Combat Outpost Zerok Pushes Back Taliban

Abstract: COMBAT OUTPOST ZEROK, Afghanistan — Nestled amid the pine-studded mountains in eastern Afghanistan , this small base a dozen miles from the Pakistan border was once one of the most dangerous places in Afghanistan. Insurgents nearly overran it in 2009. Last year mortars rained down on the base nearly every other day. But security has vastly improved here. The outpost, in the northeastern mountains of Paktika Province, has not been shelled since late last summer, due largely, soldiers here believe, to a shift in tactics that started when a new unit came in and began relentlessly patrolling the surrounding mountains, always on foot and usually at night. The incessant patrols took away the insurgents’ vantage points, and they have barely engaged since. Now the unit, Company E of the Second Battalion, 506th Infantry Regiment — a part of the 101st Airborne Division — is trying to solidify those gains by pushing the Taliban out of several nearby villages that American commanders believe are among the last of their sanctuaries in the area before the warmer summer months, when insurgent activity is heaviest. “The goal is to make them fight back in, and we’ve taken that to heart,” said Capt. Henry Hansen, the company’s commander. “Come the May time frame, we may get some of those foreign fighters who haven’t been tracking what we’ve been doing here, but we’ll be ready for them.” Military officials cannot say whether the company has simply pushed the insurgents into hiding or driven them elsewhere. And everyone expects to see an uptick in fighting this summer. But for now, the improved security is fostering other benefits. More and more elders from surrounding villages trek miles across rugged terrain to attend weekly shuras, or meetings, held at an Afghan police compound attached to the base. Last week, a recalcitrant tribe agreed to come to the compound to sit down with a rival tribe over a timber dispute, allowing the Afghan army to mediate. In a province where such issues are often resolved through conflict or through the Taliban’s shadow justice system, the meeting was a victory, a show of faith in the coalition — and by extension the Afghan government. “It’s the inkblot theory,” Captain Hansen said. “You focus on one area and it spreads out.” The company was part of the last “surge” brigade to arrive in the country, part of the American-led initiative to tamp down the insurgency and begin laying the foundation to transfer security responsibilities to the Afghan security forces by the end of 2014. Last year, a single battalion was responsible for securing the entire province. Now the same area is covered by nearly a full brigade, about six times the combat power. The province of perhaps a half million people is seen as a strategic crossing ground for insurgents entering the country from militant havens in North and South Waziristan in Pakistan. The base, an ungainly collection of dirt barriers, guard towers and plywood command posts, serves as a launching pad for securing villages and cutting off well-worn Taliban paths in the province’s northeastern mountains. While American-led forces have struggled in other isolated mountain valleys — abandoning the Korengal and Pech Valleys in the northeastern province of Kunar — the turnaround here in this rugged part of the country has been remarkable. Company E arrived in August amid nearly daily attacks. Nearly half the soldiers in the company it replaced received purple hearts. A “60 Minutes” television crew visiting that summer captured footage of the base under mortar attack and then came under fire itself as it accompanied an armored vehicle convoy to a nearby village. Collected bits of jagged steel and mortar tails fill a “shrapnel garden” in the center of the compound, a testament to past attacks. But since arriving, Company E has added little to it. Early on, the company’s patrols came under sporadic gunfire. “If we sat in one place 24 hours, the enemy attacked,” said First Sgt. Steve Chandler Jr., 40. But the patrols — 211 in the first 150 days — were having their intended effect. Intelligence intercepts showed an enemy confused about how many American troops were scouring the hills. Sgt. Anthony Stegmeier, 27, of Indianapolis, is one of the few Company E members who was with the unit when it was stationed at this same outpost from March 2008 to March 2009. “The patrolling wasn’t as strenuous as it is now, and we took a lot more IDF, sometimes daily, sometimes every other day,” he said, referring to indirect fire, usually mortars. With the high ground lost, the militants shifted tactics. They planted improvised explosive devices on ridges. But the patrols seldom took the same path twice and usually avoided easier routes along dry creek beds. Since the unit arrived nearly nine months ago, only two soldiers have been wounded. “It may be a counterintuitive concept, but the more you patrol, the safer you are,” Captain Hansen said. “If the enemy sees you everywhere, he’s a lot less inclined to attack because he doesn’t know where you are.” The mountains themselves, some reaching 10,000 feet, have taken their own toll. The company has suffered dozens of sprained ankles, strained backs and other injuries from lugging 90 pounds of gear on the night patrols. One patrol was so long and over such tough terrain the soldiers called it “Bloody Sandals.” One soldier, Pfc. Kory Russo, 19, of Fort Wayne, Ind., plummeted 30 feet down a ridge during a nighttime mission in October, injuring his back and knees, and marched about two and a half miles back to the base. He was back on patrol three weeks later. “Everyone was saying it was a miracle I made it,” he said. Still, nobody is declaring victory. Even as security has improved here, others outposts in the province have come under heavy attacks. In October, Combat Outpost Margah, a few miles closer to the border, repelled a large-scale nighttime assault that left five Americans wounded and 92 insurgents dead. “I try to be very cautious in talking about the company’s success,” said Captain Hansen, of Hunter, N.Y., “because we could cite success one day and the next day they launch a complex attack.” The company kept up the patrols through thigh-deep snow in January and February. By April, the missions had become rigorous but mostly quiet affairs, chasing intelligence intercepts that often led to empty hilltops. Even so, said Lt. Jason Eaves, 26, it has been better than sitting at the base “and taking rockets every day.” “Now,” he said, “It’s a lot of chasing ghosts.”

United States Defense and Military Forces


Russell Dunham, Hero in 1945, Dies at 89

Abstract: Russell Dunham, who as an Army sergeant in World War II received the Medal of Honor for charging up a snowy hill in the Alsace region of France and single-handedly killing, wounding or capturing 18 German soldiers, died Monday in Godfrey, Ill. He was 89. The cause was congestive heart failure, said his daughter, Mary Lee Neal. On the afternoon of Jan. 8, 1945, Sergeant Dunham was leading a platoon in the 30th Infantry, Third Infantry Division, when the soldiers, among them his brother Ralph, were pinned down by German fire. They were at the bottom of a hill near the village of Kaysersberg, the birthplace of the Nobel Peace Prize winner Dr. Albert Schweitzer. German machine-gunners and riflemen fired down on the Americans while an artillery barrage landed behind them. “The only way to go was up,” Mr. Dunham told Reader’s Digest long afterward. Wearing as camouflage a white robe made from a mattress cover, Sergeant Dunham ran up the hill ahead of his platoon and charged a machine-gun emplacement. He was shot in the back, and his camouflage became useless: his white clothing was soaked with blood. Despite “excruciating pain” from his wound, as the Medal of Honor citation told it, Sergeant Dunham wiped out three machine-gun nests and attacked German riflemen in foxholes. Moments later, Ralph Dunham destroyed a fourth machine-gun position. Firing 175 rounds of carbine fire and throwing 11 grenades, Russell Dunham killed nine Germans, wounded seven and captured two others. Two weeks later, his battalion was surrounded by German tanks at the French town of Holtzwihr. Most of the men were forced to surrender, but as Mr. Dunham told it to Peter Collier in his book “Medal of Honor,” he hid in a sauerkraut barrel outside a barn. He was discovered by two German soldiers the next morning, but while searching him they found a pack of cigarettes in his pocket and began to fight over it. They never noticed a pistol in a shoulder holster under Sergeant Dunham’s arm. While the Germans were taking him toward their lines, one of them stopped at a bar. Sergeant Dunham shot and killed the other soldier. He escaped on foot, was spotted a couple of days later by United States Army engineers building a bridge, and was treated for severely frozen feet. He was awarded the Medal of Honor at a ceremony in Nuremberg, Germany, in April 1945. Mr. Dunham, a native of East Carondelet, Ill., worked as a Veterans Administration counselor after the war. In addition to his daughter, from his marriage to his first wife, Mary, which ended in divorce, Mr. Dunham is survived by a stepdaughter, Annette Wilson; a stepson, David Bazzell; his brothers Jim, Floyd and Junior; his sisters Josephine, Florence and Charlotte; three grandchildren and nine great-grandchildren. His second wife, Wilda, died in 2002. His brother Ralph survived the war and died years later. In a 1999 interview with The Alton Telegraph in Illinois, Mr. Dunham told how “the shrapnel in my leg is a reminder of the war we fought.” And a vivid image endured from that snowy hillside in France: “It happened in 1945, but I still remember staring into the eyes of the German machine-gunner.”


