F.B.I. agents were haunted by the Hatfill precedent. Dr. Hatfill, too, was eccentric. He, too, had begun drinking heavily as he came under scrutiny. He, too, had grown depressed and erratic under the F.B.I.’s relentless gaze. What if Dr. Hatfill had committed suicide in 2002, as friends feared he might? Would the investigators have released their evidence and announced that the perpetrator was dead? In May 2007, Dr. Ivins — assured by prosecutors that he was not a target of the investigation — testified under oath to a grand jury on two consecutive days. He answered all the questions about anthrax. Only once did he plead his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination, when he was asked about his secret interest in sororities. A Life Coming Apart Starting with the search of his house on Nov. 1, 2007, Bruce Ivins’s life began to come irrevocably apart. While some agents carted files, computers and guns from the house, others questioned his wife and children, intimating that they knew he was the killer. Fort Detrick officials banned him from working with anthrax. His career was over. Last March, after drinking the fruit juice and vodka mix that he had come to rely on and adding a big dose of Valium, he passed out and was discovered by his wife, Diane. Despite his denials, she was convinced it was a suicide attempt. “You know, he’s been incredibly, incredibly stressed, because of the way he’s been hounded by the F.B.I.,” Mrs. Ivins would later tell Frederick police officers in a recorded interview. “They’ve always treated him as if he was guilty, and I just felt that he couldn’t take it anymore.” Dr. Ivins spent much of the spring in residential alcohol treatment outside Washington and in western Maryland. But when he returned, the F.B.I. agents were still there, watching his house and trailing him around Frederick. On July 10, Dr. Ivins reached a breaking point. With a strange smile, he told his therapy group that he expected to be charged with five murders and rambled on about killing himself and taking others with him, using his .22-caliber rifle, Glock handgun and bulletproof vest. Tipped off by the therapist, Frederick police officers removed Dr. Ivins from the Army laboratory that day. He voluntarily checked himself in at the Sheppard Pratt psychiatric hospital in Baltimore. After a two-week stay, Dr. Ivins was brought home by his wife. She had left a heartfelt note in his bedroom, saying she hoped that he could turn his life around and that they could enjoy life together. “He didn’t understand that so many people in the treatment program with him had lost their families because of their alcoholism,” Mrs. Ivins later told the police. “So I wanted to write down how I felt because I loved him — you know, I wanted him to come back and get healthy again so we could continue. He was retiring in September, and we were going to travel and enjoy our adult children finally.” Her note was blunt. “I’m hurt, concerned, confused and angry about your actions the last few weeks,” she wrote. “You tell me you love me but you have been rude and sarcastic and nasty many times when you talk to me. You tell me you aren’t going to get any more guns, then you fill out an online application for a gun license.” Mrs. Ivins wrote to her husband that he was paying his lawyers a lot of money but ignoring their advice by contacting two former female laboratory assistants he was preoccupied with. He was keeping odd hours, walking the neighborhood late at night and drinking so much caffeine that he was “jumpy and agitated,” she wrote. But Mrs. Ivins’s note also expressed support. “I had written on the bottom of the paper that I knew he had not been involved in the anthrax letters in any way and I never doubted his innocence,” said the woman who thought she knew him best. Even as Mrs. Ivins picked up her husband at the Baltimore hospital last July 24, his group therapist, Jean C. Duley, was in a Frederick courtroom, testifying about threats he had left on her answering machine. A judge signed an order at 10:37 a.m. directing Dr. Ivins to stay away from her. The order would not be necessary. At 12:31 p.m., according to records checked by the Frederick police, Dr. Ivins stopped in at the Giant Eagle grocery store near his house and bought Tylenol PM, acetaminophen and an antihistamine. He bought a few groceries and filled three prescriptions for his psychiatric illness, possibly a sign that he was thinking about the future. Then, at 1:21 p.m., evidently concerned that he did not have enough medication for the purpose he was contemplating, he bought a second container of Tylenol PM. Over the next two days, Mrs. Ivins worked her lunchtime shift at a nearby cafe, went for a swim at Fort Detrick and ran her regular Friday bingo game. In and out of the house, she saw that her husband was sleeping but had risen at least a few times, bringing in the mail and eating breakfast. She did not worry much; depressed, banned from his laboratory, he had been spending many days in bed. And on the back of her note, he had scribbled that he had a terrible headache and was going to rest. “Please let me sleep,” he wrote. “Please.” When she found him on the bathroom floor in the middle of a Saturday night, her voice on the 911 tape was calm and methodical: “He’s unconscious. He’s breathing rapidly. He’s clammy.” She had been through this before. The dispatcher offered to stay on the line until the ambulance arrived. “I’m O.K.,” Mrs. Ivins said. One Last Message Bruce Ivins, the connoisseur of secrets, took with him any knowledge he had of the anthrax attacks. But he left one more surprise for his family: a clause in his will intended to enforce his wish to be cremated and have his ashes scattered. If his demands were not met, $50,000 from his estate would go not to the family but to Planned Parenthood of Maryland, whose abortion services Mrs. Ivins abhorred. It was one last, devious step for a man whose oddities, for many people, made the F.B.I.’s anthrax accusation more plausible. But like so much about Dr. Ivins, it cut the other way, too. The F.B.I. theorized that Dr. Ivins had sent anthrax letters to Senators Leahy and Daschle because they were pro-choice Catholics, offending his anti-abortion views. Would an anti-abortion absolutist have flirted with a donation to a cause he despised? On Oct. 6, a lawyer for the Ivins family filed with the Orphans’ Court of Frederick County certification that Planned Parenthood would not receive the money. His ashes, the document said, “were scattered or spread on the ground, as he directed.”

