Norman F. Lent, 11-Term Congressman From Long Island, Dies at 81

Abstract: Norman F. Lent, who in his 11 terms in Congress representing a large swath of Long Island’s South Shore was a significant voice in shaping environmental legislation, despite always being in the minority, died on June 11 at his home in Arlington, Va. Mr. Lent, a Republican, was 81. The cause was complications of cancer, John Hambel, a friend and longtime Congressional aide, said. Mr. Lent, whose district in Nassau County was reconfigured several times during his years in Congress — from 1971 to 1993 — rose to become the ranking minority member of the House Energy and Commerce Committee. The committee oversees legislation on the environment, the oil industry , cable television and other matters. Mr. Lent was known for his willingness to compromise. With the panel’s chairman, Representative John D. Dingell, a Michigan Democrat, he was a co-sponsor in 1990 of major amendments to the Clean Air Act , which President Richard M. Nixon had signed 20 years earlier — among them regulations to limit toxic air emissions and acid rain. He was also a sponsor of the 1980 law that created the Superfund , the federal government’s program to clean up the nation’s hazardous waste sites. And he helped pass laws that banned oil dumping in Long Island Sound; placed Peconic Bay, on Long Island’s North Fork, in the National Estuary Program ; and banned the dumping of municipal sewage in oceans. “He has put imprints on landmark legislation, mainly serving as the emissary of Republican presidents in the tough environment of Energy and Commerce, but sometimes breaking with the White House on environmental issues,” Newsday wrote in 1992. Lawrence Levy, executive dean of the National Center for Suburban Studies at Hofstra University on Long Island, said on Monday that Mr. Lent “was one of the first green Republicans, one of those people who do not see the environment as an enemy,” adding that he “was a moderate on most issues in a way that reflected the growing middle-of-the-road suburban constituency that marked Nassau County.” Mr. Lent, who was a state senator for eight years before being elected to Congress, considered himself a moderate conservative. He won his seat in the House in 1970 by defeating the incumbent, Allard K. Lowenstein, a liberal Democrat and prominent critic of the Vietnam War. As a state senator in 1965, Mr. Lent strongly opposed an order issued by the state education commissioner requiring the integration of public elementary schools in Malverne, N.Y., because, he said, it would undermine the neighborhood school concept. As chairman of the Legislature’s Joint Committee on Public Health, he was a proponent of liberalizing New York’s abortion law, which at the time permitted abortions only to save the life of the mother. He was also a leading proponent of a state ban on the use of DDT and other chlorinated hydrocarbon pesticides. “We continue to play a game of chemical roulette with man’s biological future,” he said. “We’ve got to stop this.” Norman Frederick Lent Jr. was born in Oceanside, N.Y., on March 23, 1931, to Norman and Nellie Bain Lent. His father was a Nassau County District Court judge. Norman Jr. graduated from Hofstra in 1952 and, after serving in the Navy for two years, received his law degree from Cornell in 1957. Before running for office, he served as a law clerk to a State Supreme Court justice and as a police judge in the Village of East Rockaway. Mr. Lent’s first marriage, to Nancy Budlong, ended in divorce. He is survived by his wife of 32 years, Barbara Morris-Lent; a son, Norman III; a daughter, Barbara Anne Roberts; a half-brother, Robert; and five grandchildren. Mr. Lent chose not to run for re-election in 1992 after his district was redrawn for a second time. Soon after that he formed a lobbying firm in Washington. “You have to wonder how a guy like Norman Lent would have fared today, when nobody seems to talk to anybody on the other side of the aisle,” Mr. Levy of Hofstra said. “I suspect he would have been very frustrated. Then again, if anybody could have made it work, it would have been him.”

Lent Norman F.
United States Politics and Government
House of Representatives
Deaths (Obituaries)
Republican Party
Long Island (NY)
Lent Norman F


Washington: Plea Deal Reported in Killings in Iraq

Abstract: A soldier accused of killing five fellow servicemen at a military counseling center in Iraq in 2009 has reached a plea deal with Army prosecutors that would spare him from facing the death penalty, his lawyer said on Friday. The soldier, Sgt. John M. Russell, is accused of going on a shooting rampage at Camp Liberty, next to the Baghdad airport, in an attack that the military said could have been triggered by combat stress. “We have reached an agreement, and both parties have entered into the agreement,” said Sergeant Russell’s lawyer, James Culp. Mr. Culp said Sergeant Russell would plead guilty to five counts of murder, one count of attempted murder and one count of assault at a hearing on Monday. An Army spokesman declined to comment.

John M Russell
Plea bargain
Iraq War
Murders
Baghdad
Iraq
US Military


A Sea of Blue and Mourning at an Officer’s Funeral

Abstract: The police sharpshooters stood atop an apartment tower on Beach 84th Street in Far Rockaway on Monday morning. They were there by way of protocol, but the view must have been striking. It was a fitting vantage point for the funeral of an officer who died in a high-rise building fire. Below, hundreds of uniformed officers lined Beach 84th and spilled around the corner onto Shore Front Parkway. Beyond them stretched the beach and the choppy surf of the Atlantic Ocean. The sea still too cold for beach visitors, the neighborhood seemed to exist just for this funeral. Blue sky, blue coats. A biting wind off the water. Three flag bearers, standing near the mayor and his wife, fought to keep their colors upright. Before them all stood St. Rose of Lima Church, its doors open, waiting. The death of a police officer in the line of duty in New York City inspires sorrow and sometimes outrage. It also triggers an age-old pageant to honor the fallen, and on Monday, the funeral was for Officer Dennis Guerra, 38. He and another officer, Rosa Rodriguez, 36, were responding to a fire at a high-rise apartment in Coney Island on April 6. They took the elevator to the 13th floor only to be overcome by smoke. Officer Guerra died days later; Officer Rodriguez remains hospitalized. A teenager, Marcell Dockery, 16, who was arrested and charged with setting the fire, told investigators that he had set a mattress on fire because he was bored, the police said. After Officer Guerra’s death, he was charged with second-degree murder. In the silence surrounding the church, a slow thump of heavy drums announced the New York City Police Department’s Emerald Society Pipes and Drums before they could be seen. Row after row of police motorcycles followed, two abreast. Then came a hearse bearing flowers and, finally, the one carrying Officer Guerra’s coffin. Image After the funeral Mass, a hearse departs with the body of Officer Dennis Guerra, who had followed his father into the police force. Credit Michael Appleton for The New York Times Officers lined up at the rear of the vehicle, and one said softly, “right-face,” and they turned, raised the coffin to their shoulders and entered the church. Mayor Bill de Blasio, Police Commissioner William J. Bratton, the fallen officer’s friends and family, and dozens of colleagues followed, with one ritual making way for another, the funeral Mass. When there was nowhere left to sit, people stood along walls and in the rear. “We come to say farewell to a hero,” said the Rev. Gutierrez Fulgencio, the priest who married Officer Guerra and his wife almost nine years ago. The couple went on to have four children. Father Fulgencio urged the congregation to remember the hero and not “the irrational act of a 16-year-old teenager.” Mayor de Blasio rose to speak. “A mayor has no more solemn, no more somber duty than the one before me today,” he said. He too called the officer of eight years a hero. But then he shared other sides of Officer Guerra, from the skateboard he cherished as a child to the apron he proudly wore while barbecuing outside his Far Rockaway house. The apron read — “and I quote,” the mayor said — “‘Grillmaster: The Man, the Myth, the Legend.’ ” Image Officer Guerra’s widow receives the flag that covered his coffin. They married almost nine years ago and had four children. Credit Ozier Muhammad/The New York Times In July, Officer Guerra rescued a boy from a burning vehicle on the Belt Parkway “just before a tire exploded,” the mayor said. When Officers Guerra and Rodriguez ran toward the elevator on April 6, “their first thought was, ‘It’s up to us to save people’s lives.’ ” Mr. Bratton spoke next, of how as a child, Officer Guerra so admired his father that he chose to follow him into the police force. The younger Guerra worked dangerous posts, and the calls poured in: “Drugs were being sold. Disorderly group. Man with a gun,” Mr. Bratton said. “Dennis seemed to relish in it.” He would sometimes call his father and say, “I’m starting where you started.” When he asked his father for advice, his father said, “Go with your gut. You’ll do the right thing.” Officer Guerra’s father retired at the rank of detective, and his son was posthumously promoted to the same rank, Mr. Bratton said. The church filled with applause. Mr. Bratton paused to remember the outdoor chef — “They were the best hamburgers. He would tell you that while you were eating one” — before addressing the officer’s family. “You are surrounded by a sea of blue today,” he said. “Our family is your family.” The Mass ended, the police officers flowing out to again line the street. Many neighborhood residents came to watch. Image Mayor Bill de Blasio, his wife, Chirlane McCray and Police Commissioner William J. Bratton outside the church before the funeral for Officer Guerra. Credit Michael Appleton for The New York Times “It’s all for one and one for all — this officer was trying to help somebody out and it cost him his life,” said Mike Ladd, 56, a painter. “It’s very beautiful, the ceremony,” said Kat Raynor, 37, a doula. “It’s quite the send-off. So sad.” The bagpipes sounded, leading the hearse carrying Officer Guerra’s body away from the church. A formation of seven police helicopters passed overhead. An elderly man, winded and carrying a cane, leaned against the church to catch his breath. He wore large, dark glasses. “I can’t see anyway,” he said to another onlooker. Was that the coffin coming out, he asked. It was. He was asked why he was here. “My son,” he said, “is a lieutenant.” The proceedings concluded, the officers returned to cars and vans and buses to exit Far Rockaway and return to their work.

