Egyptians Struggle as Crisis Paralyzes Economy

Abstract: ALEXANDRIA, Egypt — Egypt ’s economy approached paralysis on Monday as foreign commerce, tourism and banking all but halted, placing acute pressure on President Hosni Mubarak to find a way out of the weeklong chaos. International companies closed plants and sent workers home or out of the country; food staples went undelivered to stores; and banks remained closed during a week when many Egyptians, who are routinely paid monthly, would receive their paychecks. A major ratings agency cut the country’s bond rating, while shortages led to rising prices. And poorer Egyptians told of cutting back to just two meals a day to cope. The protests’ crippling effects could give Mr. Mubarak and his new cabinet perhaps only a few weeks to re-establish order before shortages, rising unemployment and a deep crisis set in, economists said. “It might give impetus to more demonstrations and more riots in the streets,” said Ahmed Galal of the Economic Research Forum in Cairo. “I think the challenge is going to be in the next couple of weeks, and it is going to mount in a week or two.” Average citizens seemed to agree. “We can take this for one more week,” said Samih Hammam, 38, a teacher with a wife and three children who should have been paid on Jan. 25 and is still waiting. “After this, it’s going to create more chaos and problems, more violent reactions.” Entrenched corruption, the depredations of police forces and demands for free elections have all helped drive the protest movement, but for many Egyptians, rising prices and unemployment were the strongest motivations to stand up to the government. Now even many of those with jobs are not being paid, adding an edge of desperation to the rage. “I’m going to try to eat the cheapest foods, ful and falafel,” said Azza Aladin, 47. Ful is a simple dish of beans. A single mother with six children, Ms. Aladin said she had been forced to cut out a meal a day. Many Egyptians are paid on the last or the first day of the month, and their wages often come in cash-filled envelopes. With A.T.M.’s empty and banks closed, many bosses just cannot pay. Muhammad Soudan, 54, had a banner on his car at Monday’s protest in Alexandria that read “I would rather live hungry than die in fear.” It is not an abstract notion here. Mr. Soudan runs a construction company that employs 35 people. To make payroll with the banks closed, he borrowed money from friends. But his business has larger problems. He is unable to get building materials he needs from abroad, and he expects many of the larger companies he relies on for business to cut back. “If it goes on like this, my company is going to die,” Mr. Soudan said. The American giants Coca-Cola and General Motors are pulling back or pulling out, as are German companies like Volkswagen and the retailer Metro, as well as the Danish shipping and oil company A. P. Moller-Maersk. “Tourists are flying away; the capital is going to fly away as well,” said Gehan Saleh, an economist at the Arab Academy for Science and Technology here. With the stock market down roughly 17 percent since Jan. 24, people will move their savings into safe havens, turning nest eggs into dollars or euros, Ms. Saleh said. Ms. Saleh, a 39-year-old mother of four children, was herself facing an increasingly common problem for Egyptians: getting cash. With the grocery store refusing to take credit cards, she tried the four A.T.M.’s in her neighborhood and found them all empty, leaving her with no money in hand. Alaa Ezz, secretary general of the Confederation of Egyptian European Business Associations here, said: “It’s not like in Europe; we walk around here with wads of cash in our pockets. Very few people use credit cards or A.T.M. cards. We’re a cash society.” Large retailers, meanwhile, are worrying about where to go with their huge stockpiles of cash from the panic buying that has cleared the shelves, with no banks to take these small fortunes at a moment when there are no police on the streets. The bank closings were also affecting international business, Mr. Ezz said, with importers unable to get letters of credit. He said, however, that the subsidized food supply would be ensured by strategic stockpiles and that the government was moving to get curfew exemptions for deliveries of many necessities. The Suez Canal, a vital transit route for oil to Europe, remained open on Monday. And although international oil companies are closing local offices, evacuating nonessential workers and family dependents and telling their Egyptian employees to stay home, there has been little impact so far on exploration and production activities centered in the Gulf of Suez, the Western Desert and the Nile Delta. One exception is Statoil, a Norwegian company, which has halted offshore drilling in the El Dabaa area west of the Nile Delta. Fuel deliveries were not arriving at many gas stations in Alexandria. Lines of cars at those that still had fuel, long on Sunday, were growing even longer on Monday; four lines stretched out of one station and snarled traffic on the coastal road. Between curfews, checkpoints of armed civilians and fears of looting, transportation has emerged as a major problem. Ahmed Hassan, whose distribution company serves major consumer-goods companies like Procter & Gamble and Coca-Cola, said he was not letting any of his 350 trucks nationwide onto the roads. “We cannot let our people jeopardize their lives,” Mr. Hassan said. Instead his workers were taking shifts to ensure that all facilities and vehicles were guarded 24 hours a day against looters and thieves. According to Mr. Hassan, Coca-Cola had inquired about delivering water for its Dasani brand, while Procter & Gamble was concerned about the need for Pampers diapers, but he said it could not be done. “There are misunderstandings, people are getting excited, some of them have guns,” he said. “My first responsibility is to my workers.” The disruptions have made life harder for Egyptians already struggling to get by. Ahmad Ismail, 25, a real estate agent, supports his parents. He said safety concerns and disruptions to phone and Internet services meant he had not worked since Friday, and like others had not received his paycheck. “Things are tough, but I’m more concerned about getting this government out of power,” he said. “We can get by on less.”

Egypt
Economic Conditions and Trends
Mubarak Hosni
Demonstrations Protests and Riots


G.O.P. Split Over Congressional Budget Office Head

Abstract: WASHINGTON — Douglas W. Elmendorf is an obscure figure beyond a narrow radius around Capitol Hill. As the director of the Congressional Budget Office , his nuts-and-bolts job is to serve as the official scorekeeper on the price of legislation and the referee on the budgetary and economic impacts of policy, from the Affordable Care Act to an increase in the minimum wage. So it is one of the stranger surprises of the midterm election fallout that the question of whether to reappoint him to his post has become a hot topic of debate — among Republicans. “Doug Elmendorf has been so exceptional, he seems to be trying as hard as possible to give a fair, unbiased review of academic literature on all these issues,” said Michael R. Strain, deputy director of economic policy studies at the conservative American Enterprise Institute, who called for Mr. Elmendorf’s reappointment in National Review . “That sometimes has greatly frustrated the administration and sometimes helped the administration. It sometimes has greatly frustrated Republicans and sometimes helped Republicans.” Not so, say the most ardent conservatives, who want Mr. Elmendorf, a former Federal Reserve economist, replaced as soon as his term ends on Jan. 3. Grover G. Norquist, the small-government, low-tax activist at Americans for Tax Reform, has prominently laid out an indictment that includes putting a supposedly inaccurate price tag on the Affordable Care Act and Mr. Elmendorf’s “failed Keynesian economic analysis.” Dan Holler, a spokesman for Heritage Action, the political arm of the Heritage Foundation, agreed. “It would be absurd for a Republican-controlled Congress to keep Elmendorf at the helm of the C.B.O.” he said. “For a party looking to change the culture in Washington, this would be a good place to start.” The budget office wields enormous power in its proclamations over legislative cost and effect; working the referee has been time-honored since the office’s creation in 1974. But the hand-wringing over the changing of director has almost always been partisan, not intraparty. In 1981, officials in the Reagan administration wanted to oust the C.B.O.’s founding director, Alice M. Rivlin, when they took over Washington, but they were thwarted by senior Republicans in Congress who said that was a Hill prerogative. Republicans lamented the fate of the budget office when Democrats picked Peter R. Orszag, whom they viewed as the Democratic Party’s go-to economist. Democrats were aghast when Republicans picked Douglas Holtz-Eakin to move from President George W. Bush’s Council of Economic Advisers to the director’s office. The decision rests in the hands of Republican leaders, including the new chairmen of the House and Senate budget committees as well as the House Ways and Means and Senate Finance committees. Representative Tom Price, a Georgia Republican and a strong conservative, will be writing the House’s budget next year, while Representative Paul D. Ryan of Wisconsin moves to the Ways and Means Committee, which originates tax bills and has the dominant role in health care legislation. Both men argue that the budget office should use more “dynamic scoring” when assessing the cost of tax cuts, saying the impact on the Treasury would be mitigated greatly by the additional economic growth they contend the cuts would engender. Such a change in scorekeeping, based on the supply side theory popular among conservatives, would ease the push to overhaul the tax code and produce an ostensibly balanced budget while lowering top individual and corporate tax rates. That has Democrats worried. “If they’re bringing in a C.B.O. director with the intention of getting someone who’s going to apply voodoo economics to the budget, that’s a real problem,” said Representative Chris Van Hollen of Maryland, the ranking Democrat on the House Budget Committee. “If they’re looking for someone who is going to cook the books, that’s a real problem.” So far, no director has taken the C.B.O. down a partisan rabbit hole. “Every time, people worry about politicization,” said Mr. Holtz-Eakin, who has become increasingly aligned with conservative politics since leaving the budget office. “It is in the statute that it be nonpartisan, and I generally don’t fall out of bed wanting to break the law. And it’s in the DNA of the staff.” Ms. Rivlin said it was possible for a director to warp the institution, asserting more partisan leadership, prompting staff departures and replacing them with more partisan appointments. But, she said, “It never has, because both parties have appointed directors who understand the mission of C.B.O. is to be very nonpartisan and have made an effort to not inject their own views into the picture.” This transition has been more perilous than most. Mr. Elmendorf has told congressional leaders and committee chairmen that he wants another term. But aides close to the budget committees say the incoming leadership is looking at a host of new names. The Capitol Hill newspaper Roll Call has already floated possible replacements. Some, like Jeffrey R. Brown of the University of Illinois and Katherine Baicker of Harvard University, are respected Republican academic economists. Others are more partisan, such as Warren Payne, the House Ways and Means Committee’s Republican policy director; J. D. Foster, the deputy chief economist for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, formerly of the Heritage Foundation; and James C. Capretta, a frequent contributor to National Review. That list prompted an outpouring of concern among an eclectic group of economists on the right. N. Gregory Mankiw of Harvard, a former chairman of George W. Bush’s Council of Economic Advisers, called for Mr. Elmendorf’s reappointment on his blog : “I understand that G.O.P. leaders may be tempted to put their own stamp on the Congressional Budget Office. But sometimes the benefits of continuity transcend ideology and political affiliation.” “Dynamic scoring is more realistic, because the path of the economy responds to changes in tax policy,” Mr. Mankiw said in an email response to questions last week. “The problem is that there is substantial disagreement about which models are most appropriate for estimating those responses. Static scoring makes the clearly wrong assumption that tax policy does not influence the economy, but it has the virtue of being less model-dependent and thus more easily understood.” Casey B. Mulligan, a conservative economist at the University of Chicago, laid out his “ reasons to continue the Elmendorf era .” Keith Hennessey, a top Bush adviser, weighed in , as did Charles Murray and Alan D. Viard of the American Enterprise Institute. Still, like his counterparts in the House, the incoming Senate Finance Committee chairman, Orrin G. Hatch, also believes the C.B.O. should be taking another stab at dynamic scoring. Currently, the budget office and the White House Office of Management and Budget use “static scoring” on most bills, assessing the cost of tax cuts and spending bills primarily as simple subtraction from revenue or addition to spending totals. “What’s wrong with C.B.O. and O.M.B. doing both a static report and a dynamic report?” Mr. Hatch asked. “It’s stupid to do the one and not do the other.” Given that perspective among prominent Republicans and continuing conflict over the Affordable Care Act, congressional aides say the betting is against Mr. Elmendorf, whose positive assessments of the cost and impact of the health care law have angered conservative activists for years. His replacement, they say, would signal that Republicans are serious about change.

