Slim Peace Unites Jews and Muslims to Talk Diets

Abstract: BROOKLINE, Mass. — Your mother-in-law fixes you a plate of food. Does she determine what you eat, and how much? So went the question, part of a nutrition-themed game inspired by “Family Feud,” during a meeting of a women’s weight-loss group here the other night. Charlotte Badler, 23, lunged forward to answer. “What if you asked if you could wrap up the rest of it for tomorrow?” she offered, and then addressed an imaginary mother-in-law: “Because I would love to take it to lunch at work tomorrow.” “I love it,” cheered her teammate, Adebola Yakubu-Owolewa, 29. The two leaned in for a high-five. Ms. Badler is Jewish; Ms. Yakubu-Owolewa is Muslim. They and eight other women — five Muslims and five Jews — meet on Tuesday evenings at a Boston-area high school for lessons and activities around healthy eating and self-esteem. The group is the United States introduction of Slim Peace , a nonprofit organization that brings Israeli and Palestinian women together around the universal theme of weight-loss support. Yael Luttwak, a documentary filmmaker, founded the first group during the second Palestinian uprising, more than a decade ago, hitting upon a formula of using women struggling with their weight as a tool for Israeli and Palestinian connection. She was in a Weight Watchers group in Tel Aviv and wondered if the leaders at the time, Ariel Sharon, Israel’s prime minister, and Yasir Arafat, the Palestinian Authority president, might be more likely to talk peace if they tried to lose weight together. When Ms. Luttwak, who made a documentary film about the first Slim Peace group, visited American Jewish communities to talk about her work, they told her they had problems in their own communities with anti-Muslim sentiment and anti-Israel sentiment, and it occurred to her that the Slim Peace model could be brought here. After a talk and screening of her film in Boston, she was approached by Emma Samuels, who said that she would like to help start such a group here and that she had just the partner to run it with: Aminah Herzig, a close friend and fellow dietitian who is Muslim. They now lead the Boston group, facilitating conversations on healthy eating and cultural differences. Image The discussions at Slim Peace meetings range beyond members’ concerns about food and weight control. Credit Gretchen Ertl for The New York Times The plan is to expand Slim Peace to four other American cities — Chicago, Cleveland, Detroit and Washington — all of which have significant Muslim and Jewish populations. Groups are open to members of other faiths, and in Detroit, for example, the organization will be reaching out to the city’s large Arab-American Christian community. “We are not a peace-dialogue group and not a conflict-resolution group,” said Ms. Luttwak, 40, who now lives in Washington. “But we are bringing dialogue and exposure.” Mrs. Herzig and Mrs. Samuels said they were surprised by how quickly the women’s questions to each other revolved around their backgrounds and communities. “They were hungry for that,” Mrs. Samuels said. “Here we were talking about fiber, dairy and water intake, and they wanted to talk about religion.” Mrs. Herzig, 30, and Mrs. Samuels, 37, confide in each other about work and motherhood and take turns bringing dinner on Slim Peace nights. For the recent session, Mrs. Samuels brought steamed broccoli and chickpeas in a curry sauce atop a bed of baby kale. The women swapped strategies for coping with cravings for food they find hardest to resist. “I find it semihelpful to go to a substitute like an 80-calorie cookie bar,” said Debra Wekstein, a 45-year-old lawyer who is Jewish. Hafsa Salim’s eyes widened under her brown hijab as she asked: “Do you really just eat one of those?” “Yes,” Ms. Wekstein said. “I buy the ones that are individually wrapped.” Mrs. Salim, 28, a part-time human resources manager, has become close to a Jewish member of the group, Julie Bailit, 41, who works at a health care consulting firm. Each has invited the other to worship services, and they check in between meetings. Image Emma Samuels, left, and Aminah Herzig are the Brookline group’s leaders. Credit Gretchen Ertl for The New York Times Recently Mrs. Bailit was having a stressful day, and it was Mrs. Salim she reached out to, dashing off an e-mail, to which Mrs. Salim sent an empathic response. Mrs. Salim’s skirt skims the ground, and she covers her hair in public. “When people see me they think I’m superreligious, but I have my struggles,” she said. “I feel I’m put on this pedestal, and it’s hard to live up to that.” Mrs. Bailit told the group: “I had never spent any time with any Muslim people before this group. I feel like my whole life is Jewish.” She went on: “I’m really invested in my synagogue. I send my kids to a Jewish school. I hunger for diversity.” Ms. Wekstein told of a Christian friend who asked if she was afraid attending these sessions. She replied that she was not. The friend, Ms. Wekstein recounted, went on, “But you would be more afraid if it was meeting with their husbands.” “Yet another stereotype of Muslim men being violent,” said Anne Myers, 23, a Harvard divinity student who converted to Islam. “I hear it so many times, but it does not hurt any less.” They discussed the popular assumption that Muslims and Jews are incapable of getting along. “It’s insulting,” Ms. Myers said. “It’s not correct. I wish people didn’t think that way.” They will continue to meet for monthly dinners at one another’s homes and possibly for workout sessions once their initial program ends. A recent meeting closed with each woman choosing one word to express how they were feeling. Words like “moved,” “joy” and “grateful” filled the quiet room. “Sameach,” announced Ms. Yakubu-Owolewa, her face lit by a wide smile. “It means ‘happy’ in Hebrew.”

Judaism
Islam
Weight
Nutrition
Palestinians
Muslim Americans


Tales of the Unexpected in Premier League

Abstract: LONDON — Alex Ferguson, the doyen of world soccer managers, pronounced the last day of the old year a disaster. It was, in fact, the polar opposite. Ferguson’s team, Manchester United , had needed only to beat the bottom side Blackburn Rovers on Saturday to end 2011 alone in its customary spot atop the English Premier League . United lost, 3-2, in its own stadium, Old Trafford. One man’s disaster is another’s hope. Blackburn’s coach, Steve Kean, has nothing like Ferguson’s reputation or resources. The Blackburn squad is down to bare bones and players from its youth team, Kean soldiers on against a vicious public campaign to remove him as coach, and the Blackburn club is owned by an Indian poultry company whose ruling family appears too uninterested, or too financially overstretched, even to attend matches. Blackburn needs replacements in the January trading window. The likelihood is that with Barclays bank pressing for unpaid money, the club will have to sell before Kean, or anyone else, can buy in the market. But that is not disaster, either. The Blackburn match winners at Old Trafford were Ayegbeni Yakubu, the Nigerian striker whom Kean picked up for a song last summer, and Grant Hanley, a 20-year-old defender who cost the Rovers only the price of a youth scheme set up years ago. When Hanley, a Scot, rose above United’s goalkeeper, David De Gea, to head the final goal, he demonstrated the hope and perseverance that makes up two-thirds of England’s soccer. He is by no means the youngest or least known of Blackburn’s youths, and when Kean addressed the victory – coming five days after a creditable 1-1 draw against Liverpool — he spoke of using the club’s carefully laid internal planning to get out of its present predicament. So a disaster this is not. Rather, it is the strength of the Premier League that a club so comparatively low on riches and global acclaim can go to places like Anfield and Old Trafford and emerge undefeated. It says much for the integrity and the competitive nature of a league that classes itself the best on earth. And it was not confined to Blackburn on the last day of 2011. Aston Villa traveled to Chelsea, went a goal down and yet preyed on Chelsea’s increasingly insecure defense to emerge with a 3-1 victory that not even the fans of Villa had thought possible. United losing on home soil, Chelsea losing and being booed off its own pitch, and only Arsenal among the big guns winning on the final day of the old year are tales of the unexpected. But those who know their English history might also point out that at Christmas and New Year, it is the Brits, alone among the world’s big leagues, who cram soccer games into the holiday season. The teams play every two or three days, and sometimes when the big boys are tired, bored, or a mite complacent, these year-end contrary results happen. Alex Ferguson should know better than to be caught off his guard this way. He turned 70 on Saturday. He used the occasion to say in his program notes that he envisages at least another three years in charge at United, and he hid the truth about his team selection from the 75,000 fans in the stadium and millions who read newspapers or watch on TV. United had nine players under treatment and unavailable for action. Ferguson chose to leave out Wayne Rooney, the team’s biggest star, because Rooney, along with Darron Gibson and Jonny Evans, disobeyed a club rule by going out with their wives for an evening meal on Boxing Day. That human impulse to celebrate Christmas is not within the edict of the players’ lifestyles with so many matches to play. In the case of Rooney, who little more than a year ago held United to ransom to increase his weekly pay to £200,000, or about $310,000, it is irresponsible. And Fergie apparently dropped him for that Saturday, while telling the media that Rooney had one or two strains that rendered him unfit. The manager miscalculated. He thought that his reserves could handle Blackburn, even though he fielded players in unfamiliar roles in the lineup. However, the most experienced and often most loquacious of managers got his postgame words so totally wrong. Ferguson blamed the heavy, rain-saturated field. He blamed the absence of senior players. He used the word disaster. He forgets that he is the highest paid septuagenarian in his game. He owns thoroughbred race horses, he commands a team budget that opponents would die for, and he says himself that there is nothing better in life than getting up in a morning to oversee the training of men young enough to be his grandchildren. Moreover, the great expectations on Ferguson, and on Chelsea’s young coach, André Villas-Boas, to win every match because of the wealth at their disposal overlooks the competition at their peril. The Blackburn manager, Kean, is from Ferguson’s home city, Glasgow. So is the Villa manager, Alex McLeish. There are actually seven Glaswegians in charge of Premier League teams, and if there is one trait that they have in common it is a cussed determination not to be losers. Ferguson passed it on to McLeish when he built his defense around McLeish during their time together at Aberdeen back in the 1970s and 1980s. Ferguson became a parental figure to McLeish, whose father, a shipyard worker like Fergie’s dad, died suddenly. Two things Ferguson imbued in his captain, and in every apprentice, are to respect the opponent and to fight to the end. Blackburn applied those principles at Old Trafford on Saturday. Villa used them at Chelsea. And Robin van Persie, the son of a sculptor, tried and tried again until he scored Arsenal’s winner against the Queens Park Rangers. Cheering him from the stands was Thierry Henry. Henry is about to rejoin Arsenal for two months during his winter break from the New York Red Bulls. His salute to van Persie was special because the goal — the Dutchman’s 35th for Arsenal in 2011 – eclipsed Henry’s record for goals accumulated in a calendar year with Arsenal. What goes around, comes around.

