Kansas: Anti-Evolution Guidelines Are Repealed

Abstract: The State Board of Education repealed science guidelines questioning evolution, putting into effect new ones that reflect mainstream scientific views. The move was a political defeat for advocates of “intelligent design” who had helped write the standards being repealed. The intelligent design concept holds that life is so complex that it must have been created by a higher power. The board removed language suggesting that basic evolutionary concepts were controversial and being challenged by new research. It also approved a new definition of science, limiting it to the search for natural explanations of what is observed in the universe. The state has had five sets of science standards in eight years, each affected by the seesawing fortunes of socially conservative Republicans and a coalition of Democrats and moderate Republicans.


A Priest’s Legacy Survives, and Divides, in Mexico

Abstract: MEXICO CITY — Roberta Garza, a Mexican newspaper editor from a prominent family, recalls how the Rev. Marcial Maciel Degollado would stare into the eyes of Mexico ’s elite and go into a very persuasive fund-raising pitch: God himself expected them to share their wealth. When her father, an industrialist from Monterrey and a big supporter of Father Maciel’s Legionaries of Christ , died in 1991, the priest began working his magic on her mother and the eight Garza children. The family’s financial devotion yielded benefits that included more than one private meeting with Pope John Paul II at the Vatican. The Vatican’s decision to take control of the powerful religious order and to label Father Maciel “devoid of scruples and of genuine religious sentiment” because of his long history of sexual abuse is causing particular soul-searching in Mexico, where many of the country’s upper crust helped the Mexican-born priest build his religious empire. It is in Mexico where Father Maciel founded the Legion in 1941 and courted a Who’s Who of the country’s well-heeled entrepreneurs and rising politicians. But most of his victims were also from Mexico and it was in this country that he fathered several children. Criticism of Father Maciel is fiercest in Mexico, although even after his public shaming, he still has supporters. Father Maciel, who died in 2008 , created a vast network of private schools and universities across Mexico for the children of the elite, which helped bring in money for his movement’s worldwide expansion. There were philanthropic efforts as well, like 23 Helping Hand schools for poor Mexican children. With scandal tarnishing the Legion, some insiders are concerned that the empire might implode and the funds dry up. José Luis Damián Zúñiga, a member of the Legion’s lay affiliate, Regnum Christi, acknowledged that the scandals were testing the faith of some members. “Donations will be more difficult to obtain, and explanations will be required as to how the money will be spent once it’s received,” said Mr. Damián, who vowed to stick with the order. It is not clear what changes will be made to the leadership or to the order, which reports worldwide membership of 800 priests and 2,500 seminarians as well as more than 70,000 lay members. Anabel Mellado, who raises money for the Legion’s foundations, said she believed its charitable work would continue in Mexico because so many prominent Mexicans were Legion members who felt shamed by the founder’s actions and wanted to salvage the order. The directors for the Legion’s charitable wing include executives of some of Mexico’s largest corporations, including the cement multinational Cemex; Copamex, a large paper producer; and Banco Compartamos, the country’s largest microfinance group. Benefactors include some of Mexico’s top tycoons, including Ms. Garza’s brother, Dionisio Garza Medina, who recently stepped down as the chief executive of the industrial conglomerate Alfa; and Carlos Slim, the telecommunications magnate and investor in The New York Times. Mr. Slim’s relationship with Father Maciel and the Legionaries goes back decades and he continues to donate to the group’s charitable work, said