Harvard’s Playoff Duo, Divided by 65 Years

Abstract: During Harvard road games in the 1945-46 season, arena announcers tended to mangle the pronunciation of Saul Mariaschin’s surname. “Very often, the announcer would say Maraschino,” said Don Swegan, 87, a teammate of Mariaschin’s that season. “He just laughed. He took it in stride.” A 5-foot-11 point guard, Mariaschin (pronounced mah-ree-ASH-in) ensured that his reputation was made on the court, if not on the loudspeakers. He led Harvard to a 19-1 regular-season record and an appearance in the 1946 N.C.A.A. tournament at Madison Square Garden. The Crimson were eliminated in the first round, a round of eight teams, by Ohio State. Harvard did not return to the N.C.A.A. tournament until 2012. That 66-year dry spell has a virtual parallel in the N.B.A. When Houston Rockets point guard Jeremy Lin stepped onto the court last Sunday at Oklahoma City for the first game of an opening-round playoff series against the Thunder, he became the first Crimson player to reach the N.B.A.’s postseason in 65 years, since Mariaschin in 1948. After graduating from Harvard in 1947, Mariaschin joined the Boston Celtics and led them to the Basketball Association of America playoffs as a rookie. (In 1949, the B.A.A. and the National Basketball League merged to form the N.B.A.) Mariaschin was third on the team in points scored during the regular season, averaged 9.7 points in the postseason and appeared on his way to a solid career. But the Celtics were knocked out of the playoffs by losing two of three games to the Chicago Stags, and an 81-74 loss in the finale at Boston Garden turned out to be his last game. Mariaschin was married that summer, shortened his surname to Marsch and moved to Los Angeles, where he went to work for his father-in-law’s fabric upholstery and design company. The Celtics moved on after Mariaschin’s departure, with point guard Bob Cousy joining the team two years later and embarking on a Hall of Fame career that began a Boston dynasty lasting until the 1970s. Harvard’s fortunes were hardly as sparkling after Mariaschin left, with the Crimson enduring nine consecutive losing seasons and a 61-155 record. Mariaschin had wide-ranging talents. He also played on Harvard’s baseball team, and when he attended the Celtics’ training camp, a song he wrote, “The More I Do,” was about to be released. Image Jeremy Lin with the Houston Rockets. Credit Sue Ogrocki/Associated Press “The Celtics would hum it,” Carol Marsch, Mariaschin’s first wife, said he told her. “Whenever he made a good basket, they would hum it.” The Harvard Crimson newspaper wrote on Oct. 22, 1947, that “tunesmithing is a trade Mariaschin plies with ability neither to read nor play music.” The newspaper went on to state that two songs Mariaschin composed while attending Harvard, “Never Before Dreamed Of” and “Sentimental Guy,” would also soon be released. A baseball box score of Harvard’s 1-0 loss at Yale on June 17, 1947, shows that Mariaschin, the Crimson shortstop, went 1 for 3, as did Yale’s first baseman, George H. W. Bush, the future president. Mariaschin’s daughter Marianne Marsch-Nakamura said that her copy of the box score had red marks beside the names of her father and Bush, and that the date was underlined in red. Those notations might have been made by her father. In both his seasons at Harvard, Mariaschin earned all-conference honors in the Eastern Intercollegiate Basketball League, which became the Ivy League for the 1955-56 season, and he was named the captain of the 1946-47 team. “Our team at Harvard in 1945-46 was the very best in its history,” Mariaschin said at his 25th reunion, as quoted in The Harvard Crimson on Nov. 11, 2011. “That athletic accomplishment was very significant to me and everyone on the team.” One of his Crimson teammates that season, Wyndol Gray, went on to play for the Celtics and two other teams. In 1953-54, another Harvard alumnus, Ed Smith, played for the Knicks. The Knicks reached the playoffs that season, but Smith did not. Before attending Harvard, Mariaschin was a two-sport star at Bloomsburg, in Pennsylvania, and at Syracuse. His collegiate progression was a product of World War II-era military preparedness. Mariaschin entered Bloomsburg as a member of the V-12 Navy College Training Program, which supplied officers to the armed forces. All but one of the 11 players in a photograph of Bloomsburg’s 1944-45 basketball team, which went 10-3, were Navy V-12 cadets, according to the university’s yearbook, Obiter. If Mariaschin were alive today — he died in 1990 during a skiing vacation — his loyalties might be divided for the first-round N.B.A. playoff series between the Celtics and the Knicks. He was a Brooklyn native whose father, Willie, an immigrant from Russia, owned a tailor shop near the Brooklyn Navy Yard. Mariaschin starred at Lafayette High School, and his cousin Dan Mariaschin is lobbying for his induction into the New York City Basketball Hall of Fame. “He was one of those guys present at the dawn of the B.A.A.,” Dan Mariaschin said. “The seed of what we know as the N.B.A. today was planted by people like Saul.”

Jeremy Lin
Harvard
Basketball
Houston Rockets
Playoffs
College basketball


Rule Change On Youth Football Hits

Abstract: USA Football, the sport’s national governing body at the youth and amateur levels, is amending rules for illegal hits and will allow game officials to remove players who show concussion symptoms. The rule was changed to prevent the shoulder or forearm, not just the helmet, from being used on an opposing player above the shoulder — not just in the head.


United ‘Smashed Down’ by Loss to Swansea

Abstract: LONDON — Nothing is stable and nobody should feel secure in the court of King Louis van Gaal. A month back, the Dutchman led the Netherlands to third place at the World Cup. He eschewed the option of retiring to his villa in Portugal, saying he needed no rest. The next day, he assumed his new role as head coach at Manchester United, the club he regards as the biggest and best on earth. Within days, he was crossing the Atlantic and overseeing six United preseason games, culminating in a 3-1 win against Real Madrid in front of 109,318 fans at the University of Michigan stadium, the biggest audience ever to see a soccer game in the United States. For a start, van Gaal, who recently turned 63, had questioned the priorities of the trip. He was soon advised that the dollar is a top priority, and that there might never be a better time to capitalize in the United States on the post-World Cup euphoria. Superficially, the whirlwind tour delivered, even if the games were not all they were hyped to be. Many of the star players were on vacation or injured after the World Cup. And because Spain and England kick off their leagues at different times, the Real squad was a week or so behind United when it came to conditioning and play. But as van Gaal said, it is better to win than to lose, even in preparatory games. And van Gaal’s United did win all six of its games on tour. But the winning came at a price. Manchester was missing nine players Saturday as it opened the new Premier League season, including the manager’s star striker and fellow countryman, Robin van Persie. And though van Gaal has a list of players he wishes to sign to improve the team, including Ángel di María of Real Madrid, it just might be that the club’s travels have cut into his negotiating time for new recruits. For whatever reason, the Red Devils lost, 2-1, to Swansea on Saturday. This, as they say, is English soccer — and in this case it includes Wales because the Swans come from across the border. The forte of the Premier League — which likes to boast that it is the best on earth — is its competitiveness. Any club can beat even the elite teams on a given day. That is healthy and fine. Except that, from van Gaal’s perspective, he happens to have assumed command of a United team that lost an opening game at home for the first time since 1972. That was so long ago that it coincides with the year that Louis van Gaal made his first, faltering attempts to play with Ajax, his hometown team in Amsterdam. He proved to be a far better coach than a player, winning league titles at home with Ajax and AZ Alkmaar and abroad with Barcelona and Bayern Munich. It is van Gaal, not anybody else, who rates Manchester United higher than any of his previous clubs. But on Saturday, he found out that no matter the changes he made, United was unable to prevent Swansea from doing what the Welsh club had never done before: win a league match at Old Trafford. “We had built up a lot of confidence in the preparation,” van Gaal said, “and then it is smashed down by this result. We never played as a team, and we didn’t reach our potential.” He acknowledged Swansea’s right to the victory. He admitted that the victories in America had raised expectations that were now laid bare. He said his players had tried their very best, that their efforts were fantastic. But he described United as a team running with their legs but failing to use their brains. Even though United’s new captain, Wayne Rooney, had scored with an overhead kick and nearly struck again when he hit the post, the impression of this opening game is that Swansea was the more cohesive and assured team. The cold reality is that the Swans’ shopping budget for the whole team is what United might spend on di María, if it can get him. But the reality is, too, that United let an awful lot of experienced defenders — Rio Ferdinand, Nemanja Vidic and Patrice Evra — go for next to nothing, and there are barely two weeks left in the summer trading window to find replacements. “I know in what positions we need better players,” van Gaal told reporters on Saturday evening. “But you have to buy only when the player can fulfill the way I ask them to play. We have to wait and see.” Wait for what, and for how long? Time is running against United. It chose a coach that could not get to work until the World Cup was over. It chose an American tour that satisfied its sponsors and maybe its owners. But with the clock ticking on the transfer window, the clubs that own the players who van Gaal might want will add millions to their price because the purchaser is Manchester United, and their needs are clear for everyone to see. And that presumes that United’s name and allure will still persuade players to go there, even though the club, for the first time in almost a quarter-century, will not take part in the Champions League this season. Saturday’s loss is only one game. But the Premier League waits for no team, and Arsenal, Chelsea, Liverpool and Manchester City have already done their buying. From day one, United is already behind, both on the field and off it.