N.F.L.-Approved Therapist for Unruly Fans Draws Scrutiny

Abstract: Unruly, violent fans at N.F.L. games have been a problem for years. It got so bad at one point that officials in Philadelphia added an improvised courtroom in the bowels of Veterans Stadium during Eagles games to process offenders more efficiently. The N.F.L. and its teams have recently embraced a new and perhaps more forgiving approach toward misbehaving fans. Fans ejected from games are strongly encouraged to complete a four-hour online course in anger management before they are allowed to return to see a game. The N.F.L. also directs fans to a particular doctor to tackle their issues: Ari Novick of Laguna Beach, Calif. The league recommends Novick’s online course and has lauded its results. Novick, as a result, has been favorably mentioned by ESPN , Bloomberg Businessweek and USA Today , among other publications. He also has appeared on Yahoo Sports Radio and ABC television. An examination of Novick’s practice, however, shows that his claims about his professional credentials — membership in the American Psychological Association and the American Association for Marriage and Family Therapy — are either false or out of date, according to officials with the organizations. In addition, part of Novick’s online operation offers a monetary commission to companies and individuals for referring clients to his anger management courses, a practice that may violate the ethics codes and regulations of the psychological association and the California Board of Behavioral Sciences, which governs licensed marriage and family therapists in the state. Considerable portions of Novick’s online fan anger management course that is recommended by the N.F.L. have been lifted from other publications or Web sites without citation. And a spokeswoman for Pepperdine University, where Novick until recently asserted he was an adjunct professor of psychology, said Novick had not taught at the university since 2007. In an interview this week, Novick admitted that the biographical information on his professional Web sites was outdated; he pledged to “update it immediately.” Novick also said that his memberships in the psychological association and the family therapy association had lapsed and that he would remove them from his online biography. He also said that at least one other aspect of his public résumé was “definitely inaccurate.” But Novick said that he stood behind his role in the N.F.L. program for disruptive fans, and that he was proud of the work he had done. “We’re just getting the N.F.L. program off the ground,” he said. “And it’s getting good feedback.” Brian McCarthy, a spokesman for the N.F.L., said the league had spoken with Novick after questions were raised about his credentials by The New York Times. “He has assured us he will appropriately update his information,” McCarthy said. Of Novick’s program, McCarthy said: “The online course is educational-based and is not intended for psychological testing or counseling purposes. It is one of the many best practices that our office makes available to our clubs. The course has been helpful in educating fans on the behavior that is expected from them in our stadiums.” In August 2008, the N.F.L. and all 32 of its teams created a fan code of conduct “to help promote a positive fan environment” at stadiums. The league asked fans to refrain from “behavior that is unruly, disruptive or illegal in nature,” “irresponsible behavior” resulting from intoxication, harassment of fans of the opposing team, and using foul or abusive language or gestures. Nonetheless, ejections from N.F.L. games have risen, league officials said. They said that was in part a result of stadiums cracking down on rowdy behavior. All of it has been a boon — financially and professionally — to Novick. This season, Novick’s four-hour online program is in use at all N.F.L. stadiums. Ejected fans may be tracked by security staffers and prohibited from entering again. They are typically warned that they must complete the course before they can come to another game. And they must pay for the course. The price is at least $55, with additional money sometimes donated to a charity of the stadium’s choice. Novick, 41, received a bachelor’s degree from the University of California, Santa Barbara, in 1994, a master’s degree in clinical psychology from Pepperdine in 2003 and a Ph.D. from the California Graduate Institute in 2006. He is a licensed marriage and family therapist with the California Board of Behavioral Sciences. Through his company, the AJ Novick Group Inc., Novick runs many Web sites in addition to the N.F.L.’s fan anger management course, including AlcoholDrugClass.com , SexualHarassmentClass.com and OnlineParentClass.com . His anger management courses include sections that cover listening techniques, impulse control and risk factors associated with alcohol abuse. The fan anger management course has sections discussing stadium codes of conduct, disruptive behavior, empathy, stress management and alcohol abuse. It is peppered with questions for students as they go through the material. At the end of the course is an exam of 30 questions with mostly true-or-false statements like “There is a cure for alcohol addiction” and “Alcohol is considered safe because it’s legal.” A student must answer at least 70 percent correctly to pass. The course for N.F.L. fans relies on material from Novick’s co-authored, self-published 2005 book on anger management. But significant portions, often several paragraphs long, of the N.F.L. fan conduct class appear elsewhere online. Sections of Novick’s exam content appear to be little more than a compilation of material from the National Institutes of Health, a number of mental health Web sites, government sources and a drug abuse guide designed for teenagers. None of those sources are cited. The material either was directly copied or was substantially copied with minor changes — substituting the word “alcohol” for “drug,” for instance. In an e-mail, Novick did not dispute that he had appropriated professional material without attribution. “The lack of citation reference on the copied materials was an honest oversight in the Fan Conduct Class,” Novick said in the e-mail, “and I have instructed my programmer to make the update.” “As an owner of a distance learning company, with hundreds of versions of a program, mistakes can get made, but can also be corrected,” Novick said in the e-mail. “I put my best foot forward, always with integrity and honesty; this is a big reason why my practice is full, my patients send thank you notes for our work together, and I am collaborating with organizations such as the N.F.L. to broaden the reach of an educational program that has the ability to improve people’s behaviors.” Jeffrey Miller, who oversees security for the N.F.L., said the league decided to implement Novick’s program after it saw the success of the course when used on a trial basis by the New England Patriots, the Giants and the Jets. Novick said nearly 1,000 fans had taken the class and none had been ejected from subsequent games. As part of his commercial operation, Novick offers fees for people or businesses that send him students for his online course. The fees appear to vary, with some as high as $95. Novick said such fees were ethically proper because they involved clients seeking “educational” information, not clinical therapeutic treatment. Novick’s Fan Conduct Class Web site says that “this course is an educationally based program and should NOT substitute for medical or psychological advice” and that the course should be “used for educational purposes only.” The American Psychological Association and the California Board of Behavioral Sciences prohibit such referral fees if they involve “professional” services. “At this point, we are going to take a look at his Web site,” a spokesman for the California board said of Novick’s program that offers referral fees. The spokesman said the board had not yet determined whether it was proper, but added that the matter had been referred to enforcement officials. Other aspects of Novick’s formally posted work history appear less than accurate. Novick’s biography said he had been “a consultant for both Discovery Channel and Fox Television,” a claim that is repeated at the beginning of the N.F.L. fan conduct course. A spokeswoman for Discovery, however, said Novick “wasn’t employed by Discovery from what we can tell.” Novick did make an appearance on an episode of a co-produced show called “Monster House,” as an anger management specialist offering advice to a team of builders on an episode titled “Dog House.” Novick has made appearances on Fox Sports and affiliated stations talking about his anger management work. But there is “no record” of Novick consulting for Fox Broadcasting Company, the entertainment broadcast network, nor has he consulted for Fox television stations, company representatives said. “I viewed the relationship as ‘consulting,’ ” Novick said of the appearances on Discovery and Fox. “The use of the word ‘consultant’ seemed accurate, but I will have my bio updated to call it ‘appearances’ instead.” Novick also asserted in his biography that he had worked for the footwear company Timberland in a “senior level sales and marketing positions.” But a spokeswoman for Timberland said Novick was employed for less than a year as an in-house sales representative in the company’s customer service department. The spokeswoman for Timberland called Novick’s characterization of his work at the company “extremely misleading.” Novick conceded that his description of his work at the company was “definitely not accurate,” but said he “did not intend to mislead anyone about my background.”

National Football League
Novick Ari
Football
E-Learning


Emerging Economies Gain a Voice at Davos

Abstract: DAVOS, SWITZERLAND — Anyone at the World Economic Forum who wants a break from talking about what is wrong with the world can wander over to a Davos nightclub where the D.J. Megha Kawale will be spinning Bollywood tunes into the wee hours, compliments of an Indian business group. But it would be a mistake to think the Indians are just bringing a bouncy soundtrack to the Davos convocation of the world’s financial elite. Representatives from India and other emerging nations come with more claim than ever to steer the debate. Developing countries now account for nearly half of global output, compared to little more than one-third in 1990. The Group of 20 leading economic powers, which includes nations like China, Argentina and South Africa, as well as the United States and other wealthy countries, has emerged as the dominant forum for economic diplomacy. Companies like Huawei, a maker of telecommunications equipment that has its headquarters in Shenzhen, China, and Wipro, the outsourcing company based in Bangalore that is helping sponsor the late-night Bollywood revelry, are now as visible as the European companies that have long dominated the annual winter conference in the Swiss mountains. From the rising powers of the world like China, India and Brazil, “you didn’t used to have these large, global corporations, and that changes the dialogue,” said Tidjane Thiam, group chief executive of Prudential, which is based in London but is the largest life insurer in Indonesia and other emerging countries. Other things have changed as well. Global financial crises, like the Asian financial crisis of the late 1990s or Latin America’s perennial debt disasters, used to emanate from vulnerable corners of the developing world. But the most recent crisis, the worst since World War II, sprang from the banks in the United States and Europe. And this time, it looks as if China and other developing countries are leading the way out of recession, rather than following. “It’s quite clear that there’s been a significant shift in the global order,” said Robert M. Kimmitt, a Davos participant who is a former deputy secretary of the U.S. Treasury Department. “Asia will lead the global recovery. I think everybody agrees with that.” With the Western economic model under attack and the United States and Europe weakened by the crisis, people attending Davos from emerging nations may well be pushier this year in discussions about subjects like free trade and financial regulation. “One of the striking effects of the crisis has been a new confidence and willingness of people from emerging markets to assert what they think the agenda for reform should be,” said Barry Eichengreen, a professor of economics and political science at the University of California, Berkeley, who will be at Davos. “The days are past when the U.S. and Europeans would make all the proposals.” The number people attending the World Economic Forum just from the so-called BRIC countries — Brazil, Russia, India and China — has more than doubled since 2005, to 237, or about 10 percent of the total. Prominent politicians from emerging-market countries who are scheduled to attend the Forum include President Jacob Zuma of South Africa; President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva of Brazil; and Li Keqiang, executive vice-premier of China. Davos will serve as an informal G-20 meeting, conducted in wool sweaters and snowproof footwear. While not a place to forge formal accords, it does let leaders discuss issues face to face without their usual retinues. “It’s an efficient meeting place, mostly,” said Tarun Khanna, a professor at Harvard Business School who specializes in emerging markets. “Davos generates a million ideas. If 10 get picked up, that probably pays for it.” One of the things participants will be talking about is a rise in protectionist sentiment in developed countries. Free trade is not a tough sell at Davos, but participants will discuss how to deal with growing populism. One idea, said Mr. Khanna, who helped develop the agenda, is to push governments for better economic data, which he said he believed would better show the benefits of globalization. The agenda also includes discussions on topics like how companies can help build electricity networks and other infrastructure in countries where they operate, bypassing ineffective governments. Other panels will feature debate on the G-20 agenda, ways to increase growth in Africa and the U.S.-China relationship. Representatives from developing nations have been present in Davos for decades, but until recently they were often treated as aid recipients rather than partners in the global economy. As more developing countries stand tall, the notion that the world outside the major industrial powers is mostly in need of help is fading. Bono, the front man for the rock band U2 and a committed aid activist, will not be at Davos this year, but as a serious advocate for poor countries, he would be welcome, said Klaus Schwab, the chairman of the World Economic Forum. But Mr. Schwab has made an effort to discourage attendance by celebrities like the actresses Sharon Stone and Angelina Jolie. “The media overplayed the presence of those people, so we don’t invite them anymore,” Mr. Schwab said, without mentioning any names. Mr. Schwab long ago recognized the shift to the developing world and has begun staging spinoff events in Dubai, Rio de Janeiro and elsewhere. In September, the World Economic Forum held the third annual “Summer Davos” in Dalian, China. Some people even predict that the Chinese Davos could eventually overshadow the event that takes place in Switzerland. Mr. Khanna of Harvard, for one, plans to take a pass on Switzerland this year, even though he played a major role in composing the agenda. “I’m Indian; it’s too cold,” Mr. Khanna joked. Considering that Mr. Khanna cut short a telephone interview a few minutes later to go skiing, his excuse probably should not be taken too literally. The more important reason is that Mr. Khanna, author of a coming book on emerging markets, now prefers to attend the forum in China. “Growth has shifted to the developing world,” Mr. Khanna said. Meeting in China “makes more sense than sitting in the snow.”