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Anthrax
Federal Bureau of Investigation
United States Army


Protesters United Against Ferguson Decision, but Challenged in Unity

Abstract: FERGUSON, Mo. — Demonstrators forced the temporary closing of the St. Louis Galleria mall after staging a mass “die-in” on Friday afternoon, lying on the floor for four and a half minutes of silence to represent the hours that Michael Brown was left on the street after a police officer shot him dead. In Oakland, Calif., a group of people protesting a grand jury’s decision not to indict the officer chained themselves to a train at a Bay Area Rapid Transit station, forcing officials to close the station and causing delays across the system. And in San Francisco, Chicago, New York and Seattle, hundreds of demonstrators flocked to the streets and retail locations with chants like, “If we don’t get no justice, they don’t get no profits,” to disrupt Black Friday shopping in the hopes of highlighting issues of race, class and law enforcement that they believe the Brown case laid bare. Waves of protests have popped up across the country after it was announced this week that a grand jury would not charge Officer Darren Wilson in the killing of Mr. Brown, who was 18 and unarmed. But it is far from clear whether such actions will build into anything that brings a sustained social movement. Groups are divided by aim and by geography, with goals of justice for Mr. Brown or an end to lethal police force against minorities, but the path for achieving them is neither clear nor easy. Certainly there is an array of new coalitions with names like Lost Voices and Tribe X , and across the country this week there were calls to hold police departments accountable and increase social media organizing campaigns. Many of the demonstrations had a distinctly local flavor. Protests in Ferguson and Across the Country 15 Photos View Slide Show › Image Whitney Curtis for The New York Times In Durham, N.C., for example, protesters gathered in a plaza where in September 2013 the police shot and killed Derek Walker, 26, a black man who was publicly brandishing a gun, apparently intending to use it on himself after losing a custody fight. “The last time I was standing in this square, every one of us was tear gassed, including my daughter,” Serena Sebring, a field organizer with the activist group Southerners on New Ground told the crowd, to shouts of affirmation. She called on those attending to take the fight to city government, including running for five soon-to-be-vacant seats on a police civilian review board. But here in Ferguson, where Mr. Brown’s killing sparked a broad outcry, the challenges of creating a movement out of students and anarchists, established civil rights leaders and digital networkers, and the angry and dispossessed were clear. Groups had planned for weeks how to maintain what they called militant but nonviolent protests if Officer Wilson was not indicted. Yet the demonstrations quickly turned destructive, with stores set aflame and looted on the night of the grand jury’s decision not to indict him was announced. The violence fulfilled the worst fears of Patricia Bynes, a Democratic committeewoman here. Until recently, she was one of the people standing between the police line and the protesters, urging calm on both sides. After the August shooting, she used to try to broker deals for the demonstrators on the front lines. She has since pulled back, saying that lawless actors have hurt the peaceful movement. She became turned off, she said, several weeks ago after she called out several activists at a protest planning meeting who she said attacked a young man they accused of live-streaming the private session. At a protest a few days later, several members of the group she had criticized surrounded her and threatened her, she said. Only four people came to her defense when they circled her, she said. “If we can’t stand up to the punks and the hoodlums who are giving the protest a bad name, you’re not ready to stand up to the police,” said Ms. Bynes, 35. “You throw a rock and hide behind a peaceful crowd, you’re a coward.” What Happened in Ferguson? Here’s what you need to know about events in Ferguson, Mo. Ms. Bynes has urged peaceful protesters to avoid the evening demonstrations because they became too dangerous, and to instead focus on other ways to effect change. She has started a petition for a performance audit of the City of