Douglas W Elmendorf
Congressional Budget Office
Appointments and Executive Changes
US Politics


Carole C. Noon, Who Founded Save the Chimps, Dies at 59

Abstract: Dr. Carole C. Noon, a primatologist whose passion — and compassion — for her subjects led to her founding of Save the Chimps, the organization that provides the world’s largest sanctuary for captive chimpanzees, died Saturday in Fort Pierce, Fla. She was 59 and lived on the sanctuary grounds in Fort Pierce. The cause was pancreatic cancer, said her sister Lee Asbeck. Save the Chimps, a privately financed nonprofit organization with an annual budget of about $4 million, currently cares for 282 chimpanzees, providing a kind of retirement home for chimps who were rescued from biomedical research or the entertainment business or who had been sold and raised as pets. Founded in 1997, it has two locations, the primary one the 150-acre tract, a former orange grove in Fort Pierce, just inland from the Atlantic, where 148 animals, divided among a series of three-acre islands separated by artificial waterways, can roam freely, cared for and fed by a staff of 46. Its other “campus,” once home to the Coulston Foundation, a notorious biomedical laboratory in Alamogordo, N.M., houses 134 more chimps. There they live in cages that have been modified — enlarged and made more comfortable — from those that existed when the site was owned by Coulston and they were largely storage bins for animals awaiting use in medical research. The chimps still in Alamogordo, many traumatized by their earlier treatment, are in the process of being socialized before being transferred to Fort Pierce. After the chimps’ years of captivity and essential isolation, the sanctuary’s operators say, they need to be introduced to one another and to get used to getting along in groups in order to survive with other chimps in the semi-wild environment of the Florida refuge. “The introductions have to happen one at a time; it takes a long time,” said Jen Feuerstein, Dr. Noon’s protégé and the interim director of the sanctuary. Dr. Noon, an anthropologist, was inspired by Jane Goodall, the groundbreaking primatologist who studied chimps in Tanzania for more than four decades. She founded Save the Chimps after the United States Air Force, which had begun using chimps as part of the space program in the 1950s and continued leasing them out to research laboratories, decided to leave the chimp trade altogether. Most of the remaining Air Force chimps — “surplus equipment,” they were called — were headed for Coulston, where a well-documented history of animal welfare violations testified to its institutional indifference to their suffering. Dr. Noon, with the support of Dr. Goodall and others, sued the Air Force for custody of the Coulston-bound chimps, at the same time raising the money to start the Fort Pierce sanctuary . After she and the Air Force settled out of court, the sanctuary’s first residents — 21 Air Force chimps — moved in in 2001. The next year, the Coulston Foundation declared bankruptcy, and with a grant of $3.7 million from the Arcus Foundation of Kalamazoo, Mich., Save the Chimps bought the laboratory land and its buildings and took over the care of its 266 animals. “Carole Noon was a true friend of chimpanzees,” Dr. Goodall said in an e-mail message. “She campaigned tirelessly on their behalf and helped so many move from bleak laboratory prisons to a joyous life in a sanctuary surrounded by those who love them.” Carole Jean Cooney was born in Portland, Ore., on July 13, 1949. Her father, William G. Cooney, was a lumber company executive and something of an adventurer who, when his three daughters were small girls, moved the family to an island in the South Pacific, where he ran a ship salvage operation. Eventually, the girls and their mother, Dorothy, moved to Honolulu, and from there, after a divorce, to Cleveland, where young Carole Jean went to school. She was an animal lover — and animal rights activist — from an early age. “I can tell you exactly when we knew,” said Ms. Asbeck, who recalled that her sister showed her true colors at the movies, during a screening of the 1955 animated film “Lady and the Tramp,” which told the story of a romance between a high-class cocker spaniel and an outcast, a mutt. “When the Tramp got carried to jail” — actually the dog pound — “she was sobbing so hard we had to carry her out of the theater,” Ms. Asbeck said. Ms. Noon earned a bachelor’s degree from Florida Atlantic University. She often said her career path was set when she heard Dr. Goodall give a lecture in 1984, and she went on to earn a master’s degree in anthropology and a doctorate in biological anthropology from the University of Florida. Her specialty was the socialization of captive chimpanzees, and over the years, she did much of her field research at the Chimfunshi Wildlife Orphanage in Zambia. An early marriage, to Michael Noon, ended in divorce; her middle initial derived from her maiden name, Cooney. In addition to Ms. Asbeck, who lives in Boca Raton, Fla., Dr. Noon is survived by another sister, Kay Shelton, of Leesburg, Fla. Dr. Noon said she was often asked why she spent so much time and energy caring for chimpanzees when children were going hungry. “I’m always taken aback by the question because I don’t view the world in two halves — eating chimps and starving children,” she said. She added, “Except for a few percent of DNA, they’re us.”

Monkeys and Apes
Cruelty to Animals
Deaths (Obituaries)
Noon Carole C.
Philanthropy
Rescues
Research
Florida
Save the Chimps


For Freshman Legislators, Washington Is No Texas

Abstract: Roger Williams is a car dealer and a former baseball player. He’s comfortable talking to strangers. He’s also a new member of Congress and was a major player in national fund-raising efforts for George W. Bush when Mr. Bush ran for president. Mr. Williams is new to Congress, but he knows his way around and knows a lot of the players. And he’s not the sort to record slights at the beginning of his tenure there. He gently deflects a question about his first impressions of Congress and about what kind of reception he received after winning in November. He also doesn’t offer any anecdotes about the Congressional welcome wagon. The 25th Congressional District wasn’t likely to elect a Democrat; in fact, it was designed to eliminate United States Representative Lloyd Doggett, Democrat of Austin, who ran in a friendlier district a few miles to the southeast and won. Mr. Williams wasn’t regarded as a guy in trouble in November, and he had time between the Republican primary and now to talk to some of his new colleagues before arriving in Washington for freshman orientation. Those new colleagues can be slow to thaw. In the whirlwind after his successful challenge of Representative Francisco Canseco, Republican of San Antonio, the Democrat Pete Gallego’s phone calls came mostly from friends, supporters and legislative colleagues in Texas. Marc Veasey, the new Democratic congressman from Fort Worth, wasn’t immediately besieged by calls from Washington’s 202 area code, either. It’s a small thing, but if you had a mother or father who made you write thank-you notes or told you to go toss a football with the new kids in school every year, it seems a little weird that several of the new members of Congress from Texas weren’t showered with greetings from their new workmates. Maybe it’s a difference in how lawmakers shop for allies and for votes in the nation’s capital. And maybe the calls came later and all the courtesies have been observed by now. In Texas, the shopping is different. Some issues break on partisan lines, with Democrats here and Republicans there. But many don’t. Public vouchers for private schools, for instance, is a favorite issue of some — but decidedly not all — conservatives. It’s an example of something that requires the combatants to find friends wherever they can, within their parties or without. In Austin this week, new legislators-elect were doing the same thing their Washington counterparts were doing. The freshmen were getting their offices, getting oriented, hiring for the session, finding furniture, getting ready for the show. Here’s a difference: some tables in the room where the Texas legislators met had Republicans at them — and Democrats. Washington is a different culture, with firmly drawn partisan lines. One new lawmaker tells a story of getting in line for security passes this week and finding that photographs were being taken of Democrats in one line and Republicans in the other. The tribes are strong in Austin, too, but not like that. In Washington, the eight Texas tenderfoots — three Republicans and five Democrats — are finding out where their offices are, how to hire staff, how payroll works, and some of the peculiarities and hazards of federal ethics laws. They’ll get their committee assignments soon enough, and blend into, or start to transform, a Congress that has an approval rating of 11 percent among Texas voters. They’ll count their votes in party caucuses and then vote in blocs. In Texas, legislators might start there, but they’ll get their 76 votes for any given issue wherever they can find them, starting with the votes for their rules and for the speaker of the House. They’ve already started bonding; older Texas lawmakers can still name many of their classmates — the people they were elected with — even when their politics are disparate. Most of Gov. Rick Perry’s legislative classmates, for instance, were Democrats — as he was when he got elected. It’s a system that still relies in some measure on camaraderie and friendship and temporary differences that don’t automatically result in permanent enmities. Sure, there are permanent enemies in Austin — it’s not Disneyland. But there’s still only one line for security photographs.