Soccer
Manchester United
Premier League
Swansea City Soccer Team


After Decades, Japan Prepares for Likely New Ruling Party

Abstract: TOKYO — Japanese voters finally seem willing to oust the long-governing Liberal Democratic Party . But after decades of a virtual one-party state, the Japanese now are confronting what a change of power would actually mean. Opinion polls show the main opposition Democratic Party heading into national elections on Sunday with a widening lead over the Liberal Democrats, who have governed Japan almost continuously since 1955. Voters are turning to the opposition out of disgust with what they see as the unresponsive Liberal Democrats and their bungled handling of Japan’s economy — which has led to nearly 20 years of stagnation and the loss of Japan’s once proud status as an economic superpower. The opposition is now scrambling to prove it deserves this long-awaited chance, and can take the country in a new direction — strengthening the social safety net to ease growing inequalities, and perhaps keeping slightly more distance from the United States. But the Democratic Party’s biggest appeal may be its promise to transform Japanese politics by making them more transparent and responsive. It vows to do so by ending the Liberal Democrats’ backroom style of rule and their over-reliance on Tokyo’s powerful central bureaucracy, which sets policy on the governing party’s behalf. “More than the policies, we want to change the very dynamism of Japanese politics,” Katsuya Okada, the Democratic Party’s secretary general, said in an interview. “Just having a transition of power will by itself make a huge difference.” The possibility of such a transition, after more than a half-century of nearly unbroken rule by the Liberal Democrats, has gripped the nation’s attention. A poll released Monday by the national broadcaster NHK showed that 90 percent of voters intended to cast their ballot, far above the 68 percent turnout in the last lower house election four years ago. Voters’ expectations seem limited about what the Democrats would achieve, given their inexperience and often lackluster leadership. After years of struggle to build a coherent party from a broad spectrum of conservative splinter groups and former leftists founded in 1998, the Democrats’ platform is not very different from the Liberal Democrats. Neither the opposition nor the incumbents have fully addressed longstanding problems facing Japan, such as paying for a rapidly aging population despite soaring deficits. Rather, the hope here is if voters do hand the Democrats a victory, that could infuse new blood into a political system that has grown increasingly sclerotic under Liberal Democratic rule. That brings a bigger question: Is Japan ready for a more contentious brand of politics, in which voters decide between political parties, and parties in turn wield real power? Ever since Japan’s emergence as a modern state more than a century ago, political parties have tended to be a sideshow to the real business of running the country, which has been left to bureaucrats. It has not helped that Japan, despite being East Asia’s oldest representative political system, never seized democracy through a popular uprising, as in neighboring South Korea. Instead, its modern constitutions and parliamentary systems were bestowed from above, first by samurai reformers in the name of the emperor in the late 19th century, and then by American occupiers after defeat in World War II. The result has been a politically apathetic public. Now, political analysts say the biggest significance of a Democratic Party victory would be demonstrating to Japanese voters that they can actually shape the direction of their nation. “Just having choice will bring a huge, huge change in the political culture of Japan,” said Gerald Curtis, a professor of Japanese politics at Columbia University. “This is a country that has great potential. What it has lacked is leadership, and politicians who can paint a picture of what a bright future looks like.” The Democrats claim they can paint just such a picture. But they face an uphill battle. Reining in the bureaucracy means taking on an elite group of top achievers in Japan that actually writes laws and has served as a permanent government — even though it has come under fire for failing to combat the long downturn. Politicians’ past efforts to wrest control from bureaucrats have usually failed, in part because they have traditionally been looked down upon as self-interested and corrupt. A result is a shortage of strong, charismatic political leaders who could make a case for change, in either party. Only about a half-dozen Democratic lawmakers have ever held top government posts, and most of those defected from the Liberal Democrats. That includes the party leader, Yukio Hatoyama, 62, a Stanford-trained engineer who served as deputy cabinet secretary in the only other non-Liberal Democratic government, which fell apart in 1994 after 11 months in office. Mr. Hatoyama, who is likely to become prime minister if his party wins, is seen as a consensus builder who will work to maintain party unity and avoid a strong personal imprint on its policies. Mr. Okada, a popular 56-year-old former Trade Ministry bureaucrat known for his no-nonsense style, represents a younger generation of Democratic lawmakers less tainted by association with the governing party. “They’re going to send hundreds of inexperienced lawmakers to try to lord it over these entrenched bureaucrats,” said Atsuo Ito, an independent political analyst who wrote a book on the Democratic Party. “The bureaucracy survived World War II, and it survived the postwar American occupation. It will survive Mr. Hatoyama.” Still, the Democrats have been trying to seize the moment by tapping Japan’s simmering discontent. The party has tried to position itself as the choice for voters fed up with rising social inequalities, stagnating wages and other changes for which many blame economic globalization. It recently issued a manifesto pledging new spending of $177 billion a year. While economists have characterized the Democrats as slightly left of center, and the incumbents as slightly to the right, both parties are promising new social spending to win key blocs like farmers, who were alienated by the small-government reforms of former Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi. Another criticism leveled at the Democrats is their lack of experience, particularly in national security and diplomacy. That has drawn the attention of the United States — last month, an American assistant secretary of state met party officials to learn more about the Democrats’ foreign policy stance, which calls for a greater focus on Asia while building an “equal partnership” with Washington, Japan’s traditional protector. Mr. Okada said in his interview that a Democratic government would consider ending the Japanese Navy’s refueling of American and allied warships in the Indian Ocean, which has been unpopular here. He said it would also seek to revise the agreement governing the legal status of the some 50,000 United States service members in Japan to reduce friction with Japanese communities near American bases. He stressed that the American presence would remain largely unchanged, as would the overall relationship with Washington. “There is no need to worry about Japan-American relations,” Mr. Okada said. Indeed, the party seems to be going to great pains to stress that it would be realistic if given a chance to rule. But it has not helped its cause by seeming to flip-flop on central issues, such as a promise in the manifesto to sign a free-trade deal with the United States that the party later watered down after criticism by farmers. The Democrats say that they have practiced for rule by setting up their own “shadow cabinets” and using their shared control of Parliament’s upper house with other opposition parties to write and submit their own legislation. Some predict that the Democrats’ biggest challenge will be simply trying to hold together despite its deep ideological cleavages. This is what doomed the last non-Liberal Democratic government. At the time, too, Japan had suffered through only a few years of economic stagnation, not the decade of decline that is helping drive voters away from the governing party. “The opposition wasn’t ready then, mentally or in organization,” said Masayoshi Takemura, chief cabinet secretary in that government. “They’ve had 15 years to get their act together.”

Japan
Elections
Liberal Democratic Party
Democratic Party (Japan)


With Videos of Killings, ISIS Sends Medieval Message by Modern Method

Abstract: The ostensible purpose of the recent videos that show the beheadings of two American journalists by Islamic militants is to deter attacks — your missiles on our positions will beget our knives on Western hostages — but the true aim is to spread dread and terror. The videos deliver in miniature the same chilling message as the footage of the towers falling 13 years ago: Everything has changed, no one is safe and the United States is impotent against true believers. It is a memo from a foe that has everything to gain by goading America into a fight in a faraway land where its enemies are legion. The tactic worked back then. And while the videos convey barbarism on an elemental level, dismissing them as crude or one-dimensional would be wrong. The Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, known as ISIS, clearly has a sophisticated production unit, with good cameras, technically proficient operators and editors who have access to all the best tools. What they made are modern media artifacts being used to medieval ends. The videos serve as both propaganda and time machine, attempting to wipe away centuries of civilization and suggest that the dreamed-of caliphate flourishes and blood is cheap currency. The real warriors in those videos are the journalists who were killed, James Foley and Steven Sotloff, who were trying to do a terrible, dangerous job when they were grabbed opportunistically in Syria. Innocent people end up tragically caught in the crossfire of war, but the targeting of journalists who provide witness for the rest of us is particularly appalling to people in the news business. I initially had no interest in seeing the videos — the beheading of Daniel Pearl , a reporter for The Wall Street Journal, in 2002 is still fresh — but watched the footage of Mr. Sotloff’s death after I decided to write about it. The mastery of medium and message is evident in the careful crafting of the video. (Anybody who doubts the technical ability of ISIS might want to watch a documentary of Falluja that includes some remarkable drone camera work .) In the Sotloff clip, the enemy, in this case President Obama, is shown through a video effects filter to make his visage in a news conference about ISIS appear distorted and sinister. An electronic buzz effect signals an interruption — a kidnapping, if you will — of the broadcast before a graceful typographical segue promises “A second message to America.” We are then in a desert, the horizon carefully situated at the midpoint of a two-camera shoot. There is thought put into the wardrobe selection; the victim is dressed in an iconic orange jumpsuit — a reference to detainees in American custody — and the killer costumed more as a ninja than a jihadist, all in black and his face obscured, holding a small knife and holster. The actual murder is performed in the unflinching sunlight of the desert. (I thought more than once of the brutally clear morning of Sept. 11, 2001.) Because sound is difficult to capture on a windy expanse of arid land, the victim is wearing a lapel mike. Mr. Sotloff introduces himself in sober tones and begins to read a scripted statement off what seems to be a teleprompter. The executioner is cocky and ruthless, seemingly eager to get to the task at hand. When he does attack his bound victim, only the beginning is shown and then there is a fade to black. Once the picture returns, the head of the victim is carefully arranged on the body, all the violence of the act displayed in a bloody tableau. There is another cutaway, and the next potential victim is shown with a warning that he may be next. Image A screen grab taken from a video released by the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria. Credit SITE Intelligence Group, via Agence France-Presse — Getty Images “It is an interesting aesthetic choice not to show the actual beheading,” Alex Gibney, a documentary filmmaker, said. “I can’t be sure, but they seemed to dial it back just enough so that it would get passed around. In a way, it makes it all the more chilling, that it was so carefully stage-managed and edited to achieve the maximum impact.” The act is shocking regardless of the context. Remember near the end of Season 1 of “Game of Thrones,” when Eddard Stark, a main character, was poised to lose his head? We expected an arrow to come in from stage right to save him, but it did not and the blade fell swiftly. The audacity of the scene was something people talked about for weeks afterward, and the show’s unflinching violence has been a core element of its escalating popularity. And so it is in real life. Video beheadings are a triple death — murder and defilement in a public way — and YouTube becomes the pike on which the severed heads are displayed. The actual butchery of the act is minimized by strategic editing, which suggests that the video is not an attempt at leverage but a carefully produced infomercial about how gangster and merciless ISIS is. It is a kind of global invitation: Come for the jihad and stay for the killing. Writing in The New Yorker, Dexter Filkins did a remarkable job explaining what takes place in the videos. “For the guys who signed up for ISIS — including, especially, the masked man with the English accent who wielded the knife — killing is the real point of being there,” he wrote. Robert Baer, a former C.I.A. officer and the author of the coming book “The Perfect Kill: 21 Laws for Assassins,” has worked extensively in the Middle East and continues to be in touch with many of the factions there. He points out that a lot of the jihadists involved in filmed killings seem to be from the West and suggests that the combination of swagger and brutality reflects the worst of modern youth culture finding traction in the deadly mission of jihad. “It is very old, going back to the Middle Ages when people were drawn and quartered, a visual lesson to the living of retribution,” he told me in a phone call, “but it also reminds us that they think that they can level the playing field through their commitment, that they are not going away.” Many people have suggested that those who hosted or passed around the video have blood on their hands by proxy. I wondered what someone in the middle of things would think of the videos’ dissemination. I called my friend and colleague Tim Arango, who is the Baghdad bureau chief for The New York Times and has been reporting in the region for five years. “I think the more people who watch it, the more people will know what we are up against,” he said from Istanbul, after many months in Iraq. “I felt like I had to see them for two reasons,” he said. “One, I cover these guys and I need to know what they are saying. And two, if they are targeting American journalists in the region for propaganda uses, you need to be aware of what happened. You don’t want to be the next guy kneeling in the jumpsuit.” Tim and I are old friends examining and discussing the same thing over Skype despite being a world apart, which is a wonder of the age that we live in. But those frictionless media dynamics carry darker cargo as well. And in the same way that the sheer size of the World Trade Center was used against itself, the modern social media apparatus is now used to menace us. We don’t want to look, but some of us do and the rest of us talk about it. ISIS seems to understand that the same forces that carried the Ice Bucket Challenge ’s message of uplift — the desire to be part of something, to be in the know — can be used to spread fear and terror as well.