Dennis Guerra
Funerals
Police
NYPD
Murders
NYC
Fires
Marcell Dockery


No Need to Call the Front Desk, Just Send a Text

Abstract: As a well-traveled businessman, James Linn felt silly during a trip this month, when he forgot to pack dress socks. In the past, Mr. Linn, a managing director at the American Gas Association who was in New Orleans for an energy conference, would have rushed to a clothing store near his hotel, a Hyatt Regency, to buy an extra pair. Instead, he texted the hotel. The front desk texted back within minutes, saying it would have socks waiting for him in the lobby. “What used to be just a personal communication method has become business mainstream,” Mr. Linn said. Today, having a concierge ready at the tap of a thumb is an amenity offered mostly at luxury hotels. But more hotels of all types are beginning to accommodate guests unwilling or unable to fumble with a room phone to call a concierge — increasingly relying on text messages to keep smartphone-wielding guests happy and spending money. At the beginning of last year, Zingle, one of a handful of start-ups running the technology to connect hotel customers to concierge by text, ran a pilot program at a handful of Four Seasons and Loews hotels. Today, it works with about 300 individual hotels, including Hyatt Regency. Kipsu, another start-up that works with Starwood Hotels and Menin Hospitality, is at 150 individual hotels — five times its count from a year before. “Typically, the conversations are usually transactional in nature,” said Chris Smith, co-founder and chief executive of Kipsu. “What happens over time that’s really interesting is that a relationship grows.” Hotels hope to encourage guests accustomed to ordering from Seamless and GrubHub, even when on the road, to rely more on room service, where business has slid nationwide. In 2010, American hotels made $2.33 per occupied room from room service requests for food and beverage, according to a survey done by PKF Hospitality Research, a hospitality consulting firm. By 2014, that average fell to $1.61. But even more important, hospitality managers and analysts say, is saving a hotel from a bad review on TripAdvisor or Expedia, the powerful travel sites. For picky travelers, little things like a broken light or a leaky faucet can shave a star or two off an online review. But if guests can air grievances more easily and hotels respond quickly, the thinking goes, it could lead to more positive reviews. When a guest sends a text to one of the hotels that use either the Kipsu or Zingle apps, the message is delivered to the phones, tablets and desktops of dozens of hotel employees. When a staff member begins to type a reply, the apps let the others know someone else is on it, so the guests do not receive more than one response. Hotel staff members say the system helps them keep requests organized and respond quickly. Some hotels aim to answer all texts within three minutes. “If you take a phone call and get distracted by something else when you hang up, you might forget which room to send the razor to,” said Lauren Gilmore, a sales assistant at the Hyatt Regency in Sacramento, Calif., which uses Zingle. Hyatt is testing concierge-by-text at a handful of its Regency-line hotels. When Lynn Guthridge walked into her room at the SLS Hotel Beverly Hills last September, she smelled cigarette smoke. Ms. Guthridge, a human resources assistant at a Walgreens in Orange County, Calif., considered calling the front desk about the odor. But before she could, the front desk sent her a text. “How is your experience at our property thus far?” read the text, sent by a hotel staff member through Kipsu. When she told the hotel about the smell, a staff member at the front desk offered to move her and her daughter to another room. “Nowadays, it seems like people text too much and they don’t have enough personal interaction. But for just something like that, I think it’s pretty convenient,” Ms. Guthridge said. She often keeps in touch with her three grown children through text, she said. As they turn to texting with customers, though, hotels have found they must learn to avoid some easy missteps. “One thing that’s critical is making sure that the hotel does not text too frequently,” said Reneta H. McCarthy, a senior lecturer on hotel operations at the Cornell School of Hotel Administration in New York. “How many texts is appropriate? And should the first text that is sent to someone ask that person if they are O.K. with the business texting them?” Another pitfall — and opportunity — for harried hotelkeepers is the use of automated messages. Zingle, for example, can be programmed to automatically answer queries about where the gym is, or the time of checkout. “If there’s a common question where there’s a really simple answer, the hotels can automate it,” said Erik Suhonen, vice president for marketing and product at Zingle. Some hotels, like the Hyatt Regency in Sacramento, have those responses preloaded for front desk computers, rather than sent automatically, in order to prevent errant texts while still saving the staff a few keystrokes. Marriott Hotels & Resorts is poised to take the automation even further. In May, Marriott added a chat function to its app that lets the hotel keep a record of all requests for future reference “without guests having to explain it twice,” said John Wolf, vice president for consumer public relations at Marriott. Efforts to anticipate guests’ needs, Mr. Wolf said, help keep members of its loyalty program coming back. For the hoteliers in Beverly Hills, texting has kept at least one customer loyal. Ms. Guthridge declined to be transferred from her smoky room, but she took the hotel’s loyalty points and gave it five out of five stars on TripAdvisor. She has stayed there two more times since then.

Hotels
Text messaging
Zingle
Travel,Tourism
Business travel
Kipsu


A Plan to Rank ‘Just’ Companies Aims to Close the Wealth Gap

Abstract: Paul Tudor Jones II, the hedge-fund billionaire, has a plan to reduce income inequality. He wants to rate companies on their probity, not their profits. “The wealth gap, that’s the single most important issue in this country,” he said in September while unveiling Just Capital, a nonprofit organization that he created with Deepak Chopra , the spiritual self-help author and wellness entrepreneur who taught Mr. Jones how to meditate. Just Capital will rank corporations on how well, or “justly,” they treat employees, society and the environment. The idea is to laud companies that offer better pay, happier workplaces and greater transparency — and perhaps shame others to follow suit. This kind of moral index, Mr. Jones said, “could not only impact investors, it could impact consumers, it might impact the way companies hire, the way people go and work with companies; it will impact boardrooms, everything.” The project began, improbably enough, in 2011 in the chic Manhattan design store ABC Carpet and Home when Mr. Chopra was whisked away from his salon in a friend’s chauffeured car to an Occupy Wall Street rally. Today, with a presidential election looming and calls for the wealthy to pay more in taxes coming not only from populist politicians but also from billionaires like Warren E. Buffett, even members of the top 1 percent of the 1 percent are passionately inveighing against the wealth gap. “The middle-class guy who’s making the $50,000 a year realizes, ‘I’m being taken advantage of,’ ” warned Carl Icahn, a corporate raider turned activist investor, in a video titled “Danger Ahead” that he released in late September. While there has not exactly been a groundswell among the wealthy to significantly raise their own taxes, Mr. Icahn and Mr. Buffett are among several of America’s prominent top earners who have endorsed changing the tax loophole that treats a large portion of private-equity and hedge-fund managers’ income — known as carried interest — as more lightly taxed capital gains and require it to be taxed as regular salary. In a statement responding to questions for this article, Mr. Jones said his “strong opinion” was that carried interest should be taxed as ordinary income. “Billionaires see a backlash coming,” said Sam Wilkin, an economist and author of “Wealth Secrets of the One Percent.” Mr. Jones has experienced it firsthand. In March, the Hedge Clippers, a coalition of labor groups and community activists, marched on his Greenwich, Conn., estate to protest the influence of hedge-fund managers. At the same time, some of America’s wealthiest are responding with an unprecedented flood of money into politics, largely supporting Republican candidates who have pledged to cut taxes. A New York Times investigation documented in October how 158 families were responsible for almost half the money raised in the current presidential race. People from the finance industry lead the list. This year Mr. Jones said in a TED talk that traditionally there are three ways to change income inequality: “By revolution, higher taxes or wars.” His alternative is Just Capital . Mr. Jones argues that income inequality is being driven by what he calls “shareholder hegemony,” the principle that companies first and foremost should satisfy investors. The solution is for companies to make social responsibility as important as profits and share price. Mr. Jones, who declined to be interviewed, has a net worth Forbes estimates at $4.7 billion and was one of the few hedge-fund managers who foresaw the 1987 market crash. He is known for founding the Robin Hood Foundation, a charitable organization started in 1988 that raised $101 million last year for anti-poverty programs in New York. Just Capital’s mission fits into an existing trend. Socially responsible investing, the favoring of companies that demonstrate environmental and social awareness, is a growing movement, driven in large part by the economic ascendance of millennials and women. As of this month, Morningstar said about 2 percent of the mutual funds it tracked were tagged “socially conscious.” Such funds “typically perform on par or a little better than conventional funds,” said Jon Hale, director of manager research at Morningstar. Not all economists agree with Mr. Jones’s notion that monitoring corporate behavior would narrow the distance between the very rich and the rest. Mr. Wilkin, the economist, argued that inequity was driven not just by bloated executive compensation or the single-minded pursuit of profit, but also by what he called a two-tier economy in which some industries, like technology, finance and health care, soared ahead and left the rest behind. Just Capital, he said, was “wishful thinking that there is a market solution to income inequality that doesn’t involve increasing taxes.” Image Paul Tudor Jones II’s Just Capital asked what Americans valued most in a company. The top answer was pay and benefits. Credit Eduardo Munoz/Reuters There are many nonprofits that seek to address income inequality. Mr. Jones and Mr. Chopra bring a waft of New Age spirituality to theirs. The Just Capital board includes Arianna Huffington, a founder of The Huffington Post, and several wealthy business leaders who also are directors of the Chopra Foundation. Mr. Chopra, in an interview, described his friend as being on a path of self-discovery. “This is an evolution for him.” It all started with meditation. In early October 2011, Dylan Ratigan, an MSNBC anchor who later left to become what he described as a “sustainability entrepreneur,” was on his way to a private meditation session at Mr. Chopra’s salon in ABC Carpet and Home just as the Occupy Wall Street protests were getting started in Zuccotti Park. On an impulse, Mr. Ratigan told his teacher that he had a car waiting downstairs and asked Mr. Chopra to go with him to the park. When they arrived, Mr. Ratigan asked the protesters to let Mr. Chopra speak. Some of them fiercely objected to letting a celebrity jump the line, but Mr. Ratigan prevailed, and Mr. Chopra led the crowd in a meditative prayer that, as he put it, “quieted the angry rhetoric.” That fall, he became a featured guest at several Occupy events and was so struck by the “perceived injustice” fueling the protests that he told a friend: “We need to do something about this.” The idea for Just Capital emerged from a seminar Mr. Chopra held at Columbia Business School called “Just Capital and Cause-Driven Marketing.” A student suggested creating an index of companies based on their value to society, not quarterly profits. Mr. Chopra took the idea to Mr. Jones, whom he had met through Mr. Jones’s wife, Sonia, a yoga and wellness enthusiast. Mr. Chopra, who wears crystal-studded eyeglass frames, blends spiritual and commercial success with celebrity hobnobbing — he does workshops with Oprah Winfrey and made a recording of love poetry with Madonna. “He’s very good at the diplomacy of wealth and power,” Mr. Ratigan said. Mr. Chopra said that, so far, he had not received skeptical responses to the Just Capital idea, but he conceded that the jury had been small and “self-selected.” Mr. Jones set up the foundation in 2013, hired a staff and underwrote a survey of 43,000 Americans to determine what people most valued in a company. The No. 1 factor was pay and benefits. (At No. 10 was creating jobs in the United States.) Next year Just Capital plans to publish a ranking of the top 1,000 publicly traded companies based on a scale derived from the survey. “Americans want a seat at the table,” Mr. Jones said at the September presentation. There are many research firms, including MSCI and Sustainalytics, that examine companies for social responsibility, although their data is mostly reserved for clients and subscribers. Just Capital plans to make its ratings public at no charge. Because Just Capital will examine only publicly traded corporations, Mr. Jones’s hedge fund and thousands of others like it will be exempt from scrutiny. At the Just Capital presentation, Mr. Jones said he checked to make sure his own company, Tudor Investment Corporation, was in line with Just Capital’s principles. Tudor Investment employs about 400 people, according to a spokesman, Patrick Clifford. Its traders, of course, make well above a living wage. At first, the wages of gardeners, dishwashers and janitors at Tudor were not included in the review because they are employed by subcontractors, not Tudor directly. When managers examined the salaries, however, they found that the firm had 16 subcontracted workers who were paid $10.50 an hour. “It was literally eye-opening and embarrassing at the same time,” Mr. Jones said. He said he raised their hourly rate to $15. For comparison, in Fairfield County, where Tudor is based, janitors who belong to Local 32BJ of the Service Employees International Union make $14.10 an hour, not including benefits, and $20.49 an hour with benefits factored in. According to the M.I.T. living wage calculator, the living wage for a single worker in the county is $12.78 an hour and for an adult with one child it is $27.72. Last spring, Mr. Jones leased an office and bought a $71 million house in Palm Beach, Fla., in a state with no income tax. He also said he increased the percentage of profit the company donates to charity to 4 percent a year from 1 percent. According to CECP, an organization that monitors corporate giving trends, the industry median last year was 1 percent. At the conference this year announcing Just Capital, a guest asked him if he was the best messenger to preach corporate altruism, given that “shareholder hegemony” helped make him wealthy. Mr. Jones had a ready reply. He had been rethinking the capitalist dream, he said, ever since hearing about the “giving pledge,” a promise made by Bill Gates, Mr. Buffett and others to give away much of their wealth. “What’s the purpose of accumulating all this money when I’m just going to give it back to the people I conceivably took it from?” Mr. Jones said.