Roger Williams
House of Representatives
United States Politics and Government
Texas
Gallego Pete


Ghailani Called ‘Mass Murderer’ in Final Arguments

Abstract: Describing how a young Tanzanian man had joined a crew of terrorists inspired by Osama bin Laden’s call to attack Americans anywhere in the world, a federal prosecutor asked a jury in closing arguments on Monday to convict him for his role in the deadly bombings of two United States embassies in East Africa. The defendant, Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani , 36, is the first former Guantánamo Bay detainee to be tried in the civilian court system, and his case has raised a series of significant legal issues that could arise again if the Obama administration seeks to try other detainees in federal court. Mr. Ghailani has been charged with murder, conspiracy and other counts stemming from the nearly simultaneous 1998 bombings of the embassies in Nairobi, Kenya, and Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. The attacks killed 224 people and injured thousands. Calling the defendant “a mass murderer,” the prosecutor, Harry Chernoff, said Mr. Ghailani “sat here calmly, day in and day out, watching the trial proceed,” knowing what the jury now knew, that he “has the blood of hundreds on his hands.” In a daylong argument, Mr. Chernoff sharply attacked defense contentions that Mr. Ghailani had been duped into participating in the plot, and said he had played a key role in logistical preparations for the Tanzania attack. Those preparations, Mr. Chernoff told the jury, closely followed the advice of a Qaeda training manual, which listed “blasting and destroying the embassies” as a core Qaeda mission, and also emphasized the need for secrecy. “This is Ahmed Ghailani,” Mr. Chernoff declared, pointing at the defendant at the conclusion of his summation. “This is Al Qaeda. This is a terrorist. This is a killer.” In presenting their case, prosecutors were barred by the judge, Lewis A. Kaplan, from using a key witness who would have testified he sold Mr. Ghailani the TNT used in the Tanzania attack. He was learned about through interrogation while Mr. Ghailani was in C.I.A. custody after his capture in 2004, a period when his lawyers say he was tortured. But prosecutors were able to present dozens of other witnesses as well as forensic evidence during the trial that showed Mr. Ghailani was “all over the building of the bomb in Tanzania,” as Mr. Chernoff put it. He said Mr. Ghailani helped to buy the truck that was used to carry the bomb, as well as gas tanks that were placed inside the truck to intensify the blast. He cited evidence that Mr. Ghailani had stored detonators for the explosives, and that his cellphone was the “operational phone” for the East Africa cell of Al Qaeda, which carried out both attacks. “He wasn’t just with them. He was one of them,” Mr. Chernoff said. “He wasn’t along for the ride. He was putting the plans in motion, getting the bomb built.” And on Aug. 6, 1998, a day before the attacks, Mr. Ghailani used a false passport to flee to Pakistan with other senior Qaeda operatives, Mr. Chernoff said. They were all going to “some place thousands of miles away,” he said, “where they can congratulate each other on the massacre of innocents they had caused.” Mr. Ghailani’s lawyers will present a closing argument on Tuesday. In seeking to rebut the defense position that Mr. Ghailani, who was 24 at the time of the attacks, was an innocent and naïve man who was kept in the dark about the plot, Mr. Chernoff said there was “not a shred of evidence” that that was the case. “He still looks pretty young for his age,” he said, “but the way that Mr. Ghailani looks in no way reflects on the maturity and decision making that he brought” to his role in the plot. “He was not a child,” Mr. Chernoff added. “This is not a court of juvenile justice.”

Terrorism
Ghailani Ahmed Khalfan
Detainees


Rahm Emanuel

Abstract: As he prepares to take office, President-elect Barack Obama is relying on a small team of advisers who will lead his transition operation and help choose the members of a new Obama administration. Following is part of a series of profiles of potential members of the administration. Name: Rahm Emanuel Chosen for : Has accepted Mr. Obama's offer to be the White House chief of staff. Will bring to the job: An unusual hybrid of high-level experience as a top adviser to President Bill Clinton together with proven expertise as a Congressional leader and political strategist. Mr. Emanuel is also a close friend of Mr. Obama, a fellow Chicagoan. As the No. 4 Democrat in the House and an architect of the Democratic majority, Mr. Emanuel knows Congress from the inside out after winning his seat in 2002. In the Clinton administration, he was aggressive, frequently profane and instrumental in shaping domestic policy on issues like health care, welfare and trade. He earned the nickname Rahmbo for his determination and take-no-prisoners approach — an advantage when trying to bring a thorny issue to resolution, but a style that can be off-putting to those accustomed to gentility. In resigning his seat, Mr. Emanuel will be relinquishing a promising House career and aspirations to become speaker. Is linked to Obama by: His Second City roots (Mr. Emanuel represents a slice of the north side of Chicago and adjoining suburbs) and his ties to the family of Mayor Richard M. Daley, which has been a source of support, guidance and experience for Mr. Emanuel, who was initially known for his fund-raising skills. Mr. Obama has been close to Mr. Emanuel since arriving on Capitol Hill; Mr. Emanuel considers David Axelrod, Mr. Obama’s chief strategist, to be one of his closest friends. The three share a common policy view and would make a formidable triumvirate in the White House. Mr. Emanuel found himself under pressure during the Democratic presidential primaries to back Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton, given his relationship with her husband. But he stayed neutral and ultimately endorsed Mr. Obama. In his own words: “We’re going to put in front of the American people the fundamental question of this election: Who’s going to change the economic policies in Washington that resulted in a lower standard of living for middle-class families?” From an Obama campaign conference call with reporters on Sept. 12, 2008. Used to work as: An investment banker for three years after leaving the White House and before being elected to the House. He banked $16 million while handling mergers and acquisitions with an emphasis on utilities. In his youth, Mr. Emanuel badly cut a finger on a meat slicer while working at an Arby’s. The wound became infected, and he lost half of the middle finger on his right hand. The shortened digit is something of a trademark. Carries as baggage: Mr. Emanuel’s stint in high finance and his experience in the banking world opens him to some criticism of being too allied with Wall Street, not the image Democrats want to cultivate these days. Critics have asserted he was only able to succeed in the banking world because of his political connections. Since he is part of the Daley circle, Mr. Emanuel’s appointment as chief of staff could also create the appearance of a White House that is too Chicago heavy. His manner can also create enemies, and Mr. Emanuel has ruffled the feathers of many on Capitol Hill, particularly black and Hispanic lawmakers. Is otherwise known for: Training as a ballet dancer. And his brother, Ari Emanuel, a Hollywood agent, is the model for the abrasive agent Ari Gold in the HBO series “Entourage.” Biography includes : Born Nov. 29, 1959, in Chicago ... liberal arts degree from Sarah Lawrence College, masters from Northwestern ... married to Amy Rule, three children ... a regular swimmer and a voracious reader, using his hours aboard airplanes to consume books ... served briefly as a civilian volunteer on an Israeli military base during the Persian Gulf war of 1991.

United States Politics and Government
Presidential Election of 2008
Emanuel Rahm
Obama Barack


City’s Leading Choice to Run Downtown Heliport Puts a Former City Official in Charge

Abstract: The company that New York City chose to operate a heliport near Wall Street revealed on Monday that it would place a former city official in charge of the facility, despite criticism that it was getting the contract through political connections. At a public hearing on Monday, representatives of three local aviation companies complained about the city Economic Development Corporation’s decision to sign a 10-year contract for the Downtown Manhattan Heliport with FirstFlight, a company based near Elmira, N.Y., that has never operated a busy urban heliport. But neither FirstFlight executives nor city officials said anything at the hearing, held by the city’s Franchise and Concession Review Committee, to dispel the criticism that the company had ties to City Hall. Instead, Ron Ricciardi, the vice chairman of FirstFlight, said that Robert Grotell, who was once the senior aviation official for the Economic Development Corporation, would manage the heliport on an interim basis. Mr. Ricciardi also disclosed that Mr. Grotell, who also served as a city transportation official under Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg and his predecessor, Rudolph W. Giuliani, was the architect of the company’s successful bid for the heliport. That declaration fanned the discontent simmering among losing bidders and operators of helicopter tours in the city. One of the bidders, Linden Airport Management Corporation, has sued the development corporation in federal court, contending that its selection process was unfair and “based on political motivation.” Paul P. Dudley, the president of Linden, which operates a municipal airport in New Jersey, asked the review committee to reject FirstFlight because it had no experience operating a heliport and because, he contended, its bid was inferior to Linden’s. FirstFlight offered to pay at least $1.2 million in the first year of the contract, with the rent rising by about 4 percent annually, according to a summary from the review committee. Representatives of two sightseeing tour operators — Helicopter Flight Services and New York Helicopter — that use the downtown heliport also asked the committee to overturn the selection of FirstFlight. The target of their criticism was Alvin S. Trenk, a director of First Flight, who owns Air Pegasus, a company that runs another city heliport, at the west end of 30th Street. John Kjekstad, president of Helicopter Flight Services, said Mr. Trenk should not be involved because he also operates a sightseeing service. “To have our competitor be our landlord, which I would think is a conflict of interest, would be very difficult,” he said. Patricia Ornst, an official of the development corporation, attended the hearing but declined to respond to the complaints about FirstFlight. After the hearing, a spokeswoman for the development corporation said that it “believes that it has selected the best proposal based on the qualifications and the criteria specified” in its request for proposals. Mr. Grotell last worked for the city in 2004, when he was deputy commissioner of transportation; he is now an aviation consultant.