World Economic Forum
Davos (Switzerland)
Group of Seven
Group of Twenty
China


Obama, in Berlin, Calls for Renewal of Ties With Allies

Abstract: BERLIN — Senator Barack Obama stood before a sea of cheering admirers on Thursday and sought to inspire fresh cooperation among American allies to defeat terrorism and other threats, introducing himself as a leader who could summon other nations to join the United States in confronting the world’s next challenges. On a perch steeped in history, Mr. Obama said it was time to reprise the spirit that conquered communism, and use it to heal divisions and forge closer partnerships to deal with nuclear proliferation, global warming , poverty and genocide. Without naming President Bush or going into detail about European disenchantment with the Iraq war and other policies of the current administration, he suggested the United States would become a better partner, but called on European countries to uphold their responsibilities. “The walls between old allies on either side of the Atlantic cannot stand,” Mr. Obama said, putting a new twist on the cold war calls to bring down the barrier that divided Berlin. “The walls between the countries with the most and those with the least cannot stand. The walls between races and tribes, natives and immigrants, Christian and Muslim and Jew cannot stand. These now are the walls we must tear down.” The German police estimated that more than 200,000 people came to hear him speak from the base of the Victory Column in the Tiergarten, a sprawling park in the center of the city. Berliners waved American flags — provided by the campaign — throughout the address, offering precisely the visual message that Mr. Obama’s aides wanted to beam back home: a candidate who could restore the world’s faith in strong American leadership and idealism. He looked out toward the Brandenburg Gate, where President Ronald Reagan once implored the Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev to “tear down this wall” and end the cold war. The setting of the speech, as well as the size of the crowd, seemed to place Mr. Obama among a litany of American leaders who have stood before him, even though he is simply a first-term United States senator. “I come to Berlin as so many of my countrymen have come before,” Mr. Obama said. “Tonight, I speak to you not as a candidate for president, but as a citizen — a proud citizen of the United States, and a fellow citizen of the world.” In his 30-minute address, Mr. Obama did not overtly criticize Mr. Bush or his Republican opponent, Senator John McCain, but he did offer a gentle dose of criticism of his own nation. That, too, drew loud cheers from the crowd. “I know my country has not perfected itself,” he said. “We’ve made our share of mistakes, and there are times when our actions around the world have not lived up to our best intentions. But I also know how much I love America.” As he offered a glimpse of an active foreign policy, should he be elected — mentioning Darfur, Zimbabwe and Burma in his address — he signaled an intention to leave behind what Mr. Bush’s critics see as often-misguided unilateralism in favor of greater cooperation. Yet Mr. Obama also suggested that he would expect the cooperation to flow both ways, urging Europe to be more supportive of sending additional NATO troops to Afghanistan, a politically unpopular stance in Germany . “No one nation, no matter how large or powerful, can defeat such challenges alone,” Mr. Obama said. On the other side of the Atlantic on Thursday, Mr. McCain campaigned in Ohio, where he belittled Mr. Obama’s grasp of foreign policy and criticized him for traveling to Germany to deliver the address. “I’d love to give a speech in Germany — a political speech or a speech that maybe the German people would be interested in,” Mr. McCain told a crowd in Ohio, “but I’d much prefer to do it as president of the United States rather than as a candidate.” Republicans called Mr. Obama’s visit presumptuous, but in his first trip to Berlin he was treated with unusual deference. Local newspapers and television stations chased him around town, offering minute-by-minute updates of his whereabouts. Hundreds of people lined streets at several points around town as his motorcade passed by. Campaign volunteers holding clipboards shouted to passers-by, “Stop here, registering American citizens to vote!” Bratwurst-and-beer stands shared space with vendors who were selling an array of Obama products, including a T-shirt that declared, “The World For Obama ’08.” Manfred Krause, 65, a retired citizen of the former East Germany, said Mr. Obama’s address brought back memories of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s quieter visit to East Berlin in 1964, when he was a student. As Mr. Krause waited for Mr. Obama’s arrival on Thursday, he said, “I thought, here is someone coming from the same place.” The response to Mr. Obama has been so warm that the coordinator for German-American relations in the foreign ministry here, Karsten D. Voigt, sought to scale back expectations. He reminded Germans in interview after interview that Mr. Obama would have to support positions unpopular with the German public, like a stronger presence engaged in more fighting for the Bundeswehr, the German army, in Afghanistan. First and foremost, Mr. Obama was well received because he is not Mr. Bush, who is unpopular in Germany. But Mr. Obama said a new president in the United States would not take away the responsibility for the countries to increase their partnership. “No doubt, there will be differences in the future, but the burdens of global citizenship continue to bind us together,” Mr. Obama said. “A change of leadership in Washington will not lift this burden. In this new century, Americans and Europeans alike will be required to do more — not less.” In Washington, Mr. Bush also gave a speech on America’s role in the world on Thursday, and there were some striking thematic parallels between his and Mr. Obama’s. Mr. Bush talked about hope. He sought to revive the spirit of NATO, the Berlin Airlift of 1948 and the Marshall Plan for a new era and a new war against extremism. He championed the victims of political oppression in places like Darfur, Iran, Myanmar and Zimbabwe. But Mr. Bush’s address was not televised, while Mr. Obama’s was broadcast live on all the cable news networks. Throughout his address, Mr. Obama said that the path of history — the Berlin Airlift and the cold war fight against communism — offered hope for a future in dealing with eliminating nuclear weapons, dealing with Iran and resolving the conflict in the Middle East. “This is the moment when we must defeat terror and dry up the well of extremism that supports it,” Mr. Obama said. “This threat is real, and we cannot shrink from our responsibility to combat it.” While in Berlin, Mr. Obama met for about an hour with Chancellor Angela Merkel at the Federal Chancellery. Later, he held a session with Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier. While Mr. Obama talked about the Iraq war in private sessions, aides said, he made only a passing mention of it in his speech. The address received overwhelmingly positive attention from the German news media, which has frequently gushed over Mr. Obama for his aura, or as the large-circulation Bild daily put it on Wednesday, the “political pop star.”

Presidential Election of 2008
Obama Barack
Berlin (Germany)
United States International Relations
Europe
Germany


Magna Carta Travels in Style for Fraunces Tavern Exhibition

Abstract: For the fifth time since it was inked onto sheepskin in 1215, one of the four original copies of Magna Carta has arrived in New York, though it has probably never traveled here under cushier circumstances. On Saturday, Chris Woods, an archive conservation consultant, fresh from a first-class flight from London, donned purple plastic gloves to unveil the document before a hushed crowd of curators and exhibition installers in a dimmed gallery at Fraunces Tavern Museum on Pearl Street in Lower Manhattan. The creased, rumpled page of Latin script — King John’s promises to allow Englishmen basic civil liberties like jury trials and taxation with representation — will be the centerpiece of a show, “Magna Carta and the Foundations of Freedom,” that opens on Tuesday. Magna Carta will be one of a few British artifacts in an exhibition that also includes copies of the Declaration of Independence and the Bill of Rights, as well as a dented cannonball from the Revolution. On his trip here, Mr. Woods, a consultant for England’s Lincoln Cathedral , which owns the British document, carried it in a steel briefcase lined with climate-controlled boxes and tissue paper. He said he traveled with an armed escort from Lincoln, in northeast England, all the way to the British Airways gate at Heathrow Airport. Even on the flight, he added, he was “not alone.” He placed the briefcase in the plane’s front cloakroom. “There was no room for anyone’s coats,” Mr. Woods said wryly. The only hassle came when he had to cram eight figures into a tiny space on the customs form (the historical document is insured for about $30,000,000). This copy of Magna Carta normally rests at Lincoln Castle , an 11th-century Norman fortress; the document first visited New York for the 1939 World’s Fair. When war broke out in Europe, it was taken to Fort Knox in Kentucky until the war was over. It returned a few times in the 1970s and 1980s. At Fraunces Tavern on Saturday morning, Mr. Woods and the staff spent about an hour preparing a new, $70,000 vacuum-sealed display case for Magna Carta. A lock briefly jammed, and then a workman brought out a Windex bottle for a last-minute cleaning. Mr. Woods rushed over to take away the blue fluid before its vapors could reach the ancient sheepskin. “Bleach it out nicely, that would,” he said, whisking the bottle to the far side of the gallery. The tan page was exposed to Manhattan air for only a few moments as Mr. Woods carried it like a fragile tray from the briefcase to the vitrine. When he and the museum’s president, Charles C. Lucas, closed the lid, it gave off a slight wheeze. LED rim lights glowed like bulbs on a dressing room mirror. The men were asked to lift the lid again for a publicity photograph. They did, then locked the case for the duration of the three-month show. “Now, even James Bond couldn’t get in,” Mr. Lucas said. Over his head fluttered a few flags on loan from Britain’s Baronial Order of the Magna Charta with the heraldic patterns of some of the noblemen who urged King John to sign — the triple dots of William de Huntingfield, the stripes of Saher de Quincy. Before Mr. Woods headed off for a day of sightseeing in New York, he checked the machinery hidden within the case, which maintains the temperature around 65 degrees and the humidity at 50 percent. A steel pin at the edge of the manuscript is actually a computerized sensor, allowing him to monitor Magna Carta from his home, near Oxford. “I’ll check each day,” he said, “to be sure the conditions are what I want them to be.”