Paul Tudor Jones II
Deepak Chopra
JUST Capital
Income Inequality
Companies
HNWI,Wealth,Billionaires,1 Percent
Nonprofit


Kerry Urges Turkey to Act on Restoring Ties With Israel

Abstract: JERUSALEM — Before departing for Israel on Sunday, Secretary of State John Kerry found time in Istanbul to urge Turkish leaders to make good on their commitment to normalize relations with Israel. “We would like to see the relationship get back on track in its full measure,” Mr. Kerry said after meeting with Turkey’s foreign minister, Ahmet Davutoglu. By evening, the peripatetic Mr. Kerry was in Ramallah, the Palestinian capital in the West Bank, to explore ideas on how to advance the stalled peace Israeli-Palestinian peace process with Mahmoud Abbas, the president of the Palestinian Authority. This is Mr. Kerry’s third trip to the Middle East since he became secretary of state on Feb. 1, signifying the Obama administration’s intensified focus on the region. The major question is whether the stepped-up diplomatic pace will yield progress either on the stalled Israeli-Palestinian peace process or on Syria, where Mr. Kerry’s push to change President Bashar al-Assad’s “calculation” about his ability to hang on to power has yet to bear fruit. Diplomatic ties between Turkey and Israel have been frozen since 2010, when nine activists — eight Turks and one American of Turkish descent — were killed when the Israeli military intercepted the Mavi Marmara, a Turkish ship that was trying to run the naval blockade on supplies to Gaza, and met resistance on board. During his visit to Jerusalem last month, President Obama brokered an agreement between Israel and Turkey to restore ties. But no sooner had the agreement been announced than Turkey’s prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, boasted that it underscored his nation’s regional clout, adding to American concerns that the two sides might not follow through. Several Israeli diplomats, including two senior advisers to the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, were expected to arrive on Thursday in Ankara, the Turkish capital, to discuss the compensation Israel is expected to provide to the families of those killed in the 2010 episode. Eager to smooth the path for a restoration of ties that would lead to the return of Turkish and Israeli ambassadors to their posts, Mr. Kerry said that he had been assured by Mr. Davutoglu that the Turkish government would avoid any boastful displays of “triumphalism” in having succeeded in getting the Israelis to make concessions — which included an apology from Mr. Netanyahu. Mr. Davutoglu, however, appeared to sketch out a more ambitious set of expectations for rebuilding Israeli-Turkish relations, citing several “preconditions,” including the “lifting” of the Israeli embargo on Gaza, which he said should follow the settling of the compensation issue. A Turkish official, who asked not to be named because of his diplomatic status, said that the embargo his country wants lifted pertains to goods for civilian use and not military equipment. As soon as there were progress on the issue of compensation and on the lifting of the embargo, the Turkish official said, “we would press the button to relocate our diplomats in Israel.” To the consternation of Israeli officials, Mr. Erdogan, whom Mr. Kerry met with on Sunday, is planning to visit Gaza soon. Mr. Erdogan is also scheduled to go to Washington next month to meet with Mr. Obama. Mr. Kerry’s visit to Israel presented another set of challenges. Before he arrived on Sunday afternoon, a Palestinian official said that his side had agreed to a request from the secretary of state not to take any actions that could harm efforts to restart talks on an eventual two-state solution for a period of eight weeks. The official said the Palestinians understood that to mean that they should refrain from pursuing claims against Israel in international agencies like the International Criminal Court. “We are not canceling those efforts, but we are freezing them,” the official said, speaking on the condition of anonymity, following diplomatic protocol. The Palestinians say they still want Israel to commit to the old 1967 boundaries as the basis for the borders in a two-state solution, a demand Israel has consistently rejected. The official said that in a meeting last month with Mr. Obama, Mr. Abbas proposed that Mr. Netanyahu should present a map showing what he sees as the territorial solution. Israel says it remains committed to negotiations with no preconditions, a position that Mr. Obama appeared to endorse during his visit here. “From Israel’s point of view, you cannot discuss the borders, let alone finalize borders, without dealing with the core issues of Israel’s legitimacy, its security concerns, and to hear from the Palestinians that the conflict is over,” said a senior Israeli official, also speaking on the condition of anonymity. The Israeli official added that a Palestinian willingness to suspend further approaches to international agencies would be “a move in the right direction,” and that Israel was ready for “reciprocal, mutual confidence-building measures.” The Israeli official would not go into specifics, but there have been suggestions that Israel might temporarily suspend announcements of further settlement construction or consider releasing some Palestinian prisoners, an issue that the Palestinian leadership has highlighted. Before meeting with Mr. Abbas, Mr. Kerry sat down with senior Palestinian officials to discuss “how to create a positive climate for negotiations,” according to a senior State Department official. Mr. Kerry still has another day and a half of meetings with Israeli and Palestinian officials ahead of him before leaving for London and a gathering of the Group of 8 advanced industrial nations. An array of issues are to be discussed at the London session, among them Syria and Mr. Kerry’s efforts in the Middle East.

John Kerry
Israel
Turkey
Palestinians
International relations
US Politics
Ahmet Davutoglu
Mahmoud Abbas


Russia: Police Captain Arrested in Crackdown on Corruption

Abstract: A police captain in Moscow was arrested over the weekend on charges of accepting a bribe of more than $40,000, according to a police statement released Monday, part of an apparent crackdown on police corruption after several scandals involving law enforcement personnel. The captain, who was not identified, was accused of taking the money from a car salesman in exchange for ignoring legal infractions. The police statement said the captain’s superiors would also be punished. Despite efforts by President Dmitri A. Medvedev to push for police reform , corruption remains widespread and abuse common. In March, a man died in police custody after officers allegedly sodomized him with a bottle. The episode incited national outrage and prompted new calls for reform.

Russia
Police
Corruption (Institutional)
Frauds and Swindling
Bribery and Kickbacks
Police Brutality and Misconduct