Terrorism
ISIS,ISIL,Islamic State
Kidnapping and Hostages
Steven Sotloff
James Foley
Barack Obama
Video Recordings
Downloads and Streaming
News media,journalism
Propaganda


Hurricanes Beat Islanders to Pull a Point Behind Rangers

Abstract: UNIONDALE, N.Y. — By now, Rangers fans must be furious with the Islanders for complicating their playoff hopes. After trouncing the Rangers on Thursday night, the Islanders gave up three consecutive third-period goals and allowed the surging Carolina Hurricanes , the Rangers’ closest playoff pursuers, a 4-2 victory here on Saturday. The result left the idle Rangers in the eighth and final playoff spot in the Eastern Conference, only a point ahead of the Hurricanes. Both teams have four games left. The Hurricanes entered the third period behind, 2-1, but goals by Joe Corvo at 3 minutes 2 seconds and Erik Cole at 6:04 erased the deficit. Eric Staal added a short-handed empty-netter with 48 seconds to play, moments after he deflected high a shot from the Islanders’ Matt Martin that would have tied the score. “It was their season, and they came out hard,” Islanders goalie Al Montoya said. “This is a tough one to swallow.” Hurricanes goalie Cam Ward, who stopped 29 shots, said: “We knew it was going to be a difficult game. We saw what they did to the Rangers.” The Hurricanes won for the sixth time in seven games and hit the final stretch of the regular season on an upbeat note. “The key is not losing sight of the fact that passion and excitement wins games,” Hurricanes Coach Paul Maurice said. “In order to play well in a third period like that, you have to find a way to look forward to every minute of that third period, even if it’s 2-1 right to the end, and not be worried about the ramifications of what the game means.” The Buffalo Sabres lost in overtime at Washington, but the point they earned put them a point ahead of the Rangers. Toronto also stayed mathematically alive by beating Ottawa. The Rangers play at Philadelphia on Sunday afternoon, and the Hurricanes play host to the Sabres later in the day. After those games, the Rangers may well find themselves out of a playoff position for the first time since Oct. 30. The Hurricanes overcame a bookkeeping error to take an early lead en route to their sixth straight win over the Islanders. Their starting lineup did not conform to the lineup sheet they submitted before the game, and Islanders Coach Jack Capuano called them on it at 2:57 of the first period, at the same time the Islanders’ Trevor Gillies was sent off for slashing. The penalty that resulted from the Hurricanes’ flub was announced as an illegal lineup, and it cost them a power play. But Carolina’s Jussi Jokinen scored on the subsequent four-on-four. Jesse Joensuu equalized for the Islanders four minutes later to make the score 1-1 at the first intermission. John Tavares scored in the second to give the Islanders the lead they later lost. CANADIENS 3, DEVILS 1 The Devils failed to qualify for the postseason for the first time since 1996 when they were beaten by visiting Montreal. “We knew it was going to come,” goaltender Martin Brodeur said after the Devils’ playoff run was stopped at 13 seasons. “It doesn’t come as a shocker. We had a good run, played really hard to get ourselves in position to compete. It was just too much.” The Devils, who got off to a dismal start to the season under John MacLean, will miss the playoffs for the third time in the last 23 seasons. Jacques Lemaire came out of retirement for the Devils, and the team responded in early January, posting a 23-3-2 mark to pull as close as 6 points from the final playoff berth in the East. The Canadiens ended their faint hopes, getting two goals from Mathieu Darche and 20 saves from Carey Price. “It’s the first time for me to be eliminated before the playoffs start,” the Devils veteran Patrik Elias said. “It’s disappointing, no question about it.” (AP) BRUINS 3, THRASHERS 2 Michael Ryder scored on a penalty shot to break a third-period tie, lifting Boston over visiting Atlanta. The win clinched the Northeast Division for the Bruins and eliminated the Thrashers from playoff contention. (AP) LIGHTNING 3, WILD 1 Tampa Bay’s Dwayne Roloson stopped 29 shots against his old team and the Lightning eliminated host Minnesota from playoff contention. (AP) MAPLE LEAFS 4, SENATORS 2 Tyler Bozak had a power-play goal 5:42 into the third as Toronto preserved its slim playoff hopes with a win at Ottawa. (AP) CAPITALS 5, SABRES 4 Alex Ovechkin scored the winner 3:19 into overtime, and Washington took over the top spot in the East. (AP) RED WINGS 4, PREDATORS 3 Danny Cleary tipped in Brian Rafalski’s shot 2:58 into overtime for Detroit’s fourth straight goal, leading the Red Wings over host Nashville to clinch their 20th straight playoff berth. (AP) IN OTHER GAMES Matt Greene scored the go-ahead goal in the third period to lift Los Angeles over Dallas, 3-1, at home. ... Zbynek Michalek scored with 7:49 left and Pittsburgh handed host Florida its eighth consecutive loss, 4-2. (AP)

Hockey Ice
Playoff Games
Boston Bruins
Atlanta Thrashers
Carolina Hurricanes
New York Islanders


U.S. Put Secret Jails in Lithuania, Prime Minister Says

Abstract: MOSCOW — The prime minister of Lithuania , a former Soviet republic that broke from Moscow’s orbit and is now a member of NATO, accused the United States on Tuesday of using “Soviet methods” to set up two secret prisons in Lithuania for terrorism suspects. The prime minister, Andrius Kubilius, said the United States had reached what he contended were clandestine and illegal arrangements with the Lithuanian secret services for prisons that were outside civilian control. Mr. Kubilius made his remarks on the day that the national security committee in the Lithuanian Parliament released a report that determined that the country was the site of two small secret prisons, though it did not indicate how they were used. The report was based on testimony from politicians and national security officials. It was initiated after ABC News described Lithuania’s role in hosting so-called black sites, and other questions were raised about its activities in the fight against terrorism. Arvydas Anusauskas , chairman of the national security committee, said state security officials “received requests from the C.I.A. to establish detention facilities.” He said it was not clear who was housed in the facilities because five planes that apparently transported people to Lithuania were never inspected by civilian officials. The report contended that state security officials never informed senior government officials, like the prime minister, about the prisons, which supposedly could hold a handful of people. The scandal over the secret prisons has shaken Lithuania’s political system and could lead to an overhaul of the security services. The intelligence chief has already resigned. Mr. Kubilius did note that “Lithuania is a strategic United States ally, and cooperation in many fields, including secret operations and counterterrorism, is very important.” But he said it was “deeply worrying” that security officials established the prisons without oversight from senior civilian officials.

Lithuania
United States International Relations
Central Intelligence Agency
United States
Extraordinary Rendition


U.S. Jobless Claims Fall; Trade Deficit Widens

Abstract: WASHINGTON (Reuters) — The number of Americans submitting new applications for jobless benefits edged down last week, easing concerns that the labor market was deteriorating after surprisingly weak employment growth in April. Another report on Thursday showed that the nation’s trade deficit widened in March, with exports surging to a record high and a rise in imports highlighting the economy’s firming underlying demand. Together, the reports indicated the economy remained on a moderate growth path, despite the softer jobs growth and signs that the service sector slowed in April. “The slowdown we have seen in economic activity and employment growth during the past two months may be in the rearview mirror,” said Millan Mulraine, senior macrostrategist at TD Securities. New claims for state unemployment benefits fell by 1,000 last week, to a seasonally adjusted 367,000, the Labor Department said. Economists who had expected claims to rise to 369,000 said the decline suggested seasonal distortions that had led to a spike in applications last month were probably over. The four-week moving average for new claims, considered a better measure of labor market trends, fell by 5,250, to 379,000. Separately, the trade gap widened 14.1 percent to $51.8 billion in March, the biggest jump in nearly a year, as the surge in imports swamped a rise in exports. Imports grew 5.2 percent, the biggest gain since January. That jump was consistent with the rise in consumer spending during the first quarter. Exports had another good month, rising 2.9 percent, suggesting the global economy had not slowed as much as some had feared. “With imports for everything surging, it is hard to argue that the economy is softening,” said Joel Naroff, chief economist at Naroff Economic Advisors. While a widening trade deficit is a drag on gross domestic product, the details of the trade report were broadly in line with the government’s assumptions when it estimated G.D.P. last month. Still, the government’s gauge of first-quarter G.D.P. growth is expected to be lowered to an annual pace of about 1.9 percent, from 2.2 percent, because of a smaller-than-expected rise in wholesale inventories in March that was reported on Wednesday. Following on the heels of April’s sluggish employment gains, the claims data calmed fears the labor market was stagnating. Companies added 115,000 new jobs to their payrolls in April, the fewest in six months, the government said on Friday. Most economists have viewed the pullback in job creation as a result of stronger activity during the unusually warm winter and believe the underlying pace of payroll growth is about 175,000 a month, its average for the last three months. Scott Brown, chief economist at Raymond James, said the jobless claims figures had “simmered down after the noises we had earlier.” “This shows we have moderate job growth,” he added. Other data showed no sign of inflation pressures, with the retreat of crude oil prices pushing down the cost of imported goods in April by the most in 10 months. That should help lower the cost of living for many households and support economic growth. With external demand, particularly in Europe, and oil prices having eased, “import price pressures are likely to remain subdued in the coming months,” said Peter Newland, an economist at Barclays.