Ferguson. She said she planned to be active in campaigning for the next Ferguson municipal elections next year. And she hoped to push more people to become active in their city and county councils. “If they’ve been doing the same tactics for 100 days and absolutely nothing has changed, you’ve got to change the tactics,” she said, reflecting on the near nightly protests that have taken place here since Mr. Brown was killed on Aug. 9. Part of the challenge for activists here and across the country is whether they can or want to agree on a concrete agenda, whether it be civilian review boards for police, or special prosecutors, or a push for more minority police officers. Getting there will also require bridging generational and tactical divides, activists said. On the one hand, a new crop of young activist groups has brought energy and attention since Mr. Brown’s killing. On the other hand, it is the older, more established civil rights leadership that has the resources and knowledge of how to push concrete measures. Yet some of the younger activists remain skeptical of their older counterparts and of participating in traditional politics. There also remain questions of how militant or peaceful the groups want to be. “It’s been a little disjointed,” said Alisha Sonnier, 19, the president of Tribe X, a youth activist group in the St. Louis region that formed after Mr. Brown’s death. “At the end of the day all of us are dealing with similar feelings and similar emotions. There’s a disjointment in how we feel we should go about it.” On Friday afternoon, Ms. Sonnier’s organization led about 100 protesters through the Galleria in suburban Richmond Heights. They chanted and sang for about an hour, adjusting their slogans and lyrics to fit the moment (“Hands up! Don’t shop!” for instance, and “No true bill set our soul on fire,” sung to the tune of “chestnuts roasting on an open fire” from “The Christmas Song.”) Dozens of police and security personnel trailed the protesters but did not make any arrests. Several stores closed before the management eventually closed the entire mall. Similar protests led to closings at two other area malls later Friday.“One of the few ways to be heard and have people listen to you is to have an economic impact,” Ms. Sonnier said. “If you want to really affect people, especially those who are in power, you got to hit their pocket. We as a people cannot allow people to keep making money and a business to go on, and we can’t even get justice when our people die.” The Rev. Al Sharpton, who was planning to start a countdown to a decision by the grand jury in New York that is looking into the case of Eric Garner, 43, who died after being placed in a chokehold while the police attempted to arrest him for allegedly selling cigarettes illegally on July 17, said he had learned a lesson from the Trayvon Martin case. Documents Released in the Ferguson Case Documents and evidence presented to the grand jury that was deciding whether to indict Officer Darren Wilson in the shooting of Michael Brown. After George Zimmerman was acquitted in the shooting death of the unarmed Florida teenager, Mr. Sharpton said, his organization left it to local groups to fight to overturn the state’s so-called Stand Your Ground self-defense law. But those efforts faded. “We’re working with a lot of the young groups in Ferguson,” Mr. Sharpton said. “We’re not letting it now just dissipate into groups that will not be there in 30, 90 days. It has to be connected to a broader agenda.” Mr. Sharpton said groups would be pushing for the creation of national guidelines by the Justice Department for investigating officers when they use deadly force, which would be a mechanism to take investigations of police shootings out of the hands of local prosecutors who are close to the departments. The N.A.A.C.P. was planning to start a 120-mile seven-day march from Ferguson to the Missouri capital, Jefferson City, on Saturday. But so far the nighttime protests in Ferguson have mostly been spontaneous, angry standoffs in front of the police station, with demonstrators shouting at the officers. Older leaders needed to give the young ones room to vent and be angry, and carefully go about supporting their cause in a way that does not lecture them, said Michael McPhearson, co-chairman of the Don’t Shoot Coalition and executive director of Veterans for Peace . “It’s a matter of supporting what they’re doing, instead of trying to mold it,” he said.