his spokesman and son-in-law, Arturo Elías Ayub. Mr. Slim, now the world’s richest man , has donated a “good amount” of money to the Legion’s network of low-cost universities and plans to continue giving, Mr. Elías said. “We like the way the Legionaries educate,” he said. Mr. Slim appeared publicly with Father Maciel as late as 2004, long after the first allegations surfaced. The power that the Legionaries wield through their allies became evident in 1997, when a small Mexico City television station began investigating the evidence against Father Maciel. Javier Moreno Valle, who owned the channel then, said that the Legionaries refused to comment for the program but, unsuccessfully, lobbied to keep the story off the air. “They started pressing through every channel they could,” he said. Roberto Servitje, part of the powerful family that controls Grupo Bimbo, a giant baked goods multinational, called for an advertising boycott of the station. He was seconded by Alfonso Romo, then a wealthy businessman from Monterrey with interests in cigarettes and insurance. A friend of Mr. Moreno Valle, an executive from Televisa, the country’s main broadcaster, also called. The Servitje family declined to comment on the episode. Father Maciel himself worked his political contacts to try to save his reputation. Mr. Moreno Valle received a call from the communications minister, Carlos Ruiz Sacristán, who asked him not to broadcast the program. Father Maciel also spoke to President Ernesto Zedillo’s private secretary, Liébano Sáenz, who called Mr. Moreno Valle and asked him to cancel the program. Under the presidency of Vicente Fox, which began in 2000 and ended in 2006, the Legionaries’ more covert political influence burst into full view. His wife, Marta Sahagún, is a supporter of the order and the couple married last year in a religious ceremony presided over by a Legionary priest, eight years after they married in a civil ceremony. One of Father Maciel’s legacies will be the Mexican families he divided. Anxious that a relative might storm out of the house, Ms. Garza largely avoids speaking of the Legion around her family. “We talk about the weather,” said Ms. Garza, 43, the youngest of the eight children and one of those in the family who, despite going to Legion schools as a girl, broke with the group. When she does talk about the Legion, she pulls no punches, even though her brother is one of the highest officials in the order in Rome. “The damage they did to families is huge,” said Ms. Garza, who grew up in Monterrey, a conservative city that was a gold mine for Father Maciel. “They didn’t just take people’s money. They took away their children to live lives in the Legion and they controlled them.” Juan Vaca, a former Legion priest and one of Father Maciel’s victims who now lives in the United States, said he was estranged from his sister for years because she, a consecrated Legion member, did not believe his allegations. “She thought I was making false accusations against this holy man,” he said. “Now, she knows everything I said was the truth. She appreciates my courage.” Juan Carlos, who asked that his last name not be printed because his relatives work in the order, provided a glimpse of the scandal’s impact on his upper middle class family. He attended the Cumbres Institute in Mexico City, the first of what is now a national network of schools for the sons of Mexico’s elite. Two brothers joined the order as lay workers and continue to work for it, although one is having second thoughts. His mother began to attend regular meetings for Legionary women and met Father Maciel’s sister there, whom she revered, he said. His sons have gone to Cumbres, and he does not intend to pull out the remaining one. “I am convinced that there is a lot more to the Legionaries than Father Maciel,” he said. “They have done great things and helped many people.” But he was relieved when a school retreat for his son was canceled after the revelations about Father Maciel. “They brainwash you in those retreats,” he said, adding later, “They ask for money to fix the school pool, but they raise enough to build 15 pools.”