United States Economy
Unemployment
Labor Department (US)
Unemployment Insurance
Labor and Jobs
International Trade and World Market


Fan Who Caught Maris’s 61st Homer Visits Yankee Stadium

Abstract: Sal Durante will always be a footnote to Roger Maris ’s 61st home run on Oct. 1, 1961. He does not mind the designation. He was 19, a Yankees fan from Coney Island who was driving a truck for an auto parts store when he leapt onto his seat at Yankee Stadium to catch the ball. After a variety of other jobs, he drove a school bus for 29 years until his recent retirement. He is 69, living in Staten Island and still married to Rosemarie, his fiancée then, who paid for the $2.50 tickets that day. “It made me part of history,” Durante said Friday on a tour of Yankee Stadium that was arranged for him and where he was accompanied by Frank Prudenti, the Yankees’ batboy in 1961. It was Durante’s first visit to the new ballpark. His renown came at the original Yankee Stadium, the one with the low right-field fence that Maris’s drive cleared before it landed — smack! — in Durante’s right hand. Looking out a window on the suite level of the new stadium to the construction site where the old one stood for 86 years, he said, “I miss that stadium.” He posed next to an enlargement of the front page of The Daily News that read: “Maris Belts #61 For New Mark.” In the accompanying photograph, Maris, in his uniform, and Durante, in his black jacket and T-shirt, his hair in a pompadour, stand together, each with a hand on the ball. Durante recalled being taken upstairs to be interviewed by Mel Allen when he saw Phil Rizzuto coming out of the TV booth. “Congratulations,” Durante remembered Rizzuto telling him. “I’m glad you’re a paesano.” It was boredom that sent Durante, Rosemarie, his cousin and his cousin’s girlfriend to the stadium that day . “I’d like to catch something in batting practice,” he said, voicing limited hope, believing there would be a crowd of fans in right field, where they expected Maris might hit home run No. 61, which would break Babe Ruth’s single-season mark. Given the interest in a possible Maris home run on the final day of the regular season, Durante did not expect tickets to be available in the lower right-field stands. But his group wound up in Section 33. Durante said that he sat beside his cousin and his girlfriend. Rosemarie sat behind him. Maris flied out to left in the first inning. But in the fourth, when Maris batted second, Durante had an inspiration: move back a row. “He said, ‘Let’s switch seats,’ ” said Rosemarie, who was also on the tour Friday. “ ‘I understand baseball.’ ” Moving back proved prescient. Durante is short; had he not moved, the ball would have passed over him. From the new perch, he said he “zoomed in” on Red Sox pitcher Tracy Stallard’s motion. “As soon as Roger hit it, I jumped on my seat, and reached as high as I could,” he said. He added, “It hit right in the palm of my hand.” After a scuffle with other fans, the police quickly led him away. “I turned around and he was gone,” Rosemarie said. There would be no epic tussle as there would be decades later when two fans claimed possession of Barry Bonds’s 73rd home run ball in 2001, before a judge awarded them joint custody in advance of an auction. In 1961, the memorabilia business barely existed. But Sam Gordon, a restaurant owner in Sacramento, Calif., offered Durante $5,000 for the ball. Durante accepted and Gordon returned the ball to Maris, who had told Durante to try to make some money off the ball. The ball Mark McGwire hit for his 70th home run in 1998 when he broke Maris’s record sold for $3 million. Durante and Rosemarie, who was 17 in 1961, married a few weeks after Maris’s home run. Then they flew to Sacramento, where he accepted the money. Half the $5,000, Durante said, went to his parents, who were in debt. The rest went to set up Durante and Rosemarie’s home in Brooklyn. Today, he said, “I still think Roger holds the record.”

Maris Roger
Rizzuto Phil
New York Yankees
Stadiums and Arenas
Baseball
Yankee Stadium (NYC)


Hong Kong Restricts Election Candidates, Renewing Fears of Lost Rights

Abstract: HONG KONG — Moves by the government of Hong Kong to bar candidates from a coming legislative election over the issue of independence from China have raised worries in this semiautonomous city about the deterioration of political freedom and the potential for renewed conflict with Beijing. Since Saturday , Hong Kong election officers have blocked at least five candidates from the balloting, on Sept. 4, for seats on the city’s Legislative Council over questions about whether they acknowledge the city as an “inalienable part” of China. The disqualified candidates are mostly young people who became politically active during the Umbrella Movement protests in 2014, when demonstrators shut down several thoroughfares for more than two months to push for greater choice in elections for chief executive, the top political office in the city. The protests failed to elicit any concessions from the government. But they helped fan a “localist” movement, as it is often called, of activists seeking to strengthen Hong Kong’s identity in the face of growing cultural, linguistic and economic influence from mainland China. Edward Leung, who said he learned he was barred as a candidate on Tuesday, is a leader of the group Hong Kong Indigenous, which has proposed holding a referendum on whether Hong Kong should become independent. “Hong Kong has become an authoritarian city,” Mr. Leung told reporters on Tuesday. “As long as it’s under Chinese Communist rule, Hong Kong will not achieve democracy.” A meeting with candidates by election officials on Tuesday evening was cut short amid protests by pro-democracy legislators and activists, who said the banning of the candidates amounted to political censorship. Last month, Mr. Leung signed a declaration that he would uphold the Basic Law, the legal document governing Hong Kong and its relations with China’s central government. And he disavowed earlier pro-independence statements and deleted Facebook posts on the subject. But the election officer who handled his case questioned his sincerity. “I cannot believe that Mr. Leung had genuinely recanted his previous advocacy and support for Hong Kong’s independence,” the officer, Ho Lai-sheung, said in a letter to Mr. Leung that he posted on Facebook. Mr. Leung was charged with rioting after protests over the closing of street stalls in the Mong Kok district of Hong Kong in February turned violent . Later that month, he finished third, with 15 percent of the vote, in a by-election for an open seat on the Legislative Council. His ability to run in February but not in September has raised questions about why the government changed its mind. Some legal scholars and politicians have criticized the decision to strike candidates from the ballot, calling it bureaucratic overreach and an infringement on political freedoms. If a candidate is suspected of having made a false declaration, then that should be investigated by law enforcement, said Eric Cheung, a law lecturer at the University of Hong Kong. “This is not rule of law, it is rule of man,” he said. “You should never give such power to a particular civil servant, then have the civil servant bypass the procedures.” Last week, the High Court of Hong Kong declined to immediately rule on legal challenges to the electoral requirements, the public broadcaster RTHK reported. Mr. Cheung said that the Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress in Beijing could step in to offer a legal interpretation on the power of Hong Kong officials to bar candidates over pro-independence sentiment. A similar move by the standing committee in 2014 to strictly limit who could run for chief executive set off the Umbrella Movement protests. “This call for independence of Hong Kong really touches a nerve of the central government,” Mr. Cheung said. “They may prepare to stop it at all costs.” Zhang Xiaoming, the chief representative in Hong Kong of the central government in Beijing, said in March that advocacy of independence for the city had “already far exceeded the category of free speech and touched the bottom line of ‘one country, two systems.’ ” This week, another prominent political activist was criticized by the central government authorities, who accused him of working under United States guidance to promote Hong Kong’s independence. The activist, Joshua Wong, a leader of the 2014 protests who has since formed a political party, was pictured in a short video carried on the Weibo account of the Supreme People’s Procuratorate , the top prosecutor’s office. The video warned that advocacy of democracy and independence movements in Hong Kong, Taiwan and the regions of Xinjiang and Tibet could lead China to sink to levels of instability seen in Iraq or Syria. Mr. Wong responded that he had not advocated Hong Kong’s independence and had previously denied working on behalf of foreign governments. “We condemn such false statements,” his party said on Twitter in response to the video.

Politburo Standing Committee of the Communist Party of China


Six People Killed in Texas as S.U.V. With Immigrants Wrecks While Fleeing Police

Abstract: AUSTIN, Tex. — Traffic stops of vehicles carrying immigrants are fairly common on a stretch of Texas highway that begins in Laredo and runs northeast to Houston and beyond. Often, the police say, the immigrants, many of whom have crossed the border illegally, try to make a run for it when the vehicle is stopped. Early Thursday, what started as a traffic stop by the local police ended with six people dead, Texas officials said, when the driver of a sport utility vehicle overloaded with immigrants sped away from officers and lost control, flipping over several times and ejecting several occupants. The accident along Highway 59, about 90 miles southwest of Houston, near Edna, Tex., also injured 10, said the police chief of Edna, Clinton Wooldridge. At least three remained in a nearby hospital. Federal immigration officials conducting a criminal investigation into the crash determined that the S.U.V., a 2003 Ford Explorer, was being used by a human smuggling ring to transport 12 undocumented immigrants, all adults, from Honduras, Guatemala and Mexico, according to a spokeswoman for Immigration and Customs Enforcement. The driver, an American citizen who died at the scene, and two other occupants of the vehicle were believed to be members of the smuggling organization, said Leticia Zamarripa, the spokeswoman. One of the smuggling suspects is a Mexican citizen, and the nationality of the other was unknown late Thursday afternoon, she said. “Something this tragic happens very seldom, thank God,” Chief Wooldridge said, though he added that undocumented immigrants “bailing out of their vehicles and running off into the pastures” happened frequently. In this case, he said, the vehicle had been modified to fit more people; the middle seat was removed, and a rear seat had been folded down. Stops of vehicles carrying undocumented immigrants can occur in the area as often as four times a week, Chief Wooldridge said, mostly by officers from nearby departments participating in operations financed by Homeland Security, which provides resources like overtime pay for officers to watch out for human smugglers. The Edna Police Department does not participate in the program, he said. Thursday’s stop occurred because Edna police officers observed what they said was a moving violation. Four people were pronounced dead at the scene, and two others who were airlifted to a Houston hospital died later, Chief Wooldridge said. Several passengers attempted to run away but were later taken into custody. No other vehicles were involved. It is not uncommon for vehicles filled with immigrants who have entered the country illegally to be involved in fatal crashes near the border. In 2012, at least 15 people were killed when a truck overloaded with 23 undocumented immigrants crashed into a tree along the same highway where Thursday’s crash occurred, only farther south, the authorities said, apparently after a tire ruptured. In 2012, a teenager was sentenced to 20 years in prison when the van that he was driving flipped over and killed nine immigrants. Whether they arrive in the United States illegally or not, people fleeing Central American countries, including El Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala, are often trying to escape violence and coercion from street gangs. Jenny Bryson Clark, an associate professor of political science at South Texas College in McAllen, who has been researching human trafficking, said that immigrants from Central America often fell victim to smugglers in the United States. Immigrants are frequently held in “stash houses,” Ms. Clark said, which can be occupied by as many as 100 people, before they are transported north, usually in overcrowded vehicles. In 2014, the State Department of Public Safety reported that human smuggling organizations were “increasingly active in Texas,” citing a 94 percent increase in apprehensions of undocumented immigrants from 2011 to 2013, when there were 243,550 arrests in Texas border sectors.