Magna Carta (1215)
Fraunces Tavern
Manhattan (NYC)
Museums


Parliament Votes to Indict Ex-Official in Greece

Abstract: ATHENS — Greek lawmakers voted early Tuesday in favor of indicting former Finance Minister George Papaconstantinou over the way he handled a list of more than 2,000 Greeks with Swiss bank accounts, a possible source of much-needed tax revenue that was never exploited by the authorities. In a secret ballot that followed a contentious debate, a majority of lawmakers in Greece’s 300-seat Parliament said that Mr. Papaconstantinou should stand trial on three charges: breach of trust, tampering with an official document and breach of duty. The votes lifted Mr. Papaconstantinou’s immunity from prosecution for the time he was a cabinet minister. A council of judges will now decide whether he should face the criminal charges outlined in Parliament. Image Former Finance Minister George Papaconstantinou. Credit Giannis Liakos/Icon, via Reuters In an impassioned speech before the vote, Mr. Papaconstantinou claimed that he was being made a scapegoat for “the sins of a series of governments,” accusing the parliamentary committee that recommended the indictment vote of a “blatant attempt at fabricating guilt.” He contended that Greece’s financial crimes unit had the opportunity and motive to tamper with the list “with or without political intervention.” Hours before the vote, a financial prosecutor said two former heads of the financial crimes unit should be charged with breach of trust for failing to investigate the list. Mr. Papaconstantinou has repeatedly denied accusations that he removed the names of three relatives from the list of Greek account holders, known as the Lagarde list, after Christine Lagarde, the managing director of the International Monetary Fund, who handed over the list of names in 2010 when she was France’s finance minister in a bid to aid Greece’s efforts to fight tax evasion. International lenders have bailed out Greece with loans of more than $300 billion since 2010 in exchange for a succession of austerity measures that have reduced living standards and angered Greeks. Last month Greece’s financial crimes unit said it had traced more than $7.8 million in undeclared assets in the bank accounts of four of Mr. Papaconstantinou’s relatives, including the three removed from the list.

George Papaconstantinou
Greece
Euro Crisis
Legislature
Christine Lagarde
IMF
Tax Evasion


Penguins Defeat Islanders in Overtime to Take 2-1 Series Lead

Abstract: UNIONDALE, N.Y. — Pittsburgh Penguins forward Chris Kunitz is exceptionally glad that Sidney Crosby is back on the ice. So are his teammates, who escaped with a win Sunday over the pesky Islanders. Crosby set up three goals, including Kunitz’s power-play winner at 8 minutes 44 seconds of overtime, as the Penguins earned a 5-4 victory, taking a lead of two games to one in their opening-round playoff series. “It’s great to have Sid back out there,” said Kunitz, who led the Penguins with 22 goals in the regular season. “He set me up on a tee in overtime. To get that goal feels really good. We fought hard for this win.” Crosby returned for Game 2 on Friday after being out since March 30 with a broken jaw. He scored two goals in that game, but the Islanders rallied to win, 4-3. On Sunday afternoon at Nassau Coliseum, with raucous fans watching the Islanders’ first home playoff game since 2007, Crosby found a way to extract a clutch win for his team, which had the best regular-season record in the Eastern Conference. He assisted on first-period goals by Jarome Iginla and Pascal Dupuis, helping the Penguins take a 3-2 lead after the Islanders had scored twice in the first six minutes. In overtime, the smooth-skating Crosby drew a holding penalty on Islanders defenseman Brian Strait, then set up Kunitz for the winner. It was Kunitz’s second goal of the game and Pittsburgh’s sixth power-play goal in 13 chances during the series. “The only way to win in the playoffs is the hard way,” said the 25-year-old Crosby, who led the Penguins to the Stanley Cup in 2009. “Obviously it is emotional in overtime. You have to go through tough games like this to be successful.” After the Islanders took a 2-0 lead, Pittsburgh answered with two power-play goals 19 seconds apart. Dupuis gave the Penguins a lead with a minute left in the first, knocking a rebound past goalie Evgeni Nabokov for his third goal of the series. Defenseman Douglas Murray made the score 4-2 late in the second period, but the Islanders did not relent, and the Penguins squandered a two-goal lead of their own. Kyle Okposo’s short-handed goal at 5:31 of the third rejuvenated the crowd after the Penguins had seemingly taken control of the game. Okposo, who had scored the winner in Game 2 at Pittsburgh, took a pass from Frans Nielsen and skated in alone on goalie Marc-Andre Fleury, beating him low to the glove side and cutting Pittsburgh’s lead to 4-3. John Tavares, the first overall draft pick in 2009 by the Islanders, tied the score at 10:48 with his first career playoff goal. “You have to give the Islanders credit; they showed no quit,” said Iginla, who joined Pittsburgh in a late-season trade with Calgary. “They get up two early; we come back. Then we get up two, and they come back.” Tavares said his team would learn and move on to the next game. “We showed good fight; we played a good game,” Tavares said. “That was a tough call in overtime, but that’s part of the game. We need to regroup and come back strong in Game 4.” Game 3 featured drastic momentum swings, starting with the Islanders dominating the Penguins for the first 10 minutes. Matt Moulson opened the scoring when he banged a rebound past Fleury at 1:43. The Islanders continued to swarm, making it 2-0 when Casey Cizikas fired the puck past Fleury at 5:41. The announced capacity crowd of 16,170, waving orange towels, roared as the Islanders applied pressure, outshooting the Penguins by 10-4 at one point. “The crowd was electric; we could all feel it,” said Islanders Coach Jack Capuano, who declined to comment on the penalty called on his team in overtime. “We pushed the pace and didn’t stand around.” The Penguins, who led the N.H.L. with 165 goals in the abbreviated 48-game regular season, altered the dynamic of the game when Islanders defensemen Mark Streit and Travis Hamonic were serving penalties midway through the first period. Pittsburgh wasted little time during the two-man advantage. Iginla tipped in a Kris Letang slap shot at 13:18 to make the score 2-1. Then, with a five-on-four advantage, Kunitz burst in alone on Nabokov and ripped a shot over his right shoulder 19 seconds later to tie the score. Despite trailing after the first period, the Islanders had a 13-8 shot advantage. “We knew the Islanders could be dangerous, and they gave us a lot to handle,” Penguins Coach Dan Bylsma said. “We have to learn there are many different ways to win in the playoffs.” Game 4 is Tuesday night at Nassau Coliseum. “I’m not worried about our hockey team,” Capuano said. “They are learning about the ups and downs of the playoffs. We will come back and play the same way we’ve been playing all year.”

Ice hockey
Pittsburgh Penguins
Islanders
John Tavares
Chris Kunitz
Kyle Okposo
Playoffs


Teresa Giudice and Husband, of ‘Real Housewives,’ Are Sentenced to Prison

Abstract: NEWARK — Two married stars of the “Real Housewives of New Jersey” television show will be leaving the house for a while. Teresa Giudice and her husband, Giuseppe Giudice, known as Joe, were sentenced to prison on Thursday in Federal District Court here on conspiracy and bankruptcy fraud charges. Ms. Giudice was given a 15-month sentence and Mr. Giudice was given 41 months. Because the couple have four young daughters, Judge Esther Salas staggered the sentences so that Ms. Giudice will serve hers first. She is scheduled to report to prison in early January. Ms. Giudice cried and apologized before being sentenced. “I fully take responsibility for my actions,” she said. “I need to learn to take responsibility for myself.” Mr. Giudice also apologized. He faces an immigration hearing when he completes his sentence and is likely to be deported. His attorney has said that Mr. Giudice came to the United States from Italy as an infant and did not learn he was not a United States citizen until he was an adult. A spokeswoman for NBCUniversal, which owns Bravo, the channel that broadcasts the “Real Housewives” show, said on Thursday that the network would not comment on the Giudices’ status on the program. The sentencing drew an overflow crowd to the courtroom. At several points, Judge Salas criticized the couple for failing to list numerous assets — including vehicles and jewelry — in a presentencing report. In sentencing Ms. Giudice, Judge Salas said she had considered a lighter penalty but changed her mind because of the omissions. The couple pleaded guilty in March to hiding assets from bankruptcy creditors and submitting false loan applications to get about $5 million in mortgages and construction loans. Mr. Giudice also pleaded guilty to failing to pay taxes totaling more than $200,000. The couple must pay $414,000 in restitution.

TV
Teresa Giudice
Giuseppe Giudice
Fraud
New Jersey
Bankruptcy
Criminal Sentence
Newark NJ