Pittsburgh Has Long Been a Special Home to Hockey

Abstract: PITTSBURGH — If Minnesota is the State of Hockey, if Detroit is Hockeytown and if Buffalo is the City of Hockey, then surely this city at the confluence of three rivers is Hockeytahn, as they say here in their singular drawl. And nothing distills the long, stop-and-start history of hockey in Pittsburgh like the Duquesne Gardens wall. Pittsburgh will host the N.H.L. Winter Classic at Heinz Field on Saturday, if the weather cooperates. It will be the newest, shiniest stage for American hockey’s biggest annual one-day event, in a city whose Penguins draw higher television ratings, sell more merchandise and have more Web site traffic than any other N.H.L. team in the United States. “Our fans are sophisticated enough to know how lucky we are to have seen Mario Lemieux , Paul Coffey, Jaromir Jagr , Sidney Crosby , Evgeni Malkin and all the others here over the last three decades,” said David Morehouse, the president of the Penguins and a Pittsburgh native. “We’ve had 13 scoring champions in 21 years.” Hockey runs deep in Pittsburgh. It is where the game was first played regularly indoors on artificial ice, at the luxurious Schenley Park Casino from 1895 until it burned down in late 1896. It was home to the first professional hockey league anywhere in the world, the Western Pennsylvania Hockey League, which by 1902 was luring players from Canada, where professionalism was prohibited. The future Hall of Famers Riley Hern, Alf Smith, Bruce Stuart and Hod Stuart played for pay in Pittsburgh, eventually forcing the Canadian leagues to go pro in 1907 — a development that led directly to the formation of the N.H.L. in 1917. And it is where the United States Olympic hockey team was born in 1920, when Roy Schooley, a Canadian who stayed in Pittsburgh, put together an 11-player squad that won silver at the Antwerp Games, in the sport’s Olympic debut. The Western Pennsylvania league, the Olympic team and the Pittsburgh Pirates, a Roaring Twenties N.H.L. club briefly owned by the New York bootlegger Bill Dwyer, were housed at the Duquesne Gardens, a trolley car barn in the Oakland neighborhood that was converted to a civic auditorium and ice rink in 1899. The Gardens lasted until 1956, when it was torn down to make way for an apartment building. But part of a wall was left standing, incorporated into a restaurant in the building. That was the historic wall Jim Kubus rescued in 2008. “I found out the apartment building was being renovated, and I had 48 hours to do something before the wall would be destroyed,” said Kubus, the editor of pittsburghhockey.net , a local history site. He said he and his brother “went in and took the bricks.” For safekeeping, Kubus moved the Duquesne Gardens bricks to a location they kept secret. After the Gardens was torn down in 1956, Pittsburgh had to wait until 1961 for hockey to return with the opening of the Civic Arena, later the Mellon Arena. The N.H.L. returned to Pittsburgh in 1967 with the founding of the Penguins. “We didn’t draw very well the first year,” said Jack Riley, 91, the Penguins’ first general manager. “I remember one crowd as small as 3,000 for a midweek game against the Oakland Seals.” The Penguins tried anything to draw fans, including putting an actual penguin on the ice during intermissions. It died a month into that first season. The Penguins were averaging fewer than 7,000 fans when Lemieux arrived in 1983. His magical career and two Stanley Cup titles sparked another Pittsburgh hockey revival. But in 1998 the Penguins declared bankruptcy, and Lemieux bought the team. By the time he retired from playing for good in 2006, Pittsburgh was on the verge of losing hockey again. Lemieux was threatening to move the team to another city unless Mellon Arena was replaced. It finally was this season by the Consol Energy Center. And in that new building, in a bar called the Captain Morgan Lounge, is that small section of wall from the Duquesne Gardens. “I got in touch with the Penguins and told them I had the last part of the wall from the old Gardens,” Kubus said. He gave a brick to Morehouse, and that sealed it — a piece of 19th-century hockey in Pittsburgh would live on in 21st-century Hockeytahn. “We’re well aware of the long legacy of Pittsburgh hockey,” Morehouse said. “We’re cognizant that Pittsburgh has kind of transformed from a good hockey town that has had its ups and downs to a great hockey town.” As evidence, Morehouse cites the growth of hockey after the arrival of Lemieux, when the number of area rinks ballooned to 33 from 6, resulting in the first handful of Pittsburgh natives playing in the N.H.L. And now, again, the explosive growth since the arrival of Crosby in 2005: according to Scarborough Research, the Penguins have doubled their fan base in that period to 1.2 million, half the regional population. “We have an embarrassment of riches here,” Kubus said. That abundance will increase on Saturday, when Heinz Field joins the Schenley Park Casino, Mellon Arena, Consol Energy Center and that piece of wall from the Duquesne Gardens — all homes of hockey in Hockeytahn.

Hockey Ice
National Hockey League
Pittsburgh Penguins
Lemieux Mario
Coffey Paul
Jagr Jaromir
Crosby Sidney
Malkin Evgeni
Pittsburgh (Pa)


Liberty Statue Holds Its Own Against Las Vegas Facsimiles

Abstract: LAS VEGAS — For the record, as if that mattered, Frédéric Auguste Bartholdi was never a tourist here, having died in 1904, a year before the city’s founding as a whistle stop. But the man and the city are now linked in a way that Bartholdi, a Frenchman, would surely never have imagined — the United States Postal Service, for a new stamp featuring Lady Liberty, chose an image not of the original statue in New York Harbor but of a replica at the traffic-choked corner of Tropicana Avenue and Las Vegas Boulevard. The service is sticking with the nip-and-tuck facsimile, a close-up of Vegas Liberty’s face, because it looks good. An up-close visit on Friday confirmed this. Compared with the original, it appears, in fact, a lot less weather-beaten, much pout-ier, and, if such a description were ever appropriate for a national monument, far more sultry, and, frankly, sexy. Choice words would surely have sputtered from M. Bartholdi’s curled Alsatian lip — imposteur, perhaps, or maybe some variation of fromage. The visitor reaction to Vegas Liberty on a recent evening here was more varied, ranging from outrage to indifference to skepticism about the nature of reality and efforts to represent it. But mostly outrage. “That don’t look nothin’ like the real one,” said Vincenzo DelConti, 30, a nightlife promoter originally from Jamestown, N.Y., as he peered at Vegas Liberty. Mr. DelConti wears sunglasses at night. Marcia Zillinger, 51, a nurse visiting from Phillipsburg, Kan., said, “My family would be upset because they were immigrants at Ellis Island” when they arrived from Germany in the 1890s. “It’s not the Statue of Liberty ,” she said. “A fake is a fake.” Truth to tell, however, it is hard to get noticed, let alone indignant, here in the City of the Short Attention Span. After a while, visitors and locals alike ho-hum the faux Sphinx and mini-Pyramid of Luxor; the spotlighted Roman Forum and Caesar’s “Palace”; the moatlike canals of Venice with their amusement-park gondolas; even the two-thirds scale Arc de Triomphe and the half-scale Eiffel Tower. And so it is with the New York-New York Hotel and Casino, built in 1997, where Vegas Liberty lifts her lamp beside the golden door of entertainment. It has a miniature Manhattan skyline, with copies of Grand Central Terminal and the Chrysler and Empire State Buildings. A full-size roller coaster runs through it. There are hints of other boroughs. There’s a Nathan’s hot dogs and a Luna Park arcade recalling Brooklyn, and a Staten Island Ballroom. But, mostly, there is the Statue of Liberty. There are depictions of torches and crowns and gowns everywhere; hand-held desktop versions of the statue; and a woman-size Lady Liberty made from thousands of jelly beans. The statue of contention was built by Primadonna Resorts, a predecessor of MGM Resorts International, the current owner of New York-New York . Vegas Liberty is about two-fifths the height of the original (150 feet versus 350 feet), weighs far less (150 tons versus 27,000 tons) and is way younger (about 15 years compared with 127). It is also made of less stern stuff, mostly carved Styrofoam coated with reinforced fiberglass and exterior drywall, rather than the iron supports and beaten copper of the original. Most of which matters not to people asked for an interview on an elevated walkway within hailing distance of Vegas Liberty. “It’s beautiful,” said Mike Dinkha, 47, elongating the word. “We’re in New York-New York, bro, it doesn’t matter,” said Mr. Dinkha, who sells Jell-O shots and other drinks near an entrance to the hotel and who has worked near the statue for nine years. Alex Henes, 21, a photography major visiting from Ithaca College in New York, said the issue of which image was used for the stamp was inconsequential because it involved outmoded technology. “It’s a stamp to me,” said Mr. Henes, originally from Louisville, Ky. “We’re not the snail-mail generation; we’re the ‘e-mail, get it out as quick as you can’ generation. If it was 50 years ago, I would take issue with it.” Doug Jessup, 40, a firefighter from Richmond, Va., was also dismissive of any controversy over the stamp image, but for a different reason. “It doesn’t matter that it’s not the real one,” he said. “Wouldn’t anything be a replica anyway? It’s still only a picture, a representation in any case.” He then alluded to the firefighters, the police officers and the other first responders who died at the World Trade Center on Sept. 11, 2001. “It’s still going to stand for freedom,” Mr. Jessup said. “It’s still going to represent liberty. It’s not being defaced. It’s still the Statue of Liberty.”

New York-New York Hotel and Casino
Las Vegas (Nev)
Statue of Liberty
Postal Service (US)
Stamps (Postal)


Speed Date on the Fifth Avenue Bus

Abstract: Dear Diary: Three years ago I gave up my Village apartment and moved to a small town in Massachusetts. Even so, if someone asks me where I’m from I say New York. A few days before Thanksgiving, I come back and go to the Met. Afterward I take a bus down Fifth, a No. 4 headed for Pennsylvania Station. The bus is jammed, though silent, as I push my way to the back. A woman takes a child on her lap, a kindness to my white beard, and I sit down. A woman gets on and sits across from me. She’s around 40, has warm skin, and wears a wool hat and a large coat with bold stripes like a zebra. My New York genes kick in. I can talk to anyone. Me: “Nice coat.” She: “Thanks” (a smile). “Do you know how far down it goes before it turns?” Me: “It’s headed for Penn Station. Somewhere around 34th Street.” She: “Thank you. I get Penn Station and Grand Central mixed up. I shouldn’t but I do.” Me: “You don’t look like a tourist.” The silence is broken and now the bus is listening. This woman and I smile, and I feel the bus does the same as it passes 42nd Street, and then past colorful Christmas windows, one full of dancing gingerbreads. The bus stops. She gets up. I’m surprised. Me: “Your stop? I thought we were going to Penn Station.” I lift an open palm in protest as the doors open. She smiles, squeezes my fingers goodbye and steps down into the dark. I call after her. Me: “What about us?” Back from the dark : “We were quick!”


Waitz Is RememberedIn Tribute at Oslo Stadium

Abstract: Grete Waitz, the nine-time winner of the New York City Marathon , was remembered as a modest champion and a trailblazer for female runners at a tribute in Oslo attended by hundreds of fans, sports officials and some of her former competitors. She died at age 57 on April 19 after a six-year battle with cancer. More than 1,000 fans and dignitaries, including Norway’s crown prince, prime minister and sports officials, attended the tribute at Bislett stadium, where Waitz trained and raced in her youth.