Voting Fraud Hangs Stubbornly Over Afghan Elections, With Runoff Likely

Abstract: KABUL, Afghanistan — Ahmed Zia proudly recalled how he voted in the Afghan presidential election on April 5, for the first time in his 18 years. Then he voted for the second time, a little later that day, casting an illegal additional ballot in the same box. “I was worried that my candidate wouldn’t win,” he said, “because of all the fraud and corruption.” Electoral fraud is the shadow hanging stubbornly over Afghanistan’s elections, the first in the country’s modern history that have the promise to usher in a peaceful change of leadership. President Hamid Karzai is stepping down after 12 years in power, constitutionally unable to run again. On Thursday, Afghanistan’s Independent Election Commission issued more partial results, again showing a comfortable lead for Abdullah Abdullah, the runner-up in the 2009 presidential election, but also making it all but certain that he will not win the 50 percent of votes necessary to avoid a runoff election in late May or June. With more than 82 percent of the votes counted, Mr. Abdullah had 43.8 percent, while his nearest opponent, Ashraf Ghani, a former World Bank technocrat, had 32.9 percent, according to the commission. The remaining results are expected on Saturday, but they are not likely to change significantly. What could conceivably shift the final balance is how fraudulent votes are handled, and how many of the votes counted so far are thrown out. The results will not be official until the Electoral Complaints Commission rules on 746 claims of serious fraud in the presidential race, which could affect as many as a million votes, although the likely total is closer to half a million. Election officials have refused to specify how many votes are at stake in the complaints process. But just in the western city of Herat, an Abdullah stronghold, 80,000 votes have been quarantined on suspicion of fraud, officials there said. Neither the complaints commission nor the elections commission that organized the voting and counting has said how many of the votes tainted by fraud complaints are included in the preliminary tallies. Nader Mohseni, the spokesman for the complaints commission, said some were and some were not. “In some cases they’ve taken fraud complaints into consideration and in some they haven’t,” he said. “But we’ll have the power to exclude fraudulent votes later.” The commissions have until May 14 to certify official results. Unsurprisingly, the candidates who are behind in the vote count have focused attention on the fraud. At a recent news conference, Mr. Ghani complained that election officials were releasing results without having filtered out fraudulent votes first. “No one can claim that the votes are clean,” he said. In an interview on Thursday, Mr. Abdullah ruled out any sort of coalition government with Mr. Ghani. “Now the issue is how to strategize for the second round — no matter what, it will go to the second round,” said Mr. Abdullah, who is reported to be in negotiations with other candidates to offer them positions in his government in exchange for second-round support. Election officials and observers have generally agreed that this year’s presidential election was cleaner than past ones. But when it comes to electoral fraud, Afghanistan has established a pretty low bar. In the last presidential election, in 2009, voters in some areas were rounded up by armed warlords and herded to the polls, where the votes they cast were checked to make sure of their obedience. In other areas, entire voting districts returned thousands of votes with 100 percent of the ballots marked for a single candidate, even though all the voting places in those districts were closed because of security threats. In this election, computerized bar-coding of ballots, boxes and tally sheets should make it easier for the authorities to segregate tainted votes. But ballot-box stuffing remained a widely reported problem. “Fraud is a fact in all elections, and it is especially bad where there is a lack of education,” Mr. Mohseni said. “But in Afghanistan, maybe some people here do some special fraud.” This year, more indelible ink, a blue silver-oxide blend, was introduced to prevent the multiple-voting problem widely seen in 2009. The new ink is supposed to last several days and be more resistant to erasure. But that is a technological arms race the election authorities seem to have lost in some places, like in Mr. Zia’s hometown, Yakawlang. After he voted the first time, Mr. Zia said, he simply used Whitex laundry stain remover to wash off the ink, and voted again. He said he was fair, however. The first time, he voted for Mr. Abdullah. But, worried that fraudsters would steal the election from Mr. Abdullah, he cast a sort of safety vote for Zalmay Rassoul. Mr. Rassoul, the former foreign minister in Mr. Karzai’s government, was running a distant third in the Thursday tallies, with 11 percent of the vote. There was some industrial-scale fraud this time as well. In some districts, ballot books were stuffed into the boxes without anyone having bothered to detach the individual ballots, Mr. Mohseni said. The ballots come in books of 100. At other polling stations, local authorities declared all 600 votes in a single ballot box cast by 9 a.m., two hours after the official opening time. But with one box, and each voter requiring at least 90 seconds to vote, 600 votes would take a minimum of 15 hours to cast. Mr. Mohseni said that despite such problems, he expected the authorities to better identify fraudulent votes this year. “We did not see people forced by gunmen to vote; now the fraud is a little bit smarter,” he said. “But we are more experienced, there was a higher turnout , and many more observers this time.” The number of national election observers is much higher than in 2009; about 60,000 were trained to cover 21,000 polling stations, although many international observers pulled out or greatly reduced their presence here after a wave of pre-election violence aimed at foreigners. International observers and United Nations officials played a major role in identifying widespread problems in the 2009 election, when 1.3 million votes were disallowed because of fraud — nearly a fourth of all votes cast. This time, the United Nations and Western diplomats have been studiously quiet on the fraud issue, although they have taken care to praise the record-breaking turnout and the failure of Taliban vows to widely disrupt the voting. Success in the $120 million, Western-funded election has been important to donor countries, who need a clean vote to persuade restless electorates back home that it is worth continuing to support the Afghan government, despite persistent complaints about corruption and growing hostility toward the West.

Independent Election Commission Afghanistan


Texas Term Limit Crusade Brings Together Some Unlikely Allies

Abstract: For proponents of term limits in Texas — a group that defies partisan stereotyping — May has been a disappointing month on the state and local levels. On May 11, voters in the North Texas city of Grapevine, whose mayor has been in office for most of the last four decades, bucked a trend in city elections and handily rejected a proposal to place limits on the mayor and City Council members. Four days later, the Texas House voted down a resolution by Senator Kevin P. Eltife, Republican of Tyler, that would have asked voters to decide on a proposed limit of two consecutive terms for statewide officeholders. The alliances that have formed are almost as notable as the results themselves. In Grapevine, the term-limit effort was led by Kathleen Thompson, a Democrat who ran unsuccessfully for City Council in 2011, and Julie McCarty, the co-founder of the Northeast Tarrant Tea Party . Tim Reeves, a political consultant who aided the city’s similarly diverse anti-term-limit group, said the makeup of the opposing coalition was unique. “I’ve got to say, that’s a first for me,” he said. For Ms. Thompson, support for term limits is a core belief. “I don’t think elected positions are a career or something to make money off of,” she said. Ms. McCarty’s stance was more focused on Grapevine, where City Council members have an average tenure of nearly two decades. With the exception of a three-year hiatus from 1985 to 1988, William D. Tate has served as the city’s mayor for the last 40 years. “It’s actually an issue that divides the Tea Party,” Ms. McCarty said. “But in Grapevine, we have such longevity. And given the advantage of the incumbents, it’s not a fair election anymore.” Mr. Tate said that his longevity in office was the result of constituent satisfaction. “It’s the wrong city to have term limits when most everything is going right,” he said. “With limits, you can’t have a plan for your city that you build on, which we’ve done here.” Mark P. Jones, the chairman of Rice University’s political science department, said the issue creates “cross-tensions” for members of both parties, in part because it is hard not to view such efforts as critiques of the current leadership. (Rice University is a corporate sponsor of The Texas Tribune.) Though many Tea Party-affiliated state representatives voted against term limits for statewide officeholders, one who voted for it was Giovanni Capriglione, Republican of Southlake, whose district includes Grapevine. “It is something that I believe is necessary, it is part of the Republican Party of Texas platform, and it is something that I promised I would support,” Mr. Capriglione wrote on his Facebook page after the vote. Term limits are not mentioned in the Texas Democratic Party’s platform, but many Democrats supported the resolution in the House, and nearly as many opposed it. “It’s the oldest saying, that politics makes for strange bedfellows,” Mr. Reeves, the political consultant, said. “This is the case in point.”

Term limit
Texas
Grapevine TX
State legislature
Tea Party movement
Kathleen Thompson
Kevin P Eltife
Giovanni Capriglione


In China’s Modern Economy, a Retro Push Against Women

Abstract: BEIJING — Fresh out of college, Angela Li was proud of her job as a teller at the state-owned China Everbright Bank — maybe it wasn’t exciting, but it had prospects. After a year and a half she applied for a promotion, along with a male colleague who had joined with her. He got it. She did not. “Our boss came to talk to me afterwards,” said Ms. Li, a 25-year-old with scraped-back hair and a quiet gaze. “He said, ‘It’s good that you girls take your work seriously. But you should be focusing on finding a boyfriend, getting married, having a kid.’ ” Ms. Li quit. “I could compete in terms of ability, but not in terms of gender,” she said. China is often held up as a model for women in Asia. Women made great strides in the early decades of Communist rule, and the government has taken pains to portray women as equal to men, starting with Chairman Mao’s declaration that women “hold up half the sky.” More recently, as China has shifted to a market economy, admiring reports of “wonder women,” often promulgated by state media, suggest that Chinese women have made it in business. But the economic boom that has created opportunities for women has also fostered a resurgence of long-repressed traditional values. More and more men and women say a woman’s place is in the home, wealthy men take mistresses in a contemporary reprise of the concubine system, and pressure for women to marry young is intense. In the office, Socialist-era egalitarianism has been replaced by open sexism, in some cases reinforced by the law. “The media has been publicizing individual cases of successful women, but over all there isn’t space for women to develop in the economic realm,” said Feng Yuan, a prominent Chinese feminist. “Women’s status has not improved, and in some areas has regressed.” Chinese women are losing ground in the work force compared with men, their representation falling steadily with each rung up the professional ladder. Women make up 44.7 percent of the work force, but just 25.1 percent of people with positions of “responsibility,” according to China’s 2010 census . At the very top, their share falls still further. According to corporate records examined by The New York Times, fewer than 1 in 10 board members of China’s top 300 companies are women. That measure, significantly smaller than the proportion of women on corporate boards in the United States and much of Europe, is based on a review of the boards of directors of every company in the CSI 300 index, China’s equivalent to the S.&P. 500, which includes a wide swath of the economy from mining to pharmaceuticals. Among the CSI 300 companies, 126 have no women on their boards, according to their 2013 annual reports, the latest available. “We call it the ‘sticky floor,’” Ms. Feng said. “There is a glass ceiling here too, but most women never even get off the sticky floor.” By comparison, women hold 19.2 percent of the directorships on S.&P. 500 companies, according to Catalyst , a nonprofit group that seeks to promote women in business. In Europe, about 18 percent of board members in the Continent’s 610 biggest companies are women, according to the European Commission. While the advantages of having women in the boardroom are broadly accepted in global business circles, in China the idea meets with incomprehension, even boredom, among business leaders. Women as directors was “a noble question,” said Jiang Zhinan, a spokesman for the state-owned Aluminum Corporation of China, but one that his company had not considered. The company has no women on its eight-member board. Dongfang Electric, one of the world’s biggest makers of electric power turbines, also has no women on its nine-member board. Image Dong Mingzhu, president of an air-conditioner manufacturer, blames women for their poor showing in the workplace.“Women don’t try hard enough,” she said. “They are too happy to go off and find a man to rely on.” Credit The New York Times “We’ve never thought about it,” said Zhang Linchao, the director of the company’s general offices. Asked if the company would answer questions on the subject, he declined. “It’s irrelevant,” he said. The pattern is especially pronounced at state-owned companies, where the government could simply order higher female participation if it wanted. Of the 31 companies on the CSI 300 that have no women as senior executives, 30 are majority state-owned. That figure dovetails with extremely low numbers of women in the highest echelons of the Chinese government. No woman has ever served in the body that is the apex of power in China: the Politburo Standing Committee, which currently has seven members. In the wider Politburo, only two of 25 members are women, and few women have ever held any of 62 top spots in provincial governments, the proving ground for future top leaders. The Communist Party’s official women’s organization, the All-China Women’s Federation, is charged with representing Chinese women and protecting their rights and interests. In reality, it focuses on maintaining party control and traditional values more than promoting women. Until recently, it posted editorials on its website belittling women who chose to delay marriage. It is also one of the key party organs carrying out the country’s family planning policy, enforcement of which has led to forced abortions . The federation declined repeated requests for comment. Nor do the few women in the top echelons of business do much to promote their cohorts, several businesswomen said. Image Dong Mingzhu talked with a colleague at her headquarters. Credit The New York Times Dong Mingzhu, president of Gree Electric, an air conditioner manufacturer with sales of $22.5 billion last year , blames women for their poor showing in the workplace. “Women don’t try hard enough,” she said in an interview at the company’s headquarters in Zhuhai, in southern China. “They are too happy to go off and find a man to rely on.” Indeed, powerful cultural assumptions that women should marry young and focus on the family after a child is born account for some of the disparity. Women in the boardroom is hardly even an issue. “This issue is of interest only to a minority of females,” said Oliver M. Rui, a professor of finance and accounting at China Europe International Business School in Shanghai, “and they’re not taken seriously in China.” Others say traditional attitudes are just part of the problem. “The real problem is far bigger than any individual and has to do with things like the law and resource allocation,” said Lu Xiaoquan, a gender rights lawyer at Beijing Zhongze Law Firm. China’s Constitution says that women should enjoy the same rights as men , and labor law bans gender discrimination, but those laws are vague and nearly unenforceable, Mr. Lu says. “Chinese law doesn’t define gender discrimination, so how do you even argue a case?” he asked. “It’s very, very difficult to get one into court.” Companies need not bother with subtlety in job advertisements. A maker of security cameras seeks sales managers : No women need apply. A company that sells box cutters is looking for a human resources manager: male, age 25 to 35. Image The production line at Dong Mingzhu's company. Credit Lam Yik Fei for The New York Times In some cases, the law itself buttresses discrimination. Legally, women must retire earlier than men — generally age 60 for men and 50 or 55 for women — as they are expected to care for the young, the sick and the old. One Chinese company that does have women on its board, Haier, a manufacturer of home appliances, says the diversity makes business sense. “Females act quite differently, bringing diversity and ideological pluralism,” Ming Guozhen, a deputy general manager, wrote in a faxed reply to questions. “To some degree, this contributes to more reasonable decisions and reducing risk.” Haier’s two women directors may also be more attuned to the company’s customers. “Women are the biggest consumers and are in charge of finance in the home, so they can express consumers’ opinions better,” Ms. Ming said. Some companies not listed on the CSI 300, including the Internet giants Baidu and Alibaba, also have more women in top positions. Those women often find themselves on a lonely frontier. Fu Xin, 32, an architect who designs car dealerships for a German company, says she rarely meets women at her level. “It’s all men,” she said. “When clients come up to me at the airport or the dealership they often look past me for the boss.” But the attitudes of the successful women she has encountered are not always much different from those of their male counterparts. On a recent trip to Guangzhou, the capital of Guangdong Province, a rare female client, the head of a new dealership, took her under her wing. “She said, ‘You should do the most important thing in your life now,’ ” Ms. Fu said. “Find a husband.”