22 Afghan Police Officers Are Killed in Attacks by Taliban

Abstract: KABUL, Afghanistan — It was a particularly bloody Wednesday for Afghan police officers, as reports emerged that at least 22 had been killed in four assaults around the country by Taliban insurgents, who also pinned down 40 police officers and officials in a bunker, short on food and ammunition. The insurgents boasted that their spring offensive was well underway, and said it proved they could disrupt the upcoming runoff election for president of Afghanistan — something they failed spectacularly to do in the first round, on April 5. In the worst-hit place, in northern Badakhshan Province, some Afghan officials complained bitterly that the American military failed to rescue them, despite an official plea for help. Officials of the American-led military forces disputed that complaint, but the disagreement highlighted the changed nature of the war as the United States and its NATO allies prepare to leave the country at the end of this year. Their forces have largely stood down from the fight already, turning over security duties to the Afghanistan government. The Afghan police force has always suffered particularly high casualties, but the reports Wednesday added up to one of its worst days. In the mountainous district of Yamgan, in northern Badakhshan Province, Taliban insurgents have been battling government forces for two days in thegovernment complex, which includes the governor’s office and police facilities. As of Wednesday night, 40 government and security officials remained stuck in an underground bunker, according to Gul Ahmad Bedar, the deputy governor of the province. According to a statement emailed to journalists by Zabiullah Mujahid, a spokesman for the insurgents, the Taliban seized control of the Yamgan district capital and killed 16 police officers. He called it part of their Khaybar offensive, as they have named this spring’s fighting season , honoring a battle that Muslims won against Jews in 629 A.D. Mr. Bedar put the confirmed death toll at eight officers and three insurgents, but he added that the officials believed to be in the underground bunker had been incommunicado for two days and were exhausting their food and ammunition. Mr. Bedar said that Afghan officials had requested support from the American-led military coalition, known as the International Security Assistance Force or ISAF, but the request had been turned down. However, Lt. Col. David Olson, a spokesman for the force contradicted Mr. Bedar, saying the force “did provide assistance to the governor of Badakhshan in the form of close air support and I.S.R.,” using the military shorthand for Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance. “ISAF has not provided us with any help,” Mr. Bedar responded. “ISAF has not bombarded the insurgents, they have not shared any intelligence with our forces. We do not even know how many insurgents are there.” Mr. Mujahid, reached by telephone at an undisclosed location, said between 150 and 200 Taliban insurgents attacked the Yamgan district center and had taken complete control of it, although he said they had not yet decided if they would try to retain control. “It depends on the strategic importance of the district,” he said. The district’s population totals only 20,000. In another remote outpost, in southern Zabul Province, eight police officers seized in a Taliban ambush two weeks ago were found killed and dumped on a roadside in the vicinity of Nowbahar District, according to Jan Mohammad Rasolyaar, the Zabul deputy governor. The Taliban spokesman for southern Afghanistan, Qari Yousuf Ahmadi, reached by telephone, confirmed that the Taliban had dumped the corpses by the roadside, but said they had been killed in a botched rescue mission by Afghan forces. He also denied reports that the insurgents had beheaded the victims. In the third incident involving police officers to come to light Wednesday, four were killed in an attack late Tuesday night on a checkpost in Mehtarlam, the capital of Laghman Province in eastern Afghanistan, according to Sarhadi Zawak, a spokesman for the Laghman governor. In the fourth incident, a suicide bomber struck in rural Hesarak district in eastern Nangarhar Province Wednesday, killing two Afghan police officers and wounding nine people, including the district governor, local officials said. Mr. Mujahid boasted that the insurgents’ spring offensive was gaining momentum. “This is just the start of the Khaybar operation,” he said. “We will attack more military installations in the coming day and weeks. The fighting will intensify as the weather gets warmer. We definitely want to disrupt the so-called election.”

Afghanistan
Attacks on Police
Taliban
Fatalities,casualties
Afghan National Police


Cheating Accusations Among Officers Overseeing Nuclear Arms

Abstract: WASHINGTON — The Air Force said on Wednesday that 34 officers responsible for launching the nation’s nuclear missiles had been suspended, and their security clearances revoked, for cheating on monthly proficiency tests that assess their knowledge of how to operate the warheads. At a news conference, Deborah Lee James, the secretary of the Air Force, said the officers, at Malmstrom Air Force Base in Montana, either knew about or took part in texting answers to the routine monthly tests. Eleven Air Force officers — including two accused in the Malmstrom cheating scandal, as well as one other nuclear missile officer — have also been the focus of suspicion in an illegal drugs investigation, defense officials said. Although the Air Force has been plagued in recent years by scandals, the current revelations are particularly alarming because they involve America’s nuclear arsenal, where errors could be catastrophic. “There’s no making this better,” said Kathleen Hicks, a former top defense official in the Obama administration now with the Center for Strategic and International Studies. She called any potential security lapse in the country’s nuclear arsenal as “worrisome. Period. Full Stop.” Defense officials insisted that the nation’s nuclear arsenal remained safe. “This is not about the compromise of nuclear weapons,” said Gen. Mark A. Welsh III, the Air Force chief of staff. He called the revelations a “compromise of the integrity of some of our airmen” and said the Air Force “will not accept or allow that type of behavior.” He characterized the Malmstrom case as the largest cheating episode he had come across among missile launch officers. Defense experts say that the end of the Cold War and the elevation of counterterrorism in the American military has led to low morale among the men and women, known as missileers, who live and work within a hair trigger of the country’s 450 nuclear missiles. The missileers have increasingly come to view their mission as a backwater, with little chance of advancement to the top ranks of the Air Force. Bruce G. Blair, a former Minuteman missile launch control officer, said missile officers routinely cheated, in part because the Air Force required them to score 100 percent on the proficiency tests. “Perfection is demanded of all of these crew members, and it’s an impossible standard,” Mr. Blair said. The Air Force cheating and drug scandals come at a time when a large number of senior officers in other branches of the military have been investigated, penalized or fired in connection with allegations of sexual improprieties, sexual violence, financial mismanagement or poor judgment. But Air Force nuclear missile officers have had particular problems. Last month, an Air Force inquiry revealed that the general who oversaw some of the nation’s nuclear weapons was dismissed for drunken antics during an official trip to Moscow last summer. The officer, Maj. Gen. Michael J. Carey, was removed as commander of the 20th Air Force, which maintains and operates intercontinental ballistic missiles, after being accused of drinking heavily, insulting his guests, consorting with someone identified as the “cigar shop lady,” and slurring his speech while weaving in Red Square, “pouting and stumbling.” Last May the Air Force disclosed that it removed 17 officers assigned to stand watch over nuclear-tipped Minuteman missiles after finding safety violations, potential violations in protecting codes and attitude problems. And last November, The Associated Press reported that Air Force officers with nuclear launch authority had twice been caught napping with the blast door open. That is a violation of security regulations meant to prevent a terrorist or intruder from entering the underground command post and compromising secret launch codes. The Pentagon disclosed the original drug inquiry last week, but officials have declined to go into details on the investigation, which is continuing, other than to say that the officers are suspected of possessing recreational drugs. Senator Mark Udall, Democrat of Colorado and chairman of the Senate subcommittee that oversees the nuclear arsenal, said Wednesday of the cheating scandal that “there is simply no room in our Air Force, and certainly in our nuclear enterprise, for this type of misconduct.” Ms. James said she would travel next week to missile launch sites to discuss ways to prevent future problems. She said that 600 missile crew members across the Air Force, including all of the 190 officers at Malmstrom, would retake the proficiency test by Thursday. General Welsh said the time frame for the cheating alleged to have occurred was last August and September. As for the reports in November of crews sleeping with the blast door open, Mr. Blair said that back when he was a missileer, “everyone slept with the blast door open.”

US Air Force
Cheating
Nuclear weapon
Deborah Lee James
Mark A Welsh III
Michael J Carey
US Military


For Charter Communications Chief, Time Warner Cable Is a Long-Sought Prize

Abstract: STAMFORD, Conn. — Thomas M. Rutledge declared victory last week when Charter Communications struck a $56.7 billion deal to acquire its much larger rival Time Warner Cable. From a corporate takeover standpoint, Charter had publicly battled for control of Time Warner Cable for the last two years. For Mr. Rutledge, Charter’s chief executive, it was the conclusion of a personal quest that goes back more than a decade. A cable industry veteran, Mr. Rutledge had been passed over for the chief executive job at Time Warner Cable in 2001. Years later, Mr. Rutledge tried to orchestrate an acquisition of Time Warner Cable when he was working as chief operating officer of Cablevision, the New York cable company. While talks between the two companies ultimately fell apart, a transaction was “seriously contemplated,” Mr. Rutledge said during an interview last week at Charter’s headquarters here. “People think that idea came to me from other people,” Mr. Rutledge said about the latest deal, alluding to news articles about the behind-the-scenes influence of John C. Malone, the billionaire media executive who is the primary backer of Charter. “But it is actually something that I have been pursuing for a long time.” Mr. Rutledge now appears to have captured his prize and stands to become one of the most powerful people in the Internet and television industries. Pending regulatory approval, the proposed merger — along with Charter’s $10.4 billion acquisition of Bright House Networks — will create the second-largest cable operator in the country, with 24 million customers in 41 states. The company would have more than 100,000 employees and control close to 30 percent of the country’s high-speed Internet market and account for 17 percent of video customers. “With this deal, he is ready to step in and be one of the real leaders,” said Jerald L. Kent, chief executive of Suddenlink, the cable operator that recently sold a controlling stake to Altice, the European telecommunications company. Mr. Rutledge, 61, has kept a relatively low profile outside the cable industry and rarely agrees to interviews. He has a reputation for being one of the best operators in the industry, a family man and a history and trivia buff, but at Charter he has mostly been overshadowed by Mr. Malone’s outsize reputation. “Why would anybody want to have a high profile?” Mr. Rutledge asked. “I don’t know what the advantage of it would be. I am trying to build a great company.” Image Charter Communications’ headquarters in Stamford, Conn. Credit Karsten Moran for The New York Times Nearly four decades ago, Mr. Rutledge helped construct a cable system from the ground up. He had been hitchhiking with a friend across Europe and the Middle East after graduating from high school in the 1970s when his father fell ill. He returned home to Pittsburgh and found an hourly job through one of his father’s friends at a small start-up cable company called Eastern Telecom. His position involved assembling devices on the ground and tossing them into the air to technicians, who were hanging from poles by belts and hooks. Soon, Mr. Rutledge was promoted and he, too, worked as a pole climber. That experience and technical understanding have been instrumental to Mr. Rutledge’s knowing exactly what it takes to lose and gain customers, industry executives said. “It is a single machine that is on 800,000 miles of roads, all interconnected, operating seamlessly so that you can deliver products anywhere and everywhere in digital form,” Mr. Rutledge said of cable service. “If you understand how it all works, which I do because I have actually built most of it, it is pretty fascinating.” After graduating from college in 1977, he took a job as manager trainee at American Television and Communications, which later became Time Warner Cable. Mr. Rutledge soon took on a position running decentralized operations across the country, moving his family seven times, working in the suburbs of Pittsburgh, Portland, Me., Albany and Austin, Tex. At the time, Mr. Rutledge said, the cable industry had an energy similar to that of Silicon Valley today, the feeling of building something revolutionary. “It was the place to be,” he said. “It was very cool. It is still cool.” Mr. Rutledge expected to take on a major operating role in the company. But after AOL acquired Time Warner in 2001 to form AOL Time Warner, Mr. Rutledge was passed over for the chief executive job at Time Warner Cable and left the company. “I just thought I would be miserable,” he said. “They didn’t believe in the vision of the industry the way I thought it should be.” That vision, he believed, did not involve owning networks like AOL but instead transforming the pipes that deliver entertainment and information for the digital age. Mr. Rutledge eventually landed at Cablevision, which is controlled by the Dolan family. He helped lead the company through a period of success and the development of a series of innovations, including the introduction of triple-play bundling, in which subscribers receive a discount for purchasing multiple services including cable television, phone and Internet. The company faced challenges and lost subscribers after Mr. Rutledge left, but analysts said that it is not clear whether he was to blame. “The open question has always been: Why did Cablevision end the way it did under his watch?” said Rich Greenfield, a media analyst at BTIG Research, adding that the company struggled in the face of stronger competition from Verizon. Cablevision declined to make an executive available for comment for this article. During his tenure at Cablevision, Mr. Rutledge met Mr. Malone, a larger-than-life figure who was one of the industry’s pioneers. Mr. Malone tried to recruit Mr. Rutledge to run DirecTV, the satellite operator he controlled at the time. Mr. Rutledge was not interested, but agreed to meet Mr. Malone for a dinner at the University Club in New York. Image Charter got a second chance for a deal after Comcast abandoned its bid for Time Warner Cable in April. Credit Karsten Moran for The New York Times “I thought the idea of sitting in a room and telling him why I didn’t want to go to DirecTV would be fascinating,” Mr. Rutledge said. “He is a frictionless thinker. By the end of the conversation, we were talking about how great cable is.” (Mr. Malone was not available for an interview, according to a spokesman.) The two executives talked occasionally over the next several years, but the fateful call came in February 2013 when Mr. Rutledge was on vacation in St. Barts. By that time, Mr. Rutledge had taken the reins at Charter, and the company had recently announced a $1.62 billion deal to acquire Cablevision’s Bresnan Broadband Holdings for systems in Colorado, Montana, Wyoming and Utah. Mr. Malone was curious about Mr. Rutledge’s strategy, and Mr. Rutledge laid it out for him: that consolidating the industry would allow cable companies to invest more in technology and deliver a better product to customers. “The vision has not changed at all,” Mr. Rutledge said. In 2013 Mr. Malone’s Liberty Media purchased a 27 percent stake in Charter; the tie-up combined Mr. Rutledge’s operational experiences with Mr. Malone’s financial skills and gave the company more firepower to pursue the industry’s crown jewel: Time Warner Cable. “The truth is boring,” said Eric L. Zinterhofer, chairman of Charter’s board. “The truth is that it is never one person in any of these things.” That set up a bitter, hostile takeover attempt by Charter for Time Warner Cable, which was thwarted when Comcast emerged with a $45.2 billion bid for the company 15 months ago. Mr. Rutledge, while disappointed, quickly changed strategy. Charter began negotiating for the subscribers Comcast would have to divest to appease regulators. “I describe him as very workmanlike and even-keeled,” Mr. Zinterhofer said. “He is focused on what he can control.” When Comcast’s takeover bid collapsed, Mr. Rutledge reassembled Charter’s deal team and started plotting a new strategy. The hunt for Time Warner Cable was back on. Mr. Rutledge worked on the deal over Memorial Day weekend from his home office in Greenwich, Conn., while one of his grandchildren played under his desk. It is certain that the deal will face stiff scrutiny from regulators, and Mr. Rutledge is taking on much of the lobbying effort himself. In fact, he called Federal Communications Commission officials last Monday, the day before the deal was announced, after watching a grandchild in a Memorial Day parade. “I thought about what I was going to say during the parade,” he said. Mr. Rutledge said it was gratifying to see his vision for the industry come together with Charter’s bid for Time Warner Cable. "Its future is better than its past," he said.