Maciel Degollado Marcial
Legionaries of Christ
Sex Crimes
Mexico
Priests
Child Abuse and Neglect


In Final Tally, Vote for Gay Marriage Costs 3 Republicans

Abstract: As four Republican state senators, one by one, agreed to break with their party and cast a politically risky vote to legalize same-sex marriage last year, Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg and gay-rights advocates vowed to do everything in their power to protect them against political retribution. But when the Legislature returns to Albany next month, only one of those four senators will be among those sworn into office. One, facing the prospect of a tough challenge, decided not to run again; a second was defeated by a more conservative Republican in a primary, and on Thursday, a third conceded defeat after a monthlong paper-ballot counting process in a three-way race in which a more conservative candidate drew so many votes from him that the race was won by a Democrat. The fates of the same-sex-marriage-supporting Republicans in New York are a jarring note for same-sex marriage advocates, who last month claimed four victories on ballot measures in Maine, Maryland, Minnesota and Washington, and last week celebrated the Supreme Court’s decision to hear two cases relating to same-sex marriage. “The four G.O.P. senators who voted for marriage equality, they were ahead of their time, frankly,” said Gregory T. Angelo, the chairman of the Log Cabin Republicans of New York State, a group that supports gay rights. Activists on both sides of the same-sex marriage issue nationwide had kept a close eye on the fate of the four New York Republicans, whose re-election battles were depicted as a de facto referendum on whether it was electorally safe for Republicans to support same-sex marriage. Gay-rights advocates talked hopefully of being able to persuade Republican legislators in other statehouses that voting for same-sex marriage did not amount to political suicide. They helped provide financial support for the New York senators; the four Republicans ultimately raised more than $3.5 million for re-election bids, according to the New York Public Interest Research Group. But, same-sex marriage opponents paid for billboards to denounce the incumbents and predicted that voters would punish the senators for switching their positions. “People just don’t forget these things,” said the Rev. Jason J. McGuire, the executive director of New Yorkers for Constitutional Freedoms, a conservative group that sued, unsuccessfully, to challenge the legality of how the Senate approved the marriage bill. “I hope that what the Senate Republicans will have learned in the last election cycle is that policies of appeasement always fail,” he said. “And essentially that’s what they did: they caved to the governor and really more liberal-minded interests rather than their core constituency.” The outcry against the Republicans had an awkward side effect — although conservatives contributed significantly to their fates, two of the three are being replaced by Democrats who support same-sex marriage. But Michael R. Long, the chairman of the state’s Conservative Party said the races should amount to a wake-up call for Republicans. “Principles matter,” Mr. Long said. “These guys were institutions. And I think their voters were upset and were tired of being taken advantage of.” Gay-rights advocates on Thursday played down the significance of the election results, suggesting that, as with any local races, the outcomes were the result of a blend of factors. For example, the senator who decided not to seek re-election, James S. Alesi of Monroe County, had caused controversy over an issue that had nothing to do with politics: he broke his leg while exploring a house that was under construction, and then filed a lawsuit against the homeowners. And the senator who lost his primary, Roy J. McDonald of Saratoga County, emboldened his critics by saying that anyone upset with his position on the issue could “take the job and shove it.” (The lone senator to win re-election, Mark J. Grisanti of Buffalo, had his own baggage: he took part in a bar brawl at an American Indian casino. He sailed to an easy victory in a four-way race.) Mr. Alesi, in an interview Thursday, said that Mr. Saland and Mr. McDonald “endured the wrath and the venomous vengeance of a small handful of people for being courageous heroes.” “I can’t think of too many senators or members of the Assembly that have ever done anything historic,” he said. “ So when you look at the four of us, whether we’re survivors of the political process or not, we did something that was so historic that it overshadows how you feel about somebody’s win or loss.” The last of the senators to fall was Stephen M. Saland of Poughkeepsie, who had served in the Legislature for more than three decades. He lost the support of the Conservative Party because of his vote, and he barely won the Republican primary in September. The challenger who nearly beat him, Neil A. Di Carlo, stayed in the race as the candidate of the Conservative Party, and ended up winning more than 14 percent of the vote. Mr. Di Carlo on Thursday said Mr. Saland had been defeated despite receiving financial support from Mr. Bloomberg “and other radical homosexualists.” The difference in votes between Mr. Saland and his Democratic opponent, Terry W. Gipson , was close enough that the race was not called on election night, and the candidates fought for weeks over which paper ballots to count. But last weekend, Mr. Saland concluded he had little chance of winning, and told his lawyers to ease up; on Thursday, officials in Dutchess County finished tallying the paper ballots, and Mr. Saland conceded defeat to Mr. Gipson. Election officials said he won by about 2,100 votes. Mr. Bloomberg, who donated money and helped raise money for the Republican senators, was obviously disappointed, saying in a statement Thursday, “Senator Saland is everything you look for in a public servant — a principled leader who stands up for what is right irrespective of partisan politics.” And Mr. Cuomo, a Democrat who had personally persuaded Mr. Saland and the three other Republicans to risk their careers by voting for same-sex marriage, was similarly rueful. “Steve is a public servant of remarkable character, integrity, and courage and serves as a model for our collective aspirations of how our elected officials should perform,” Mr. Cuomo said in a statement. “It is unfortunate that an elected official who stood so strong for equality, as Steve did, was not able to survive in today’s political environment.”