Police Brutality,Police Misconduct,Police Shootings


Will Britain Ever Leave the European Union?

Abstract: LONDON — Still a small political force, the party campaigning to take Britain out of the European Union has an office on the top floor of a grand building in the heart of London’s political district. And it doesn’t pay a penny in rent. Though the United Kingdom Independence Party has no representatives in the British Parliament , it does have a dozen members in the European Parliament. And that entitles it to a small space at 32 Smith Square, the London base of two institutions of the European Union that U.K.I.P. wants to leave. The subversive act of installing itself there fits the mood in Britain, where European integration never fired enthusiasm and where the euro crisis has stirred calls to redefine Britain’s relationship within the 27-nation bloc. None of the three main political parties want to leave the Union, but the Conservative prime minister, David Cameron , recently suggested a referendum after renegotiating Britain’s place there — the first such plebiscite since 1975 — though without clarity on the timing or what question would be addressed. “I don’t think Britain is happy with its current relationship with the E.U.,” Mr. Cameron said. “ I am committed over time to making those changes,” he added, “before putting that then to the people to get their full-hearted consent.” The opposition Labour Party might even steal the initiative by offering an “in or out” vote. The logic is that Labour would mostly unite behind a vote to stay in the Union — which could therefore be won — while such a choice could split the Conservatives. A significant shift is under way. “At the start of the century, the question was whether Britain was going to join the euro,” said Mark Leonard, executive director of the European Council on Foreign Relations. “Now it’s whether we are going to leave the E.U.” The change has been crystallized by economic turmoil in the euro zone and fears that, though Britain never joined the single currency, it will not escape the consequences of the debt crisis. For the euro area to survive, it needs to integrate economically. And British politicians worry that access to Europe’s single market could erode if a group of more integrated euro zone nations slanted rules to the disadvantage, for example, of Britain’s financial services sector. Until 2004, 32 Smith Square was the headquarters of the Conservative Party. Its leader at the time, Edward Heath, negotiated British membership in the forerunner of the current Union, which Britain joined in 1973. His generation of Conservatives was largely pro-European. That began to change under Margaret Thatcher, who, in the twilight of her premiership, resisted the drive toward economic and political union in Europe. When the Conservatives lost power in 1997, their party shrank, concentrating control of local organizations among harder-core supporters who tended to be euro-skeptic. These activists helped select the current generation of members of Parliament, many of whom, egged on by Conservative-supporting newspapers, want Britain to claw back some powers from the Union, bolstering national sovereignty. According to one Conservative lawmaker, about 30 colleagues want to go further and quit the Union altogether. Accordingly, Mr. Cameron needs a tougher line or risks being outflanked by potential rivals who are more euro-skeptic, like the former defense secretary Liam Fox. Nigel Farage, U.K.I.P.’s leader, believes that in the next elections to the European Parliament in 2014 (under a system more favorable to small parties than national elections), his party could come first. “There has been an absolute change within the center of gravity,” he said. “A year ago, people were saying that re-negotiating the relationship was a little extreme. Now that’s the soft debate.” Many Conservative Parliament members will need to win U.K.I.P. voters back to keep their jobs — and so have hardened their stance on Europe before the next British elections. “The genius of the euro-skeptics is the way they have turned the pro-European argument on its head,” said Mr. Leonard. “So the European single market, which was seen as a source of prosperity, is presented as a straitjacket of red tape.” But could Britain actually leave the Union? Renegotiating membership would be tough. Though some concessions could be secured, France and Germany would never allow Britain to stay in the single market but opt out of social, agricultural and regional policies — the euro-skeptic dream. A referendum on the outcome of a renegotiation would therefore be unpredictable and could precipitate an accidental exit from the Union. Meanwhile, there is a danger that Britain’s increasingly aloof stance within the Union could marginalize it and reduce its influence. Under that scenario, a British exit could become a slow self-fulfilling prophecy. But any referendum will probably come after the next British elections, which may not be until 2015, by which time the Union, because of changes forced by the euro zone crisis, could be markedly different anyway. So Britain’s European destiny remains as ambivalent as ever. The answer to its probable referendum will most likely depend on the precise question Britons are asked — and when they finally confront it.