Thomas M Rutledge
Charter Communications
Time Warner Cable
Mergers and Acquisitions
Cable television


Lobstermen Will Help Study Whether Lost Traps Still Catch Lobsters

Abstract: PORTLAND, Me. (AP) — Beneath the waters off the coast of Maine lie hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions, of wire lobster traps. Lost over the years to storms, boats or the knives of fishermen who have cut them from their buoys to settle scores, some of these “ghost traps” continue catching lobsters. Marine biologists say lost and abandoned lobster, crab and other fish traps plague coastal waters around the globe, putting pressure on a number of already-troubled fish populations. Lobstermen this winter will pull up gear from selected spots in the first large-scale study of ghost traps along the Maine coast. Other studies are focusing on lost traps off the Pacific, Atlantic and Gulf of Mexico coasts. “It would be very interesting if we could drain the ocean and look at what’s down there,” said Holly Bamford, head of the Marine Debris Program of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. “We might be surprised.” Fishermen have been losing and discarding equipment for as long as they have plied the sea. But the range and impact of that refuse has grown in the last 50 years as fishing has increased, especially with more durable, nonbiodegradable equipment. The ability of lost lobster traps to continue fishing diminishes as the bait — herring or some other oily fish — dissipates. Still, scientists believe the traps continue catching lobsters, attracting creatures in search of shelter. And while traps must have escape vents that break free over time, not all vents do so. Ghost fishing studies include looks at Dungeness crab traps in Alaska, Washington, Oregon and California; blue crab and sea bass traps off North Carolina; blue crab traps in the Chesapeake Bay and the Gulf of Mexico; spiny lobster traps in Florida; and fish traps in the United States Virgin Islands. Other studies have looked at the impact of lost fishing nets in Puget Sound in Washington and off the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands, where more than 600 tons of nets were collected. In Maine, the Gulf of Maine Lobster Foundation has received a $200,000 grant to look at the issue. The foundation plans to recruit 10 lobstermen in each of seven Maine harbors to grapple for lost traps, said Laura Ludwig, who is heading the project. The findings will be assessed to determine how effective the traps are at fishing after they have been lost. Depending on their condition, the traps will be returned to their rightful owners, recycled or disposed of. In Maine, where lobstermen fish more than two million traps, it is estimated that 5 percent to 10 percent — 100,000 to 200,000 — are lost in any given year. Ben Crocker Jr., a lobsterman from Roque Bluffs in eastern Maine, says most lobstermen feel the lost traps are not catching lobsters because they are so mangled and do not have bait. “It’s mostly just garbage on the bottom,” Mr. Crocker said. Lobstermen say they are concerned about a new federal regulation that seeks to protect endangered North Atlantic right whales by outlawing use of floating rope that connects lobster traps on the ocean bottom and sometimes entangles the whales. Lobstermen say the rope sinks to the rocky bottom, where it easily abrades and breaks free, resulting in more lost gear.


Real Madrid Advances in Champions League but Has Reason to Worry

Abstract: LONDON — Real Madrid needs to win the Champions League the way a capsized crew needs a life raft. Its team, one of the most expensive ever assembled, won at home, 2-0, to complete what looked like a rout of Roma over the two legs. Looks can be deceiving. Though Cristiano Ronaldo scored again for his 90th goal in 123 Champions League appearances, the evidence is that the good ship Real Madrid is less of a force and less complete than Barcelona or Bayern Munich, the two most impressive teams in this year’s tournament. For more than an hour Tuesday in Santiago Bernabéu Stadium, it was Roma that created the better chances. Created, and squandered. If only Roma had a finisher remotely like Ronaldo, it would have comfortably wiped out the two-goal deficit it dug for itself after losing the first leg. “I’m asking my team to do the impossible,” Roma Coach Luciano Spalletti had said before the game in Madrid. “The way they are training allows me to ask that. But we mustn’t be weak mentally.” Roma has excelled in Italy this year — it has won seven straight in Serie A — and Spalletti easily identified the obvious flaw in Madrid’s lineup. He told his players, particularly the speedy Egyptian winger Mohamed Salah, to get behind Madrid’s left back, Marcelo, and create havoc there. Salah did that part to perfection. Marcelo is adventurous at going forward and linking up with Ronaldo, but the Brazilian has barely any inclination to fulfill his defensive duties. Madrid Manager Zinedine Zidane, a marvelous player who now is a rookie coach, appeared happy enough to pick Marcelo. Why? Perhaps because what Zidane best knows and loves about soccer is attacking and exploiting the opponent’s weakness. He did it par excellence as a Real Madrid forward. And earlier this week, one of his players, Raphaël Varane, said, “He is a coach who loves the game and loves attacking football. He likes movement, moving the ball around quickly and playing higher up the pitch.” Marcelo, then, is a definite Zidane pick. But the risks are obvious: On Tuesday night, Salah (twice), Edin Dzeko and Alessandro Florenzi were in good position to score, one on one, against the Madrid goalkeeper Keylor Navas. Only once did the goalkeeper need to show his agility to make the save. The other three shots went wide. And Spalletti’s face on the sideline showed that he feared that once such opportunities came Real Madrid’s way, there would be no such wastefulness. Madrid, to be sure, was carving out its own openings: Statistics had Real having 37 shots on goal to Roma’s 12. But that statistic didn’t tell the whole truth. Most of Real Madrid’s attempts came from long range, against a well-organized double line of Roma defenders. And most were either off target or so tame they were mere catching practice for Roma keeper Wojciech Szczesny. When he was finally beaten, it was by Ronaldo, of course. A week or so back, when some in Madrid’s media were prematurely calling time on Ronaldo’s career, his response was to tell them to look at the statistics because they never lie. Ronaldo was booed by a sizable portion of the crowd Tuesday, but in a handful of minutes, between the 64th and 68th, he scored the first goal and set up the other by James Rodríguez. Neither finish was a work of art. Rodríguez’s shot went straight through the legs of the goalkeeper, and Ronaldo’s was tapped in from close range, although it did require him to think and move quickly to reach the low cross by Lucas Vázquez. Vázquez is that rarity, a player actually produced by the Real Madrid youth system. The 24-year-old had to wait a long time for his breakthrough season in Real’s white, and he spent last season at Espanyol, the other club in Barcelona. Vázquez’s role on Tuesday was to come off the bench and replace Gareth Bale — recently returned from injury — once he tired. After linking up with Luka Modric, Vázquez danced past a defender and demonstrated that he had the talent to shine, if his club allowed him to show it. Ronaldo now has 353 goals in 336 games with Madrid, and no one would deny that he is a superstar. Yet, the Madrid fans boo him. The older supporters look beyond the goal totals and want less hubris. They saw it in previous stars like Alfredo Di Stéfano and, later, in Zidane. And Tuesday, the crowd that harangued Ronaldo gave a standing ovation to a man who never played for them. As the game neared its end, Roma sent it its longtime magician, Francesco Totti. Now 39, Totti first wore Roma’s distinctive purple and golden yellow when he was 16. Real once bid for him, but Totti always was a one-team kind of a guy. He can no longer inspire his beloved team to victory, as he once could with instinctive and almost insolent guile. But as he made a cameo during his 595th game for Roma — most likely his last appearance at the Bernabéu — Totti was given the ovation denied to the man who scored the game winner, Ronaldo. Spalletti reiterated after the contest that his team needed, somehow, to toughen up on the mental side of the game, something Totti never had a problem with. But by fielding Totti at the end, he demonstrated that Roma is also woefully short in what Madrid has in abundance: the ability to score goals. And Real, which has no chance to win its league and has only the Champions League left to play for, advanced to the quarterfinals for the sixth year in a row.