Same-Sex Marriage Civil Unions and Domestic Partnerships


Technology Can Be a Blessing for Bored Workers

Abstract: OF all the repetitive, mind-numbing jobs in the late 19th century, cigar-rolling was special. Unlike sewing clothes, mining coal or forging steel, it was blessedly quiet. And thus cigar workers, whether in Chicago or Havana, were the first ones in their time who managed to introduce that vital commodity — distraction — onto the work floor. Using their own wages, and backed by a powerful union, they paid for a “reader” who sat in an elevated chair and began the morning with the news and political commentary. By the afternoon, he would usually have switched to a popular novel. The 100 or so rollers on the floor were his captive audience, listening as they worked. Today, the outside world has managed to sneak into the workplace through personal music players and cellphones, not always with official consent. But discussion of the effects of technology on our working lives is almost always restricted to office workers, who often see cellphones and BlackBerrys as emblems of their busy lives. For blue-collar workers in many occupations, however, cellphones and music players have also had profound effects — including escape from the tedium or the physical isolation of their jobs. Unlike white-collar workers, many of these workers face restrictions from employers or objections from customers. New Yorkers like to complain about cabbies talking on cellphones, but they rarely ask themselves why someone driving a cab late at night far from home needs the phone in the first place. Music helps many postal workers stay sharp during what is often repetitive work. Giselle E. Ambursley, part of a group of five or six who work on a mail-sorting machine at the Postal Service’s Morgan Processing and Distribution Center in Manhattan, said that on a typical day, “four out of five” listen to music. “It helps most of us get through the day.” “I remember when I first got a Walkman,” she said. “I was excited, especially about using it at work. I bought tapes galore. I have thousands of dollars worth of tapes.” Ms. Ambursley, a shop steward in the American Postal Workers Union, now uses a Microsoft Zune and says she intends to convert those tapes into digital files for her player. Cellphones are another matter. Cellphone conversations are not tolerated while working because supervisors see them as a distraction, Ms. Ambursley said, and when a call comes in, it can be returned only when off the floor. It is a shame, she said, because for night workers, the calls are often short — wishing a good night or helping with homework — and some people can easily use a hands-free cellphone while working. The time spent leaving the work floor is a waste, she said. “They keep bringing up safety, but I bring up productivity.” David White, a freelance truck driver from Amherst, Mass., said his Treo 700 — a phone with an Internet connection — made the many days he spends away from home more comfortable. While he recognizes that truckers are not the stereotypical users of a Treo, he thinks they are ideal users. “Getting my Hotmail — now Yahoo mail — on my P.D.A., that made a world of difference,” he said. “It didn’t matter if I was living in a truck.” His iPod is another critical gadget. He says he downloads audio books from Audible.com and listens to them through an adapter in the tape deck in his truck. His job does have advantages, he says. “You’ve got no boss, no one bothering you. You just have to show up,” he said, but even so, “if I didn’t have the books, I couldn’t do it.” Last Christmas season, however, he worked as a temporary employee for United Parcel Service, moving packages — but not making deliveries — and he found that the trucks had no tape decks. There were speakers, he said, and he saw that some full-time employees had rigged CD players and radios to connect to the speakers. He was leery, however, of using them without permission. He was left, he said, to listen to the G.P.S. road directions. “It was a little British voice,” he said. “Even that much was enough.” Truckers and mail sorters have an advantage, however, that other workers do not: they largely do not deal with the public. Cab drivers, for example, are the most widely vilified users of cellphones in the workplace because they use them in front of customers. In New York, cabbies are not permitted to use cellphones while driving. The city has been sending undercover inspectors to ticket them. Likewise, U.P.S. delivery drivers are not permitted to listen to music. Nor are trainees at the Ready, Willing and Able program in New York who clean the streets. The program’s spokesman said they “are learning how to be responsible workers, which includes balancing work and personal life.” He said they are highly visible, so “New Yorkers can see them on their cellphones or listening to music, as opposed to interacting with each other and the public.” Biju Mathew, a professor of technology at Rider College who has been an advocate for taxi drivers, said cellphones have replaced the citizens’ band radio system. CB was “completely communal,” he said. With the arrival of cellphones, “it was broken down to a series of individual conversations,” he said. But with newer technology, he said, the drivers frequently speak in groups of 6 to 10 drivers in conference calls. “They found that a single conversation is isolating, and they are back to communal discussions. They have readapted the technology.” The cigar makers faced restrictions of their own. After a strike in 1931 in Tampa, Fla., failed, said Nancy Hewitt, a Rutgers history professor, the workers returned, but the factory owners had dismantled the readers’ chairs. “They replaced the readers with radios,” she said. Over the next decade, industrial production came to the cigar factory and the radios were gone, too — no one could hear them over the noise.

boredom
Labor
Recordings and Downloads (Audio)
Computers and the Internet


Presque Isle Baseball Team, Always on Road, Ends Season Close to Home

Abstract: The University of Maine at Presque Isle baseball team, which had not played a home game since 2005 because of the snow that typically covers the campus field all season, ended its 2009 season earlier this week with a home doubleheader against Bates College at a nearby high school. Although Presque Isle lost both games on Wednesday — the scores were 8-3 and 4-3 — the team concluded a successful season given the heavy travel. After losing eight consecutive games during a February trip through western Virginia , the team rallied with winning streaks of four and six games. The Owls (14-25, 13-7 Sunrise Conference) finished second in their postseason conference tournament and had players honored regionally and nationally. Last year’s team was just 5-20. Tyler Delaney, the Owls’ junior second baseman from Nova Scotia, was named the National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics baseball player of the week in early April after going 21 for 25 with 15 runs batted in during a five-game stretch. Delaney, who led the nation in triples this season, was selected to the all-conference team, along with his teammates D. J. Charette, Corey Harding and Tyson Tash, a freshman who was named the conference rookie of the year. The lone senior, pitcher Brandon Elie, was asked earlier this season if he wished he had played major college athletics, where teams fly in jets, stay in nice hotels and play before packed grandstands. “I’d settle for a home game that my parents could come to,” he said. His parents attended the doubleheader on Wednesday, which represented his final college games.