Soccer
English Premier League
Manchester United (Soccer Team)
Blackburn Rovers (Soccer Team England)


Red Bulls Beat Columbus

Abstract: Bradley Wright-Phillips scored the go-ahead goal in the first half, and the host Red Bulls held on to beat the Columbus Crew by 2-1. The playoff-bound Red Bulls (15-9-6) have a 3-point lead over D.C. United in the Eastern Conference with four games to play. The Crew (13-11-8) have lost consecutive games and are 4 points behind the Red Bulls. ■ The United States romped to a 6-1 victory over a depleted Cuba squad in Kansas City, Kan., to guarantee itself a semifinal spot in Concacaf Olympic qualifying. Cameron Carter-Vickers, Matt Miazga and Jerome Kieswetter scored in the first half for the United States. ■ United States Coach Jurgen Klinsmann is relying on experience for next Saturday’s Concacaf Cup playoff match against Mexico in Pasadena, Calif. With a berth in the 2017 Confederations Cup up for grabs, Klinsmann has turned largely to players from the 2014 World Cup, with 16 players returning from that squad, which reached the round of 16. The team is led by four veterans: goalkeeper Tim Howard, striker Clint Dempsey, midfielder Michael Bradley and defender DaMarcus Beasley. (REUTERS) ■ Chelsea was defeated by visiting Southampton, 3-1, the fourth loss in eight games for Chelsea as it defends its Premier League title. Chelsea is only 4 points above the relegation zone and 10 points behind the leader, Manchester City, which beat visiting Newcastle, 6-1. (AP) ■ Barcelona lost at struggling Sevilla, 2-1, missing the chance to take the provisional lead in the Spanish league.

Soccer
New York Red Bulls Soccer Team
Columbus Crew Soccer Team


Revis and Jets Reach Agreement on New Contract

Abstract: FLORHAM PARK, N.J. — On Labor Day , Darrelle Revis reported to work, ending his summer-long holdout and some 36 days of rancorous negotiations. When Revis stepped onto the Jets ’ practice field around 1 p.m., he received a hero’s welcome. Some teammates bowed. Others pretended to faint. Still others teased Revis, an All-Pro cornerback, for the length of his unruly beard or his slow march onto the field. Linebacker Bart Scott even started the “Rudy clap,” an ode to the football movie, while others chanted, “Revis Christ!” Nose tackle Kris Jenkins said: “It’s about time. It’s great to see the morale in the locker room. It’s through the roof.” Revis said he had butterflies walking out to practice. “This experience humbled me,” Revis said. “I didn’t know my future. I didn’t know anything.” The deal marked a compromise where both sides could claim victory. The Jets won by retaining a player of Revis’s talents for the next four seasons for what appeared to be less money than Oakland pays cornerback Nnamdi Asomugha. Revis won by obtaining $32 million guaranteed, along with the chance to negotiate another contract in four years, at age 29. Coach Rex Ryan won respect inside his locker room for his last-ditch trip to see Revis in South Florida. General Manager Mike Tannenbaum won for consummating a deal after failing to do so with Pete Kendall and Chris Baker. Mike Pettine, the defensive coordinator, won because the best player has returned to the league’s top-ranked defense, and Ryan said he “does not see Revis coming off the field” against Baltimore next Monday night. Even teammates felt an immediate boost. “We feel like we have the best secondary in the N.F.L.,” cornerback Antonio Cromartie said. The turning point came Saturday, when Ryan flew to South Florida with Woody Johnson, the owner, to talk with Revis; his mother, Diana Gilbert; and her brother, Sean, a longtime N.F.L. defensive end who once held out an entire season. Revis said Ryan was smiling as if “he took a trip to Disney World.” The meeting, held inside a conference room, lasted three hours. But to Johnson, it felt like 20 minutes. The sides talked about timing, with the season one week away, about Super Bowl aspirations, and about Revis one day entering the Hall of Fame in his Jets jersey. Ryan played down his own importance Monday, but Revis said the visit “meant a lot.” Revis apologized to fans and said: “It was rough on me. I’m happy that it’s over with.” Because his and Revis’s goals are aligned, Ryan compared their recent courtship to young lovebirds separated by their respective parents. When Ryan looked into Revis’s eyes at the end of those three hours, he saw a player who longed to return to the field. When Revis looked into Ryan’s eyes — well, Scott took it from there. “It’s hard to say no to Rex in person,” Scott said. “He’s like Droopy, you know, the dog with the sad face.” Teammates insisted Monday that they never doubted Revis would arrive before the season started, even if Revis himself admitted a season-long holdout had crossed his mind. They had watched the Jets give contract extensions to center Nick Mangold and left tackle D’Brickashaw Ferguson. Several Jets, including Ryan, said recently that they were prepared to go into the season without Revis, that their Super Bowl aspirations had not changed. But that proved mostly rhetoric. Internally, players never doubted his importance, or return. “I knew it was going to get done,” Dwight Lowery said. “You can’t have a player of his caliber sitting out the season. That’s just dumb.” Yet what seemed obvious to Lowery and his teammates took months and included a strange series of events. Like the infamous meeting between the sides at the Roscoe Diner during training camp. Like sightings of Revis in his hometown, Aliquippa, Pa. Like Sunday’s conniption from Ryan. Beyond the obvious excitement, the Jets were also reconfiguring their defense for the opener. Revis allows that luxury. Lowery cracked an enormous smile when asked how Revis changed the Jets’ defense, then answered with two words, “A lot.” Ryan said that Revis would instantly make his staff “better coaches.” Most N.F.L. teams assign their top cornerback to cover the opposition’s No. 2 receiver, while they roll coverage to, or double, the top wideout. Revis draws No. 1 receivers every week, giving the Jets an extra player for coverage or blitzes. “You can put him on a guy and operate like he doesn’t exist,” Scott said of Revis. “I don’t even look over that way. I do something else.” Revis flew commercial from Florida on Monday morning. His agents said he would donate his holdout fines, which approached $600,000, to charity. They also argued that Revis’s deal made him the highest-paid cornerback in football, although Asomugha, whose deal averages more than $15 million per season, might disagree. They also said the contract had been structured to avoid another holdout. Expect Revis to play the full game against the Ravens, as long as he can round his body into football shape this week. Sherman McBride, who coached Revis at Aliquippa High School, said not to worry. Revis, McBride said in a telephone interview, always worked harder than the rest. “That’s one of his greatest assets,” McBride said. “He’s such a competitor.” On Monday, Revis’s locker had been filled with cleats and jerseys. On Monday, everyone knew this: The Jets and Revis had reached a compromise, sealed by a coach who looks like Droopy, celebrated by the most boisterous of locker rooms. EXTRA POINT Rex Ryan said that the Jets will re-sign fullback Tony Richardson, who was released Sunday. The Jets had expected to bring Richardson back when they released him to clear a roster space.


Fee Talks at Standstill for Lifetime Network

Abstract: Lifetime Entertainment, a cable television joint venture of the Walt Disney Company and the Hearst Corporation with programming aimed at women, said yesterday that talks with the Dish Network over fees to broadcast Lifetime had broken down again. Lifetime said it was seeking increases that amounted to "pennies per month," while Dish was "seeking Draconian cuts" that would hurt the channel's ability to develop programs. The two companies have been negotiating over the fees for about eight months. The latest impasse comes after Dish, the satellite television service owned by EchoStar Communications, took Lifetime programs off the air Dec. 31, said a Lifetime spokesman, Gary Morgenstein. A spokeswoman for Dish did not immediately return a call for comment. "The rates we have proposed to Dish are highly competitive relative to what we believe Dish is paying for other networks -- including networks that are far less popular -- and would not add to Dish customers' costs," Betty Cohen, Lifetime's chief executive, said in a statement. Lifetime is starting a media campaign called "Take Back Your Lifetime," hoping to generate a groundswell of support among viewers to pressure Dish to accept its fee increases.