Politburo Standing Committee of the Communist Party of China


Jay Walder, M.T.A. Chief, Vows to Enforce Bus-Lane Restrictions

Abstract: Jay H. Walder , the new chairman of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority , was walking through his old neighborhood in Brooklyn on Monday when he ran into a former neighbor he had not seen in 15 years. Pleasantries were quickly followed by a plea: “Please do something about the B41!” That would be the B41 bus, which Megan Ryan, 65, the former neighbor, and nearly 40,000 people along Flatbush Avenue ride each day. “It’s very frustrating,” Ms. Ryan explained to the chairman. “A local comes, and you can’t get on it, because there’s too many people.” Sometimes, she said, she walks to a nearby avenue to try to catch the limited. “And of course, it will pass me when I’m walking by.” Much of the focus on Mr. Walder’s arrival in New York has been on the subways, where Mr. Walder, a former London transit guru, wants to install contactless, no-swipe fare cards and arrival-time clocks. But buses, which carry nearly 2.4 million New Yorkers a day on nearly 250 routes, have struggled to overcome constant congestion and slow speeds, with some moving only slightly faster than a typical pedestrian. Experiments with bus lanes and satellite tracking technology have yielded mixed results — leaving riders like Ms. Ryan, who commutes to her job as a nurse for developmentally disabled patients, with a lurching, crawling ride to work. To Mr. Walder, that simply does not make sense. “In London, you carry nearly twice as many people in the bus system as you do on the Underground,” he said on Monday as he rode a packed B41 local along Flatbush Avenue toward Downtown Brooklyn. In New York, the opposite is true. “We must close the gap and make more of the bus system,” he said. Mr. Walder’s plans include an expansion of dedicated bus lanes with stricter enforcement, aided by cameras mounted on street poles and on the buses themselves that can snap photos of offending cars. He wants to introduce the contactless fare cards — which can be quickly waved over a sensor — to the subways and buses, reducing boarding times. And he wants GPS devices on buses so passengers can tell when a bus is coming, even if the familiar bulky shape is not visible on the horizon. “What I’d like you to think about is a train system with rubber-tire vehicles,” Mr. Walder said, peering out at the passing street. A single red car was parked in the bus-only lane on Flatbush Avenue, forcing the bus to merge into an adjacent lane and bringing traffic to a standstill. “We’re on a bus right now where every seat is full,” he said. “How many people are on this bus? Seventy-five? But we haven’t prioritized this bus any differently than a car which has one person in it.” In London, Mr. Walder and his team found that drivers simply did not believe that bus-lane restrictions would be enforced. Stricter fines, widespread cameras and an advertising campaign helped open up the lanes, leading to a significant increase in ridership. “If I put train tracks down the street, you wouldn’t park your car on them. If I said this is a bus lane, somehow it becomes fair game,” he said. “One person’s use of a road impacts upon another person’s use of the road. My point is, if we have to make a choice, make the choice for the bus, not for the car.” Buses have become cleaner, more efficient and graffiti-free since Mr. Walder moved to the Prospect Park area of Brooklyn in 1989 as a newlywed. But the congestion and lack of information for riders remains the same. Waiting for the local just before 8 a.m., Mr. Walder assumed the perennial pose of the expectant bus rider: head cocked, eyes searching the busy street. Without any sort of GPS unit, the wait can seem like forever. “Just not knowing when the bus is coming” can make riders much more anxious, Mr. Walder said. Because of the way New York’s transit system is governed, carrying out some of these changes will require cooperation with City Hall, Albany, the Police Department, and even the courts — statewide legislation must be passed, for example, before the city can use cameras to enforce the bus-only lanes. And Mr. Walder, who has been on the job for only two weeks, did not give many details about when his plans might take effect, or what could make these efforts more successful than those that fell short in the past. (Attempts to provide arrival times to bus riders have been tried as far back as 1996.) But the chairman said “there is no separation on this issue” among the key entities, noting that Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg has cited improved buses as a top priority. And he pointed to recent successes, like countdown clocks installed this summer along 34th Street and a pilot program on Fordham Road in the Bronx that has raised bus ridership there by 30 percent. On Fordham Road, buses can send signals to traffic lights that delay red signals, allowing a straggling bus to make it through the intersection. But Mr. Walder said he would like to begin with better enforcement, noting that more complicated technologies can come after riders start to see a difference. “This is what moves New York,” he said, as a packed B41 lurched by.

Metropolitan Transportation Authority
Walder Jay H
Buses
New York City


Lakers’ 0-3 Start Puzzles Fans and Team

Abstract: LOS ANGELES — What are Lakers fans supposed to do now, go to their rooms without dinner? With Kobe Bryant having just told the faithful who were alarmed at the team’s 0-2 start to “shut up; let us work,” the Lakers made it 0-3, falling to the no-longer-bedraggled Clippers , 105-95, on Friday and making a believer of Bryant. “It’s time to panic right now,” Bryant said afterward. “That’s what we’re supposed to do. It’s our job. We’re not supposed to coast and assume things will be all right. Got to push at it.” The Clippers improved to 2-0 and led the Pacific Division. The Lakers are in last place, have not led in a second half and have matched their worst start since 1978 — although, as Bryant noted, disclaiming any interest in the distinction, “I was 1.” One local team has traditionally been deemed royalty and the other beneath contempt, but at least for now the roles have been reversed. Ballyhooed after last season’s acquisition of Chris Paul, the Clippers led the Pacific by two and a half games in mid-February before a strong Lakers finish sent them back into eclipse. Little noted as they were, the Clippers still finished one game behind the Lakers and lasted only one day less in the playoffs. The Clippers now have an enhanced roster with Jamal Crawford, Grant Hill and Lamar Odom, and a system in place. The Lakers enhanced their own personnel significantly with two late-summer acquisitions and, once again, seemed to overshadow the Clippers. Now, however, Dwight Howard is recuperating from back surgery, and Steve Nash missed Friday’s game with a bruised calf. The Lakers are also putting in their third offense in three seasons. Coach Mike Brown, who dumped his predecessor Phil Jackson’s triangle, junked his own system and hired the former Washington and Philadelphia coach Eddie Jordan to install the Princeton offense. Unfortunately for the Lakers, their starters have been together in only 3 of this fall’s 11 games, counting the preseason (when they went 0-8), making it difficult for five players from three teams to grow accustomed to anything. And, as Jordan showed with the Wizards and the 76ers, his offense is no cinch to pick up. The TNT commentator Charles Barkley turned it into a joke, noting before the season, “I’ve always said I want my accountants from Princeton, not my offense.” When the Lakers lost to Dallas and Portland, it was no longer a laughing matter among their fans. Bryant, who after the one-sided loss in Portland said he was “not a happy camper about all this,” arrived home to find Lakers fans circling the wagons and decided to try restoring perspective. “I just — I don’t understand the city here,” Bryant said. “They’ve seen us win multiple championships here, playing an offense that was tough to learn, that was a sequence of options that weren’t set plays that took five guys being on the same page of working together. They know how that stuff works. For them to be so stupid now.” The surprise acquisitions of Howard and Nash seemed to return a fading team to its status as the team of the new millennium, with five titles since 2000. The starting lineup of Bryant, Howard, Nash, Pau Gasol and Metta World Peace is the tallest in the N.B.A. and the most skilled, with 5 All-Stars and a combined 33 All-Star Game selections. It is also the oldest, with Nash, 38; Bryant, 34; Gasol and World Peace, 32; and Howard, 26. As Bryant ruefully noted: “We’re not the most athletic team in the world, so it’s not like we’re just going to go out there and play hard. There are things other teams can get away with that we can’t get away with, in terms of everybody crashing the boards and getting back in transition. We don’t have the kind of speed that we can do that.”

Los Angeles Lakers
Los Angeles Clippers
Basketball
Bryant Kobe
Paul Chris
Nash Steve


Schumer Mortgage Plan

Abstract: WASHINGTON, Sept. 10 (AP) — Senator Charles E. Schumer proposed on Monday that two government-sponsored mortgage giants be allowed to increase their role in the home loan market as a stabilizing force for the troubled mortgage industry. Mr. Schumer, a New York Democrat, wants Congress to let Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac increase their holdings of securities backed by mortgages by $145 billion, or 10 percent of total holdings. The legislation is aimed at easing a credit squeeze that is worsening the housing market’s woes. Mr. Schumer wants half the money to refinance existing loans and half to finance new mortgages.