University of Maine
Baseball
Colleges and Universities
Bates College


Salvation Army Sues Bank of New York Over Securities Losses

Abstract: The southern division of the Salvation Army filed suit against the Bank of New York Mellon on Friday for almost $22 million, contending that the bank had “grossly mismanaged” assets belonging to the charity by investing them in mortgage-backed securities and other risky investments. “As a result of BNY Mellon’s misconduct, the Salvation Army has incurred losses and is left holding unproductive, toxic assets with extended maturity dates, the values of which have substantially declined,” the organization said in a lawsuit filed on Friday. “The Salvation Army cannot now devote those assets to its many charitable projects.” The organization, with its four divisions, is one of the largest charities in the country, with assets of $8.8 billion in 2009, the latest year for which financial data is available. In 1997, the Salvation Army hired BNY Mellon to maintain custody of securities it owned, and shortly thereafter, agreed to participate in a securities lending program . Under that program, the organization’s securities were lent to short-sellers in exchange for cash collateral, which the bank then invested. “We believe our actions were appropriate, and we will defend ourselves vigorously against these claims, which are without merit,” said Ron Gruendl, a spokesman for BNY Mellon. “We have a very rigorous process, and our clients understand both the benefits and risks of securities lending.” The Salvation Army said in its lawsuit that it had no previous experience with securities lending and thus “emphasized to BNY Mellon that it wanted little or no risk as a result of participating in the program.” When the securities in such programs are returned, the collateral that was posted is returned to the borrower and the lender keeps any returns made on it — or makes up any losses. In its lawsuit, the organization said that the list of approved investments offered to it by the bank included low-yielding but highly liquid products like government bonds, certificates of deposit and high-grade commercial paper . Instead, it said, the bank invested the collateral in securities backed by subprime and other risky mortgages as well as floating-rate notes of highly leveraged companies like Lehman Brothers, the CIT Group and the insurer American International Group. “These investments were inconsistent with the conservative risk profile of the Salvation Army,” the organization said in the lawsuit. “Moreover, BNY Mellon’s decision to overweight the Salvation Army’s portfolio heavily in favor of asset-backed securities tied to the housing market and financial services companies violated basic principles of prudent investing.” The lawsuit noted that in a meeting last July, the bank’s chief executive, Robert P. Kelly, stated that the Salvation Army had pushed for higher yields on the securities-lending account, but it denied that such a request was ever made by the charity.

Suits and Litigation
Subprime Mortgage Crisis
Salvation Army
Bank of New York Mellon Corp