Titans of Artisanal Food Expand in Crowded New York City Arena

Abstract: By the lunch rush on Monday, the sun had maneuvered around the Midtown towers, warming a bustling three-block slice of Broadway, from 41st Street to 39th. In the pedestrian plaza, Roberta’s mobile wood-burning pizza oven was firing its sopressata-topped pies, for which the line seemed to stretch back to the restaurant’s Brooklyn home. Over at Red Hook Lobster Pound, a man in a spiffy suit asked for the source — down to the exact harbor — of the lobsters in the $16 rolls. Colleagues sitting at tables savoring General Tso mushroom rice bowls and pastrami dumplings were accosted by food voyeurs, and also panhandlers. Construction workers viewed the scene with amusement while a hawker for a hamburger booth shouted in a looping soundtrack: “Antibiotic-free! Hormone-free!” This was no carnival. This was the garment district food market, only the latest to hit the streets of New York, and the newest creation from UrbanSpace, a British import that operates holiday markets in Manhattan as well as a growing number of food-only markets in an increasingly crowded culinary landscape. From Eataly to the Plaza Food Hall, Hester Street Fair to Gotham West Market, Hudson Eats in Battery Park City and over to Smorgasburg in Brooklyn, chef-entrepreneurs have taken their craft from kitchen to booth. They are operating in outdoor stalls, repurposed shipping containers or semi-permanent halls — with an eye, perhaps, toward real estate of their own. Smorgasburg, arguably, has been the scene’s leading tastemaker . Image At UrbanSpace’s garment district food market, Roberta’s Pizza. Credit Dave Sanders for The New York Times Out of public view, an even longer game is playing out. UrbanSpace and Smorgasburg have become competitors in the sacred space where artisanal meets fast casual. Smorgasburg has the cachet; UrbanSpace has the location. “To me, it’s a very different game than what they’re doing,” Julie Feltman, 27, UrbanSpace’s outdoor market director, said on Monday. “This is Midtown Manhattan. We land here with not a lot of fanfare beforehand and we already have people selling out at lunch.” Until now, the two companies mostly have had their own turf — UrbanSpace on Broadway, Smorgasburg in Brooklyn. Their approach differs, too. UrbanSpace operates markets with a limited run and about 30 vendors, in places where tourists flock and New Yorkers work. Smorgasburg, the largest public market in the city, built its brand from a borough, if not the other way around. It was spawned from the Brooklyn Flea , which started mostly with small retail vendors. “When I’m in Brooklyn, it’s a neighborhood, it’s a cultural experience, it’s an international experience,” said Susan Povich, the owner of Red Hook Lobster Pound , one of the original food vendors at Brooklyn Flea, who was at the garment district market on Monday. “Here, I’m basically trying to sell sandwiches to people on the street, to the guy that works in that building. I look at this as more of an outdoor food court.” Image At UrbanSpace’s garment district food market, the poffertjes booth. Credit Dave Sanders for The New York Times Smorgasburg has crossed the East River before, with select vendors selling at Whole Foods on Houston Street, and as concessionaires for Central Park SummerStage concerts since 2010. On Friday evening, Smorgasburg planned to host a pop-up market/happy hour with 30 vendors at the SummerStage site, hoping to make it a weekly venture next summer. “I don’t know that we view them as competition — I view them as a corollary,” Eric Demby, co-founder of Brooklyn Flea and Smorgasburg, said of UrbanSpace. “I’ll be perfectly honest with you, there was a time when Smorgasburg was less established when we were more concerned with their comings and goings. Now we are both quite successful. We are both riding the same wave.” In Crown Heights last month, Smorgasburg opened Berg’n, a 9,000-square-foot beer hall and food court with four vendors from the market. The beer hall is connected to a former Studebaker service center developed into an office building in part by Jonathan Butler, the Brooklyn Flea’s co-founder. On Tuesday, the company signed a short-term lease for the vacant ground floor to be the winter home of Smorgasburg and Brooklyn Flea. UrbanSpace is preparing its first indoor operation, and it’s a potential blockbuster: a 10,000-square-foot market, with space for 25 vendors, in the ground-floor walkway of the Helmsley Building, near Grand Central. Roberta’s, an UrbanSpace staple, could be expanding there. Each of the vendors will have a stall with its own kitchen and range hoods, but they will share table space. Image Mad. Sq. Eats Credit Dave Sanders for The New York Times The market’s name will include UrbanSpace — for the first time. Why? “Because we’ve been doing this for 25 years and no one knows about our company,” said Eldon Scott, president of UrbanSpace. Mr. Scott, a 52-year-old Boston native and Yale graduate, got his start overseas. After earning a master’s from the London School of Economics, he joined Eric Reynolds, the founder of UrbanSpace Management , a company that had been working on urban renewal projects since the 1970s. Mr. Scott created several sites for UrbanSpace in London, including the first organic farmers’ market there in 1992, before opening the New York office in 1994. He started with the Grand Central Terminal holiday markets, moved on to the Union Square holiday markets in 2003 and added Columbus Circle in 2004. There were food vendors among the retail, but only as an afterthought. “Around 2008, we started to notice there were better chefs and concepts that were coming to us,” he said. That year, he started Mad. Sq. Eats in the triangular slip of Worth Square, adjacent to the park. That year was also when the Brooklyn Flea was launched in the Bishop Loughlin Memorial High School yard, in Fort Greene — no thanks to Mr. Scott. Image UrbanSpace’s president, Eldon Scott, with the company’s Julie Feltman. Credit Dave Sanders for The New York Times Mr. Butler, who had been a Merrill Lynch vice president before leaving in 2007 to start the Brownstoner real estate website, had come to Mr. Scott for advice, directed by a mutual friend in finance. “Actually, to give him credit, I was like, ‘A market in a schoolyard?’ ” Mr. Scott said, laughing as he recalled the exchange. “So, I didn’t see it. I also didn’t live in Brooklyn, so I didn’t see that energy bubbling.” Mr. Scott’s only venture in Brooklyn had been DeKalb Market, with vendors operating out of converted shipping containers. The quirky market drew design acclaim but not consistent pedestrian traffic; after a two-year run, it shut in 2012 to make way for condominium construction. Mr. Scott, whose full-time staff now numbers seven, focused on pop-up markets, like Broadway Bites, in Greeley Square off 33rd Street, which opens again next month. Image Berg’n is their competitor’s new beer hall. Credit Victor J. Blue for The New York Times Mr. Scott served no fewer than three metaphors for putting together a reinvented food court, comparing it to designing a Facebook page, arranging guests at a dinner party and creating an artificial reef. “You throw down a bunch of tires and cinder blocks,” he said. “The stuff isn’t beautiful; the beauty is the color of the fish.” UrbanSpace beat out five other companies in the public request process to run the new market, negotiating with the Garment District Alliance to pay a lump sum of $70,000. The company supplies the booths and the electricity, which vendors pay for. Black Iron Burger has brick-pattern wallpaper in its garment district stall, matching its restaurant on West 38th Street. Christie MacKinnon, 36, the owner of Kicky’s Kitchen, which makes alcohol-infused cake bites (“caketails”), uses the same wooden bar she took to college at Harvard, and the disco ball from her sister’s Sweet 16. Frittering Away, a lemonade company that began at Smorgasburg as a fritter stand, has a white picket fence. The market will run through Oct. 17 and then return in the spring. In November and December, UrbanSpace will run a holiday market in more or less the same space. Opening day in the garment district had hiccups like any new production. Ms. MacKinnon’s sign had not yet come in; other vendors had yet to hang theirs. Edward Huang, the founder of Zai Lai’s organic Chinese food, had graduated from one-day pop-ups only to split his pants, catch a cold and have a new worker be a no-show on Day 1. Lines were long for the paella, pizzas and quinoa arepas, as vendors and customers figured out the somewhat precious pricing and the market’s rhythm. “Took a little longer than expected,” one diner said. His friend responded from his food coma: “That’s O.K., we’re outside the office.”

Food Trucks,Food Vendors
Urban Space
Smorgasburg Brooklyn Flea
Food
NYC
Garment District Manhattan
Jonathan Butler
Eric Demby
Eldon Scott


U.S. Officials and Experts at Odds on Threat Posed by ISIS

Abstract: WASHINGTON — Earlier this year, President Obama likened the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria to a junior varsity basketball squad, a group that posed little of the threat once presented by Osama bin Laden and Al Qaeda. But on Thursday, Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel called ISIS an “imminent threat to every interest we have,” adding, “This is beyond anything that we’ve seen.” With the rapid advance of ISIS across northern Iraq, and the release this week of a video showing one of the group’s operatives beheading an American journalist , the language Obama administration officials are using to describe the danger the terrorist group poses to the United States has become steadily more pointed. But some American officials and terrorism experts said that the ominous words overstated the group’s ability to attack the United States and its interests abroad, and that ISIS could be undone by its own brutality and nihilism. “They have a lot of attributes that should scare us: money, people, weapons and a huge swath of territory,” said Andrew Liepman, a senior fellow at the RAND Corporation and former deputy head of the National Counterterrorism Center. “But when we’re surprised by a group, as we have been in this case, we tend to overreact.” These notes of caution from inside the government and from terrorism watchers come as the White House considers expanding military action against ISIS , including possibly striking across the border in Syria. Image Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel called the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria an “imminent threat.” Credit Saul Loeb/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images American intelligence agencies are working on a thorough assessment of the group’s strength, and they believe that its ability to gain and hold territory could make it a long-term menace in the Middle East. Intelligence officials said there were indications that ISIS’ battlefield successes had attracted defectors from Qaeda affiliates in Yemen and Africa, who are eager to join a group with momentum. But experts say ISIS differs from traditional terrorist groups like Al Qaeda and its affiliates, primarily because it prefers enlarging what it calls its caliphate over discrete acts of terrorism. It has captured dams and oil fields, and has seized spoils of war like armored personnel carriers and tanks. Bin Laden’s goal was also to create an Islamic caliphate, but he often said that it was years away and could be achieved only under the proper conditions. ISIS, on the other hand, has renamed itself “Islamic State” and declared that the caliphate has arrived. “This is a full-blown insurgent group, and talking about it as a terrorist group is not particularly helpful,” said William McCants, a fellow at the Brookings Institution. Rear Adm. John Kirby, the Pentagon press secretary, said the Defense Department did not believe that ISIS had “the capability right now to conduct a major attack on the U.S. homeland.” Iraqi Army Retakes Government Complex in Central Ramadi Efforts to stem the rise of the Islamic State. “We do believe they have aspirations to strike Western targets,” Admiral Kirby said, adding that the “urgency of the threat” was driven by the belief that ISIS had enlisted thousands of foreign fighters and was holding its ground in Iraq and Syria. ISIS is now under pressure from American airstrikes in Iraq . And the group must defend its gains from advances by a host of adversaries, like Iraqi Kurdish troops, the forces of President Bashar al-Assad of Syria, and other Syrian rebels. “Attacking the U.S. is not their first priority,” Mr. Liepman said. In addition, American officials said that the group’s brutal methods of governing the territory it has seized, while effective in the short term, could create internal factions that would weaken its grip on power. Gen. Martin E. Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said Thursday that the group’s ambition was to remake the Middle East by absorbing nations including Israel, Jordan, Kuwait and Syria into its caliphate. “If it were to achieve that vision, it would fundamentally alter the face of the Middle East and create a security environment that would certainly threaten us in many ways,” he said. But some experts are skeptical that ISIS could ever realize that goal. “ISIS can expand, but it can’t dominate alone,” said George Friedman, chairman of Stratfor, a geopolitical risk analysis company. Even in Iraq, the group “can’t defeat the Kurds,” Mr. Friedman said. “It certainly doesn’t have the power to defeat the Shiites in the south.” A Rogue State Along Two Rivers The victories gained by the militant group calling itself the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria were built on months of maneuvering along the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers. But for a population that is not accustomed to images of Americans at the mercy of foreign militaries, the video of the killing of the American journalist, James Foley, was bound to strike a chord and exacerbate a feeling of being under threat. Some experts said the fear of ISIS was driven partly by how little is known about the organization. While the United States has spent more than a decade studying Al Qaeda, officials know comparatively little about the structure and leadership of ISIS, beyond the information they have on the group’s self-appointed caliph, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. But a large segment of the United States’ counterterrorism apparatus is now devoted to filling in the intelligence picture about ISIS. Speaking to reporters on Thursday, Mr. Hagel said as much. “We must prepare for everything,” he said. “And the only way you do that is that you take a cold, steely, hard look at it and get ready.” It is generally agreed that it is far more difficult to carry out a terrorist attack inside the United States today than it was before the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, because of the steps taken since to prevent would-be terrorists from entering the country. But that does not mean that ISIS cannot present a significant threat in the Middle East. “I’m worried about Turkey, I’m worried about Jordan, I’m worried about regional destabilization,” said Jarret Brachman, the author of “Global Jihadism: Theory and Practice” and an adviser to the United States government on ISIS and Al Qaeda. Mr. Brachman said that he did not believe the group had the ability, at the moment, to attack the United States, and that such an attack would bring about an American response so destructive that it would undermine the militants’ goal of territorial expansion.