Mortgages
United States Politics and Government
Democratic Party
Housing
Schumer Charles E


Paula Deen’s Cook Tells of Slights, Steeped in History

Abstract: SAVANNAH, Ga. — Dora Charles and Paula Deen were soul sisters. That’s what Ms. Deen called the black cook from the start, even before the books and the television shows and the millions of dollars. For 22 years, Mrs. Charles was the queen of the Deen kitchens. She helped open the Lady & Sons, the restaurant here that made Ms. Deen’s career. She developed recipes, trained other cooks and made sure everything down to the collard greens tasted right. “If it’s a Southern dish,” Ms. Deen once said, “you better not put it out unless it passes this woman’s tongue.” The money was not great. Mrs. Charles spent years making less than $10 an hour, even after Ms. Deen became a Food Network star. And there were tough moments. She said Ms. Deen used racial slurs. Once she wanted Mrs. Charles to ring a dinner bell in front of the restaurant, hollering for people to come and get it. “I said, ‘I’m not ringing no bell,’ ” Mrs. Charles said. “That’s a symbol to me of what we used to do back in the day.” For a black woman in Savannah with a ninth-grade education, though, it was good steady work. And Ms. Deen, she said, held out the promise that together, they might get rich one day. Now, Ms. Deen, 66, is fighting empire-crushing accusations of racism, and Mrs. Charles, 59 and nursing a bad shoulder, lives in an aging trailer home on the outskirts of Savannah. “It’s just time that everybody knows that Paula Deen don’t treat me the way they think she treat me,” she said. The relationship between Mrs. Charles and Ms. Deen is a complex one, laced with history and deep affection, whose roots can be traced back to the antebellum South. Depending on whether Mrs. Charles or Ms. Deen tells the story, it illustrates lives of racial inequity or benevolence. Jessica B. Harris, a culinary scholar whose books have explored the role of Africans in the Southern kitchen, said Ms. Deen and Mrs. Charles are characters in a story that has been played out since slaves started cooking for whites. “Peering through the window of someone else’s success when you have been instrumental in creating that success is not a good feeling,” Ms. Harris said. “Think about who made money from the blues.” Image Mrs. Charles, third from left, on the cover of one of Paula Deen’s cookbooks. Credit Simon & Schuster Ms. Deen ran a restaurant in a Best Western hotel when Mrs. Charles, newly divorced and tired of fast-food kitchens, walked in and auditioned by cooking her version of Southern food. Ms. Deen hired her immediately. Their birthdays are a day apart, so they celebrated together. When Ms. Deen catered parties to survive until they could open the Lady & Sons, Mrs. Charles hustled right beside her. “If I lost Dora, I would have been devastated,” Ms. Deen wrote in her 2007 memoir, “It Ain’t All About the Cooking.” Early on, Mrs. Charles claims, Ms. Deen made her a deal: “Stick with me, Dora, and I promise you one day if I get rich you’ll get rich.” Now, Mrs. Charles said, she wished she had gotten that in writing. “I didn’t think I had to ’cause we were real close back then,” she said. That is where the two women’s stories diverge. Ms. Deen, through her publicity team, offered a statement denying all of Mrs. Charles’s accusations: “Fundamentally Dora’s complaint is not about race but about money. It is about an employee that despite over 20 years of generosity feels that she still deserves yet even more financial support from Paula Deen. ” What is more, the document states, Ms. Deen “provided guidance and support through the many ups and downs of Mrs. Charles’s life.” Investigators for the Rev. Jesse L. Jackson’s Rainbow PUSH Coalition have spoken to Mrs. Charles. Robert Patillo, a lawyer for the coalition, visited Savannah in June and July to interview Ms. Deen’s restaurant employees, including Mrs. Charles, who still works at the Lady & Sons. The 20 or so others Mr. Patillo spoke with were divided on the conditions for black and white workers. Some said there was bias against blacks, while others said the Lady & Sons was a terrific place to work. The Rainbow PUSH report said, “There was evidence of systemic racial discrimination and harassment at the operations.” But, it went on to say, “there is limited evidence of direct racism or racial discrimination” by Ms. Deen. Mrs. Charles says she is not expecting any money from Ms. Deen, especially not now. “I’m not trying to portray that she is a bad person,” she said. “I’m just trying to put my story out there that she didn’t treat me fairly and I was her soul sister.” Image Ineata Jones rings the dinner bell at a Deen restaurant. Certainly, power imbalances based on race exist in other parts of the country, but without the same historical resonance or familial love as in the South, said Hodding Carter III, a public policy professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and the spokesman for the State Department under President Jimmy Carter. “It’s very hard for either one to come out and say the truth about the racial implications because it doesn’t seem so bad to either party,” Mr. Carter said. “What would you think if you spent 20 years with a rich family and all you got to was a trailer? But it’s not like everybody around her was making a ton of money, either. At the Deen house, it’s, ‘Man, we were doing good by her.’ ” There were perks and kindnesses. Mrs. Charles attended Ms. Deen’s wedding. Sometimes Mrs. Charles appeared on the television shows as part of her day job. She also performed on Ms. Deen’s signature cruises, taking vacation time to do so, though her expenses were paid. She sometimes received clothes and other free goods that came along as Ms. Deen’s star rose. Mrs. Charles’s family and friends got jobs with Ms. Deen, including Ineata Jones, whom everyone called Jellyroll. She ended up as close to Ms. Deen as Mrs. Charles was. Ms. Deen used Ms. Jones for restaurant theater. At 11 a.m., when the doors opened at the Lady & Sons, she stood in front and rang an iron dinner bell, something she had asked Mrs. Charles to do as well. An image of Ms. Jones doing just that was turned into a postcard sold at Paula Deen stores. Ms. Jones was also in charge of making hoecakes, the cornmeal pancakes served to every guest. Ms. Deen had designed a station so diners could watch them being made. At both jobs, Mrs. Charles and other employees said, Ms. Deen wanted Ms. Jones to dress in an old-style Aunt Jemima outfit. “Jellyroll didn’t want to hear that,” Mrs. Charles said. “She didn’t want to do that.” In her statement, Ms. Deen said she had never asked anyone to dress like Aunt Jemima. Nor, she said, has she referred to Mrs. Charles and others using a racially offensive term for a black child, as Mrs. Charles claims. Ms. Jones, who has limited reading and writing skills, makes $10 an hour. She said in a telephone interview that she had only positive comments about Ms. Deen and declined to speak further for this article. Ms. Deen offered a legal document that Ms. Jones signed on July 6 saying she had not been discriminated against, nor, as others claimed, had she heard Ms. Deen use racial slurs. In 2010, Lisa T. Jackson, a white manager working at Uncle Bubba’s Oyster House, the restaurant Ms. Deen set up for her brother, Earl Hiers, known as Bubba, voiced claims of racism and sexual harassment in the Deen empire. Her complaints form the basis of a federal lawsuit winding through the court system. Ms. Deen’s deposition, in which she admitted to using a racial slur, led to devastating losses in her fortunes as several marketing partners, including four casino restaurants, the Food Network, her book publisher, Walmart and the pharmaceutical company Novo Nordisk, stopped working with her. Video Dora Charles worked for Paula Deen for more than 20 years. She says she endured racism and unfair pay despite their close relationship, accusations that Ms. Deen denies. Ms. Jackson, in her own deposition, said she had been surprised to hear Ms. Deen use a racial slur, especially because she appeared to love Mrs. Charles. “It was like, how could — you know, how could she say something like that?” said Ms. Jackson, who now lives in Atlanta. Ms. Jackson told Mrs. Charles that she was paid less than others who helped run the kitchen and who had not been there as long. Those people were white. Ms. Jackson introduced her to S. Wesley Woolf, the Savannah lawyer who would go on to file the suit. Mr. Woolf helped Mrs. Charles and three other employees file complaints with the United States Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. The agency will not make public the results of those complaints. Around that time, Jamie Deen, the son who now runs the flagship restaurant, put Mrs. Charles on a salary of about $71,000 a year. Whether that decision was connected to the E.E.O.C. complaint remains in dispute. Mr. Deen says it was not. He gave her a bonus and the title of quality control manager. He even said the family would fix a rotting floor in her mobile home. And, documents show, he reminded her to keep contributing to the company retirement plan, which Ms. Deen says she set up with Mrs. Charles in mind. So Mrs. Charles went back to work, using the money to catch up on bills and help care for her four grandchildren. She did not press matters in court because, she said, she did not want the mess. “I didn’t have nobody to stand behind me,” she said. Lawyers on both sides of the suit are stockpiling statements. “It’s just such a complex drama,” said Marcie Ferris, a professor who coordinates the Southern studies program at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. “It points to the fact that race is at the heart of Southern food and you can’t avoid it.” Mrs. Charles realizes that her time with Paula Deen is over, and that she will soon leave her kitchen. But the relationship will always be there. “I still have to be her friend if I’m God’s child,” she said. “I might feed her with a long-handled spoon, but, yeah, I’m still her friend.”

Restaurant
Race and Ethnicity
Paula Deen
Dora Charles
Cooking
Discrimination
Black People,African-Americans
Chef


Massachusetts: New Limits Are Placed on Cod Fishing in the Atlantic

Abstract: Federal regulators on Monday restricted commercial fishing for Atlantic cod in the Gulf of Maine. Officials with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration announced a temporary emergency action that establishes rolling restrictions to commercial boats with gear capable of catching cod in areas of the gulf. It also limited catches to 200 pounds per trip in areas that remain open. Earlier this year, the administration released a study showing stocks of the species to be at historically low levels. The action will be in effect through the spring, but similar terms could be extended for the 2015 fishing season. Some fishermen said the cuts could put them out of business. Also Monday, the regulators increased the amount of haddock that fishermen are allowed to catch.