Running
New York City Marathon
Waitz Grete
Marathon Running
Norway


SooBin Kim Grabs Lead in Women’s Australian Open

Abstract: SooBin Kim shot a course-record nine-under 63 to leave Lydia Ko, the defending champion and top-ranked women’s player, seven strokes behind in the Women’s Australian Open in Adelaide. Kim had a three-stroke lead over Casey Grice and Caroline Masson.


N.B.A. Talks Yield Progress but No Breakthrough Yet

Abstract: Pushing aside ultimatums, threats and caustic rhetoric, N.B.A. owners and players returned to the bargaining table Wednesday for a 12-hour session that produced modest movement, but nothing close to a final deal. The talks ended around 1 a.m. Thursday and will resume at noon. “The fact that we don’t have a deal obviously let’s you know that there’s still a lot of work to be done on the system,” said Derek Fisher, the players union president. “We’re going to meet again tomorrow to give it our best effort, but we’re not sure if that will be enough.” In theory, the players were working against an ultimatum: to accept the N.B.A.’s most recent proposal by 5 p.m. Wednesday, or have it replaced by a significantly worse offer. But once talks resumed, the parties effectively “stopped the clock,” Commissioner David Stern said. Failure to reach a deal in the next day or so could still trigger the N.B.A.’s “reset” proposal, which would threaten the rest of the season. But as long as talks continue, there is hope on both sides that a deal can be struck, and the four-month lockout resolved. “I would not read into this optimism or pessimism,” Stern said. “We just continue to negotiate as we continue to negotiate.” He added, “We’re not failing, and we’re not succeeding.” The potential parameters for a deal changed Tuesday, when the union signaled that it might accept the N.B.A.’s proposed 50-50 split of revenues, if the league would compromise in other areas. That move put the onus back on the owners and pushed the parties back to the table, just three days after talks collapsed. The union wants the league to drop or modify several provisions that would limit free-agent movement. The league wants to ban luxury tax-paying teams from making sign-and-trade deals and from using the full midlevel exception, worth $5 million. The union fears that those rules, combined with a more punitive tax, would strangle the free-agent market. Any further economic concessions from the union are now predicated on the league moving on those issues. Yet there was only incremental movement, despite the 12 hours of talks, according to a person briefed on the negotiations. The players have been earning 57 percent of league revenues and have already offered to reduce that share to 51 percent. If they move to 50, it would represent a $280 million annual reduction — and a giveback of approximately $3 billion over a 10-year deal. The union believes that should warrant a compromise on the system issues. Asked if the league showed that flexibility, Fisher said, “Not as much as we like. But that’s why we’re here.” He added, “Because we believe once the dollars are set, the system is just a matter of working conditions for players and having choices and rights within the system. It’s not about getting more dollars for players once the economic split is resolved.” Despite the union’s gesture, league officials are resistant to trading dollars for free-agency rules. “The competitive issues are independent of the economic issues,” said the deputy commissioner Adam Silver, “and our goal is to have a system in which all 30 teams are competing for championships; and, if well managed, they have an opportunity to break even or make a profit. We don’t see the ability to break even or make a profit as a tradeoff for the ability to field a competitive team.” Any deal will almost certainly be predicated on a 50-50 split of revenues. Stern is already dealing with a backlash from hardline faction of owners who wanted to cap players at 47 percent. “If they’re going to get a deal, it’s going to be at 50-50,” said one person involved in the talks. “Ownership is willing to lose the season rather than go any higher.” That leaves the union with little room to make a deal. This round of negotiations is being conducted with small groups on each side. Stern was joined by Silver, the San Antonio Spurs owner Peter Holt — who heads the N.B.A.’s labor relations committee — and the league’s top two lawyers, Rick Buchanan and Dan Rube. Representing the union were Fisher and the executive director Billy Hunter , along with the union’s outside counsel Jeff Kessler, its outside economist, Kevin Murphy, and its lead attorney, Ron Klempner. Although a group of strident owners, most of them from small markets, have been dictating the N.B.A.’s position, Stern has the authority to make the necessary compromises, according to a person involved in the talks on the league side. “David is going to do what needs to be done,” the person said. The union has its own concerns. A disillusioned faction of players and agents is already collecting signatures on a petition to dissolve the union, an extreme measure that would shift the battle to the courts and probably prolong the crisis. If those players are upset with the terms of a handshake deal, they could attempt to defeat it at the ballot box and continue the decertification effort. A month of games has been canceled so far. Based on the league’s need for a four-week preparation period — to finalize the deal, hold free agency and training camps — the first two weeks of December are already threatened. REBOUNDS Jeffrey Kessler, the chief negotiator for the players union, apologized Wednesday for making a racially charged comment about N.B.A. owners. Discussing the taut labor negotiations between the league and the union, he had told The Washington Post that the league was treating the players “like plantation workers.” “The comments that I made to The Washington Post Monday night took place quite late, at the end of a lengthy interview,” Kessler said Wednesday. “And looking back, I believe that the words I used were inappropriate, and I am going to communicate my apologies for that to the N.B.A. and to the commissioner, who I will call and indicate that I apologize for that choice of words. The important thing for the parties is to get together and try to make a deal, and we have to put aside any other types of distractions.”

Basketball
Lockouts
National Basketball Assn
Fisher Derek
Stern David
Hunter Billy
Silver Adam


Barclays Deputy Chairman Michael Rake Is Preparing to Depart

Abstract: LONDON — Michael Rake, the Barclays deputy chairman and senior independent director, is preparing to leave the bank’s board this year and take over as chairman of Worldpay, a British payment processor. Worldpay said on Wednesday that Mr. Rake would become nonexecutive chairman on Sept. 1, subject to regulatory approval. He will succeed John Allan, who previously announced plans to step down as chairman in May and who will remain as a director of the company. “I’ve been very impressed by the Worldpay story so far and am looking forward to being part of the journey ahead,” Mr. Rake said in a news release announcing his appointment. “The payments industry has never been more exciting and Worldpay is at the forefront of this innovation.” In a statement, Barclays said that Mr. Rake intended to stay on as deputy chairman and senior independent director until “at least the end of 2015.” “If and when he stands down from the Barclays board, a new senior independent director will of course have been appointed,” the bank said. People familiar with the discussions, but not authorized to discuss the matter publicly, said Mr. Rake was expected to leave the Barclays board at the end of the year. Mr. Rake’s impending departure was reported late Tuesday by The Times of London. The news came just over a week after Antony Jenkins was ousted as the Barclays chief executive, a move that the bank said was orchestrated by its independent directors, including Mr. Rake. Mr. Jenkins took over as chief executive in 2012 as Barclays was reeling from a rate-rigging scandal involving the London interbank offered rate, or Libor. After the scandal, Mr. Jenkins moved quickly to change the bank’s culture and exit riskier business lines, but he was ultimately forced out last week after directors lost confidence in his ability to improve returns to shareholders. John McFarlane, who replaced David Walker as the Barclays chairman this year, is expected to assume the role of executive chairman on Friday. Mr. McFarlane will serve as the bank’s top executive until a replacement for Mr. Jenkins is found. Mr. Rake has been a Barclays director since January 2008 and its deputy chairman since July 2012. He spent more than 30 years with the accounting firm KPMG, including serving as senior partner of its British business and chairman of KPMG International. He is the chairman of the telecommunications company BT Group and president of the Confederation of British Industry, a trade group. Mr. Rake will join Worldpay as it prepares for a potential initial public offering this year. The company provides payment processing and other services to businesses. In 2014, the company processed 370 billion pounds, or about $575 billion, in transactions and recorded revenue of £3.65 billion. It was previously owned by the Royal Bank of Scotland and sold to the private equity firms Bain Capital and Advent International in 2010.

Barclays
Michael Rake
Worldpay
Board of directors
Antony P Jenkins
David Alan Walker
Banking and Finance
John McFarlane
Appointments and Executive Changes


Cardinals’ Pujols Has Fractured Wrist and Could Miss 6 Weeks

Abstract: St. Louis Cardinals first baseman Albert Pujols will be out an estimated six weeks with a fractured left wrist, leaving baseball without a three-time most valuable player in a devastating blow for a franchise hit hard by injuries this season. The team announced the results of a magnetic resonance imaging test and a CT scan Monday, one day after Pujols was injured during a home game against Kansas City. The team said that Pujols had a nondisplaced fracture of his left radius and that his arm was in a splint. General Manager John Mozeliak referred to the injury as a fractured wrist. Mozeliak said he hoped to have Pujols back by the beginning of August. Pujols is hitting .279 and was heating up after a slow start. The team said his left shoulder was sore, but no structural damage was found. Pujols was hurt Sunday after Wilson Betemit hit a chopper up the middle off Cardinals starter Jamie Garcia. Second baseman Pete Kozma backhanded the ball and made a jump throw to first, pulling Pujols off the bag toward home. As the slugger tried for a tag, Betemit ran into his glove hand, and Pujols went to the ground in pain. “He hit me on my wrist and my shoulder,” Pujols said afterward. “He kind of jammed me back. It’s the toughest play to make as a first baseman. It’s a bang-bang play. I saw the replay a couple of times, but I didn’t really want to look at it.” Pujols, 31, is due to enter free agency this fall after rejecting a multiyear contract extension at the start of spring training. He will be placed on the 15-day disabled list for the third time in his career, and the Cardinals said they would announce a roster move before Tuesday night’s game against the Philadelphia Phillies. Lance Berkman took over at first base after the injury and could serve as the long-term fill-in at the position. He began the year as a full-time outfielder for the first time since 2004. St. Louis was tied for first place in the National League Central despite the latest in a string of injuries. Pujols was hurt three days after the cleanup hitter Matt Holliday returned from a quadriceps injury that landed him on the 15-day disabled list. Holliday also missed time after an appendectomy. Third baseman David Freese, second baseman Skip Schumaker and pitcher Kyle McClellan have also missed significant time for a franchise that early in spring training lost the 20-game winner Adam Wainwright for the season. RED SOX 14, PADRES 5 Adrian Gonzalez drove in three runs with a single and a double in a 10-run seventh inning against his former team, and hot-hitting Boston rolled to a win over visiting San Diego. CUBS 6, WHITE SOX 3 Carlos Pena hit a three-run homer and Starlin Castro drove in three runs as the Cubs rallied to beat the host White Sox. White Sox Manager Ozzie Guillen was ejected in the sixth inning after apparently arguing that a ball hit near the plate by Alexei Ramirez should have been ruled foul. ANGELS 2, MARLINS 1 Jered Weaver pitched seven innings and Los Angeles spoiled 80-year-old Jack McKeon’s return to the dugout with a win over host Florida, which tied a franchise record with its 11th consecutive loss. IN OTHER GAMES Tim Hudson pitched eight scoreless inning and hit his second career home run as host Atlanta beat Toronto, 2-0. ... Josh Hamilton’s two-run triple helped Texas to an 8-3 win over Houston in Arlington. ... Jake Arrieta (9-4) moved into a tie for the American League lead in wins as Baltimore topped host Pittsburgh, 8-3. ... Jason Giambi hit a three-run homer as visiting Colorado handed Cleveland an 8-7 loss, its first defeat in seven interleague games this season. ...Jeff Niemann pitched six scoreless innings in his return from a back injury as Tampa Bay beat host Milwaukee, 8-4.