ISIS,ISIL,Islamic State
Iraq
Syria
US Military
US
Barack Obama
Chuck Hagel
Martin E Dempsey
Terrorism


Merkel’s Visit to Britain Sets New Tone After E.U. Rift

Abstract: LONDON — The first thing Prime Minister David Cameron did when Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany arrived Wednesday for a half-day visit here was to take her to a German history exhibition at the British Museum. But after a friendly stroll through Europe’s past, the continent’s future was firmly back on the agenda — and with it Mr. Cameron’s hope that Ms. Merkel would help him mollify those in his party who clamor for an exit from the European Union, something both leaders say they are keen to avoid. The visit was overshadowed, however, by the terrorist attack in Paris, and after receiving a security briefing from British intelligence chiefs the two leaders jointly telephoned President François Hollande of France to express their support. “In this very desperate hour, we stand by the French people,” Ms. Merkel said later at a news conference. Mr. Cameron’s pledge to hold a referendum on European Union membership if he is re-elected in May, along with hints he has dropped about possible limitations on the free movement of people within the 28-member bloc, one of its central tenets, have strained relations between London and Berlin. Yet at a joint news conference on Wednesday, the gulf between the two leaders appeared to have narrowed. “Of course, the British citizens will decide, but I don’t want to hide from you that I very much like having the U.K. in a strong and successful European Union and like working with them for a better future,” Ms. Merkel said, speaking in German. “Where there is a will, there is a way.” Mr. Cameron, running down his wish list of immigration reforms within the union, left out his most contentious demand, one that would allow Britain to turn other Europeans away unless they had a job waiting. “I support freedom of movement, but what I don’t support is the abuse of freedom of movement,” he said, demanding only that jobseekers from other union countries not claim unemployment benefits, and that they might be asked to leave if they had not found work after six months. “I want to fix Britain’s relationship with the E.U., which the British people can find very frustrating,” Mr. Cameron said, adding that his aim remained “reform within the E.U. and a referendum in which Britain decides to stay in a reformed European Union.” Ms. Merkel has made clear that she will not back any concessions that require changing the treaties governing all member states and is opposed to any initiative challenging freedom of movement. But standing beside Mr. Cameron on Downing Street on Wednesday, she was happy to echo his language on benefit abuse. “We have no doubt about the principle of freedom of movement being in any way in question, but we also have to look at abuse of that principle,” the chancellor said, adding that “abuse needs to be fought against so that freedom of movement can prevail.” Five months before a hotly contested general election in Britain, immigration has emerged as a central theme in the campaign. With the U.K. Independence Party, which advocates cutting ties with the European Union and sharp curbs on immigration, eating into his conservative base, Mr. Cameron has come under pressure from his own party to take a harder line on both issues. Nigel Farage, the Independence Party leader, reacted to Wednesday’s comments with a disdainful post on Twitter : “Mr. Cameron made big overtures last month. But 48 hours with Ms. Merkel and he’s already repeatedly committing to open door immigration again.” Their differences over Europe aside, Mr. Cameron and Ms. Merkel have long had a warm rapport, based not least on a shared conservative philosophy and similar outlook on economic policy. If Ms. Merkel has become known for her uncompromising support of deficit-cutting — or austerity — in the southern nations of the euro area, Mr. Cameron’s coalition government has that reputation here. Over the past year, Mr. Cameron has spared no effort to court Ms. Merkel. The last time she visited, in February of last year, the German chancellor was given the unusual honor of addressing both houses of Parliament. Since then, there have been 31 British ministerial visits to Berlin, three times as many as German visits here, according to The Guardian. In June, Queen Elizabeth II, who delegates most travel to younger royal generations these days, is to make her fifth state visit to Germany. The prime minister praised the British Museum exhibition “ Germany: Memories of a Nation ,” which explores six centuries of German history on the 25th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, as a testament “to the collaboration of our two countries, and I believe that collaboration will get stronger.” Ms. Merkel chose to point out another lesson from the exhibition. It showed, she said, “the very fruitful mutual exchanges also in past centuries between European nations.”

Germany
Great Britain
Angela Merkel
David Cameron
EU
Immigration


Jamaica Death Toll Rises as Manhunt Continues

Abstract: KINGSTON, Jamaica — After five days of sporadic fighting in the capital, the Jamaican police have still not found the object of their raid, a gang leader wanted in the United States on gun and drug charges, but the death toll has risen to at least 70 and complaints are mounting that the police have used indiscriminate force. On Thursday, after a futile search and another shootout in an upscale neighborhood, the police issued a public statement appealing to the gang leader, Christopher Coke , and his brother to turn themselves in. In Mr. Coke’s stronghold of Tivoli Gardens, a working-class neighborhood that became an urban combat zone after gunmen loyal to him tried to prevent the police from entering, residents ventured from their homes for the first time in days to search for food or the bodies of friends and relatives who had been killed. One woman carried a picture on her cellphone of a woman lying on the ground next to a tire. The woman, who hid the camera as soldiers drove by and asked that her name not be published, said the woman in the photo was Petrona Henry, a schoolteacher and mother of three children, who had been killed by soldiers. Every house held a story. At 30 Shearer Street, Beryl Brown walked to the gate to tell hers, saying her son Key Francis, 50, had been shot and wounded on their veranda, for reasons she could not understand. A group of residents called out to journalists, urging them to investigate a nearby cemetery where they said the security services had hastily buried bodies. Their stories were impossible to verify. Security forces allowed journalists to tour parts of Tivoli Gardens on Thursday for the first time since the fighting began, but with armed escorts and on the condition that the journalists move quickly. But officials promised to investigate the complaints of police misconduct. “The government is committed and insistent that the rights of citizens be respected,” Daryl Vaz, the information minister, said Thursday afternoon. He said a public defender’s office would be established in Tivoli Gardens and nearby Denham Town, and promised “independent investigations of all police and military operations to date.” A police spokesman, Gilmore Hinds, disputed the claims of a mass grave at the cemetery, saying that 15 bodies would be buried soon, but only because they were badly decomposed. “All killings in Jamaica are investigated,” he said. “There is no exception to the case.” Although the fighting on Thursday appeared to be limited to a couple of hours, the death toll for the week was significantly higher than the 44 announced Wednesday. The fighting began Sunday when the police tried to enter Tivoli Gardens to arrest Mr. Coke, and Mr. Coke’s defenders fired on the police. But the death toll has skewed heavily toward civilians. Mr. Hinds said 73 civilians had been killed, although in 6 cases it was not clear if they were related to the raid, and three soldiers and police officers had been killed. While those numbers provoked loud debate in Jamaica, the Obama administration expressed its support for the operation, which aims to extradite Mr. Coke to face charges in New York. “As the Jamaican government seeks to uphold the rule of law, the United States stands in support of its efforts to ensure public safety and to combat drug trafficking and other criminal activity,” Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. said in Washington. In Kingston, the police also announced that they had recovered more than 7,000 rounds of ammunition, several homemade bombs and six firearms, including two pistols. “Seven thousand rounds can be equated with 7,000 Jamaican lives,” Mr. Hinds said, adding that the raid was “worth the effort.” In addition, more than 500 people have been arrested. At a stadium that is serving as a detention center, more than 100 people, mostly women, pressed up against a gate outside, begging guards for news of their relatives. Several vans arrived, carrying prisoners and guards. A few young men emerged from the stadium grounds, saying they had been beaten while in detention. One said that a friend had been executed in front of him in Tivoli Gardens. At Madden’s Funeral Home, which serves as the city’s morgue, relatives of the missing were leaving photographs in the hope that someone there may have seen their loved ones. Ferdinand Madden Jr., the proprietor, looked at the pictures of two brothers, ages 17 and 20. One was reclining on his bed, the other standing on a porch. Mr. Madden said that their relatives told him that they had been carrying groceries home for their grandmother when they were caught in cross-fire. He said the youngest victim of the violence was about 14 years old, and that the average age seemed to be about 22. All but one of the victims were men, he said, and every one of them had been shot. “I was traumatized by this,” he said.

Jamaica (West Indies)
Coke Christopher
Civilian Casualties
Defense and Military Forces


In Gary, Ind., a ‘Gateway’ Has Become ‘the Eyesore’