Bloomberg’s Search Method: Stay Within the Circle

Abstract: Shortly after 2 p.m. on Tuesday, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg circulated through his City Hall offices, introducing a tall, blond woman who looked slightly familiar to his top aides. A foreign dignitary, perhaps? Or maybe an ambitious out-of-state politician hoping to impress the mayor? Somebody’s wife whom they were supposed to recognize? No, it was Cathleen P. Black , and in less than an hour, Mayor Bloomberg would stun New York’s political, business and education establishments by naming her as the city’s schools chancellor, replacing Joel I. Klein . To a degree unusual even for an administration that relishes keeping its deliberations as private as possible, hardly anyone knew of Mr. Klein’s departure or Ms. Black’s arrival until minutes before the official announcement. While such posts are typically filled after highly publicized national searches that can last months or even a year, there is little evidence that anyone else was seriously vetted or considered — and few of the usual suspects, including members of the mayor’s inner circle, were even consulted. “I didn’t know Joel was leaving,” said Merryl H. Tisch, the chancellor of the State Board of Regents and a longtime friend of the mayor, who said she was “surprised” when Mr. Bloomberg broke the news to her, around the time of the 3:15 p.m. news conference unveiling Ms. Black as the next chancellor. “It all went down very quickly.” Even Mr. Klein, who had spent eight years running the nation’s largest school system, did not know who his successor would be until Monday. And not until 30 minutes before the news conference — or just a little before reporters were told, vaguely, of an important announcement — did Mr. Klein inform his leadership team, apologizing for the secrecy of a process over which he said, with resignation, he had no say. Inexplicable as it may have seemed to outsiders, the secrecy around the search for someone to run the schools crystallized two tenets of the Bloomberg era: the mayor’s faith in the ability of business leaders to fix the ills of government, and his keen dislike of drawn-out public debates that might derail his agenda. And, in what has become a Bloomberg hallmark, the mayor relied on someone he knew through business and social networks, someone squarely in his comfort zone of wealthy and socially prominent Upper East Side residents, someone with whom he has shared many friends and colleagues, dinners and drinks. Stu Loeser, a spokesman for Mr. Bloomberg, declined to discuss details of the search process, who else was interviewed for the job, precisely how the mayor made his decision or even when he first met Ms. Black, chairwoman of Hearst Magazines, saying only that the mayor “spoke to many individuals about the position and chose the best.” But Eric Nadelstern, the deputy chancellor for school support and instruction and a respected 39-year veteran of the city school system, said that if he was a candidate for the chancellorship, he did not know about it. “I’ve never actually had a conversation with anyone either asking me to consider it or, from my perspective, expressing interest in the position,” he said. Michelle Rhee , the education reformer who recently departed as chief of the Washington schools, did not respond to an e-mail on Wednesday, but several people close to her and Mr. Klein said she had not been interviewed. Ms. Black spent much of Wednesday in her office on the 43rd floor of the Hearst Tower in Midtown, fielding congratulations. A call placed her office was returned by a spokeswoman for the Education Department , who said the chancellor-in-waiting would not be doing any interviews until after she begins in December. Mr. Loeser also declined to make the mayor or First Deputy Mayor Patricia E. Harris , who was said by many to be crucial in the selection, available to discuss the choice. On Monday, Ms. Black was seen at the Hearst Tower with a thick stack of materials concerning public education. One City Hall insider, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he did not want to risk offending Mayor Bloomberg, said that key City Hall officials had spent hours briefing Ms. Black this week on education issues. If many education stakeholders were hurt to be left out of the process, Howard Wolfson , the deputy mayor for intergovernmental affairs, defended the approach as crucial to avoid making Mr. Klein a lame duck. “The mayor felt strongly that had Joel announced he was leaving and engaged in a search at that point, the school system would have been destabilized,” he said. “You would have had a situation in which there was a lot of uncertainty. He doesn’t think you find the best people, when they are paraded in for interviews.” Instead, Mr. Bloomberg turned to someone he has known for many years, if not particularly well, a fellow media mogul whose social life and business interests cross-pollinate neatly with his own. Ms. Black and her husband, Thomas E. Harvey, a lawyer and avid Republican donor, are known for hosting Christmas parties in their exclusive Park Avenue building, where apartments go for at least $10 million, and current and former neighbors include Tom Brokaw and Lloyd C. Blankfein . Mr. Bloomberg and his girlfriend, Diana L. Taylor , are regulars at those soirees. In 2007, Ms. Taylor, a former state banking commissioner, was among several people who hosted an event to celebrate the publication of Ms. Black’s book “Basic Black” at the Hearst Tower. One other prominent co-host was Gayle King, a close friend of Oprah Winfrey , and the editor at large of O, The Oprah Magazine. (Mr. Bloomberg, Ms. Black and Ms. Winfrey were photographed together at the 2006 opening of the new Hearst Tower.) But Ms. King, too, was out of the loop on Ms. Black’s career change, according to someone who was with her when the announcement occurred. Exactly when Mr. Bloomberg began courting Ms. Black for the job is not clear. Michael Mulgrew, president of the United Federation of Teachers , said that when he arrived at a diner for breakfast with the mayor on Oct. 19, he ran into Ms. Black, who appeared to have just met with Mr. Bloomberg. The mayor introduced her to the union chief but made no mention of her having interest in or connection to the schools. Mr. Bloomberg and Ms. Black, along with Mr. Klein and Rupert Murdoch , the chairman of News Corporation , are regular attendees of the New York investment bank Allen & Company’s annual conference in Sun Valley , Idaho , the exclusive gathering each July of the country’s publishing elite. Mr. Murdoch, who provided Mr. Klein with a job as a new executive vice president of News Corporation, was also apparently unaware of the mayor’s choice of Ms. Black until the day of the announcement, according to two people who spoke anonymously so as not to jeopardize access to Mr. Murdoch. These two people said Mr. Murdoch, who has grown more interested in education, had for months been discussing a possible job with Mr. Klein, over meals and at industry events. Mr. Klein said the two met on Sunday to hammer out the details. For her part, Ms. Tisch, the Board of Regents chancellor, said she could not recall meeting Ms. Black. Asked about the choice, she was circumspect, saying, “I don’t know her, so I don’t like to talk about things I don’t know.”