Baseball
Sports Injuries
St Louis Cardinals
Pujols Albert


Celtics Beat 76ers With Third-Quarter Eruption

Abstract: BOSTON — In a series characterized by striking ebbs and flows, one constant has remained: the team that wins the third quarter wins the game. That stood true in the first four games of the Eastern Conference semifinal series between the Boston Celtics and the Philadelphia 76ers , and it was driven home again, forcefully, Monday night. Trailing by 3 points after a spotty first half, the Celtics erupted in the third quarter, led by Brandon Bass, who scored 18 of his 27 points in the quarter, 2 more than the 76ers. The explosion, coupled with a stifling defense and a host of Philadelphia turnovers, turned the game around and enabled the Celtics to take a 101-85 victory and a 3-2 series lead. Game 6 is Wednesday night in Philadelphia. Bass might qualify for most unlikely hero, having averaged only 10.1 points a game this postseason before Monday night. But he was unstoppable in a torrid third quarter, connecting on six of seven field goals and all six of his free throws. Rajon Rondo dished out 7 of his 14 assists in the period as the Celtics outscored Philadelphia by 28-16, shooting 61 percent and forcing six turnovers. “I thought we had a good grip on the game,” Philadelphia Coach Doug Collins said. “It went downhill quickly.” Boston trailed, 57-53, when it got fuel from four different sources: a clear-path foul on Paul Pierce, which resulted in two missed free throws by Andre Iguodala; a highly questionable offensive foul call on Kevin Garnett, which got the crowd involved; five Philadelphia turnovers in less than three minutes; and the aggression of Bass, who was hitting jump shots and rattling home dunks with equal proficiency. “It’s a blessing for me,” said Bass, whose previous playoff best was 19 points. “I’ve been working at it for a long time, and I’m glad it finally paid off.” Garnett (20 points) started a 10-0 run with a 17-foot jumper, and then Bass accounted for the next 6 points. A Ray Allen layup off a turnover completed the run. The Celtics did not trail again, turning back a 5-0 Philadelphia spurt with a quarter-closing 12-4 run. It was the kind of quarter Celtics Coach Doc Rivers had hoped to see after a so-so first half. “We weren’t right in the first half,” Rivers said. “You could just feel it. I don’t know what the turning point was. We needed something to ignite us. I don’t know what did it, but something did.” Or someone. While Bass was the undisputed finisher in the third quarter, Rondo was the unquestioned distributor. He assisted on four of Bass’s six baskets. He also had a steal in the 10-0 Boston run and was his usual disruptive presence on defense. Elton Brand, who led the Sixers with 19 points, simply said: “It starts with Rondo. You have to stop Rondo.” Rivers said he thought Rondo played as well in the second half as he had played all year. “I thought his will, his leadership, we needed it,” Rivers said. “And he gave it to us. He played with a force.” Leading by 9 points after three quarters, the Celtics blew the game open in the fourth, scoring the first 6 points and holding the Sixers scoreless for more than four minutes. Boston led by as many as 20 in the quarter. Pierce had 16 points, and Greg Stiemsma had 10. Stiemsma also had three blocked shots, two in the pivotal third quarter. Boston also had a big advantage at the free-throw line, attempting 33 foul shots to the Sixers’ 16. The Celtics prevailed despite the absence of guard Avery Bradley, who has been battling a left shoulder injury. Bradley has dislocated the shoulder three times in the postseason, the last time during Game 4 on Friday. Allen, who had lost his starting job to Bradley, returned to the starting lineup for the first time since April 4 and finished with 5 points.

Philadelphia 76ers
Boston Celtics
Basketball
Playoff Games


Get Ready, Internet. The Pope Has Joined Instagram.

Abstract: In the three years since Pope Francis joined Twitter , he has attracted more than 25 million followers in nine languages. On Saturday, the pontiff added a new app to his social media mix: The pope joined Instagram. When most people join a new social media site, they find their first friends and followers by scrolling through their email address books or cellphone contact lists. But because this is Pope Francis, his arrival on Instagram was heralded several days in advance by a Vatican news release. “Instagram will help recount the papacy through images, to enable all those who wish to accompany and know more about Pope Francis’ pontificate to encounter his gestures of tenderness and mercy,” Msgr. Dario E. Viganò, prefect of the Vatican’s Secretariat for Communications, said in a statement . The pope, formerly known as Jorge Mario Bergoglio, now goes by the Instagram name @Franciscus, which is Latin for “Francis.” According to Vatican Radio , the pontiff’s decision to join Instagram comes one month after he met with the company’s chief executive, Kevin Systrom. His first picture was uploaded at about 12:25 p.m. Saturday. It showed the pope in prayer, and was accompanied by the words “Pray for me” in nine languages. Though new traditions are slow in coming at an institution as old as the Roman Catholic Church, it appears that a standard operating procedure for social media has begun to emerge at the Vatican. The pope does not compose his own posts on Twitter, for instance, and he likewise will not personally snap the photos that are uploaded to his Instagram account. He won’t personally upload them, either. That will be the job of the social media department of the Secretariat for Communications (yes, the Vatican has a social media department), which will manage the account, choosing pictures from the photographic service of L’Osservatore Romano , the Vatican’s daily newspaper. “In this way we can show those aspects of closeness and inclusion that Pope Francis lives every day,” Monsignor Viganò said in the statement. The pope’s Instagram account is separate from the official Vatican account , which is run by the Pontifical Council for Social Communications, a part of the Roman curia that also runs the Vatican’s official Twitter and Facebook accounts. The pontiff’s embrace of social media is in keeping with the forward-looking aspects of his papacy, which have earned the 79-year-old Aregentine the nickname “ cool Pope ” in certain quarters. He has posed for selfies, taken up residence in a modest guesthouse instead of the Apostolic Palace and pressed for the church to be more open to the world outside the Vatican walls. And now he will join the conversation on Instagram, one picture at a time.

Social Media
Catholic Church
Pope Francis
Instagram
Mobile Apps
L'Osservatore Romano


Botched Surgeries Lead to Inquiry

Abstract: PROVIDENCE, R.I., Nov. 29 (AP) — The chief of the neurosurgery department at Rhode Island Hospital has stepped aside while officials investigate three incidents in which surgeons operated on the wrong side of a patient’s head. The chief, Dr. John A. Duncan, will see patients but will not run the department, a spokeswoman for the hospital’s parent company, Lifespan, said Thursday. Since February, three brain surgeons at the hospital have operated on the wrong side of a patient’s head; the most recent incident was on Friday. In two cases, the doctors did not realize the errors until after they had opened the skull. An elderly man died in August a few weeks after a surgeon mistakenly operated on the wrong side of his head. Dr. David R. Gifford, director of the Rhode Island Department of Health, said that an autopsy was pending but that the department believed that the man’s death was not connected to the surgery. In the other two cases, the patients are fine, the department has said. The hospital was fined $50,000 this week, reprimanded and ordered to make a series of changes that include improved training and additional safeguards. Rhode Island Hospital is the largest hospital in the state and serves as the teaching hospital for the Alpert Medical School at Brown University.

Medicine and Health
Surgery and Surgeons
Fines (Penalties)