European Union
Great Britain
Legislatures and Parliaments
Cameron David


Curlin Owners Lose Case

Abstract: Three lawyers accused of bilking their clients in a diet drug settlement must repay at least $62.1 million in settlement funds and interest, a judge in Louisville, Ky., ruled Friday.Special Judge William Wehr ordered William J. Gallion, 56, Shirley A. Cunningham Jr., 52, and Melbourne Mills Jr., 76, to repay $42 million taken from the settlement and $20.1 million in interest. The lawyers are being sued by about 400 former clients who claim they took too much money as part of a $200 million fen-phen settlement. Gallion and Cunningham own a 20 percent stake in Curlin, who won the second leg of the Triple Crown in May.


2 Men Arrested in Killing at Newark Fraternity House

Abstract: Two men have been arrested in connection with the fatal shooting this week of a college student in Newark during a break-in at his fraternity house, the authorities said on Friday. Prosecutors in Essex County, N.J., said Nafee Cotman, 18, and Taquan Harris, 22, both faced charges of murder, robbery, burglary and weapons-related offenses in the killing of Joseph Micalizzi , a junior at the New Jersey Institute of Technology, inside the Tau Kappa Epsilon fraternity house on Monday. Bail for Mr. Cotman was set at $1 million, prosecutors said. Mr. Harris was awaiting arraignment on Friday night. Information regarding their lawyers was not immediately available. The authorities said the two men had broken into the house, in the University Heights section of Newark, around 3 a.m. on Monday. They encountered Mr. Micalizzi, a 23-year-old mechanical engineering student from Freehold, N.J., and shot him. He was taken to University Hospital, where he was pronounced dead. Mr. Micalizzi’s death was the second time in a month that a college student had been fatally shot in off-campus housing in the neighborhood. On April 10, Shani Patel, a 21-year-old Rutgers student, was killed and his roommate was wounded in a shooting at their apartment near the university’s Newark campus, the authorities said. A suspect, Marcus Feliz, 25, was arrested and charged a few days later.

Murders and Homicides
Fraternities,Sororites
College
Joseph Micalizzi
Newark NJ
NJIT
Robbery