Car Crash
Human trafficking
Texas
Illegal Immigration
Police
Immigration


Crisis is Full of Political Opportunity

Abstract: WASHINGTON - President Barack Obama told reporters in London last week what he advises young people who are thinking about forgoing college in these hard economic times: ''Don't shortchange the future because of fear in the present.'' This was actually a strike aimed at domestic critics, who say the U.S. president, saddled with a financial crisis, is overloading the circuits by pushing for an overhaul of health care, energy and education policy, and probably immigration. These skeptics say the political system can only do so much and that, by failing to set priorities, Mr. Obama risks not getting anything done. The president's ''desire to be transformative,'' the Economist magazine writes, ''may be contributing to his problems, distracting him from the economic crisis.'' This analysis is flawed. First, as Rahm Emanuel is fond of saying, ''Never allow a crisis to go to waste.'' The White House chief of staff makes the case that these issues are connected. ''Health care is one-sixth of our economy,'' he said in an interview. ''In energy, we're exporting $700 billion a year, and we've lost the American edge for having the most educated work force. This is an opportunity to do what we've postponed for a generation.'' It's not likely to be any easier trying later. Mark Zandi, the chief economist at Moody's Economy.com, says the hemorrhaging will stop later this year and the economy will stabilize. Still, he says, a year from now unemployment, a lagging indicator, ''will be closing in on 10 percent.'' And with multitrillion-dollar deficits and nervous politicians facing elections in 2010, contentious and complicated initiatives will face big obstacles. Central to the Obama presidential campaign was that he would be different and bold. A little more than a year ago, he got himself in trouble with some Democrats by making clear his governing (not ideological) model was a Republican: ''Ronald Reagan changed the trajectory of America,'' he said, adding that he ''tapped into what people were already feeling, which was: We want clarity, we want optimism, we want a return to that sense of dynamism and entrepreneurship that had been missing.'' Anything less than a broad-based, ambitious agenda would probably turn off forces that rallied behind his candidacy. ''He has raised everybody's sights and described convincingly the challenges,'' says Jim Johnson, a top Democratic strategist and former chairman of Fannie Mae. ''Not standing up to those challenges would be a mistake.'' Polls suggest the public embraces big plans. A recent Democracy Corps survey shows that, no matter how the question is asked, Americans by large margins want Mr. Obama to focus on more than the economy, their dominant concern. That doesn't mean they will rally around anything that is done; skeptics are right that it will be very tough. The road to health care reform is littered with corpses, and Senator Edward M. Kennedy, probably the most talented U.S. legislator, is partially sidelined by health problems. Still, there is feverish activity among lawmakers and interest groups, some of whom have never sat down before, all encouraged by the ubiquitous Mr. Emanuel. It is likely Democrats will pursue a legislative shortcut - the ''reconciliation'' process - to ensure opponents can't use a filibuster to block health legislation in the Senate. The prospects for a major cap-and-trade energy program are even more daunting. An ominous sign came last week when the Senate voted more than 2-to-1 to reject a proposal to include cap and trade in the reconciliation process. Yet two skillful House Democrats, Henry A. Waxman of California and Edward J. Markey of Massachusetts, have unveiled draft legislation. They figure that the Energy and Commerce Committee will clear a measure by May 25 and that it will pass the full House by the August recess. They are counting on sufficient compromises to secure support from House Democrats representing districts where industrial interests have been opposed: Rick Boucher of Virginia (coal), John D. Dingell of Michigan (automobiles) and Mike Doyle of Pennsylvania (steel). If successful, it may make it easier in for some in the Senate - like the Democrats John D. Rockefeller IV of West Virginia or Debbie Stabenow of Michigan and the Republican Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania - to come on board. To do this will require tradeoffs on how to use funds raised from the sale of greenhouse-gas emission permits to polluters. Mr. Obama proposes using most of the estimated $645 billion, over eight years, for a middle-class tax cut. The Senate majority leader, Harry Reid of Nevada, wants to use it to fund expanded health care. Yet as Mr. Waxman and Mr. Markey tweak their measure, much of the revenue will probably have to be used to offset higher energy costs facing the constituents of Mr. Boucher, Mr. Dingell and Mr. Doyle, as well as to invest in ''clean energy.'' That underscores the numerous land mines in the ambitious Obama agenda. The president needs the economy to show at least some sign that the financial rescue plan and the stimulus package are working. If the economy appears to be worsening, political fallout is likely. Privately, the president has said he thinks the public will be more patient than lawmakers, whose timeframe is often the next election. And any foreign crisis would affect domestic politics, with Afghanistan and Pakistan the top worry. The House speaker, Nancy Pelosi, has warned the White House that legislative success on domestic issues would be harder if it looks like the United States is getting bogged down in Afghanistan. The first year of a presidency sets the tone. The sweeping achievements of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Mr. Reagan were signature moments, while the mediocre initial forays of other presidents have been equally telling. It is axiomatic for political leaders to seize moments of opportunity. One of the tragedies of the George W. Bush administration is that after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, when the country had rallied behind him, he used little of that enormous political capital. Mr. Obama does not intend to make that mistake. Like his basketball heroes, Michael Jordan and LeBron James, it is prime time, and he wants the ball.

United States Politics and Government
Obama Barack


Error at IBM Lab Finds New Family of Materials

Abstract: As a research chemist at an IBM laboratory, Jeannette M. Garcia spends her days mixing and heating chemicals in pursuit of stronger and more easily recyclable plastics. Recently she followed a simple formula that required mixing three components in a beaker. Somehow she missed a step, leaving out a chemical. She returned to find her beaker filled with a hard white plastic that had even frozen the stirrer. Dr. Garcia tried grinding the mystery material, to no avail. Then she took a hammer to the beaker to free it. That laboratory error has led to the discovery of a new family of materials that are unusually strong and light, exhibit “self-healing” properties and can be easily reformed to make products recyclable. The materials — two new types of synthetic polymers — could have transportation uses. Because of their recyclability, they also could have an impact on consumer products, as well as on the industrial packaging for microelectronics components. The findings were reported on Thursday in the journal Science by a research team at IBM’s Almaden Research Laboratory in San Jose, Calif. There has been an explosion of new polymer materials in recent years, but most of them are variants of existing synthetic classes that are characterized by long chains of simpler molecules connected through chemical bonds. The materials are today ubiquitous in modern life, found in everything from paints and contact lenses to garments and batteries. “They are just pervasively used materials,” said James L. Hedrick, an advanced organic materials scientist at IBM in San Jose. “This is the polymer age.” Image A Scanning Electron Microscopy image of one of the new ultra-strong polymers, which could have applications for transportation, as well as have an impact on consumer products and packaging. Credit IBM The IBM scientists say that this is the first distinctly new family that has been discovered in several decades. They said they had not yet named the new family, which they have code-named “Titan” and “Hydro.” The materials are not yet ready for commercial use, but the scientists said they had already begun working with several universities on composite applications that could have a significant impact on manufacturing and fabrication in the fields of transportation, aerospace and microelectronics. The materials are known as thermosets because they are formed using a heating process. Their strength comes from their three-dimensional network of chemical bonds. The polymers have the rigidity of bones, one of the strongest biological materials, and can be made as much as 50 percent stronger by blending them in composite form with materials like carbon nanotubes. They also tend to perform better than other types of polymers under high temperatures. IBM has invested heavily in new computational chemistry technologies that rely on supercomputers. The researchers were able to build a computer model of the new material, characterizing it in two distinct types, one that was “soft and gooey” and the other extremely rigid. “There is this conventional wisdom out there that the main classes of polymer materials have all been discovered,” said Bob Allen, a senior manager for Chemistry and Advanced Materials Research at the laboratory. “But with this approach that we’ve taken with heavy doses of computational time, as well as hard-core laboratory synthesis, we’ve come up with a new one.” The IBM finding evokes the discovery of Teflon, said Timothy E. Long, a chemistry professor at Virginia Tech. “Serendipity is the mother of invention.” In 1938, while looking for alternative refrigerants, Roy Plunkett, a DuPont chemist, inadvertently polymerized tetrafluorethylene, accidentally creating one of the most slippery materials. In a perspective essay accompanying the research article in Science, Dr. Long argued that the new materials represented a significant advance in efforts to make consumer goods more easily recyclable, particularly electronics, which have become a major waste problem. “Thermosets are designed to be exceptionally stable in terms of temperature and mechanical properties; they are not designed to be reversible,” he said. “To think about materials that have all of these properties, and which are also recyclable, is an advance.”