From a Leisurely Trot to a Showdown at Belmont

Abstract: Each morning, Casino Drive is saddled up and ridden along the backside of Belmont Park. For an hour, he darts between barns, sends puffs of dirt in the air as he clip-clops down shady paths and garners admiring stares from the most hard-bitten of horsemen. When Casino Drive, a chestnut colt, finally hits the racetrack for a gallop, he swallows the ground with his giant strides. When he skips off the track, the tour of the nooks and crannies of the grand old racetrack starts over for another hour. “It is the way we do things at home in Japan,” said Nobutaka Tada, racing manager for Casino Drive’s owner, Hidetoshi Yamamoto. “We warm up. We cool down. We are never in a hurry. We try to make sure he is a happy horse.” By 6:38 p.m. Saturday, the world will know whether this leisurely stamina building has paid off, and if Casino Drive was, indeed, the formidable obstacle that many expect him to be on Big Brown ’s path to fame. By then the 140th running of the Belmont Stakes will be in the books, and thoroughbred racing will have its 12th Triple Crown champion. Or not. Big Brown’s trainer, Rick Dutrow, makes no bones about what he believes destiny holds for his Kentucky Derby and Preakness champion, or how he feels about the nine other horses that are expected to enter the starting gate with his colt for the grueling mile-and-a-half marathon known as the Test of the Champion. “I feel like it’s actually a foregone conclusion,” Dutrow said. “To me, I just see the horses he’s in with and I see our horse, so I expect him to win this race.” Last June, however, Yamamoto — the chief executive of a company that develops, designs and produces video games and slot machines — had a vision about what destiny held for Casino Drive. He watched on television as Rags to Riches ran down Curlin in the stretch to become the third filly and the first in 102 years to win the Belmont. Immediately, Yamamoto telephoned his trainer, Kazuo Fujisawa, and told him that Casino Drive, a gangly 2-year-old colt that he had paid $950,000 for as a yearling, was bound for New York. It was hardly an impetuous call. Rags to Riches’s mother, Better Than Honour, gave birth not only to Casino Drive but also to Jazil, the 2006 Belmont winner. Why couldn’t another of her offspring win the race? “We did not bring Casino Drive here,” Tada said. “His pedigree led us here.” Yamamoto and Fujisawa, Japan’s leading trainer the past two years, may have been in a hurry to get here, but Casino Drive was not. The son of Mineshaft, he was a rambunctious colt at 2 and prone to minor injuries that kept him from the track. He was unveiled in grand fashion in February, when he ran off with an 11 ½-length victory in a mile-and-an-eighth race. Fujisawa had hoped to start Casino Drive at least once more in Japan. Instead, an influenza outbreak in kept the colt moving from racetrack to training centers to escape illness. He also endured a lengthy quarantine to prove he was disease free before shipping to Belmont on April 30. Ten days later, Casino Drive finally got his second start, winning the Grade II Peter Pan Stakes by five and three-quarter lengths. His jockey that afternoon, Kent Desormeaux, seemed mightily impressed. Desormeaux, after all, is Big Brown’s regular rider. “We’ve got our hands full,” Desormeaux said, referring to Casino Drive. “He’s the only colt around who can stride with Big Brown. It’s going to be a great race.” Edgar Prado picked up the mount on Casino Drive. Prado has ridden in eight Belmont Stakes, winning in 2002 with Sarava and in 2004 with Birdstone, ruining the Triple Crown bids of War Emblem and Smarty Jones. In both instances, Prado was on long shots — Sarava was 71-1 and Birdstone 36-1. He will not be on one Saturday as Casino Drive figures to be the second betting choice. Dutrow is having no talk of an upset. He says he will be running to the winner’s circle before Casino Drive hits the quarter pole. “The Japanese horse has so much to prove,” Dutrow said. “I don’t know if he’s on the top of his game training here. I would not depend on this horse for second.” Tada, who arrived here with Casino Drive, has taken Dutrow’s brash taunts in stride. “I enjoy listening to his comments,” he said. “It sounds like he knows our horse more than us.” Tada will also decide soon whether to enter another of Yamamoto’s horses, Spark Candle, in the Belmont to ensure a fast pace, and perhaps soften Big Brown for Casino Drive’s late run. In the Peter Pan, Spark Candle pressed Mint Lane through a rapid three-quarters of a mile in 1:10.47 before fading to sixth. “Big Brown is a great horse, and we are honored to be running with him in a great race like the Belmont Stakes,” Tada said. “We’re also trying to win.” BIG BROWN GETS NEW SUTURES Big Brown, who missed three days of training this week with a slight crack on the inside of the left front hoof, had his steel sutures changed Saturday by the hoof specialist Ian McKinlay. “The little crack looks like it’s in pretty good shape,” Rick Dutrow said from Belmont Park. “It’s not bugging the horse in any kind of way. We’re right on course, right on target.” (AP)

Big Brown (Race Horse)
Horse Racing
Belmont Stakes
Triple Crown (Horse Racing)
Preakness Stakes
Kentucky Derby


New Life, From an Arctic Flower That Died 32,000 Years Ago

Abstract: Living plants have been generated from the fruit of a little arctic flower, the narrow-leafed campion, that died 32,000 years ago, a team of Russian scientists reports. The fruit was stored by an arctic ground squirrel in its burrow on the tundra of northeastern Siberia and lay permanently frozen until excavated by scientists a few years ago. This would be the oldest plant by far that has ever been grown from ancient tissue. The present record is held by a date palm grown from a seed some 2,000 years old that was recovered from the ancient fortress of Masada in Israel. Seeds and certain cells can last a long term under the right conditions, but many claims of extreme longevity have failed on closer examination, and biologists are likely to greet this claim, too, with reserve until it can be independently confirmed. Tales of wheat grown from seeds in the tombs of the pharaohs have long been discredited. Lupines were germinated from seeds in a 10,000-year-old lemming burrow found by a gold miner in the Yukon. But the seeds, later dated by the radiocarbon method, turned out to be modern contaminants. Despite this unpromising background, the new claim is supported by a firm radiocarbon date. A similar avenue of inquiry into the deep past, the field of ancient DNA, was at first discredited after claims of retrieving dinosaur DNA proved erroneous, but with improved methods has produced spectacular results like the reconstitution of the Neanderthal genome. The new report is by a team led by Svetlana Yashina and David Gilichinsky of the Russian Academy of Sciences research center at Pushchino, near Moscow, and appears in Tuesday’s issue of The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America. “This is an amazing breakthrough,” said Grant Zazula of the Yukon Paleontology Program at Whitehorse in Yukon Territory, Canada. “I have no doubt in my mind that this is a legitimate claim.” It was Dr. Zazula who showed that the apparently ancient lupine seeds found by the Yukon gold miner were in fact modern. But the Russians’ extraordinary report is likely to provoke calls for more proof. “It’s beyond the bounds of what we’d expect,” said Alastair Murdoch, an expert on seed viability at the University of Reading in England. When poppy seeds are kept at minus 7 degrees Celsius, the temperature the Russians reported for the campions, after only 160 years just 2 percent of the seeds will be able to germinate, Dr. Murdoch noted. The Russian researchers excavated ancient squirrel burrows exposed on the bank of the lower Kolyma River, an area thronged with mammoth and woolly rhinoceroses during the last ice age. Soon after being dug, the burrows were sealed with windblown earth, buried under 125 feet of sediment and permanently frozen at minus 7 degrees Celsius. Some of the storage chambers in the burrows contain more than 600,000 seeds and fruits. Many are from a species that most closely resembles a plant found today, the narrow-leafed campion (Silene stenophylla). Working with a burrow from the site called Duvanny Yar, the Russian researchers tried to germinate the campion seeds, but failed. They then took cells from the placenta, the organ in the fruit that produces the seeds. They thawed out the cells and grew them in culture dishes into whole plants. Many plants can be propagated from a single adult cell, and this cloning procedure worked with three of the placentas, the Russian researchers report. They grew 36 ancient plants, which appeared identical to the present day narrow-leafed campion until they flowered, when they produced narrower and more splayed-out petals. Seeds from the ancient plants germinated with 100 percent success, compared with 90 percent for seeds from living campions. The Russian team says it obtained a radiocarbon date of 31,800 years from seeds attached to the same placenta from which the living plants were propagated. The researchers suggest that special circumstances may have contributed to the remarkable longevity of the campion plant cells. Squirrels construct their larders next to permafrost to keep seeds cool during the arctic summers, so the fruits would have been chilled from the start. The fruit’s placenta contains high levels of sucrose and phenols, which are good antifreeze agents. The Russians measured the ground radioactivity at the site, which can damage DNA, and say the amount of gamma radiation the campion fruit accumulated over 30,000 years is not much higher than that reported for a 1,300-year-old sacred lotus seed, from which a plant was successfully germinated. The Russian article was edited by Buford Price of the University of California, Berkeley. Dr. Price, a physicist, chose two reviewers to help him. But neither he nor they are plant biologists. “I know nothing about plants,” he said. Ann Griswold, a spokeswoman for PNAS, as the journal is known, said the paper had been seen by an editorial board member who is a plant biologist. Tragedy has now struck the Russian team. Dr. Gilichinksy, its leader, was hospitalized with an asthma attack and unable to respond to questions, his daughter Yana said on Friday. On Saturday, Dr. Price reported that Dr. Gilichinsky had died of a heart attack. Eske Willerslev, an expert on ancient DNA at the University of Copenhagen, said the finding was “plausible in principle,” given the conditions in permafrost. But the claim depends on the radiocarbon date being correct: “It’s all resting on that — if there’s something wrong there it can all fall part.” If the ancient campions are the ancestors of the living plants, this family relationship should be evident in their DNA. Dr. Willerslev said that the Russian researchers should analyze the DNA of their specimens and prove that this is the case. However, this is not easy to do with plants whose genetics are not well studied, Dr. Willerslev said. If the claim is true, then scientists should be able to study evolution in real time by comparing the ancient and living campions. Possibly other ancient species can be resurrected from the permafrost, including plants that have long been extinct.


Court-Martial Possible in Afghan Civilian Killings

Abstract: JOINT BASE LEWIS-McCHORD, Wash. — A lawyer for the Army staff sergeant accused of being the ringleader in the killings of three Afghan civilians tried to cast doubt on the charges Tuesday at a hearing that will determine whether the soldier faces a court-martial. The staff sergeant, Calvin R. Gibbs , 25, of Billings, Mont., is charged with three counts of premeditated murder in the killings, which occurred near Kandahar in January, February and May. He and four other soldiers are accused of killing civilians for sport, then planting weapons near them to make it appear that they had died in combat. Some of the soldiers are accused of collecting body parts from Afghan corpses and of posing with the dead for photographs. In addition to the murder charges, Sergeant Gibbs is accused of conspiracy; assaulting another soldier; threatening a soldier; collecting bones and a tooth from dead Afghans; and collecting assault rifles, mortar rounds and grenades from dead Afghans to use as props in future killings. Soldiers have said that he cut fingers off bodies and used them to intimidate a fellow soldier into keeping quiet. A lawyer for Sergeant Gibbs, Phillip Stackhouse, told the Army investigator who presided over the hearing that the case against his client rested largely on statements by soldiers who refused to testify in person at the hearing. He said several of the soldiers could have been trying to implicate Sergeant Gibbs to protect themselves. He also said “storyboards” the Army creates to document combat deaths could provide “an alternative explanation to what happened,” including justifying the deaths as the result from legitimate combat. The storyboards were not shown in open court. Army prosecutors maintained that Sergeant Gibbs was the ringleader in the killings. “When he arrives at this platoon in November of 2009, that’s when things start going south,” said one of the prosecutors, Capt. Andre O. LeBlanc. “That’s when people start getting killed, and that’s when Sergeant Gibbs forms this team of trusted junior soldiers and he’s leading them down the dark path.” In addition to the five soldiers charged in the killings, seven others in the unit have been charged with crimes including assault, hashish use and possessing photographs of dead Afghans. Several soldiers have said that hashish use was rampant in the unit, part of what was formerly called the Fifth Stryker Brigade, Second Infantry Division, and has since been renamed the Second Stryker Brigade, Second Infantry Division. But while many of those involved in the case are facing drug charges, Sergeant Gibbs is not. He is also not charged with taking or possessing photographs of the dead. It could be several weeks before the hearing’s investigative officer, Col. Thomas P. Molloy, decides whether to refer the case to a court-martial. Colonel Molloy has already referred one soldier accused in the killings, Specialist Jeremy N. Morlock , for court-martial. At one point, Mr. Stackhouse asked an Army investigator in Afghanistan why the Army had not interviewed Afghan villagers after the killings and done more crime scene work. The investigator, Special Agent Anderson D. Wagner, speaking via conference call, said that telling villagers that an American soldier had been accused of murdering civilians would have had “strategic consequences that puts people at risk,” including other soldiers.