Abstract: GARY, Ind. — If one building could tell the story of this city’s hope and heartbreak, it would be the Sheraton Hotel. The tallest structure in this former steel town was once considered “the gateway to Gary’s future.” It is better known today as “the eyesore” — boarded up and abandoned, an empty shell of a better era. As if Gary needed a reminder of its failures, the Sheraton stands brooding next door to City Hall, where Mayor Karen Freeman-Wilson is determined to finally tear it down, floor by floor, as if reversing time. “It means that city government can make a promise and keep it,” the Harvard-educated first-term mayor said of the planned demolition, which will begin later this spring and be streamed live on the city’s website. “That we understand the significance of the Sheraton being in the heart of our downtown, right next door to the seat of government, looking like it looks. That’s unacceptable.” Struggling postindustrial cities, where populations have withered, have come to similar conclusions across the country . Rather than restore the thousands of forgotten buildings in places like Baltimore, Buffalo, Cleveland and Detroit, city planners see more promise in empty lots to keep crime and blight from spreading. In the past year, Gary has completed more than 200 demolitions, mostly of single-family homes. About 30 miles south of Chicago along Lake Michigan, the city is in the middle of counting its vacant structures, but as many as 15,000 abandoned buildings could remain, said Gary’s redevelopment director, Joseph Van Dyk, who is overseeing the Sheraton demolition. By 1971, when the 14-story hotel first opened as a Holiday Inn, the city’s decline had already begun. The population in Gary, built on a thriving steel industry in the early 20th century, peaked around 180,000 in 1960 . More manufacturing jobs disappeared with each passing decade. So did many white residents, who moved to the suburbs after the election of Richard G. Hatcher, one of the nation’s first black mayors of a major city. Today, there are fewer than 80,000 people living in Gary. At the groundbreaking for the hotel, Mr. Hatcher called the project “the first in a series of moves in downtown Gary development” and “the gateway to Gary’s future,” according to local newspaper archives. The Holiday Inn closed four years later. When it reopened as the Sheraton in 1979, followed by the construction of a convention center across the street, the hotel’s triumphant return was again heralded by Mr. Hatcher as a turning point. There was a restaurant serving French cuisine and vintage wine. The Impressions were the first musical group to perform at its Visions Lounge. Image Mayor Karen Freeman-Wilson says it is unacceptable that the building should remain “in the heart of our downtown, right next door to the seat of government.” Credit Daniel Acker for The New York Times But when demand fell short of expectations, the Sheraton shut its doors by the mid-1980s. It has sat unused ever since. A skywalk intended to reach from the Sheraton to the convention center was never completed. It now extends across Broadway and stops in midair. Vehicles exit a toll road and drive beneath this walkway to nowhere, a gateway to Gary that has fallen short. Over the years, investors have considered turning the hotel into apartments, office space or a retirement home. Other attempts to attract business downtown — a baseball stadium, Miss U.S.A. beauty pageants — also fell short of the hype, including the grand opening of a Wendy’s restaurant. Today, a small eyewear shop has replaced the fast-food franchise. “Smoke and mirrors,” said Marion Williams, owner of the local radio station WLTH 1370-AM, who considers the Sheraton demolition little more than another public relations stunt. The station, which divides its airtime between talk radio and “a touch of blues and some sweet soul,” occupies a small storefront on the same block as the hotel, across the street from the broken marquee of the convention center. Mr. Williams rattled off a list of problems, including crumbling infrastructure and high unemployment, that he said the city should address with the estimated $1.8 million in federal grants and city funds going toward removing the Sheraton. “Out of all the priorities, you’ll find no one would put it on the top of their list,” he said. Where department stores once lined Broadway, shops have been painted to hide the hollowness: Living-room furniture is drawn in the window of a shuttered retail space. The neglected Palace Theater has a vested ticket-taker named “Dione” painted on its front kiosk. Ms. Freeman-Wilson, who is up for re-election next year, does not blame residents who doubt the Sheraton will come down. The city, which owns the land, is still deciding what to do with the empty lot in the short term, but hopes eventually to sell it to someone who will build anew. For now, a picture of the Sheraton hangs on the wall in her office. It is surrounded by other images of the blighted buildings. Ms. Freeman-Wilson intends to fix or remove each one, replacing the photos “with the way it’s supposed to look.” But demolition, she said, is just part of a plan that also includes airport investments, a new teaching hospital and the promotion of Gary’s lakefront. “It’s one symbol that we can really get things done,” she said of the Sheraton. “But if that’s the only symbol, then I’m in trouble. We’re all in trouble.”

Sheraton
Gary Indiana
Commercial Real Estate
Restoration and Renovation
Karen Freeman-Wilson
Indiana
Hotels
Buildings
Abandonment
Demolition


Delivery Start-Ups Face Road Bumps in Quest to Capture Untapped Market

Abstract: DoorDash, one of a multitude of start-ups with a mobile app that lets people order and get food sent to their doorsteps, relies on contract drivers like Brian Navarro to make the deliveries. The problem is that workers like Mr. Navarro don’t always stick around. Mr. Navarro began driving for DoorDash and another delivery start-up, Postmates, in Los Angeles about four months ago. Mr. Navarro, 40, who previously drove for the ride-hailing companies Uber and Lyft, said he had seen plenty of contractors quit DoorDash and other delivery companies during the time he has worked with them. “Drivers do jump around,” Mr. Navarro said. “The general consensus is that drivers really only stick around for three to six months.” That churn has become expensive for DoorDash. A large number of drivers left the start-up less than a year after they joined, according to two people who have seen the company’s driver data. DoorDash spends upward of $200 in recruitment and referral bonuses for some drivers, said the people, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the details are confidential. Other delivery companies, like Postmates and Instacart, face similar retention challenges, these people said. The issue is just one headache now troubling delivery start-ups, which have been among the hottest sectors of start-up activity in recent years. Based on a belief that the companies would succeed once they grew to enormous scale, investors poured more than $730 million into delivery firms like DoorDash, Instacart and Postmates from early 2014 through the first half of 2015, up more than 1,100 percent from the same period a year and a half ago, according to data from CB Insights, a venture capital analytics firm. But entrepreneurs and investors are beginning to find that the economics of making a delivery service work are far from easy. Good Eggs, an organic grocery delivery service, laid off more than 100 employees and shuttered its offices outside its San Francisco headquarters in August. Instacart, the grocery delivery service, recently laid off 12 recruiters, which the company said was “part of an overall plan to slow down hiring” after a growth spree last year. And DoorDash has been turned down by some venture capitalists as it has tried to raise new financing, according to three people familiar with the company’s plans. Image From left, Holger Luedorf, Bastian Lehmann and Sean Plaice of Postmates at its office in San Francisco. Mr. Lehmann, the chief executive, said the company’s long-term approach would ultimately drive down prices for customers. Credit Jason Henry for The New York Times The problems are rooted in the high operating costs of the start-ups, which typically act as middlemen between consumers and restaurants or grocery stores. The companies not only have to pay for large fleets of drivers, they also have big groups of employees who receive customer orders from the apps and who then manually make calls to the restaurants to order food. At the same time, to attract customers, many of the start-ups offer introductory prices and discounts, often making delivery free for first-time users. As DoorDash’s experience with drivers shows, the start-ups’ costs don’t necessarily decline over time. For some drivers, who are paid a fee per delivery, it can be difficult to make enough deliveries in an hour to make it financially worthwhile for them. And when drivers move on, the companies must spend again to recruit replacements. “Ensuring drivers have the best possible experience on the DoorDash platform is one of our top priorities,” Eitan Bencuya, a DoorDash spokesman, said in a statement. He said the company has proprietary technology that helps drivers increase the amount of deliveries they can make in a single trip, increasing their commissions per hour. Mr. Bencuya declined to comment on DoorDash’s fund-raising efforts. The Wall Street Journal earlier reported on the start-up’s funding hurdles. For consumers, the delivery services may not seem cheap, either. Customers pay a delivery fee and a service charge on top of the cost of the food, as well as an optional tip to the driver. That has prompted concern that the services will not appeal to less affluent users in cities like New York, Denver, Atlanta and San Francisco, where DoorDash and others operate. “Private companies doing last-mile delivery rely on charging high consumer fees, which make the services untenably expensive for the average consumer,” Dean Prissman, an Internet analyst for Morgan Stanley, wrote in a research note to clients in October. Some investors said the start-ups have the potential to capture a relatively untapped multibillion-dollar market, one that is also being eyed by tech behemoths like Google, Amazon and Uber. The companies see opportunity in bringing delivery to millions of retailers and restaurants that do not now offer it, all for a slice of the fees. Alfred Lin, a partner at the venture capital firm Sequoia Capital, which has invested in DoorDash and Instacart, said the start-ups are also amassing a very valuable asset: consumers’ purchasing data. “The advent of the smartphone gives a company the ability to track all the information about your purchasing habits, and where you are,” he said. “It’s pretty dramatic what a company can do to utilize that information.” Mr. Lin compared DoorDash’s trajectory to those of Netflix, Amazon and Zappos, which all required huge early spending toward a bet on future growth. He added that DoorDash is seeing a lot of growth now. Image A Postmates courier making a cupcake pickup. Credit Jason Henry for The New York Times Bastian Lehmann , chief executive of Postmates, said that delivery businesses face high upfront costs but that his company’s long-term approach will ultimately drive down prices for customers. Postmates has raised more than $100 million from investors including Spark Capital and Tiger Global Management. “It’s still kind of a premium service,” Mr. Lehmann said in an interview. “It’s not unlike the early days of Uber, when they only had black cars.” To bring prices down, Postmates and DoorDash have assembled teams to forge deals with restaurants that they provide delivery for in their apps. The start-ups negotiate a fee that a restaurant pays per delivery — in the range of 20 percent — and the savings are passed on to the consumer, who pays a $5 delivery fee. Early retail partners include C hipotle , Starbucks and 7-Eleven, among others. Mr. Lehmann said he imagines a future in which Postmates cuts deals with 60 to 70 percent of the restaurants in its app. As Postmates grows more popular, drivers will be able to make more deliveries to more people in shorter amounts of time, eventually earning them — and the company — more money. “We can and will be profitable as a company in 2017,” he said. Mr. Lehmann added that its drivers do jump to adjacent services from time to time but frequently return to working for Postmates. DoorDash is trying to keep a lid on costs another way: By paying its drivers less per delivery. According to an email from the company to drivers that was reviewed by The New York Times, DoorDash said that starting on Monday, it would change the pay per delivery in Los Angeles to $5, down from $6, excluding tips. “We know this is an important change, so we want to be transparent about why we are making this adjustment,” DoorDash said in the email. The company said drivers would make up what they lose in fee cuts through an increased order volume. Mr. Navarro, the driver in Los Angeles, said he could make only about two deliveries an hour, though that has increased at peak mealtimes. While he is unhappy with the fee change, he said he plans to keep working for DoorDash and Postmates for now because it beats the alternative. “I’d rather do this than be driving for Lyft or Uber,” he said.