A Band of Thieves in Milwaukee Show a Patriotic Side

Abstract: Kyle Windorski, a 21-year-old college student in the Army Reserve, was walking home Tuesday morning on the east side of Milwaukee when four men with stocking caps over their faces forced him into an alley at gunpoint and demanded cash. In an account confirmed by the Milwaukee police, Mr. Windorski said the men ordered him to the ground on his stomach, and he was helpless as they fished his wallet out of a pocket. They counted his $16 and by their raging tone, he could tell they were not happy. The muggers then turned their attention to Mr. Windorski’s various identification cards: a driver’s license, a University of Wisconsin student card and a military ID. Suddenly there was confusion, and silence. “We’ve got to give this stuff back,” the ringleader snapped. “This guy’s military!” And with that, Mr. Windorski said he got a heartfelt thank you from the rather patriotic band of thieves, and a fist-bump for his service to the country. The still-masked men helped him up to his feet, returned his money and then one said, “This guy’s been cool,” Mr. Windorski remembered. “We can’t do this.” Mr. Windorski joined the Army Reserve a year ago, a move he did not foresee as potentially life-saving until now. He has completed his training, but has not been deployed. “I consider myself very lucky but also bewildered,” Mr. Windorski said in a telephone interview from his apartment on Wednesday. “I realize that it probably would have gone a very different way had they not made that decision after seeing the ID. I had really no idea how to react. It was a complete 180. Their demeanor changed, absolutely turned around. I just got up and started walking away.” The four assailants had a busy Tuesday, according to the Milwaukee police, who said Mr. Windorski was one of three victims attacked on the east side of town by four men in hoods and stocking caps. One victim was a rabbi, who managed to escape unharmed. Another man approached in a different incident had his wallet taken but was not seriously injured. The attackers remain at-large. Anne E. Schwartz, a Milwaukee police spokeswoman, said she had never heard of a story like Mr. Windorski’s. “Sometimes you hear about a criminal who, for one reason or another, decides not to prey on a victim, but I’ve not heard of this particular twist,” Ms. Schwartz said. Criminal behavior can boggle the mind. “Obviously they had no problem putting a gun in the face of a holy man or another guy,” she said. “We still consider them dangerous people.” Mr. Windorski, who, by chance, is a criminal justice major, is not sure what to think. He said, “I’m just happy to still be alive.”

Muggings
Milwaukee (Wis)
Reserves (Military)
University of Wisconsin
Crime and Criminals