Syracuse Gives Louisville Its First Loss

Abstract: Louisville’s run at a perfect season came to an ugly and decisive end Saturday. Syracuse’s Ryan Nassib threw for 246 yards and 3 touchdowns in his final home game, moving into second on the university’s career passing list, as the Orange routed No. 11 Louisville, 45-26, for the Cardinals’ first defeat. “I am very embarrassed today for our program,” Louisville Coach Charlie Strong said. “We didn’t play well — the preparation and the execution weren’t there. We didn’t play well in all three phases. We have a lot to learn from this game.” Syracuse’s 45 points were the most the Cardinals (9-1, 4-1 Big East) had allowed in a game this season. “This was the worst game we ever played,” defensive back Hakeem Smith said. “They came out and got us.” Syracuse (5-5, 4-2), which blew the game open with three touchdowns in the second quarter, needs one win for bowl eligibility. Its final two games are on the road against Missouri and Temple. Nassib directed an offense that gained 524 yards. He now has 8,214 yards passing and trails only Marvin Graves on Syracuse’s career list, one spot ahead of Donovan McNabb. “We played mistake-free football, just tried to play our game and not do too much and had fun doing it,” Nassib said. “Having success early on puts the pressure on the opposing team. It gets the momentum going, and that’s what happened today.” The Orange’s Jerome Smith ran for 144 yards, and Prince-Tyson Gulley added 98 yards rushing and 2 touchdowns. Teddy Bridgewater completed 36 of 49 passes for 424 yards and 3 touchdowns for Louisville, which fell into second place behind Rutgers in the Big East. “They played the deep ball, but they still had guys make plays underneath,” Bridgewater said. “It was nothing new, nothing we hadn’t seen all week. It was just a lack of execution.” The Cardinals, who are off next Saturday, have games remaining against Connecticut at home and Rutgers on the road. RUTGERS 28, ARMY 7 Brandon Coleman’s two touchdown catches helped No. 24 Rutgers (8-1) survive an upset bid by Army (2-8). The game was tied, 7-7, in the fourth quarter before Army made two miscues on punts and lost a fumble, helping host Rutgers score three times. “Obviously, the kicking game was a disaster,” Army Coach Rich Ellerson said. “The fourth quarter turned into a bit of a clown act.” Despite allowing only 252 yards, the Black Knights lost to the Scarlet Knights for the ninth straight time. CINCINNATI 34, TEMPLE 10 Cincinnati scored on four of its last five first-half possessions in a Big East victory over host Temple (3-6, 2-4). The senior quarterback Brendon Kay, making his first start for the Bearcats (7-2, 3-1), was 13 of 21 for 244 yards and 2 touchdowns. TROY 41, NAVY 31 Corey Robinson completed 25 of 28 passes for 322 yards and a touchdown as host Troy (5-5) ended the five-game winning streak of Navy (6-4). Gee Gee Greene ran for 150 yards and a touchdown for the Midshipmen, and quarterback Keenan Reynolds had three rushing touchdowns. COLUMBIA 34, CORNELL 17 Sean Brackett threw three touchdown passes, leading host Columbia (3-6, 2-4 Ivy League) to a comeback win over Cornell (4-5, 2-4). The Lions, coming off a 69-0 loss at Harvard, scored the final 27 points. PRINCETON 29, YALE 7 Trocon Davis’s 100-yard interception return for a touchdown helped visiting Princeton (5-4, 4-2 Ivy League) defeat Yale (2-7, 1-5). FORDHAM 36, LAFAYETTE 27 Carlton Koonce rushed for 189 yards, including a 69-yard touchdown, and host Fordham (6-4, 3-2 Patriot League) came back from a 10-point first-quarter deficit to defeat Lafayette (5-5, 2-2). WAGNER 31, HOLY CROSS 30 Nick Doscher’s touchdown pass to Cody Morgan with 18 seconds left gave Wagner (7-3) a home victory over Holy Cross (1-9). BROWN 28, DARTMOUTH 24 Quarterback Patrick Donnelly rallied Brown (6-3, 3-3) to two fourth-quarter touchdowns and an Ivy League victory over host Dartmouth (5-4, 3-3). LIBERTY 28, STONY BROOK 14 Liberty’s defense forced five turnovers, including an interception that Nick Sigmon returned for a touchdown, as the host Flames (5-5, 4-1 Big South) beat Stony Brook (9-2, 5-1).

Football (College)
Syracuse University
University of Louisville


Change to Rules of Golf Is Unequal on Its Face

Abstract: This week’s Masters , the first of golf’s four major tournaments, will be the last one played with equipment that is supposedly making the game too easy. The United States Golf Association announced in August that after years of deliberation, it was changing its rules regarding the grooves on the face of golf clubs. Grooves help golfers spin the ball and control the shot to the green. Elite golfers like Tiger Woods can do this far better than the average player, especially from the long grass that surrounds fairways and greens. The change in specifications cuts their permitted volume of grooves in half. (The current maximum, established in 1984, is only 17 fine human hairs wide and 10 hairs deep.) The U.S.G.A. is concerned that with the current grooves, elite golfers can control the ball nearly as well from the rough as they do from the fairway. It wants to make the rough more of a hazard for the top players; smaller and shallower grooves on the club’s face cause a more erratic ball flight out of longer grass, with little or no spin. There is a perception that the game is becoming too easy for elite golfers — about 0.1 percent of the golfing population — who can drive the ball with abandon because they do not fear the consequences of landing in the rough. This problem — if it is a problem — involves the very best golfers, but the other 99.9 percent of the golfing population will be affected by the change as well. Dick Rugge, the U.S.G.A.’s senior technical director, said that most golfers “won’t notice any difference” because “they don’t hit greens out of the rough very often anyway.” But there is a difference between not very often and never, and all golfers relish those moments when they hit shots that are every bit as good as those of the PGA Tour stars. Those shots will be even rarer, and most golfers will notice the difference. They will also eventually notice the effect on their wallets because the clubs they own run afoul of the new rule. All golfers in elite competition will be required to use clubs with the new groove configuration beginning Jan. 1, 2010; all clubs manufactured after that date must have the new grooves. Casual golfers, though, can keep using their old clubs until 2024. This means that for the first time, golf will have different rules for different levels of players. Golf is different in that the finest professionals and middling amateurs can compete side by side, as they do in tournaments like the AT&T National Pro-Am. For many golfers, part of the game’s appeal is knowing that they are playing the same game on the same courses as the world’s best. But from 2010 to 2024, the average golfer may use clubs that professionals may not. A little piece of the identification factor will be gone. In the 1920s, there was much concern that the golf ball was traveling too far and that it was making great courses obsolete. To rein in the distance gains, the U.S.G.A. in 1931 reduced the permitted weight of the ball to 1.55 ounces from 1.62. The chairman of the Implements and Ball Committee (now the Equipment Standards Committee) wrote at the time, “Our aim has been to provide a better and pleasanter ball for the greatest number playing the game and to restore the proper balance between ability and course conditions.” A year later, the U.S.G.A. reversed this change; its president announced that “after carefully canvassing the situation in all parts of the United States and among all classes of players, we concluded that the sound thing to do was to increase the weight of the golf ball, and we have done so.” Today, the U.S.G.A. does no such canvassing, and certainly no thought is given to making the game “pleasanter.” The performance of the elite golfer has dictated almost all recent equipment rules changes: restrictions on the length of a driver, the height of a tee and the degree of forgiveness that can be built into a club, as well as this new change in grooves. The U.S.G.A. has not shared its evidence that a problem exists, nor has it demonstrated that this solution addresses the problem while doing the least damage to the golfing population as a whole. Never has a change of such consequence been made with such a lack of transparency or without appropriate input from those affected. A category within the Rules of Golf called a condition of competition can be adopted for specific events without affecting everyday play. The logical solution to a problem caused by a few hundred elite golfers is to grow the rough a little longer at their events, or to make the impending equipment change through a condition that would be adopted by the PGA tours and the governing bodies for major championships. This would allow some time, and provide evidence of whether the change solves an actual problem, and should be extended to all golfers as a rule, be abandoned or remain a condition for the pros alone. Golf participation is declining, and we have yet to hear of people quitting the game because they found it too easy. We do not need equipment rules aimed specifically at making it harder for Tiger Woods or anyone else.


Burkina Faso: 4 Killed in Protests Against Police

Abstract: Four people have been killed in clashes between the police and demonstrators in the city of Koudougou, reports said Thursday. The demonstrations started Tuesday over the death of a jailed student. The government said he died of meningitis. Fellow students say he died because he had been mistreated.

Burkina Faso
Demonstrations Protests and Riots
Police
Deaths (Fatalities)


Google Entices Africans to Contribute to Swahili Wikipedia

Abstract: MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. “THE farmer and the cowman should be friends” is the hopeful refrain of Oklahomans in the Rodgers and Hammerstein musical “Oklahoma.” After all, their activities rhyme: “one likes to push a plow; one likes to chase a cow.” Alas, the cultivators and the grazers seem destined for conflict. The largest online grazer of them all, Google , has repeatedly come upon fences as it roams the Internet seeking new material for search results. There is China’s corner of the Internet, for example. The government there allowed Google to enter but insisted that its computers ignore writing and photographs about the Tiananmen Square crackdown in 1989, say, or the status of Tibet or political dissent in general. Google agreed to those conditions — that material simply doesn’t show up when someone looks for it at google.cn — though it says it is now refusing to abide by those rules in light of a hacking attempt emanating from China. Another barrier Google recently ran up against involves authors and publishers concerned by the company’s effort to digitize books in university libraries. Many of these are so-called orphan works, for which copyright holders could not be found, and so without securing permission, Google unleashed its page scanners. Only recently has it tried to settle with the authors and publishers so it can put the works online. Then there are the gaps in the Internet, barren because large populations in the Arabic world, Africa and much of India lack the means or education to create Web sites and other online content. But Google can do something that cowboys can’t: create more real estate. The company is sponsoring a contest to encourage students in Tanzania and Kenya to create articles for the Swahili version of Wikipedia , mainly by translating them from the English Wikipedia. The winners are to be announced Friday, with prizes including a laptop, a wireless modem, cellphones and Google gear. So far the contest, Google says, has added more than 900 articles from more than 800 contributors. “Our algorithms are primed and ready to give you the answer you are looking for, but the pipeline of information just isn’t there,” said Gabriel Stricker, Google’s spokesman on search issues. “The challenge for searches in many languages for us no longer is search quality. Our ability to get the right answer is hindered by the lack of quality and lack of quantity of material on the Internet.” Sitting in a Google cafeteria, Mr. Stricker outlined all the ways information eludes the search engine — wrong language, not digitized, too recent, doesn’t exist but should. Feeding the maw is clearly an obsession of Google’s. After all, the search engine’s comprehensiveness is an edge against a new, well-financed competitor, Bing from Microsoft. In e-mail interviews, two of the finalists in the Swahili contest said the arrival of Google on their campuses changed them from passive users of Wikipedia to active contributors. Still, they expressed mixed feelings about receiving material rewards for sharing knowledge. One of the finalists, Jacob Kipkoech, a 21-year-old from the Rift Valley of Kenya who is studying software engineering at Kenyatta University in Nairobi, has created 17 articles so far that were given points. Among the topics were water conservation, Al Qaeda and afforestation, the process of creating forests. “Wikipedia has been a good online research base for me,” he wrote, “and this was a way I could make it possible for people who can’t use English to benefit from it as well.” Another finalist, Daniel Kimani, also 21, is studying for a degree in business information technology at Strathmore University in Kenya. He said that contests were an effective way to attract contributors but that “bribing,” or paying per article, “is not good at all because it will be very unfair to pay some people and others are not paid.” “I believe in Wikipedia,” he said, “since it is the only free source of information in this world.” Swahili, because it is a second language for as many as 100 million people in East Africa, is thought to be one of the only ways to reach a mass audience of readers and contributors in the region. The Swahili Wikipedia still has a long way to go, however, with only 16,000 articles and nearly 5,000 users. (Even a relatively obscure language like Albanian has 25,000 articles and more than 17,000 contributors.) Mr. Kimani and Mr. Kipkoech represent one of the challenges for creating material in African languages. The people best equipped to write in Swahili, or Kiswahili as it is sometimes known, are multilingual university students. And yet Mr. Kimani wrote that he used “the English version more than Kiswahili since most of my school work is in English.” Translation could be the key to bringing more material to non-English speakers. It is the local knowledge that is vital from these Kenyan contributors, the thinking goes, assuming that Swahili-English translation tools improve. Mr. Kimani wrote one entry in English and Swahili about drug use in Mombasa, the second-largest city in Kenya. It says that the “youth in this area strongly believe that use of bhang or any other narcotic drug could prevent one from suffering from ghosts attacks.” Now the article lives in English and Swahili, although the English Wikipedia editors have asked for citations and threatened to remove it. It is yet another obstacle as Google the cowboy becomes Google the farmer.