United States Defense and Military Forces


People

Abstract: People Deutsche Bank has hired Stephen Cunningham as a managing director and head of corporate finance and M&A for Latin America. Mr. Cunningham, who will be based in New York, joins after 10 years at Morgan Stanley, where he was head of investment banking for Latin America. Barclays Capital has hired Anne Daley from Goldman Sachs as a director and head of financial institutions in the bank's Americas debt underwriting syndicate. Michael Shackelford has joined Credit Suisse in New York from Invesco Institutional as a director in the leveraged investments group. Adam Harris has joined the law firm of Schulte Roth & Zabel as a partner in the business reorganization group. BNP Paribas has named Richard Bongo as a managing director and head of asset-backed securities sales for North America. Mr. Bongo was previously a director in mortgage sales at Merrill Lynch. Steven Price, formerly at the private equity firm Spectrum Equity Investors, is now a senior managing director of Centerbridge Partners, a private equity firm that specializes in distressed situations. The California Public Employees' Retirement System, or Calpers, has named Russell Read chief investment officer. Mr. Read was formerly deputy chief investment officer for Deutsche Asset Management and Scudder Investments. Donald J. Herrema is joining Morgan Stanley as head of private wealth management for the Americas. Mr. Herrema, who joins from Loring Ward International Ltd., will also become president of Morgan Stanley Trust Company. Bob Jordan has joined the absolute return strategies group at Morgan Stanley Investment Management. Mr. Jordan, an executive director, and Ted Restelli, Sean O'Malley and David Swank are moving from the proprietary trading desk at Morgan Stanley's institutional equity division. Nicholas Del Deo joins from Giraffe Capital and will handle trading. Lisa Weiss, a former general counsel at Sony BMG, and Craigh Leonard, a former partner at Bingham McCutchen, are joining the New York office of the law firm of Morrison & Foerster. Ms. Weiss joins as partner, while Mr. Leonard joins as senior counsel. Ray Pullaro is joining Blackstone Alternative Asset Management, a fund of hedge funds with $12 billion under management, from UBS.

APPOINTMENTS AND EXECUTIVE CHANGES
EXECUTIVES AND MANAGEMENT
BIOGRAPHICAL INFORMATION


Sandusky Is Innocent, His Wife Says

Abstract: STATE COLLEGE, Pa. (AP) — Dottie Sandusky, the wife of the former Penn State assistant football coach Jerry Sandusky, said Thursday that her husband was innocent of the child sex abuse allegations against him and that his accusers were making up their stories. It was her first comments since Sandusky was arrested last month and accused of molesting boys he met through a charity he founded for troubled youth. She released the statement through her husband’s lawyer a day after a grand jury report said one boy screamed in vain for her to help him while Sandusky attacked him in a basement bedroom. Dottie Sandusky said that she was devastated by the accusations and that no such thing occurred. “I am so sad anyone would make such a terrible accusation, which is absolutely untrue,” she said. “We don’t know why these young men have made these false accusations, but we want everyone to know they are untrue.” Sandusky faces more than 50 charges stemming from what the authorities say were assaults on 10 boys at his home, on Penn State property and elsewhere. He has maintained his innocence.

Sex Crimes
Child Abuse and Neglect
Sandusky Jerry
Pennsylvania State University
Colleges and Universities
Football (College)
Sandusky Dorothy


Making Time for Sweetbreads, Even Amid a World Crisis

Abstract: Jan Eliasson came close to calling off lunch. The Syrian crisis had kicked into high gear a few days earlier, and on this morning a convoy of United Nations chemical weapons inspectors found itself under fire. Mr. Eliasson, No. 2 at the United Nations as its deputy secretary general, was an extremely busy fellow. “This meeting was in danger, I must say,” he said after settling into a corner booth at Aquavit, a Scandinavian restaurant on East 55th Street. It is not every day that a routine appointment in New York is almost undone by a possible war crime thousands of miles away. But Mr. Eliasson, 73 next week, with a long diplomatic résumé both at the world organization and in his native Sweden, wished to keep his commitment to have lunch. So with the yearly convening of the United Nations General Assembly drawing near, he kindly made time to talk about a diplomat’s life in New York. (He also came with a watchful security agent, who sat discreetly a short distance away on a bench with a clear view of the booth.) In two weeks, world leaders will once again descend upon the city en masse for nonstop speechifying, endless meetings and, yes, hopelessly snarled traffic on the East Side of Manhattan. “Some call it the Crazy Week,” Mr. Eliasson said after the waiter took the lunch order. It is “when we think the science of cloning hasn’t advanced fast enough. We need to be in so many places at the same time, the secretary general and I.” One logistical detail that does not fall to him or his aides is making sure, say, that mutually hostile countries do not wind up by mistake in the same hotel. Let them work that one out on their own. But security is a constant concern. “I’m not supposed to talk about that,” Mr. Eliasson said, “but I think we’re in close contact with the N.Y.P.D.” As for the inevitable traffic jams, “we are deeply sorry that we cause inconvenience.” He continued: “When I was perm rep” — that’s diplo-speak for a country’s permanent representative to the United Nations, in his case Sweden’s, from 1988 to 1992 — “I had difficulty even getting to the General Assembly through the security screens on Second Avenue and First Avenue. We know it’s really a nuisance. But I would hope that New Yorkers realize how enormously we value that New York is the host town.” “I hope,” he said, “that New Yorkers see that maybe there could be discussions inside that building that in the end may result in a cease-fire or peace or an agreement between two nations about fighting polio, or a strong reminder of the importance of human rights to someone who needs to hear it from someone very important.” Still, he acknowledged, with the faintest of sighs, “it’s hard to see that when you sit in a car stuck in traffic.” Mr. Eliasson, a former president of the General Assembly who has been in his present position for 14 months, suggested Aquavit after his first choice, a classic French restaurant, turned out to be very French: no way was it open in the final days of August. While Aquavit is Nordic-themed, he is not a regular. “I’ve been here twice,” he said. Both he and his interviewer started off with charred gravlax in a mustard sauce. A dish of sweetbreads, better known to him by their French name, ris de veau, caught his eye. “I have a weakness for that,” he said. “My wife never serves it.” It was a temptation that the interviewer easily resisted; he chose a Chilean turbot. Both drank French cider, skipped dessert and finished with coffee — cappuccino for Mr. Eliasson, a double espresso for his tablemate. It is no secret that the United Nations is widely unloved in New York. One reason is its perceived hostility to Israel, which led previous mayors like Edward I. Koch and Rudolph W. Giuliani to use it as a punching bag. Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, more globally minded than his predecessors, takes a comparatively benign view. His Economic Development Corporation, relying on figures nearly a decade old, calculates that the United Nations generates 18,000 jobs and $2.5 billion a year in economic activity for New York. And it is more than likely that some local businesses have benefited in recent years from the extensive renovations that are under way at the organization’s East Side campus. There is, too, a belief held by many New Yorkers that diplomats do little more than drive around all day looking for places to park illegally. In fact, as a result of a 2002 agreement with the State Department, most embassies and consulates here have become pretty solid citizens when it comes to paying parking tickets. Their total debt — put by the city’s Finance Department at $16.6 million, which is barely enough to keep the municipal government running for two hours — has even shrunk a bit in recent years. The chief deadbeats are the same ones just about every year. Egypt perennially tops the list with nearly $2 million in unpaid summonses going back years. If New Yorkers are angry over a matter like parking, he hasn’t heard it, said Mr. Eliasson, who is an easy conversationalist. “When I go around town and talk to people, when they hear I’m from the U.N., they may ask how things are going with Syria, or what are we doing about this or that,” he said. “That’s the kinds of reactions I get.” Not surprisingly, his life here is circumscribed by the nature of his position and by security imperatives. “I can’t move as freely as I sometimes would like to,” he said. But that does not mean forgoing all pleasures. In mid-July, for instance, he joined the crowds flocking to Central Park to hear the New York Philharmonic, led by Alan Gilbert — “who, by the way, spent eight years in Sweden conducting the Royal Stockholm Philharmonic Orchestra,” Mr. Eliasson tossed in, a touch of national pride there. “It was 85 degrees,” he said. “The sun was setting in a blue-pink light over the trees. There were 50,000 sitting on chairs or having picnics.” “In Manhattan, it’s incredible,” he said. “You still have these oases. I remember when there was snow when I was ambassador. I walked into Central Park and felt like I was in northern Sweden. When I see the barges and ships go down the East River, it’s like my hometown, Gothenburg. We have a river going through the city.” “But I must tell you I get my frustrations also,” he said, answering a looming question about what he finds irritating here before it could be asked. “The sirens, why do they sound so enormous?” he said. “I’m very high up, and still I’m waking up at night. It sounds like the Third World War has broken out. I don’t think I’ve ever heard a higher decibel level of ambulances, fire and police cars. For me the word ‘decibel’ has lost its meaning.” Griping about noise. Does it get more New York than that?

Jan Eliasson
UN General Assembly
NYC
International relations
Sweden
UN
Syria