Soccer
Roma Soccer Team
Real Madrid
UEFA Champions League
Francesco Totti
Cristiano Ronaldo


An Afterlife for Europe’s Disused Places of Worship

Abstract: BRUSSELS — When a church closes its doors, it is a sad day for its parishioners. When it is slated for demolition, it is a sad day for the larger community, as Lilian Grootswagers realized in 2005 when she and her neighbors in the small Dutch village of Kaatsheuvel learned that St. Joseph’s Roman Catholic Church was due to be torn down and replaced by a four-story apartment block. Leaping into action, Ms. Grootswagers started a petition drive, collecting 3,250 signatures, almost one-quarter of the village’s population, and sought help on a national level. As it turned out, St. Jozefkerk, built in 1933 as the centerpiece of an unusual architectural ensemble, was eligible to be on a register of historic buildings. Today, nine years after it held its last Mass, the church is still standing, empty but awaiting its next incarnation. Its rescue was a victory for a widening effort across Europe to preserve religious buildings in the face of rapid secularization and dwindling public resources. Begun as a grass-roots movement in 2009, the Future for Religious Heritage took shape in 2011 as a network of groups from more than 30 countries, dedicated to finding ways to keep churches, synagogues and other religious buildings open, if not for services, then for other uses. But making the transition from places of worship to some other purpose is a tricky one, which necessarily involves not only community support, but also managerial skills. “You can only manage a building if it has income,” said Leena Seim, executive officer of the Future for Religious Heritage, which has an office in Brussels. Image St. Joseph’s church in the Dutch village of Kaatsheuvel. Credit Lilian Grootswagers Perhaps nowhere is the plight of churches more stark than in the Netherlands, where about 1,000 Catholic churches — about two-thirds of the country’s total — are due to be shut down by 2025, a reorganization forced by a steady drop in attendance, baptisms and weddings. Those were the figures given by Cardinal Willem Eijk, archbishop of Utrecht, in a report delivered to Pope Francis last December. This trend is building up to an “immense tsunami,” said Ms. Grootswagers, council secretary for the Future for Religious Heritage. “Every day, there is a story in the papers about another church closing. Before, it was kept quiet. Now they are saying it in the open.” From Italy to Estonia, communities are scrambling to find ways to save oft-beloved buildings from destruction, neglect, and in some cases the ravages of mass tourism. The status of religious buildings varies widely. In France, churches built before 1905 mostly belong to the municipalities. In Britain, most belong to the Church of England. In every country, and every case, there are intricate tax implications, legal issues and questions about the appropriate use of a formerly sacred place. Deconsecrated churches have been turned into health centers, libraries, museums, restaurants and even a roller skating rink. These outcomes can be controversial. The key is an open debate, Ms. Seim said, adding, “It is most important to involve stakeholders at an early stage.” But it is not easy for communities to thrash through these issues on their own, which is why the Future for Religious Heritage has collected and shared ideas, experience and expertise across its network. A recent poll backs up the view that religious buildings are widely cherished as part of Europe’s cultural heritage. According to the poll, conducted by Sociovision among 6,000 citizens of eight European countries, four out of five consider the religious buildings in their midst to be “crucial” for the future of their communities, and three out of four favor opening them to non-religious activities if that would keep them open. Armed with these findings, preservationists are pressing for aid from the European Union. “We have to convince people that churches are not just for believers,” Olivier de Rohan-Chabot, president of the Future for Religious Heritage, said in an interview in Paris. “Suddenly, we have realized that this is a problem that concerns our civilization.”

Europe
Catholic Church
Protestants
church,churches
Historic preservation


New York City Delays Hiring 540 Police Recruits

Abstract: The Bloomberg administration, laboring under continued budget troubles, said Tuesday that it was shelving plans to hire a 540-candidate Police Academy class that was to be sworn in this month, city officials said. Leading city legislators, including the City Council speaker, Christine C. Quinn, and the head of the city’s largest police union said they were alarmed by the decision, warning that any further depletion of police officers’ ranks could erode recent gains in crime fighting. The department’s head count is now 34,525 officers, about 6,000 fewer officers than at the peak of departmental staffing, in 2000. Patrick J. Lynch, the president of the Patrolmen’s Benevolent Association , called the move — which he referred to as a “cancellation” of this month’s class — “a bad decision that will compound the existing staffing problem, compromise public safety and put our police officers at greater risk.” But Stu Loeser, a spokesman for Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, said the administration was merely shifting the April class to July, when 900 police recruits were already expected to be hired. Mr. Loeser said the city would “do a combined class then.” He said everyone eligible to be hired in April would be eligible in July, after the start of the next fiscal year. Mr. Loeser said that the final July enrollment, whether 1,450 or some other number, would be determined through the city’s budget process. Councilman Peter F. Vallone Jr. of Queens, chairman of the Council’s public safety committee, said that each month that passed without the swearing in of recruits meant a loss in head count because officers were retiring. The class scheduled to start this month was already postponed; it had been set to begin in January, he said. “And by the time any cadets hired in July get onto the streets, it will be January 2012,” Mr. Vallone said. “And as every month goes by, we lose over a hundred officers to attrition.” Paul J. Browne, the department’s chief spokesman, said that “in adjusting to the tough fiscal reality,” the force had managed to oversee reductions in murder and overall crime, as measured in seven categories, through the first three and a half months of the year. “We’ll continue to fight crime with what we have,” Mr. Browne said.

Police
Hiring and Promotion
Police Academy
New York City


7 Years for Psychologist

Abstract: FARGO, N.D. (AP) — A former mental hospital psychologist who said he became interested in child pornography while treating sex offenders was sentenced Friday to seven years in prison. The man, Joseph Belanger, 61, of Jamestown, pleaded guilty last year to receiving and possessing materials involving the sexual exploitation of minors. Mr. Belanger, who had worked at the State Hospital in Jamestown for more than 20 years, paid for access to pornography Web sites and downloaded thousands of sexually explicit images.

Pornography and Obscenity
Sentences (Criminal)
Psychology and Psychologists


Transgender Children’s Books Fill a Void and Break a Taboo

Abstract: Sam Martin was browsing in a Boston record store 23 years ago when an unusual photography book caught his eye. Mr. Martin flipped through its pages, which featured portraits and interviews with women who had become men, and started to cry. “I thought, ‘Oh, my God, I’m not the only one,’ ” said Mr. Martin, 43, who started transitioning to male from female after he bought the book. “When I was growing up, I never saw people like me in movies or books.” Mr. Martin is now on a mission to change that. He belongs to a small group of emerging authors who are writing children’s literature that centers on transgender characters, hoping to fill the void they felt as young readers. His debut work of fiction — a semi-autobiographical story about a transgender teenage boy who falls in love with an older boy on the beach in Cape Cod — will be published in a collection this month by Duet, a new young adult publisher that specializes in lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer fiction. “My goal was to write stories that would have helped me feel less alone at that age,” said Mr. Martin, who works as a Starbucks barista in Washington and writes at night. A few years ago, gender fluidity was rarely addressed in children’s and young adult fiction. It remained one of the last taboos in a publishing category that had already taken on difficult issues like suicide, drug abuse, rape and sex trafficking. But children’s literature is catching up to the broader culture, as stereotypes of transgender characters have given way to nuanced and sympathetic portrayals on TV shows like “Orange Is the New Black” and “Transparent.” Recently, the highly publicized transformation of the reality TV star and former Olympian Bruce Jenner into Caitlyn Jenner — revealed to the world via a glamorous portrait on the cover of Vanity Fair — brought even more visibility to the movement for transgender equality. More writers and publishers have started tackling the subject, not just with memoirs and self-help guides tailored to transgender youth, but through novels aimed at a broad readership. This year, children’s publishers are releasing around half a dozen novels in a spectrum of genres, including science fiction and young adult romance, that star transgender children and teenagers. “In our culture, it was really something that was in the shadows, but suddenly people are talking about it,” said David Levithan, vice president and publisher of Scholastic Press. “As our culture is starting to acknowledge transgender people and acknowledge that they are part of the fabric of who we are, literature is reflecting that.” Image A memoir by a transgender teenager from Oklahoma. Several of the movement’s debut authors have published books drawn from their own experiences. Last fall, a transgender teenager named Jazz Jennings published “I Am Jazz,” a picture book she co-wrote about a transgender girl. Simon & Schuster released dual memoirs by Katie Rain Hill and Arin Andrews, two transgender teenagers from Oklahoma who met and fell in love. Mr. Andrews, 19, said that books for young adults on the subject were scarce when he began transitioning to male from female in 2011. “When I first started transitioning, I mostly had YouTube as a source,” he said. “I wanted to write a book to help others because there were not a lot of sources out there, and I thought that one book could save a person’s life.” Mr. Andrews says he receives 15 to 20 Facebook messages a day from readers about his memoir, “Some Assembly Required,” including notes from children as young as 8 and readers in their 60s and 70s who say the book helps them navigate questions about their gender identity. The body of children’s literature on the subject is still tiny and relatively new. When Julie Anne Peters published “Luna,” a novel about a teenage girl whose brother wants to be a girl, in 2004, it was the first young-adult novel with a transgender character to be released by a mainstream publisher. Since then, more than 50 novels with transgender characters have been published, mostly for teenagers, according to Talya Sokoll, a librarian who compiled a reading list of children’s books with trans characters. Some of the writers who are exploring the topic have faced criticism and online attacks. A blistering Amazon review for “I am Jazz,” written for 4- to 8-year-olds, called the story of a transgender girl “inappropriate material for young readers,” while another reviewer scolded, “We should not be indoctrinating young kids about ‘trans.’ ” But writers and publishers have been undeterred, noting that child psychologists and L.G.B.T. advocacy groups argue that very young children can question their gender identity and that families should be open to discussing the subject. The next frontier for authors writing about transgender people seems to be middle-grade literature, or books aimed at 8- to 12-year-olds. In November, Disney Hyperion published “Gracefully Grayson,” a novel for readers ages 10 and up about a sixth-grade boy who feels like a girl. In August, Scholastic will publish “George,” a middle-grade debut novel about a boy who knows he is a girl but doesn’t know how to tell his family and friends. George decides to try out for the part of Charlotte in a school production of “Charlotte’s Web” in hopes that it will help others see him the way he sees himself. For readers, it’s not much of a leap. From the first paragraph, an omniscient narrator refers to George as “she,” so that when other characters use male pronouns to refer to George, it feels jarring. Image Alex Gino, the author of "George," identifies as genderqueer, a gender identity that falls outside of the male/female binary. Credit Dina Litovsky for The New York Times The author, Alex Gino, who grew up in Staten Island and lives in the San Francisco Bay Area, identifies as genderqueer, a gender identity that falls outside of the male/female binary, and goes by the pronoun “they.” Alex started writing “George” 12 years ago, while working as a tutor, and wrote more than a dozen drafts. “I wrote it because it was the book I wanted to read,” Alex said. “I wanted trans voices telling trans stories.” In the first draft, Alex didn’t even use the word “transgender.” “I was like, how would a 10-year-old ever come across that word, but now I’m like, of course they would,” Alex said. Scholastic is facing resistance from some teachers and librarians who question whether third and fourth graders are ready for the discussion. About a month ago, the publisher sent 10,000 early copies to teachers around the country to get feedback, and the responses were largely positive with some mixed reactions. But Scholastic is aiming to turn the book into a mainstream success. It increased the first printing to 50,000 from 35,000 based on strong preorders and sent Alex to meet with booksellers and librarians at the ABC Children’s Institute in Pasadena, Calif., and at BookExpo in New York. They hired Jamie Clayton, a transgender actress, to narrate the audiobook. So far, early responses from parents of young readers have been encouraging. Marietta Zacker, a literary agent who lives in South Orange, N.J., picked up a copy of “George” at the expo and read it with her 11-year-old daughter, Natalia, who loved it. “It was not shocking to her,” Ms. Zacker said. “It’s the story of every person, the quest to be your own self.” Carolyn Mackler, a young-adult novelist who lives in Manhattan, gave a copy of “George” to her 10-year-old son to read. She told him that it was about a transgender child and explained what that meant. After he read it, she asked him what he thought. “I said, ‘If you met George, would you be friends with him?’ ” she recalled. “And he said, ‘Mom, it’s her, and I would be friends with her if she was nice.’ ”