IBM
Polymer
Science Journal
Jeannette M. Garcia


France’s Sovereign Debt Rating Downgraded by Moody’s

Abstract: Moody’s Investors Service downgraded France’s sovereign debt rating by one notch, to Aa1 from Aaa, the agency said on Monday, citing the country’s uncertain fiscal outlook as a result of “deteriorating economic prospects.” In addition, Moody’s said it was maintaining a negative outlook on France because of structural challenges and a “sustained loss of competitiveness” in the country. Standard & Poor’s has an AA-plus rating and negative outlook on France, which it downgraded by one notch in January, from AAA. Fitch Ratings has France at AAA, also with a negative outlook. The loss of the Aaa rating from two agencies poses a problem for France, as investment funds often require their best assets to have a minimum of two top-notch ratings to remain in their portfolios. On top of this, borrowing costs could rise for France given that it is now not considered as strong a credit risk as before, although the country’s rating is still very high. “I’m not surprised for two reasons: Rating agencies are trying to beat each other at downgrading everybody, but secondly, simply because France is paying the price for not engaging in reform,” said Axel Merk, president of Merk Investments in Palo Alto, Calif. “The question is whether it is a wake-up call, or not, and I don’t think so; the French are too proud. “Some metrics in France have been deteriorating a tad but not enough for stubborn politicians to change course,” Mr. Merk said.

Credit Ratings and Credit Rating Agencies


Soccer Fever in the City’s Immigrant Enclaves

Abstract: On June 11, play began in that international ritual of soccer, barstool debate and workplace underproductivity known as the World Cup. While much of America views the event with faint curiosity, its immigrants follow it with microscopic attention. Below, excerpts of World Cup articles from local ethnic newspapers. KIRK SEMPLE Africa, the World Cup and Heartache The Odabro Restaurant, at 236 South Essex Street in Orange, N.J., is a watering hole for Africans. ... According to the proprietor, Mr. Andrew Onyenwenyi, “I love the fact that the World Cup is being played in Africa. But as a businessman, I want to know what kind of profit is going to be generated for Africa for hosting the World Cup. It is not just having the fame; it is what do we get in return. As for the African teams, I am highly disappointed, except, of course, with Ghana.” In seeking the answer to what the World Cup really meant for Africa and Africans, it was Mr. Kofi Boateng, the C.O.O. of the World Trade Association, who provided the answer. “The 2008 Olympic Games,” said Mr. Boateng, “was the moment for China to make the official announcement that they have arrived on the world scene, and so it is that the 2010 World Cup is Africa’s moment to announce that we have arrived on the world scene as equal partners.” CHIKA A. ONYEANI, June 21 The African Sun Times is a pan-African weekly with a circulation of 45,600, and is published in East Orange, N.J. Waiting for Italy “We believe in them.” This was the chant at the Van Westerhout Cittadini Molesi Social Club (447 Court Street in Brooklyn) about the possibility of two World Cup victories by the Azzurri coached by Lippi. The members of this club, which in October will celebrate its 50th anniversary, seem united by an unshakeable trust that this could happen. ... “To follow the national team together in our circle is a ritual that our Italianness almost demands of us,” said the treasurer, Giuseppi De Mattia. “All the complaints that we have sitting at the bar become irrelevant when we sit in front of the TV.”... Maybe the average Italian can transcend a feeling of national identity, said Allegrino Sale, the president of the Van Westerhout club, but “for us emigrants, we are instinctively transported from the moment we are far away. We are proud of our citizenship, rooted in tradition, and our belief is more intense.” GIANLUCA TARCAMELIA, June 14 America Oggi is an Italian-American daily published in Norwood, N.J. It has a circulation of 32,000. Making Profits Some Mexican vendors in New York are recording an increase in sales now that many countrymen are acquiring shirts, flags and soccer balls as part of the celebrations of the highly anticipated inaugural game between Mexico and South Africa. Anselmo Cañedo, owner of a sports clothing and equipment store in Upper Manhattan, said his weekly profits were rising 40 percent compared with recent months now that Mexican fans are so “excited” that they “spare no expense” in welcoming the World Cup. ... “My workers and I are happy because we are recovering from a difficult economic situation. In the winter we sold almost nothing and often thought about closing the store,” he said. ZAIRA CORTÉS, June 11 El Diario de México, which is based in Murray Hill and publishes five days a week, has a circulation of 15,000 in the New York area.

World Cup 2010 (Soccer)
Soccer
Immigration and Emigration
New York City


India Prevents Kashmiri Activist From Traveling to U.N. Meeting

Abstract: NEW DELHI — An activist from the Indian-controlled portion of Kashmir said on Thursday that he had been prevented from boarding a flight in Delhi as he was on his way to Geneva to speak at a session of the United Nations Human Rights Council. The activist, Khurram Parvez, of the Jammu Kashmir Coalition of Civil Society, planned to submit a “civil society stakeholder’s report” to the council on the situation in Kashmir, where the death of a commander for a separatist group in July has set off clashes between stone-throwing protesters and Indian security forces. He had also planned to attend a European Union session in Brussels. More than 70 people, most of them civilians, have been killed in the confrontations, and thousands of civilians and security forces have been injured. Image Protesters in Srinagar, the capital of the Indian state of Jammu and Kashmir, on Tuesday. Credit Dar Yasin/Associated Press Mr. Parvez said he had already passed through security checks at the airport on Wednesday when “something popped up on the screen of the immigration officer’s computer.” “He said he had to consult someone and disappeared in a back room for the next 15 minutes,” said Mr. Parvez, who has since returned to Srinagar, the capital of the Indian state of Jammu and Kashmir. A spokesman for India’s Ministry of Home Affairs said that he could not immediately comment on the reasons Mr. Parvez was prevented from traveling. Mr. Parvez said that after an hour and a half, the immigration official told him that he had instructions from an official in the Intelligence Bureau to bar him from traveling to Geneva. The official noted that there were no charges against him. The incident echoed a decision in January 2015 to prevent Priya Pillai, a Greenpeace activist, from flying to London to speak on the effects of mining on indigenous tribes in the central Indian state of Madhya Pradesh. She was told that her name was in a database of people not allowed to leave the country. The Ministry of Home Affairs said afterward that her visit was “prejudicial to the national interest” and would harm India’s image abroad. In March of that year, the Delhi High Court ruled in favor of Ms. Pillai’s petition against the ministry, ordering the government to expunge the “offload” notation in her passport. Mr. Parvez said on Thursday that he had filed inquiries with the Ministry of External Affairs and the Home Affairs Ministry, asking why he was barred from traveling.


Blu Develops a Social Networking Device for Smokers

Abstract: Companies have started adding the ability to communicate wirelessly to an increasing range of devices, like tablet computers, cars and refrigerators. Now they are doing it with cigarettes. Blu, the maker of electronic cigarettes that release a nicotine-laden vapor instead of smoke, has developed packs of e-cigarettes with sensors that will let users know when other e-smokers are nearby. Think of it as social smoking for the social networking era. “You’ll meet more people than ever, just because of the wow factor,” said Jason Healy, the founder of Blu, who did not appear to be making friends as he exhaled the odorless vapor of an e-cigarette at a coffee shop in Midtown Manhattan recently. “It’s like with any new technology.” E-cigarettes have several obvious advantages to their traditional counterparts. They allow users to avoid bans on smoking in public places because they release only water vapor. Mr. Healy and other e-cigarette manufacturers also claim that they have practically no negative health effects — an assertion that draws skepticism in many quarters. But the devices are also, in their own way, gadgets. The new “smart packs,” which will go on sale next month for $80 for five e-cigarettes, are equipped with devices that emit and search for the radio signals of other packs. When they get within 50 feet of one another, the packs vibrate and flash a blue light. The reusable packs, which serve as a charger for the cigarettes, can be set to exchange information about their owners, like contact information on social networking sites, that can be downloaded onto personal computers. The packs also conveniently vibrate when a smoker nears a retail outlet that sells Blu cigarettes. Later versions will be tethered to a smartphone through an app, allowing more options for real-time communication, Mr. Healy said. The company also plans to develop a system through which the packs will monitor how much people are smoking and report back to them — or to their doctors. Marketers think people want more devices to link to each other. More than 105 million adult Americans have at least two types of connected devices, and 37 million have five or more, according to Forrester Research. Nintendo’s new hand-held gaming systems, the 3DS, communicate with one another when brought into close proximity. A smartphone app called Color allows users to take photographs that are then automatically shared with anyone nearby who has also downloaded the app. It recently raised $41 million from venture capitalists. But Charles S. Golvin, an analyst at Forrester Research who has studied connected devices, said that ideas like Blu’s connected cigarettes or Color show that digital connections can get ahead of the reasons for doing so. “The way that groups of affinity are conferred just by physical proximity makes a bit of sense,” he said. “If someone walks by with a Nintendo, great, I share a common interest. The fact that I walk by a smoker? Seems like a weak link.” Mr. Healy says he thinks the connected packs would be most useful in nightclubs, where people are interested in striking up conversations and want to smoke without being forced outside. Adam Alfandary, 24, a Brooklyn resident who works for a technology start-up, was skeptical. He said that the social aspects of smoking were a part of the reason he continued to light up, but he scoffed at the idea of a cigarette that would do the social part for him. “I think that’s the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard in my life,” he said. “And I’m saying that in full acknowledgment that smoking is one of the dumbest things I can do.”