Delivery Services
DoorDash
Postmates
Mobile Apps
Price
Startup


A Marriage of Visual Masters

Abstract: “Take an object. Do something to it. Do something else to it.” These oft-cited instructions were written by Jasper Johns as directives to himself, and they are particularly suited to his work in printmaking, with its multi-stepped process and its toolbox of techniques. But to “do something” and then “do something else” when printing requires skilled assistance. The 53 pieces in “Jasper Johns and John Lund: Masters in the Print Studio” at the Katonah Museum of Art were all printed by John Lund, a master printer who has worked with Mr. Johns for over four decades. The exhibition not only presents a selective survey of Mr. Johns’s print work during the second part of his career, it also illuminates the critical role of the printer, seen through the unique and now exclusive professional relationship between Mr. Johns and Mr. Lund. Curated by Ellen J. Keiter, the museum’s director of exhibitions, and Belinda Roth, its former interim executive director, the show is arranged chronologically. It begins with “Cup 2 Picasso,” a lithograph created in 1973 as a tribute to Picasso. The image is a Rubin’s vase, the classic is-it-a-vase-or-is-it-a-profile optical illusion, this one with Picasso’s silhouetted profile forming the contours of a cream-colored vase. Image “Untitled” (2000) Credit Jasper Johns/Licensed by VAGA, New York. All rights reserved. The piece marks the first time Mr. Johns and Mr. Lund worked together. They had met the year before at Universal Limited Art Editions , a fine art publisher on Long Island. Mr. Johns had been making prints since 1960 and often published editions at Universal. Mr. Lund, employed there as an apprentice, processed and proofed the “Cup 2 Picasso” plates. The print is noteworthy as one of Mr. Johns’s earliest depictions of a Rubin’s vase, a motif that recurs throughout the exhibition. The vase appears prominently as late as 2011 in the “Shrinky Dink” etchings, and in varied iterations of “The Seasons,” a series that the two men worked and reworked — re-etching, burnishing, recombining details and finally cutting up and reconfiguring the plates — from 1985 until 1992. Mr. Lund described an experience that transformed the four “Seasons” etchings made in 1987 from black and white to color. “We did something on the spur of the moment,” he said by telephone. “He put a sheet of Mylar over the ‘Spring’ plate and painted colors on it. We printed the Mylar as a monotype and then printed the plate over it, and it looked so beautiful that it was obvious this was the way to go.” Image “Untitled” (2011) Credit Jasper Johns and ULAE/Licensed by VAGA, New York. Published by Universal Limited Art Editions. All rights reserved. Working on “The Seasons,” which are heavy with personal references, deepened the rapport between the artist and the printer. Within a few years of completing the series, Mr. Johns had moved from Manhattan to Sharon, Conn., and Mr. Lund had designed and equipped a print studio in a onetime horse stable on the property, attached by a short corridor to Mr. Johns’s painting studio. By 1996, Mr. Lund and his family were living in the gatehouse on the 200-acre estate, and two years later, Mr. Johns established his own publishing imprint, Low Road Studios. Mr. Lund has been Mr. Johns’s sole printmaking collaborator since 1995. Mr. Lund is soft-spoken and humble, qualities that have surely contributed to his success in serving Mr. Johns’s vision. “There’s a back and forth between us, and we’ve developed a certain understanding,” he said. “Sometimes I have to take control, but most of the time I’m sitting back trying to interpret his intentions and find a way to make them work. I guess I have an ability to be unnoticed but still there and useful.” Image “Flag on Orange” (1998) Credit Jasper Johns/Licensed by VAGA, New York. All rights reserved. Mr. Lund’s expert usefulness is apparent throughout “Masters in the Print Studio,” as is Mr. Johns’s relentless digging. The first Low Road print, “Flag on Orange,” features one of the artist’s most recognizable symbols, the American flag, floating against a sea of orange. The etching’s watery texture, achieved through spit-bite aquatint, exemplifies the interplay of the two men’s strengths. The newest prints in the show, from 2012, are small black-and-white lithographs of the numerals 0 to 9, a subject Mr. Johns has investigated perhaps more than any other. “The architecture is the same,” Mr. Lund said, “but the treatments are different from anything he’s done before.” The exhibition includes photographs of the men working, and a video of Mr. Lund discussing their collaboration. One area examines the printmaking process, with progressive proofs illustrating the stages a print goes through, and a notebook of reproductions of trial proofs for “Untitled,” an etching from 1998, that reveal a surprising array of color combinations and compositional arrangements that were explored during the quest for the final version. Together, the artist and the printer have created more than 70 editions. Mr. Johns, who will turn 84 next month, continues to renegotiate his material (his latest works, including several printed by Mr. Lund, are currently on view in “Jasper Johns: Regrets” at the Museum of Modern Art). Mr. Lund, in turn, continues to support Mr. Johns’s creative process. “We share a common aesthetic in terms of what we both see,” Mr. Lund said. “But it’s his work. It’s not my role to influence it other than to make it look as good as it can possibly look.”

Katonah Museum of Art
Jasper Johns
Katonah NY
Art
John Lund


Book Bags for the Children, and Bags of Crack at Starbucks

Abstract: A sign outside an 11th-floor apartment in the Jacob Riis Houses in Lower Manhattan reads: “Warning: This Property Protected by Jesus Christ.” But outside, in a nearby courtyard, that particular responsibility apparently fell to Dwayne Mitchell. “He always looks after the kids on the block,” said a 41-year-old woman who has known Mr. Mitchell, 35, since he was a boy. Another neighbor, Shaquane Mitchell, 38, agreed. “They’re saying he’s the mayor of the block,” she said, adding that he must have been a very good one “because he was the one there handing out book bags for the kids.” Both women paused and added disclaimers. “I don’t know where the funds were coming from,” Ms. Mitchell said. (She declined to say whether she was related to Mr. Mitchell.) The other neighbor, who did not give her name, put it more bluntly: “Just because somebody sells drugs doesn’t mean they’re bad.” Mr. Mitchell and 10 others were arrested and named in an indictment announced this week by the Manhattan district attorney’s office. It reads like a document that someone pulled out of storage from the 1980s, describing Mr. Mitchell as a kingpin who sold fistfuls of crack cocaine in and around the Riis Houses on the Lower East Side. Arraignments are set for next week. Taken together, the indictment and the way Mr. Mitchell’s friends defend him suggest a curious double life. On a given day, Mr. Mitchell might pick up his children from school and send his girlfriend, forbidden from seeing her own children because of her arrest record, to deliver crack to a customer uptown. He was clever enough to still be at the game well into his 30s, the age of forced retirement for many in the field. He arranged drug sales, at least three times this year, the indictment says, at a Starbucks on Second Avenue in Kips Bay. It is hard to imagine a less inconspicuous place to buy and sell crack, in the company of over-caffeinated young professionals. Or is that the point? “You’re not going to think about thousands of dollars in crack sales in a Starbucks,” Lt. John Patane of the New York Police Department said in an interview. Indeed, likely absorbed in latte orders and laptops, customers were apparently oblivious as Mr. Mitchell’s girlfriend, Fatima Owens, 32, stepped into the unisex restroom, emerging a few moments later and a few grams lighter, the indictment states. An undercover police officer who had arranged to buy the drugs went in next, finding the crack she had left in a bag or, once, in an umbrella, according to the indictment. He paid her in the coffee shop. Mr. Mitchell seemed naïve in other ways. He treated his cellphone as if he had never heard of “The Wire,” or any wire, or met anyone who had. His use of code words, as described in the indictment, would not fool some second graders. On July 1, one of Mr. Mitchell’s lieutenants, Charles Laboy, 37, called him and said he had plenty of “chicken,” and “just thought you might need all the food you can get,” the indictment states. A couple of weeks later, Mr. Laboy urged Mr. Mitchell to call him “when you’re ready to make some doughnuts.” Had they switched code words? Apparently not. On Aug. 5, Mr. Laboy called Mr. Mitchell and told him it was “time to make the doughnuts,” but lamented that he only had “one piece of chicken left.” Mr. Mitchell bought crack wholesale from a man in SoHo named Sabed Rahman, 29, according to the indictment. Sometimes, Mr. Rahman seemed to struggle to keep up with demand. But if this angered Mr. Mitchell, it didn’t show. “Pls have it ready 4 me 2 night pls,” he wrote in a text message on July 31. Throughout the summer, Mr. Mitchell was organizing day trips for families. “Bear Mountain,” Lieutenant Patane said. “He would rent a bus.” But the largess went only so far, he said. “He did nothing for free,” and charged for the rides, Lieutenant Patane said. “Let’s not be mistaken.” The communal love for Mr. Mitchell could not match the displeasure with crack addicts in the courtyard, and more and more people began calling 911, the police said. In the end, Mr. Mitchell’s girlfriend was warning him about police cars that would “creep” around the area, according to the indictment. Another person who worked for him said they “can’t even sit outside now.” Did he care? Did he have an end game? He may have hinted at it in something he told a friend. “He said, ‘Well, if they got me, they got me,’ ” Lieutenant Patane said. “ ‘I’m not going to jail broke.’ ”

Dwayne Mitchell
Drug Abuse
Cocaine and Crack
Kips Bay Manhattan
Lower East Side Manhattan


Phyllis Harrison-Ross, Mental Health Pioneer, Dies at 80

Abstract: Dr. Phyllis Harrison-Ross, a pioneering black pediatrician, psychiatrist, prison monitor and mental health administrator, died on Jan. 16 in Manhattan. She was 80. The cause was lung cancer, Elinor Tatum, her goddaughter and the publisher of The New York Amsterdam News, said. Dr. Harrison-Ross was a ubiquitous presence in the mental health field in New York and nationally for more than 35 years. She was an early leader in designing rehabilitation and therapy for children with a combination of severe developmental, emotional and physical disabilities. She was also at the forefront of promoting teleconferencing to bridge gaps between doctors and patients, and what is known as televisiting, to link inmates in prisons in rural parts of upstate New York to their families in New York City and other urban areas. From 1973 to 1999, Dr. Harrison-Ross directed the Community Mental Health Center at Metropolitan Hospital in East Harlem and was the hospital’s chief of psychiatry. She helped form the New York City Federation of Mental Health, Mental Retardation and Alcoholism Services in 1975; was president of the Black Psychiatrists of America from 1976 to 1978; and was chairwoman of the New York City Directors of Psychiatry in Municipal Hospitals in the late 1980s. In 2000, she founded the Black Psychiatrists of Greater New York & Associates. Dr. Harrison-Ross served on President Richard M. Nixon’s National Advisory Council for Drug Abuse Prevention and the New York State Commission of Correction and was chairwoman of the commission’s Medical Review Board. She recently said that since 1976, she had reviewed the deaths of thousands of people in state and local custody. After the attack on the World Trade Center in 2001 and Hurricane Katrina in 2005, she mustered her colleagues to provide interfaith disaster services and became the volunteer president of All Healers Mental Health Alliance, which seeks to organize long-term responses to mental health needs that arise from natural and man-made disasters. Dr. Harrison-Ross was also an emeritus professor of psychiatry and behavioral health services at the New York Medical College. She wrote numerous articles and two books: “Getting It Together,” a textbook for junior and senior high school students, and, with Barbara Wyden, “The Black Child: A Parents’ Guide.” Of “The Black Child,” The New York Times Book Review said, “Everyone can learn something from this book.” Phyllis Anne Harrison was born on Aug. 14, 1936, in Detroit to Harold Jerome Harrison, a teacher who became deputy superintendent of the Detroit public school system, and the former Edna Smith, a social worker and professor at Wayne State University. She was accepted to Albion College in Michigan when she was 15 and graduated with a bachelor of science degree in 1956. Three years later, she was the only black woman in the graduating class of Wayne State University’s College of Medicine. Her husband, Edgar Lee Ross, died in 1996. No immediate family members survive. Last July, she was featured in an article in The Times about issues facing older people when they move to smaller living quarters. She had lived in the same large apartment on the Upper West Side of Manhattan for 48 years. Dr. Harrison-Ross trained as a pediatrician and as a psychiatrist, interning at Bronx Municipal Hospital and Albert Einstein College of Medicine. There she helped develop therapeutic programs for multiply handicapped preschool children at what is now known as the Rose F. Kennedy University Center for Excellence in Developmental Disabilities. New York officials replicated the programs statewide. In 2004, she received the American Psychiatric Association’s Solomon Carter Fuller Award for African-American Pioneers.