Search Engines
Google Inc
Wikipedia
Computers and the Internet
Language and Languages
Africa
Tanzania
Kenya
Contests and Prizes


Brazil Is Entranced by a Tale of Love, Taxes and Bribery

Abstract: RIO DE JANEIRO — There were the boxes of Cuban cigars, which cost about $500 each at a shop in Vila Nova Conceição, one of the most exclusive districts of São Paulo, and the $2,260 bottles of Vega Sicilia Único, a legendary Spanish red. Throw in a Porsche Cayenne, speedboat jaunts to tropical islands and all-night soirees with high-end escorts, and what do you get? The unlikely lifestyle of a Brazilian tax inspector. In one of the most salacious corruption scandals to captivate Brazil in years, the municipal government of São Paulo, the nation’s largest city, is reeling from revelations of a scheme in which investigators claim that a group of tax inspectors allowed construction companies to evade more than $200 million in taxes in exchange for bribes. “We always had marvelous dinners, excellent trips by private plane to Angra dos Reis,” Vanessa Alcântara, 27, the former companion of one of the inspectors charged with accepting bribes, said in a televised interview , referring to the oceanfront city that is a playground for Brazil’s elite. The titillating details of the scandal are emerging as an offshoot of a custody battle between Ms. Alcântara and Luis Alexandre Cardoso de Magalhães, 41, a low-ranking São Paulo official. Brazilians are absorbing their confessions and accusations against one another, some of which have been nationally televised , in a case that underlines how political corruption remains entrenched despite landmark efforts to send corrupt officials to jail . So far, the scandal has tinged the administration of São Paulo’s current mayor, Fernando Haddad, and of his predecessor, Gilberto Kassab. Investigators say the bribes to Mr. Magalhães and his colleagues were largely used to gain approval for real estate projects. A top aide to Mr. Haddad, Antonio Donato, resigned after tax inspectors implicated in the scheme told prosecutors that some of the bribes were channeled to Mr. Donato when he was a city councilman. Mr. Donato denied that claim on Tuesday, and Mr. Haddad said in a statement that his administration put an end to the inspectors’ actions shortly after he took office this year. Intercepts of phone calls by Mr. Magalhães suggest that he met Ms. Alcântara in 2011 at Bamboa, a São Paulo nightclub frequented by prostitutes. She disputes that account, which Mr. Magalhães repeated over the weekend on the Globo television network, contending that they met when she tried to sell him a cellphone plan. But when it comes to living high from ill-gotten gains, the estranged couple seem to agree on a lot of things. Mr. Magalhães, who chose to cooperate with investigators after his arrest in October, described how developers delivered bags of cash, some containing about $30,000, on a weekly basis to his office. The money was then divided among four municipal officials, he said, recounting how he burned through much of his haul by spending more than $4,500 a night on prostitutes. “I spent because the money was coming in,” he said. “I wanted to live.” In telephone intercepts and newspaper interviews, Ms. Alcântara said she and Mr. Magalhães, who had a child together, would count the money in her living room, on occasion finding more than $180,000 on their hands. Prosecutors estimate his fortune at $8 million, an amount difficult to reconcile with his annual salary of about $82,000. Ms. Alcântara said he used some of the money to decorate her apartment at a cost of $50,000, and local newspapers have reported that they would splurge on $2,200-a-night suites at a designer hotel and meals at steakhouses with $380 bottles of Charmes-Chambertin Grand Cru, a coveted French wine. The high life apparently ended when Ms. Alcântara became enraged over what she saw as the meager monthly child support Mr. Magalhães offered her after they separated, prompting her to talk to prosecutors. As is sometimes the case in the cycle of Brazilian corruption scandals, celebrities can emerge from such intrigue. One aspirant to such status is Nagila Coelho, 38, a personal trainer who is now a romantic companion of Mr. Magalhães. She is planning to start her own line of bikinis, according to a report in Folha de São Paulo , a Brazilian newspaper. Ms. Alcântara, meanwhile, is mulling a venture into politics. She said she already had a slogan: “Being a thief is easy; I’ll be honest amid all the thieves.”

Bribery and Kickbacks
Rio de Janeiro
Brazil
Tax Evasion
Sao Paulo Brazil


Paul Sprenger, Lawyer Who Fought Discrimination, Dies at 74

Abstract: Paul C. Sprenger, a Washington lawyer who represented female iron miners in Minnesota in the nation’s first class-action lawsuit focused on sexual harassment — at the time an emerging legal concept — died on Monday while on vacation in Curaçao. He was 74. His wife and law partner, Jane Lang, said the cause was apparently a heart attack he had while snorkeling. Mr. Sprenger, who began his legal career in Minneapolis, won important victories — and large settlements — for women, minorities and older workers against some of the nation’s largest companies, including 3M, Cargill and Control Data Corporation. “He’d been an insurance defense lawyer,” Ms. Lang said, “but when he discovered what a great feeling it was to win something for someone who didn’t have anything, he said, being a plaintiff’s lawyer was a no-brainer.” Mr. Sprenger first became involved in gender discrimination litigation in the 1970s, when he represented Shyamala Rajender , an assistant professor of chemistry at the University of Minnesota, which at the time had never had a tenured female professor in engineering or the hard sciences. “It was the first sex discrimination class action against a university,” Ms. Lang said. “He won a 10-year consent decree, and it changed higher education for women.” It would be almost a decade before he brought the landmark sexual harassment case, that of Lois Jenson, a miner, against the Eveleth Taconite Company. It became the basis of a 2002 book, “Class Action,” by Clara Bingham and Laura Leedy Gansler, and of a 2005 film, “North Country,” in which Woody Harrelson played a lawyer based on Mr. Sprenger and Charlize Theron played a character based on Ms. Jenson. Ms. Jenson started working at a mine in northern Minnesota’s Iron Range in 1975. Almost from the start, according to court documents, she and the other female miners were subjected to sexual harassment, verbal abuse, threats, stalking and intimidation. They were pinched, grabbed and stared at. In 1984, a week after Ms. Jenson mailed a complaint to the State Department of Human Rights, her tires were slashed in retaliation. Mr. Sprenger filed his class action on behalf of Ms. Jenson and other female miners in 1988. The court proceedings and appeals dragged on for a decade, and in 1998, just as a second trial was to begin, 15 women settled with Eveleth for a total of $3.5 million. Mr. Sprenger won a far larger settlement in a race and gender discrimination case against Pepco, the Washington power company, which changed its practices as a result of the litigation. He had comparable success in an age-discrimination cases, one against First Union Bank and another against Control Data. In 2010 Mr. Sprenger was the lead counsel representing television writers in a $74.5 million settlement against the television production industry, the largest settlement in the history of age-discrimination litigation. Paul Sprenger was born on Sept. 8, 1940, in Stillwater, Minn. He received his bachelor’s degree and his law degree from the University of Michigan. Mr. Sprenger met Ms. Lang when they were on opposites sides of a case involving black employees of the Burlington Northern Railroad. He represented the workers, she the railroad, and they negotiated a settlement. They merged their practices in 1989, forming the firm Sprenger & Lang, with offices in Washington and Minneapolis, and married the next year. Mr. Sprenger learned he had prostate cancer 17 years ago and Parkinson’s disease seven years later, Ms. Lang said. His son, Steven, bought the firm in 2000, although Mr. Sprenger and Ms. Lang continued to do legal work for several years. The Minneapolis office closed in 2009, and the younger Mr. Sprenger, like the older, had stopped taking new cases, Ms. Lang said. But while cutting back on the law practice, Mr. Sprenger and Ms. Lang turned to philanthropy, together founding the Atlas Performing Arts Center on H Street in Washington and helping to revitalize its neighborhood. They led a $24 million capital campaign for the center. It opened in 2005 in a long-neglected former movie theater, which had been transformed into a 60,000-square-foot complex with four performing spaces and three dance studios. Besides his wife and son, Mr. Sprenger is survived by two daughters, Heidi and Sara; two stepchildren, Jessica Lang and Benjamin Alamar; 14 grandchildren; and one great-grandchild. Ms. Lang said that she and her husband had formed their firm with tall ambitions. “We were going to do big things and change the world and make a difference for women and minorities and older workers,” she said. “He really believed that if we just worked harder we would come out on top, because we were right.”

Obituary
Discrimination
Paul C. Sprenger
Lawsuits
Lawyers