Smoking and Tobacco
Social Networking (Internet)
Healy Jason
Blu


The Twins Are Winning Again After Off-Season Losses

Abstract: MINNEAPOLIS — The baseball version of a teachable moment, Minnesota Twins style, happened a little more than a month into the season. As has often been the case this year, the student was Carlos Gómez, Minnesota’s exciting but erratic center fielder. Gómez is one of many young new faces whose play has kept the Twins in the thick of the American League Central race, even after the star center fielder Torii Hunter and the ace pitcher Johan Santana left in the off-season. Integrating the newcomers requires frequent in-game tutorials from Manager Ron Gardenhire and his coaching staff, and this was one of the more memorable ones. An overeager Gómez fielded a first-inning single against Toronto and overthrew second by so much that the ball bounced to Gardenhire in the Twins’ dugout for a two-base error. The runner did not score, but at the end of the inning, Gardenhire waved Gómez over. Instead of yelling at him for carelessness, Gardenhire offered the ball to Gómez and asked him to autograph it. “He’s a kid who plays with a lot of emotion,” Gardenhire said. “If I kick him there, I might lose him for the rest of the game. He smiled. But he also knew what he did wrong, and it didn’t affect him the rest of the game, I don’t think.” Gómez, who is hitting .250, homered two innings later, and the Twins went on to win, 5-3. Gómez said he appreciated Gardenhire’s light yet firm touch. “I like that he can talk to me like I’m his son,” Gómez said. “That’s why I’m so happy. This team is great. They’ve got a great staff, and a good manager.” Because of that, what should have been a rebuilding year has turned into a contending one for the Twins, who begin a three-game series at Yankee Stadium on Monday night a half-game behind the division-leading Chicago White Sox. “You’ve got to give Ron Gardenhire and his staff credit,” said Texas Manager Ron Washington, whose Rangers beat the Twins on Sunday, 1-0. “I don’t think early in the year people thought Minnesota was going to do anything this year. But their staff got after it. And their young pitching is starting to perform.” It took time. The Twins have used five starters at shortstop and six at third. Yet since June 13, the Twins are a major league-best 23-8. The starting rotation, with the well-traveled Liván Hernández pitching in front of two rookies and two others with minimal experience, is 19-5 in that stretch with 24 quality starts. Until hitting a season-high four home runs on Saturday, the Twins had the fewest of any team in the A.L., with only Justin Morneau (15) and Jason Kubel (13) in double figures. But the Twins make up for a lack of power with hustle and timely hitting. Minnesota’s .313 average with runners in scoring position is by far the best in the majors. “You have to be surprised,” said Gardenhire, whose team traded Santana to the Mets and did not re-sign Hunter or pitcher Carlos Silva. “When you lose Santana and you lose Silva and you lose Torii Hunter, that’s a lot. You wonder how you’re going to make up for that. “Fortunately for us, our young pitchers have stepped up and done a good job. The middle-of-the-lineup guys have done their part, and we’ve had a lot of good role guys step up.” Nick Blackburn (7-5, 3.65 earned run average) and Glen Perkins (7-2, 3.84), who will face the Yankees in this series, are tied for the A.L. lead in victories by rookies. The left-handed Perkins, raised in nearby Lakeville, Minn., threw six scoreless innings on Friday to beat Texas for his fifth consecutive victory. The rotation has been so strong that the Twins say they have no room for Francisco Liriano, the 2006 sensation who missed last season after having reconstructive elbow surgery. Liriano, 8-0 at Class AAA Rochester since late May, has allowed one earned run while winning his last four starts. His agent, Greg Genske, filed a union grievance last week, accusing the Twins of limiting Liriano’s service time so he will not be eligible for arbitration next year. Perkins is one of four Class AAA call-ups who have fortified the Twins’ roster. Second baseman Alexi Casilla, third baseman Brian Buscher and right fielder Denard Span (who replaced the injured Michael Cuddyer) are all playing regularly and batting over .300. A fifth call-up, infielder Matt Macri, hit .367 before returning to Rochester. “We’ve just been fortunate enough that some depth has helped us,” Gardenhire said. “And we didn’t know if that was going to be the case.” What the Twins have done, after every other team in the division appeared to strengthen itself in the off-season while they lost Hunter and Santana, is extraordinary. “If you’re in that clubhouse, and you lose a couple of players like those two, you think, Oh no, we’re in for a long haul next year,” said Texas reliever Eddie Guardado, a former Twins teammate of Hunter’s and Santana’s. “You think that way because they were your guys. “Then you go, ‘What are we going to do now?’ But they’ve stepped up and moved on. That’s just what they do.” It hasn’t all been smooth. The Twins’ surge over the past month came after a 1-7 stretch on the road in which opponents scored 10 runs or more four times. But the pitching coach Rick Anderson implored his staff to keep throwing strikes — the Twins have issued the fewest walks in baseball — and things turned around. “I don’t want to say we’re surprised by what they did at all,” the All-Star closer Joe Nathan said. “This is what Gardy and them instilled in us at the start. If we go out and play the way we’re capable of, we’re going to be in the spot we’re in now. So we’re not surprised by it. And the lessons continue. Gardenhire said Gómez never signed the errant ball. “I threw it in the stands,” Gardenhire said. “That’s where it belonged.”

Minnesota Twins
American League
Santana Johan
Hunter Torii
Baseball
Trades (Sports)
Gomez Carlos (1985- )


Jeter Hits His 5th Home Run as Yankees Beat Royals

Abstract: KANSAS CITY, Mo. — If the injured Mariano Rivera needed any convincing that age need not be a deterrent in his return from a serious knee injury, Derek Jeter provided it on Friday night. Jeter, who will turn 38 on June 26, added two more hits, including a two-run homer, to his league-leading tally and scored two runs to help lead the Yankees to a 6-2 victory over the Kansas City Royals at Kauffman Stadium. With his latest offensive output, Jeter’s average remained at .404. His 46 hits are the most in the majors. His home run capped a four-run seventh inning that helped C. C. Sabathia win his fourth straight game and improve to 4-0. Sabathia, pitching to end the Yankees’ three-game losing streak, pitched eight very good innings, allowing two runs and seven hits, and did not walk a batter. His performance helped soothe the Yankees after Thursday’s jarring events, when Rivera sustained a season-ending knee injury during batting practice. “I’m glad C. C. was pitching tonight,” Mark Teixeira said. “When you have a little bit of a skid, it’s always good to have that ace. That’s why an ace is so important.” Dave Robertson, who will be Rivera’s primary replacement, struck out the side in a perfect ninth in a non-save situation. Robertson has struck out the last eight batters he has faced. “It’s a situation I’ve been in before,” Robertson said. “Usually, 6-2, I would come in, and if I walked a guy Mo would come in.” There will be no Rivera until next year, but Jeter was there to help fill the void. He came into the game with 44 hits, making him only the fifth player in the past 70 years to get that many in his team’s first 25 games, according to the Elias Sports Bureau, and the first since Alfonso Soriano had 45 for the Yankees in 2003. Jeter’s batting average had dipped below or was right at .400 for a few days, but he had four hits Thursday to get it back over .400. He led off Friday with a soft liner to left field and scored on a two-run homer by Teixeira. The Royals matched the two runs in the bottom of the first, and the score remained tied for the next five innings. With two outs in the top of the seventh, Eduardo Nunez hit a run-scoring triple and Chris Stewart followed with an R.B.I. single to make it 4-2. That set the stage for Jeter, who hit his fifth home run of the season, only one fewer than he had all last year.

New York Yankees
Kansas City Royals
Jeter Derek
Baseball


European Airlines Will Lose $1.1 Billion, Aviation Group Predicts

Abstract: BEIJING (AP) — The International Air Transport Association on Monday nearly doubled its forecast of European airline losses this year to $1.1 billion and said that the worldwide aviation industry would scrape by with thin profit margins because of high fuel prices. American and Asian airlines should make money this year, but more airlines in Europe might follow Malev of Hungary into bankruptcy if the Europeanfinancial crisis worsens, theassociation, a global trade group, said. The worldwide aviation industry should make a total profit this year of $3 billion on revenue of $631 billion, a 0.5 percent margin, the association said. The group represents 240 airlines that carry 84 percent of passengers and cargo worldwide, but its forecast covers the whole industry. “The industry’s profitability is balancing on a knife edge,” said Tony Tyler, chief executive and director general of the association. The “most immediate risk” is Europe’s debt crisis , which could drag down profits if it sets off a recession, Mr. Tyler said. He said a 1 percent decline in global airline revenue could turn the small profit the association predicts into a $3 billion loss. Asian airlines should lead global profits at $2 billion this year, while their American counterparts are expected to earn $1.4 billion, the association said. Airlines in Latin America and the Middle East are expected to show profits of $400 million each while African airlines lose a total of $100 million. The predicted European loss of $1.1 billion is nearly double the association’s March outlook. Brian Pearce, an economist for the group, said the increased loss was a result of Europe’s financial turmoil. In addition to Malev’s failure in February, smaller airlines in Germany and Spain have closed. “We’ve already seen some European airlines going out of business this year, and there is clearly a possibility that will continue,” Mr. Pearce said. The latest outlook is based on a forecast that oil prices will average $110 a barrel this year. The association said fuel accounted for 33 percent of airlines’ costs, up from 13 to 14 percent a decade ago. The global profit forecast represents a decline of more than 50 percent from $7.9 billion last year. That was down from $15.8 billion in 2010. The association also appealed on Monday to governments to head off a mounting conflict over European carbon charges on airlines by negotiating a global system to regulate the industry’s emissions of climate-changing gases. China, the United States, India, Russia and others oppose the European charges, which took effect Jan. 1 and require airlines to buy permits to emit carbon. China and India have prohibited their airlines from cooperating and Beijing has blocked purchases of European aircraft by its airlines, raising fears of further economic retaliation.