Phyllis Harrison-Ross
Obituary
Mental Health
Psychiatry
New York


Democrats Divided Over Gas Tax Break

Abstract: WASHINGTON — As angry truckers encircled the Capitol in a horn-blaring caravan and consumers across the country agonized over $60 fill-ups, the issue of high fuel prices flared on the campaign trail on Monday, sharply dividing the two Democratic candidates. Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton lined up with Senator John McCain , the presumptive Republican nominee for president, in endorsing a plan to suspend the federal excise tax on gasoline, 18.4 cents a gallon, for the summer travel season. But Senator Barack Obama , Mrs. Clinton’s Democratic rival, spoke out firmly against the proposal, saying it would save consumers little and do nothing to curtail oil consumption and imports. While Mr. Obama’s view is shared by environmentalists and many independent energy analysts, his position allowed Mrs. Clinton to draw a contrast with her opponent in appealing to the hard-hit middle-class families and older Americans who have proven to be the bedrock of her support. She has accused Mr. Obama of being out of touch with ordinary Americans who are struggling to meet their mortgages and gas up their cars and trucks. Mrs. Clinton said at a rally on Monday morning in Graham, N.C., that she would introduce legislation to impose a windfall-profits tax on oil companies and use the revenue to suspend the gasoline tax temporarily. “At the heart of my approach is a simple belief,” Mrs. Clinton said. “Middle-class families are paying too much and oil companies aren’t paying their fair share to help us solve the problems at the pump.” The split occurred as Senators Clinton and Obama were competing intensely in primaries in Indiana and North Carolina, where voters go to the polls next Tuesday. Opinion surveys have shown that the faltering economy and high gas prices are the top concerns of voters across the country, edging out the war in Iraq. The Clinton campaign is running television advertising in Indiana contrasting her approach on gas prices with Mr. Obama’s. Mrs. Clinton said the tax on the oil companies, which have been reporting record profits as oil prices soar, would cover all of the lost revenue from the federal tax on gasoline and diesel fuel. She also said no highway projects would suffer. Mr. Obama derided the McCain-Clinton idea of a federal tax holiday as a “short-term, quick-fix” proposal that would do more harm than good, and said the money, which is earmarked for the federal highway trust fund, is badly needed to maintain the nation’s roads and bridges. In 2000, Mr. Obama supported a bill in the Illinois legislature to suspend most of the state’s 6.25 percent gasoline sales tax. But he later opposed making the reduction permanent, arguing that the state needed the revenue and that the measure had saved consumers little. Mrs. Clinton, of New York, has also taken varying stands on the issue of gas taxes. In her 2000 Senate campaign, she spoke against repealing the federal gasoline tax, calling it “one of those few taxes that New York actually gets more money from Washington than we send.” At a meeting with voters in North Carolina on Monday, Mr. Obama said lifting the gas tax for three months would save the average consumer no more than $30, a figure confirmed by Congressional analysts. Mr. Obama has previously dismissed Mr. McCain’s proposal as a “scheme.” “Half a tank of gas,” Mr. Obama told his audience. “That’s his big solution.” President Bush’s spokeswoman essentially sided with Mr. Obama in saying that tax holidays and new levies on oil companies would not address the long-term problems of dependence on foreign oil. Dana Perino, the White House spokeswoman, said gasoline prices were “entirely too high, but I think it would be disingenuous and unfortunate for American consumers for them to be led to believe that there is a short-term fix.” “There is not going to be one,” Ms. Perino said. It is not clear whether Congress will act quickly on a fuel tax suspension and a new levy on oil companies, particularly given the White House opposition. While Democratic leaders are sympathetic, aides said, similar plans have failed a number of times. The debate erupted as both candidates rounded up more superdelegate endorsements on Monday, with Mr. Obama highlighting the backing of Senator Jeff Bingaman of New Mexico, who is the chairman of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, while Gov. Michael F. Easley of North Carolina was preparing to endorse Mrs. Clinton on Tuesday. The split on the gas tax is a relatively rare one for Mrs. Clinton and Mr. Obama, who agree on the broad outlines of policy in most areas. They have both called for the suspension of purchases for the national strategic petroleum stockpile, a supply of oil to protect the country against sudden supply disruptions; new taxes on oil companies; measures to curb global warming ; and heavy federal spending on renewable energy sources. They have also called for a federal investigation of possible manipulation in oil markets. Mr. McCain has also called for a halt to purchases for the petroleum reserve and expressed support of climate-change legislation, but opposes the imposition of windfall-profits taxes on oil companies. All three candidates have endorsed tougher fuel-efficiency standards for cars and trucks and diplomatic measures to pressure oil-producing nations to lower prices. The federal tax on motor fuels — the tax on diesel fuel is 24.4 cents a gallon — yielded $28.2 billion in 2006, the last full year for which statistics are available. The last time the federal fuel taxes were raised significantly was in 1993 as part of President Bill Clinton’s budget-balancing package. The highway trust fund that the gas tax finances provides money to states and local governments to pay for road and bridge construction, repair and maintenance. Mr. McCain and Mrs. Clinton propose to suspend the tax from Memorial Day to Labor Day, the peak driving season, which would lower tax receipts by roughly $9 billion and potentially cost 300,000 highway construction jobs, according to state highway officials. Mrs. Clinton would replace that money with the new tax on oil company profits, an idea that has been kicking around Congress for several years but has not been enacted into law. Mr. McCain would divert tax revenue from other sources to make the highway trust fund whole. The Senate blocked a $15 billion tax on oil companies last December that was part of a larger energy package. A McCain spokesman sought to use the gas tax issue to drive a wedge between the two Democratic candidates and paint Mr. Obama as a flip-flopper given how he voted as a state lawmaker in 2000. “It’s clear Barack Obama’s not strong enough to provide immediate relief at the pump, and it shows he doesn’t understand our economy or have the ability to deliver for hard-working Americans,” said Tucker Bounds, a McCain aide. “Senator Obama’s arguments against John McCain’s gas tax holiday are complete fiction, and the reality is that he used to support a gas tax holiday before he was running for president.”

Presidential Election of 2008
Oil (Petroleum) and Gasoline
Excise Taxes
Prices (Fares Fees and Rates)
Taxation
United States Politics and Government
Trucks and Trucking
Clinton Hillary Rodham
McCain John
Obama Barack


Cornerbacks for Seahawks Take Charge by Being Patient

Abstract: RENTON, Wash. — Kris Richard makes it sound like some covert activity — as if sharing this information would pose a security leak. Or he is simply joking. “It’s kind of one of those things to where, if we tell you, we can’t let you leave,” said Richard, the Seattle Seahawks’ defensive coordinator. The topic is technique — or at least providing a definition for a specific technique. Ask Richard Sherman or other Seattle cornerbacks what has made them among the best in the N.F.L., and the answer is often “perfecting our technique.” But what exactly are they talking about? For the Seahawks, specifically their cornerbacks, it is a style of play called the step-kick. It is not unique to Seattle — many teams’ cornerbacks use similar approaches when playing press coverage at the line of scrimmage. But the Seahawks have become masters of the technique. It was a key reason that Seattle’s pass defense was the best in the N.F.L. the past two seasons. “Everybody that learns the technique, they have to do it at a high rate, and if you don’t, you’re going to get chewed out,” Seattle wide receiver Doug Baldwin said. “More so it has to do with the discipline and the style of play our defensive backs choose to play with on a day-to-day basis. They take their craft very seriously.” The step-kick, used when cornerbacks are aligned in press coverage, is based on patience and reaction, and not being beaten deep by a wide receiver. In traditional bump-and-run coverage, by contrast, a cornerback tries to force where the receiver is going to go. Overaggression in the bump-and-run style can leave cornerbacks in a trailing position when a receiver wins coming off the snap. The style the Seahawks play reduces risk. “We really want them to be on top; we really want them to be in lead positions,” Richard said. “So what’s the easiest, best way in order for them to do that?” He said the best way was to allow wide receivers “to push in the direction that they’re going.” Richard added, “Rather than you dictate, let him dictate.” No one has figured out this style of play better than Sherman, the prototype in Seattle. Tall, long, smooth and patient, he has all the attributes that augur success for a cornerback playing this style. “I think it’s one of the most difficult techniques to learn out there because it goes against most of the things you learn,” Sherman said, adding, “You have to train yourself and discipline yourself to not react to certain things.” Sherman often stays on the field long after practice, working with young cornerbacks. His most attentive student during training camp has been the rookie Tye Smith. “It’s like riding a bike with training wheels and then taking the training wheels off immediately,” Sherman said, “and somebody says you should be able to ride just as fast as you have been riding with no training wheels.”