Cathleen P Black
Mike Bloomberg
NYC
K-12 Education
NYC Department of Education


Yellen Tells N.Y.U. Graduates to Expect Failure and Learn From It

Abstract: Janet L. Yellen has long occupied a front-row seat as Washington grappled with the financial crisis and the weak economy that has plagued the nation. Standing over second base at Yankee Stadium, where she delivered a commencement speech on Wednesday, Ms. Yellen suggested that playing the game is a lot harder than it looks from the stands. Ms. Yellen, the chairwoman of the Federal Reserve, told a swirl of thousands of purple-robed New York University graduates that finding the right path in life involves missteps. Even Yankees legends such as Babe Ruth failed most of the time when stepping up to bat, she said. The Fed can relate to that, Ms. Yellen said. “We brainstormed and designed a host of programs to unclog the plumbing of the financial system and to keep credit flowing,” said Ms. Yellen, who has served on the central bank in various positions since 2004, taking over as its leader in February. “Not everything worked, but we kept at it, and we remained focused on the task at hand. I learned the lesson during this period that one’s response to the inevitable setbacks matters as much as the balance of victories and defeats.” While avoiding any detailed discussion of monetary policy, Ms. Yellen heaped praise on her predecessor, Ben S. Bernanke, saying his grit and courage helped him manage the financial crisis in difficult times. Mr. Bernanke’s actions were “unprecedented in ambition and scope,” Ms. Yellen said. “He faced relentless criticism, personal threats and the certainty that history would judge him harshly if he were wrong,” she said. “But he stood up for what he believed was right and necessary. Ben Bernanke’s intelligence and knowledge served him well as chairman.” The speech on the infield was a departure from Ms. Yellen’s typical days, which she often spends surrounded by economists in the Fed’s cloistered headquarters and meeting with business executives, politicians and officials. Wednesday morning, she shared the stage in the Bronx with a baseball legend, Mariano Rivera, a former Yankees player and top relief pitcher who played on five winning World Series teams; with Elena Kagan, the Supreme Court justice; and with Aretha Franklin, the queen of soul. All received honorary degrees. Ms. Yellen told the graduates the story of how focusing on the simple California sea slug, even amid ridicule, led to a Nobel Prize for Eric R. Kandel, an N.Y.U. alumnus whose research helped decipher the chemistry of memory. It is a lesson in being persistently curious, she said. Listen carefully, she advised the graduates, even to detractors. Success based on ability alone is a myth, Ms. Yellen said. Instead, she advised them to show grit, which she described as “an abiding commitment to work hard toward long-range goals and to persevere through the setbacks that come along the way.” The ceremony represented a homecoming of sorts for Ms. Yellen, who spent her childhood in Brooklyn and attended Fort Hamilton High School in Bay Ridge. Ms. Yellen, who studied economics as an undergraduate at Brown University, went on to receive a doctorate from Yale. She later became an economics professor at the University of California, Berkeley and served for a time as President Bill Clinton’s chief economic adviser. Her husband and son are also economists. The state of the economy was definitely on the minds of graduates and parents at the ceremony. Angela Bountouvas of Queens said that when she sent her son, Anastasios, to college four years ago, she had hoped the job market would be brighter by the time he graduated. He is a math major and is about to join the ranks of the unemployed. “It’s opening up a little, but it might not be enough,” she said. For Ms. Yellen, any wrong move could spook Wall Street and rock the nation’s economy. Her every word and action is examined for deeper meaning by legions of analysts and economic forecasters. As the first woman to lead the Federal Reserve, she is under the microscope. The other women honored at Wednesday’s ceremony also are known for breaking gender barriers. Ms. Kagan is the fourth woman to serve as a United States Supreme Court justice; Ms. Franklin was the first woman to be named to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Her song “Respect” was often seen as an anthem of the women’s movement of the late 1960s and early 1970s. Those three were on the stage at a time when several other prominent women have taken a beating in the news media. New York tabloids published headlines this week suggesting the wife of New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio was a reluctant mother to the couple’s daughter. Media pundits have debated whether gender played a role in the ouster of Jill Abramson, who until last week was the executive editor of The New York Times. In recent months, Republicans have called Wendy Davis, a Democratic candidate for Texas governor, “Abortion Barbie.” At Wednesday morning’s ceremony Josh Lipowsky, 32, said he was impressed by the slate of honorees, particularly Ms. Yellen. “She’s one of the most powerful, if not the most powerful woman in the country,” he said. Sarah McGowan, a 22-year-old music and Spanish major, was also happy to see successful women honored. Ms. McGowan called Ms. Yellen “a strong female figure,” and said that while her speech did not mention gender at all, just by showing up “she’s telling women they should not be afraid to go for it.”