Airlines and Airplanes
Europe
International Air Transport Assn


Drug Traffickers Turn to New Type of Courier: Seniors

Abstract: WASHINGTON — In what law enforcement officials describe as a new front in international smuggling, global traffickers and cartels are increasingly turning to a new source for couriers to smuggle drugs across international borders: vulnerable American older adults. The traffickers deceive seniors with promises of prizes or relationships, setting them up to unknowingly try to carry luggage filled with cocaine or other items through customs, hoping they will not arouse suspicions. Such cases have been seen in nearly a dozen foreign countries, officials say. Details of the smuggling and a counteroperation that officials called Operation Cocoon were disclosed by the Department of Homeland Security during a hearing on Wednesday before the Senate Special Committee on Aging. Officials from Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the Customs and Border Protection agency are working with international law enforcement agencies to combat the growing deception, officials said. The Homeland Security investigation into drug smuggling that targeted older people began in 2013. Alan Scott Brown, the acting assistant director for investigative programs at Homeland Security Investigations, a division of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, said the agency had managed to save some seniors — including a 97-year-old man — from becoming drug couriers by stopping them before they could leave the country. But he added that some of the people, after years or months of prodding, were so trusting of members of the drug gangs that “they don’t believe the truth when confronted.” The two agencies say they have worked with foreign counterparts to intercept couriers, seizing a total of 272 kilograms of methamphetamine, 209 kilograms of cocaine, four kilograms of ecstasy and 11 kilograms of heroin. About 116 unsuspecting seniors — the oldest person taken into custody was 87 — have been arrested by foreign governments in smuggling cases, including in New Zealand, Australia, Brazil, India, Fiji and Japan. Eighty-three United States citizens have been arrested abroad since 2013 and identified by Immigration and Customs Enforcement as victims of this scheme through Operation Cocoon. How the Epidemic of Drug Overdose Deaths Rippled Across America Drug deaths have surged in nearly every U.S. county. “The criminals who set this chain of events into motion are cruel, but very, very clever,” said Senator Susan Collins, Republican of Maine, who is the chairwoman of the Senate Special Committee on Aging. J. Bryon Martin, 77, a retired pastor from Maine, is one of many American seniors serving time in a foreign prison after being accused of drug smuggling. Andrew Martin, his son, testified at the hearing that his father was arrested in July after being caught at an airport in Madrid with nearly two kilograms of cocaine worth about $450,000. The elder Mr. Martin had met a person online who he thought was a young woman named “Joy” and struck up a relationship that lasted for five years, his son said. She claimed to be from a wealthy North African family and said she needed Mr. Martin’s help in obtaining real estate documents for property her family owned in Peru. The woman asked him to go to South America to get the documents and then bring them to her in London. While in Peru, Mr. Martin was given two sealed packages and a plane ticket to London with a layover in Madrid. He was arrested after security personnel at the airport in Spain noticed the packages and opened them. Mr. Martin, who his son said was in poor health, is serving a six-year sentence for drug smuggling. “Before this conviction, my dad had never been charged with even a misdemeanor,” Andrew Martin said. Officials say they do not know precisely how many older adults have been deceived into becoming drug couriers. They say it is also very hard to catch the criminals behind the deception, because most operate outside the United States and have become highly sophisticated in disguising their activities.

Old age,elderly,senior citizens
Smuggling
Drug Abuse
Customs and Border Protection US
Fraud
Homeland Security
Immigration and Customs Enforcement,ICE


New Jersey Reaches Deal on Hurricane Sandy Aid

Abstract: New Jersey has agreed to spend more federal disaster money to provide housing to people displaced by Hurricane Sandy and to make sure that the hardest-hit parts of the state get a proportional share of the money, according to a settlement reached on Friday. The state also agreed to reconsider all of the applications for reconstruction aid that were rejected, after a review found that more than three-fourths of them should have been approved. The agreement stemmed from complaints by civil rights groups filed last year with the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development. “We have one more chance to get this right, and I am hopeful that this agreement will help the state do a better job,” said Frank Argote-Freyre, president of the Latino Action Network, one of the groups that filed the original complaint. The Latino Action Network and the Fair Share Housing Center argued that minorities affected by the storm had not been treated fairly. The New Jersey chapter of the N.A.A.C.P. later joined in the complaint. The agreement came after New Jersey learned that it would receive about $880 million in the third round of federal disaster-relief funding. The state has spent about $1 billion of the $4.2 billion promised to it. In the settlement, the state agreed to spend an additional $215 million to provide replacement housing, on top of the $379 million it had already allocated for that purpose. Critics of the state’s handling of the federal aid, including the groups that filed the complaint, questioned why so much money was going to inland counties when so many people remained displaced in the counties along the Jersey Shore that suffered the brunt of the damage. The settlement calls for more than half of the housing aid to be spent in Monmouth and Ocean Counties and an additional 20 percent to go to Atlantic County. It also would create a pool of $15 million to help renters, particularly those of low and moderate incomes, whose homes were damaged or destroyed. “To the greatest extent feasible, households wishing to return to their pre-Sandy community with this assistance shall be supported and funded to do so,” the agreement says. Adam Gordon, a lawyer with the Fair Share Housing Center who represented the groups, said the settlement “looks at a pretty wide swath of issues that really were impacting a lot of people of all races and all backgrounds.” “I don’t expect this is going to fix all the problems,” Mr. Gordon continued, “but it addresses many of them.”

Hurricane Sandy
Federal Aid
New Jersey
Real Estate
Housing


Health Insurers Use Process Intended to Curb Rate Increases to Justify Them

Abstract: WASHINGTON — After the Affordable Care Act took effect in 2010, it created a review mechanism intended to prevent exorbitant increases in health insurance rates by shaming companies that sought them. But this summer, insurers are turning that process on its head, using it to highlight the reasons they are losing money under the health care law and their case for raising premiums in 2017. That has ignited an election-year fight between insurers and consumers, who are complaining bitterly about the double-digit increases being sought across the country. The conflicts have been on vivid display at hearings in states like Pennsylvania, where Highmark, one of the state’s largest insurers, has proposed rate increases averaging 41 percent. “The health of the citizens of Pennsylvania is worth more than the profits desired by health insurance companies,” Rose Lynd, 35, of Pittsburgh, testified at a hearing in Harrisburg held late last month by the Pennsylvania insurance commissioner, Teresa D. Miller, a former Obama administration official. Ms. Lynd, a cancer survivor, said her costs were onerous. “My premiums are more than $600 a month, which is more than our mortgage payment,” Ms. Lynd said. “I am grateful that the Affordable Care Act is here for my family, but I am disappointed by its limitations. All I want is a plan that makes our health care affordable, but it doesn’t exist.” Highmark defended its request by saying it was paying out more in claims than it was receiving in premiums. Jeff Scheib, the vice president in charge of actuarial services at Highmark, offered a statistic to illustrate the problem. “There were close to 250 individual A.C.A. policyholders in Pennsylvania who incurred over $100,000 each in claims and then canceled coverage before the end of the year,” Mr. Scheib testified. “This behavior drives up the cost to insure the entire pool, because people use insurance benefits and then discontinue paying for coverage once their individual health care needs have been temporarily met.” While state insurance commissioners, who review rates, are trying to balance the needs of consumers and insurers in a turbulent market, insurers have extra leverage this year. At least a dozen nonprofit health insurance cooperatives have collapsed , and several big commercial insurers have decided to cut their losses by limiting their participation in the insurance exchanges, the new marketplaces created under the health law. The problems threaten to shadow Democrats through Election Day. While Hillary Clinton has vowed to “defend and expand” the Affordable Care Act, her Republican opponent in the presidential race, Donald J. Trump, has seized on the issue. At a rally in Fairfield, Conn., on Saturday, he repeated his vow to repeal the health law, saying consumers were facing rate increases greater than they had ever seen. Ms. Miller, the Pennsylvania commissioner, said that protecting consumers was a top priority. But she said, “The large requests before me this year are not unique to Pennsylvania, unfortunately.” Arthur M. Lucker, a consultant to the Pennsylvania Insurance Department, said insurers had requested rate increases of more than 25 percent in at least 20 states, including Arizona, Florida, Ohio and Texas. Aviva Aron-Dine, an economist at the federal Department of Health and Human Services, said predictable factors were behind the upward pressure on rates. For example, the federal government is ending a program that helped pay some of the largest claims incurred by insurers. In addition, Ms. Aron-Dine said, some insurers may be trying to make up for having initially set premiums too low. In any event, she said, most people buying insurance on the exchanges receive subsidies. Image A health insurance fair last year in San Francisco. Credit Jim Wilson/The New York Times Connecticut has a state-run insurance exchange considered one of the most successful in the nation. But that has not provided a guarantee of stable rates. Anthem, for example, is seeking an average increase of 27 percent in Connecticut. That is “just off the charts and unacceptable,” one Anthem customer, Douglas H. Wade Jr. of Bridgeport, said at a hearing in Hartford on Aug. 3. Matthew McDermott, the leader of an interfaith advocacy group, Congregations Organized for a New Connecticut, said: “We’re concerned that the proposed rate increases will drive many employers and many individuals to drop coverage altogether. And we worry that that heads us toward a market failure here in Connecticut.” Two of the four insurers on the Connecticut exchange have indicated that they will not be offering plans in that marketplace next year. “Higher-than-expected health care costs have jeopardized the financial solvency of some insurers and have caused other insurers to leave the exchange altogether,” said James Augur, a regional vice president of Anthem in Connecticut. At a hearing in Helena, Mont., Monica J. Lindeen, the state insurance commissioner, asked Blue Cross and Blue Shield why it was seeking an average rate increase of 62 percent for 2017, after receiving an increase of 22 percent this year. “Cost is what’s really driving our rate increases,” said Michael E. Frank, the president of Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Montana. “For every dollar we brought in last year, we paid out $1.26 for medical care,” Mr. Frank said. “In the first six months of this year, we have already paid $4.17 million in medical costs for the top 10 individuals. That’s $70,000 a month for those individuals.” Insurers invariably cite drug costs as a factor driving up premiums. James Spencer, the chief actuary of Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Montana, said 1 percent of prescriptions accounted for 30 percent of pharmacy costs. Ms. Lindeen wanted to know why Montana Blue Cross and its parent company, Health Care Service Corporation, had not constrained the pay of top executives. The parent company reported total compensation of more than $11 million for its chief executive in 2014. A Blue Cross executive told Ms. Lindeen that executive pay reflected “the size and complexity of our business” and was a tiny share of total expenses. While the Obama administration has said the federal insurance marketplace is gaining healthier, lower-cost consumers, several insurers said at the hearings that they had not seen a significant improvement. “Studies concluded that the market would stabilize after absorbing the pent-up demand from the previously uninsured population,” testified Eric Galvin, the chief financial officer of ConnectiCare Insurance Company. But, he said, “rather than stabilize, that cost has continued to skyrocket, and we see no end to that higher level of spending.” Christopher F. Koller, a former health insurance commissioner in Rhode Island, said he was always concerned that insurers were seeking higher rates than necessary, with the expectation that their requests would be cut back by state regulators. But even if officials trim proposed rates, consumers can still face substantial increases. This month New York officials approved rate increases averaging 16.6 percent for individual health insurance plans in 2017, more than twice the average in the state for 2016. The insurance commissioner in Mississippi approved an average rate increase of 43 percent for Humana, fearing that the company might otherwise leave the state’s insurance exchange, as UnitedHealth intends to do. And the Kentucky insurance commissioner has approved increases averaging 5.6 percent for Aetna, 22.9 percent for Anthem and 31 percent for Humana.

Health Insurance
Obamacare,Affordable Care Act
Pennsylvania
Connecticut
Montana
Blue Cross and Blue Shield Assn
Anthem
Humana
Highmark Health Services