Ballpark Statisticians Follow a New Count, the Toilet Ratio

Abstract: If nothing else, $2 billion worth of baseball ballparks should buy shorter waits for the restrooms, at least for women. Waiting in longer lines has been an uncomfortable, if not unhealthy, reality for generations of women at places like stadiums, arenas and theaters. Men may see relatively quick marches through the lavatories as a common joke. Women view long lines as everything from a small irritant to a persistent form of gender discrimination. But “potty parity” laws and ever-changing plumbing codes promise relief. And in no place in New York City will those changes be felt more than in the restroom lines at the new Yankee Stadium and the Mets ’ Citi Field , if things go according to plan. It may be the biggest moment “for potty parity that we have seen, to have two big facilities open at the same time, and all these restrooms open at once,” said Kathryn Anthony, a professor of architecture at the University of Illinois and a board member of the American Restroom Association. Roughly 1,500 new toilet fixtures (water closets, in plumbing parlance, and urinals for men) await fans at the two ballparks, about a 30 percent increase at Yankee Stadium and a 10 percent increase at Citi Field, which holds about 12,000 fewer fans than Shea Stadium did. More toilets are on the way for football fans, too. About 1,350 fixtures are planned at the new stadium for the Giants and the Jets , scheduled to open in the New Jersey Meadowlands in 2010. Potty parity does not always mean that there will be the same number of toilets for women and men. Parity is measured by wait times. Studies show that women take about twice as long as men in the restroom. The reasons vary, from the obvious (the need to secure themselves inside a stall, shed more clothes and use toilet paper) to the not-so-obvious (menstrual cycles and the increased likelihood, compared to men, of ushering small children). Groups including the American Restroom Association and the World Toilet Organization view quick access to clean public toilets as no laughing matter. People with medical problems, including bladder or bowel dysfunction, may not be able to wait. Long waits can exacerbate other issues, including urinary-tract infections. For years, women have most dealt with the consequences, if not the indignity, of waiting in long lines. New York City passed a law in 2005 requiring that all new or significantly renovated places of public assembly — concert halls, arenas, Broadway theaters, stadiums and the like — have two women’s toilet fixtures for every one devoted to men. About half of the states and many municipalities have similar laws, with varying ratios, designed to offset the extra time that women take in the restroom and slowly undo decades of male-dominated design and construction. “Until relatively recently, most architects, contractors, engineers, building-code officials and clients were not concerned about this issue,” Dr. Anthony said. “These were very male-dominated professions, and still are. They rarely contacted women about their restroom needs.” New York’s law came as the city was overhauling its plumbing and building codes, much of which dated to 1968. The city based its plumbing code on the 2003 version of the International Plumbing Code, which has specific requirements for toilet fixtures for various types of buildings and occupancies. Almost always, women are to be supplied with more. But because most assembly halls in the city are decades old, they generally lack in women’s restrooms. New construction provides a rare chance to make right. The new Yankee Stadium, with a capacity of 52,325, needed a minimum of 358 women’s toilets and 176 men’s fixtures, of which no more than half could be urinals, according to the city Department of Buildings. Generally, once the minimum requirements are reached, the mix of toilets can be tailored to the building’s needs. Studies show that baseball crowds lean slightly male. Stadium builders tend to meet the requirements and add a bunch of urinals. The Yankees and their architects, Populous (formerly HOK Sport Venue Event, which also designed Citi Field), gave Yankee Stadium 369 women’s toilets, and 98 toilets and 298 urinals for men, according to the buildings department. Another 78 fixtures are in unisex bathrooms, designed for families or in luxury suites. Citi Field, with a capacity of about 45,000, was required to have 303 women’s toilets and 152 men’s fixtures. It was designed with 374 women’s toilets, and 111 toilets and 240 urinals for men. At the new Meadowlands football stadium, where New Jersey dictates the use of the National Standard Plumbing Code, requirements called for at least 420 toilets for women and 277 fixtures for men. The stadium will have 608 for women (nearly a 50 percent increase from Giants Stadium) and 704 for men (a more than 40 percent increase), including 523 urinals, according to the New Meadowlands Stadium chief executive, Mark Lamping. Football crowds tend to be overwhelmingly male — the Giants estimate 70 percent at Giants Stadium — which is why most of the extra fixtures are for men. But the best plans do not always work. Mr. Lamping and Populous are among those with experience in the difficulty of navigating codes and predicting fan behavior. Mr. Lamping was the president of the St. Louis Cardinals when the new Busch Stadium opened in 2006 with 37 fewer toilet fixtures for women than men. That violated Missouri ’s law requiring a 1-to-1 ratio. The stadium was granted a one-year extension to create fixture equality — 334 fixtures for each gender. St. Louis University — the city, apparently, is a nexus for confusion — ran afoul of the same law when it opened Chaifetz Arena last year. Like Busch Stadium, it followed codes, but the law said it had too many fixtures for women (120, compared with 103 for men). After debate and consternation, the slight gender gap was allowed. The fear for any new building is that opening reviews could center on long waits at the restrooms for men or women. A renovated Soldier Field opened in Chicago in 2003 with longer lines for men. Five women’s restrooms were converted to men’s restrooms. A similar thing happened in Nashville when the football stadium opened for the Tennessee Titans in 1999. Architects followed a 2-to-1 women-to-men ratio requirement. Men faced long lines while women breezed through restrooms. Rather than consider it payback victory for women, state lawmakers changed the ratio to 1.65 to 1. Just what is the right ratio? Dr. Anthony, whose work on the subject includes a book titled, “Designing for Diversity: Gender, Race and Ethnicity in the Architectural Profession,” and who wrote two years ago that restrooms “remain among the more tangible relics of gender discrimination,” says it is at least 2 to 1. During exhibition games at the stadiums last weekend, there were no reports of clogged lines at the restrooms. But Dr. Anthony says she wants the Yankees and Mets to clock the wait times and adjust accordingly. “Ideally,” Dr. Anthony said, “nobody should have to wait at all.” No, she does not live in New York.