Transgender,Gender Dysphoria
Books
Children
Publishing
Teens
Discrimination


Shutdown’s Quiet Toll, From Idled Research to Closed Wallets

Abstract: WASHINGTON — The Environmental Protection Agency has stopped monitoring mercury contamination in the Everglades and testing water after the recent floods in Colorado. An $8 billion space telescope, the largest in the world, waits to be tested at minus-400 degrees Fahrenheit in a closed government facility in suburban Maryland, facing the possibility of costly delays. Many of the half a million federal workers whose paychecks on Friday showed half of what they normally earn fretted about how to juggle bills and put off major purchases. As the partial government shutdown reached its 11th day on Friday, it was affecting far more than the nation’s monuments and parks, with much of the little-noticed machinery of government shifted to idle. Jobs deemed essential continued to be performed, but other tasks that have paused may take a lasting toll, even if President Obama and Congressional Republicans reach an agreement to end the shutdown soon. The temporary disruption of furloughed workers’ spending patterns, a skittishness likely to continue even after they go back to work, is capable of measurable damage to the nation’s growth rate, economists said. Federal workers are “spooked” and are likely to save more and spend less, said Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody’s Analytics. “They’re going to be cautious at least into the next year,” he said. Victor Anderson, a furloughed worker for the Internal Revenue Service in West Virginia, said, “I live from paycheck to paycheck just like every other American does.” Mr. Anderson, who earns $62,000 a year overseeing building maintenance, is worried that his credit rating will fall because he cannot pay bills this month. “I’ve got to tell you, this is messing me up,” he said. “It’s going to take me a year once we go back to work to get squared away because of not getting my salary.” The National Institutes of Health, the largest financial supporter of medical research in the world, has ground to a halt during the peak of its grant-making season, suspending millions of dollars in new research. The country’s Antarctic program has been suspended, ejecting some of the world’s leading scientists from their lodgings at the South Pole, where they collect data crucial for understanding climate change. Some agencies, like the E.P.A., have been virtually shuttered. Almost 95 percent of the agency’s 16,000 workers have been told to stay home. And while some longtime opponents of environmental regulation cheer that temporary outcome, others are deploring what could be lasting impacts on the environment. “It is a polluter’s heyday,” said Sara Chieffo, the legislative director of the League of Conservation Voters. Normally, she said, “they are doing the inspections that need to be done, making sure that polluters are held to account.” “We know that the longer this goes on, the cascading effects occur,” she added. Dan Ronnenberg, who is on a furlough along with thousands of other safety inspectors for the Federal Aviation Administration, said tasks not being performed included inspections of the de-icing of aircraft on the tarmac and checks that pilots do not fly longer than allowed. He said the risks to flight safety increase the longer outside inspectors were off duty. The shutdown initially sent about 800,000 workers home on Oct 1. The Defense Department recalled most of its 350,000 civilian work force, and others who are deemed essential have returned piecemeal, like thousands of C.I.A. employees and experts at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention needed to confront a salmonella outbreak. Agreements were reached between the federal government and states to reopen a number of national parks and monuments, including the Statue of Liberty, Grand Canyon National Park, Mount Rushmore and parks in Utah and Colorado. But the shutdown has left close to 500,000 employees still on furlough, according to the American Federation of Government Employees. The House passed a bill to assure that they receive back pay, which the White House supports. Even if workers are financially made whole, their uncertainty about whether another shutdown could occur was giving many pause about making big purchases. Image Furloughed employees of the Environmental Protection Agency headed into a wooded area to do volunteer trail maintenance in Hillsborough, N.C., on Thursday. Credit Gerry Broome/Associated Press Andrew Sailes, a mechanic at Bolling Air Force Base in Washington, and his wife have put off buying a house for a year. “We’ve got to sit in our apartment until we get some more money,” he said. “We had to push everything back.” The furlough comes on top of the all-agency spending cuts earlier this year known as sequestration, which forced some workers to take unpaid leave and departments to cut budgets. Republicans applauded reducing the size of the government, but some economists calculated that the cuts have slowed the nation’s growth. Scientists said that one of the most serious casualties might be the country’s reputation. Markus Kissler-Patig, the director of the Gemini Observatory, an international coalition with telescopes in Hawaii and Chile, said he was worried about the United States’ foreign partners if the coalition’s cash flow, which is administered by the National Science Foundation, were to run out. The foundation, which is almost entirely furloughed, cannot provide cash infusions during the shutdown. “I am starting to hear informal feedback questioning whether the N.S.F. is the right agency to run this international observatory,” he said. Nor could the timing have been worse for the James Webb Space Telescope, an $8 billion contraption that unfolds like an origami figure in space and will be capable of detecting the universe’s earliest galaxies. Scientists have toiled for years and were poised to put its inner workings to the test by simulating the vacuum of outer space in a structure the size of a grain silo when the shutdown halted work at the NASA-run facility in suburban Maryland. “It’s just sitting there twiddling its thumbs,” said Matt Mountain, the director of NASA’s Space Telescope Science Institute. Also suspended was work at the South Pole, which involves collecting information critical to studying climate change and can be done only a few months a year. “In my whole career, this is the most frustrating thing I’ve ever seen,” said Ross Powell, a geologist who has been going to the South Pole since the early 1970s. At the E.P.A., officials have allowed about 900 employees to stay on the job, responding to imminent threats to the environment or to public health. Workers are reporting for duty at toxic waste sites that pose a direct threat to surrounding communities. But officials said the bulk of the agency’s work had been suspended. Industrial chemicals are not being screened for potential health effects. Routine inspections of drinking water systems across the country have been halted. Some of the agency’s critics say the work stoppages are proof of what they have contended for years: that the agency’s efforts to issue environmental rules reach too far into American life and should be curtailed. “There is some good news out of the shutdown,” Representative Marsha Blackburn, Republican of Tennessee, wrote on Twitter. “The E.P.A. can’t issue new regulations.” But supporters of the agency said the shutdown had affected critical tasks related to keeping the nation’s air and water clean. Representative Lamar Smith, Republican of Texas and chairman of the House Science, Space and Technology Committee, said he hoped the shutdown would end soon. “The partial government shutdown has delayed investigations and ongoing scientific studies at the agency,” Mr. Smith said. But the E.P.A.’s shutdown has also created economic effects as the agency has stopped certifying certain products that enter the country for sale. Among those is millions of dollars’ worth of chemicals used to make pesticides. They are stuck in customs because E.P.A. field workers are not available to review and approve them. At the nation’s ports, some cars and trucks are stuck in limbo because there are no E.P.A. inspectors to certify the emissions stickers that are put on the windows. Anne Lucas, a chemist for the Food and Drug Administration in Maryland who has been on furlough, said she was not worried about her finances but was unhappy to be idle so long. “We all just want to get back to work,” she said. “Most federal workers are not there for the money, they’re there for the service.” She has been volunteering at a nature center, where she is assigned to pick up trash, a task she said was preferable to doing nothing. “Just because I have a Ph.D. doesn’t mean I’m too good to pick up trash,” she said.

Closings
US Politics
Federal Budget
EPA
NSF
NASA