Hong Kong Protest Leaders Sentenced to Community Service

Abstract: HONG KONG — Two Hong Kong activists were sentenced to community service on Monday and another was given a suspended jail term for their involvement in a demonstration that led to large pro-democracy street protests two years ago. One of the activists, Joshua Wong, 19, a student leader who was convicted in July of unlawful assembly, was sentenced to 80 hours of community service. Another, Nathan Law, 23, was sentenced to 120 hours of community service for inciting people to take part in the gathering. Mr. Wong was found not guilty of that charge. The third, Alex Chow, 25, received a three-week jail term with a one-year suspension. The suspension means he probably will not serve jail time if he does not commit any crimes over the next year. Video In 2014, Joshua Wong was at the forefront of a student movement for democracy in Hong Kong. They had faced up to two years in prison, but lighter sentences were expected after the court ordered a report on their eligibility for community service. The men said they had no regrets over their actions. “It is a long-term battle for us,” Mr. Wong said. The sentence “will not affect my persistence and my courage in the social movement,” he added. Their gathering, on Sept. 26, 2014, escalated into larger demonstrations after the police tried to remove protesters from a courtyard in a main government office complex. Thousands more people turned out, occupying a nearby road and several other streets around the city in what became known as the Umbrella Movement. Protesters camped on the streets in an unsuccessful effort to secure more freedom in nominating candidates for this semiautonomous Chinese city’s top political office, the chief executive, and to call for the current chief executive to step down. While they abandoned their sit-in 79 days later, several of the protesters have since moved into politics. Mr. Wong, made famous by his role as a leader of the protests, formed a party with Mr. Law, who is running for a Legislative Council seat in elections in September. Mr. Law’s candidacy was at risk of invalidation if he was in prison at the time of the election, but the sentence of community service means he can still run. Their party, Demosisto, has called for a referendum on the future of Hong Kong’s relationship with China. Calls for greater autonomy or independence for the city have increased in the two years since the protests. Hong Kong is a former British colony returned to Chinese control in 1997 , and for 50 years, it is entitled to maintain its own legal and economic system, including strong protections for civil rights not enjoyed by people in mainland China. But many residents fear that the “one country, two systems” model is eroding under influence from Beijing. The authorities in Hong Kong have said that Legislative Council members are barred from supporting independence under the Basic Law, which declares that the territory is an “inalienable part” of China. Election officers have disqualified at least five candidates from running for legislative office over questions on their beliefs about the city’s future. Those candidates have called the move an unfair impingement on political freedoms. Although surveys indicate that most Hong Kong residents do not support independence for the city, analysts say that the government’s efforts to restrict advocacy of that view could increase its popularity.

Joshua Wong
Alex Chow
Nathan Law Kwun-chung
Hong Kong
China
Occupy Central,Umbrella Movement
Freedom of assembly
Civil Unrest


Rodriguez Is a Michigan Man With an Image to Repair

Abstract: CHICAGO — Rich Rodriguez’s reputation has taken some hits over the last seven months. When he left West Virginia in December, the state, the governor who runs it and the fans who live there vilified him. The university filed a lawsuit to force him to pay a $4 million buyout that his contract called for. Rodriguez, who left to take the Michigan job, then took a wallop from Purdue Coach Joe Tiller, who referred to him as “a guy in a wizard hat selling snake oil” after a player who had committed to the Boilermakers signed with Michigan instead. Entering the Big Ten Football Kickoff here on Thursday, Rodriguez knew the questions would slap him from every direction. What about the West Virginia lawsuit? What about your image? What about the family values that apparently have disappeared from Wolverines practices, to be replaced by assistants screaming expletives? But Rodriguez — who brings his spread offensive attack to Michigan, replacing Lloyd Carr’s power run philosophy — does not play defense. So when he stepped to the dais Thursday afternoon, he did not shy from the topics. He went right after them. “I’ve been working all summer on my snake oil concoction,” Rodriguez said during his opening statement. “I can’t wait to see Joe tonight.” The remark drew a laugh. Rodriguez has tried to lighten the tone as the summer of West Virginia’s discontent fades into Michigan’s new era. “Life is too short to take everything personally,” Rodriguez said. “There were some things that obviously bothered me more than others, and unfortunately I’ve had to deal with some things the last six months that really bothered me. But I’ve known Coach Tiller, and we laughed about it. No big deal. It’s not something anybody is going to carry with them.” Maybe that is not exactly true. It is doubtful that the state of West Virginia, for one, would welcome him back. A few weeks after the Mountaineers lost to Pittsburgh in a game that knocked West Virginia out of the national championship race, Rodriguez agreed to take the Michigan job. Less than 24 hours after his announcement, officials in Grant Town, W.Va., removed two signs that proclaimed it as Rodriguez’s hometown. Then the rift really got nasty. West Virginia filed the lawsuit, and Gov. Joe Manchin issued a six-paragraph statement saying that Rodriguez had become a “victim of a college coaching system driven by high-priced agents that has turned those dreams into just another back-room business deal.” The backlash surprised Rodriguez, who earlier this month agreed to pay $1.5 million of the buyout. Michigan will pay the rest. “Some of it caught me off guard,” Rodriguez said. “To the level and the way it all unfolded was a little bit disappointing. Maybe I should have expected it to a certain degree, but I didn’t expect it to come that far. All I did was try to coach and do as well as I could. I just changed jobs.” His new job was what Rodriguez really wanted to focus on during Thursday’s news conference. And an unlikely person came to his defense. “He’s going to be a great representative for Michigan and the Big Ten,” Ohio State Coach Jim Tressel said. “We always chitchat about things and laugh.” It is unclear how much amusement Rodriguez will have this season. Last year’s Michigan offense took a major hit in the N.F.L. draft. The Miami Dolphins picked offensive lineman Jake Long No. 1 over all. Later in the draft, the Wolverines lost quarterback Chad Henne, receivers Mario Manningham and Adrian Arrington and their star running back, Mike Hart. Rodriguez retains a few veterans on defense, but he now feels he can move past the ugliness of the last seven months. Finally, Rodriguez can concentrate on restoring the image of his new team — and himself. “I’ve not changed who I am,” Rodriguez said. “I never have. It just seems what was portrayed has changed. That’s probably the most disappointing part about it. What have I done wrong image-wise? “I still have my health. I still have my family. I’m at a great place. But if my reputation is damaged, it is upsetting because I’ve just changed jobs. I’ve done things like I’ve done them anywhere else. I guess it takes time for people to see what’s really going on.”

West Virginia University
University of Michigan
Rich Rodriguez
Coaches
College football


In Financial Rules, Mr. Obama, Proceed With Care

Abstract: Some things are worth doing quickly, even if you might have done a better job if you had taken more time. Others must be done well, even if that means delay. Putting together the financial bailout plan fell squarely into the first group. By the time it was enacted into law, the Treasury Department had changed its plans almost beyond recognition. What was a plan to buy dicey assets turned into a plan to invest directly in banks. Congress discovered it had approved something it did not know it had considered. Fixing the financial and regulatory systems falls into the second category, and it is something that will be left to the Obama administration, as well as the next Congress. An effective plan will also include more international cooperation and agreement than has ever been seen before. We have seen the havoc that internationally linked markets and institutions can cause. Whether or not we wish they would vanish, they will not. The details are not crucial now, but the basic approach should be. If Barack Obama has strong views on basic issues, he should make them clear to people being considered for high economic posts in his administration. If not, he should understand the views of those he is appointing, and make sure that he is comfortable with them and that his appointees are in basic agreement with each other. The issue is far more complex than the ritual denunciation of deregulation that the president-elect employed on the campaign trail. Contrary to that rhetoric, there may well have been too much regulation of some markets and some activities of financial institutions — regulation that encouraged and accelerated the growth of a parallel unregulated financial system. That system was allowed to grow with almost no oversight. Hedge funds could invest huge sums, and borrow even larger ones, with no disclosure of what they were doing. Credit-default swaps — which should have been treated as insurance contracts — could grow with no required reserves and no regulatory attention to assure the sellers could meet their obligations. One principle of the new regulatory system must be that regulations are based on what people do, not on who they are. If two products accomplish the same objective, they should be regulated the same way. Hedge funds that raise money from pension funds should not be allowed to wave a magic wand and be treated far differently from other institutional investors. There should not be one regulatory system for financial products regulated by the Securities and Exchange Commission, another for similar products under the jurisdiction of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission and a third for products provided by companies that have the word “insurance” in their names. It may be tempting to seek a return to the separation of investment banking from commercial banking. But it is too late for that. Integrated companies are here, and must be dealt with. Perhaps most important, regulators must take responsibility for doing their job, rather than subcontract it to the regulated. As new financial products were developed, the regulators threw up their hands and allowed the banks to apply their own (supposedly) sophisticated risk models, or to rely on bond rating agencies. We saw what happened in mortgage-backed securities. One of the big problems with those securities could be called the “Russian roulette” issue. The probability of a disastrous outcome appeared to be so low that it was ignored in the models used by the issuers and raters, and the investors were happy to rely on them. But even a low probability event may represent an unacceptable risk. Few of us would play Russian roulette, even if the odds were wildly in our favor, because it is a game no one can lose twice. A new division at Standard & Poor’s, the market, credit and risk strategies group, has begun analyzing the products that S.& P. used to rate highly, and has issued a report that illustrates one part of the dilemma. The study takes a more or less typical mortgage securitization sold at the peak of the market, and applies different, but still reasonable, assumptions about the future. “It is amazing how fast you can go from having something that has a very high value to one with a very low value,” said Michael G. Thompson, the group’s managing director. Mr. Thompson pointed to a security, originally rated AA-plus, that would now be worth 76 cents on the dollar if you assume that 20 percent of the underlying mortgages will default and that losses on those mortgages will be 35 percent of the amount owed. Raise each of those figures by just five percentage points, and the security’s estimated value falls to 9 cents. But the value of another security, this one previously rated AAA, from the same securitization would fall only to 85 cents from 86 cents under the same set of assumptions. And the first security’s value would rise by only a penny if you applied more optimistic assumptions. That is because these securitizations were structured so that one security would suffer no losses until all those below it were wiped out. At that point, even a few more losses can be devastating. Those numbers are crucial in understanding the current battle over mark-to-market accounting, which the banks blame for much of their problem. They argue that even when current market prices are available, they are obviously unreasonable because they are so far below the values produced by the bank’s own models. As it is, banks now are using models to measure about $600 billion of assets, Mr. Thompson said, adding that better disclosure is needed to allow investors to assess what assets the banks hold and whether the values shown are based on optimistic or pessimistic assumptions. There are other regulatory principles that should be adopted. One is that regulators should review the structure of new products before they are widely distributed and before they become a significant part of the portfolios of regulated institutions. Such a review should focus on the risks that need to be disclosed and understood, and on the risks that the new securities will create. Mortgage securitizations led to a system where the lender thought it need not care if the loan was repaid, and to a situation where it was much harder to restructure a troubled loan, given that such a restructuring could be advantageous to one part of the securitization and not to another. If the private securitization market ever does come back, steps should be taken to deal with those problems. But the most important decisions will come after the new structure is adopted. The regulators must be given enough resources to do their jobs, and those appointed to do them must be people who believe in the regulatory system. Former investment bankers may not be the best choices for hiring as watchdogs. The regulatory system has never been a top priority of a new president, or at least not since Franklin D. Roosevelt had to invent a system during the Great Depression . Mr. Obama’s choices, like those of Mr. Roosevelt, may be with us long after he is gone.

Emergency Economic Stabilization Act (2008)