US Economy
Federal Reserve
Ben S Bernanke
Janet L Yellen
Commencement speech
College
NYU


Britain: Islamic Leader’s Arrival Catches Government Off Guard

Abstract: British officials were left red-faced after a radical Islamic leader banned from the United Kingdom managed to get into the country anyway. Sheik Raed Salah, the head of the Islamic Movement in Israel, has since been arrested and is now fighting deportation proceedings, but opposition politicians on Wednesday demanded to know how Sheik Salah, an Israeli Arab, gained entry in the first place. A Labour lawmaker, Yvette Cooper, called on the Conservative-led government to “explain why an individual banned from this country was allowed to walk in and instead of being stopped at the border had to be pursued by the police instead.” Sheik Salah had arrived to address Parliament, but news of his invitation outraged many lawmakers. The home secretary, Theresa May, declined to comment directly on the case but vowed to block anyone whose presence “is not conducive to the public good.” It was reported that Ms. May had tried to prevent Sheik Salah from entering the country.

Muslims and Islam
Great Britain
Islamic Movement


Group Sues Aetna, Claiming Discrimination Against H.I.V. Patients

Abstract: A consumer group has sued the health insurer Aetna , claiming that it discriminated against patients with H.I.V. when it required them to obtain medications exclusively through its own mail-order pharmacy. The lawsuit , filed Friday in federal court in San Diego by the advocacy group Consumer Watchdog, argues that Aetna’s policy violates the new federal health care law, which prohibits insurers from discriminating against people based on medical condition. The company’s new policy, which takes effect Jan. 1 and applies to people who have purchased individual coverage, also raises the out-of-pocket amount that patients must pay for their treatments, potentially doubling it in some cases, according to the suit. “We are in an era where presumably we guarantee access to health insurance to anyone, regardless of their health history or disability,” said Jerry Flanagan, the lead staff lawyer for Consumer Watchdog. But “insurance companies are still in the business of insuring people for the highest premium they can, and keeping their medical expenses down.” In a statement, a spokeswoman for Aetna said the policy change was “part of our ongoing strategy to do all we can to keep our health plans affordable and help with medication adherence.” She said the move was consistent with industry standards. Aetna is the most recent insurer criticized for its coverage of specialty drugs like H.I.V. treatments, which can cost more than $2,000 a month. In an effort to limit their exposure to the rising costs, many insurers have been placing additional restrictions on the drugs or increasing the out-of-pocket amounts that patients must pay. In May, two consumer groups filed a federal complaint asserting that four insurers in Florida (including CoventryOne, an Aetna subsidiary) had discriminated against people with H.I.V. by making their drugs more costly and difficult to obtain. All of the companies have since agreed to make changes that would lower the cost of the drugs. Consumer Watchdog has previously sued two other insurers, United Healthcare and Anthem Blue Cross of California, over similar policies restricting H.I.V. drugs to mail-order programs. Both of those cases were later settled and members of those plans can now opt out of the mail-order plans. Aetna said members could opt out of its new policy as well. But the lead plaintiff in the lawsuit, who is not named for privacy reasons, claims in the suit that his requests to do so were turned down multiple times. Mr. Flanagan of Consumer Watchdog said no such option was made available to consumers he had spoken to, and he asked Aetna to suspend its mail-order policy “to give us time to make the program truly optional.” The federal government is also assessing the mail-order issue. This fall, the Department of Health and Human Services proposed a rule that would require insurers to offer an alternative to mail-order pharmacies, although members could be charged more for using a local retail pharmacy. The department said that requiring consumers to use mail-order pharmacies could discriminate against people without a fixed address, or those who wished to keep their conditions confidential from neighbors or co-workers who might see the packages. The department has not said whether it will go forward with the proposed rule. Insurers and pharmacy-benefit managers for years have been prodding consumers with chronic medical conditions to obtain their drugs through mail-order pharmacies. Besides serving as an added revenue stream, mail-order pharmacies keep down costs as well as premiums, the industry claims. Compared to a neighborhood pharmacy, specialty mail-order pharmacies can also keep better track of the needs of patients with serious medical conditions, the industry says. “People love it — they love the convenience and the savings and the ease of handling,” said Mark Merritt, the chief executive of the Pharmaceutical Care Management Association, which represents pharmacy-benefit managers and opposes the proposed federal rule. But patient advocates say that the restriction of patients to mail-order programs has been particularly onerous for people with H.I.V. Often, they have close relationships with local pharmacists, some of whom specialize in treating people with the virus and are aware of the long list of additional medications that many patients must take. Refilling medications through the mail breaks that bond, advocates say, and also increases the risk that patients will miss a dose if a refill is not delivered on time. Missing even a small number of doses can lead to a resurgence of the virus. “We talk about everything that’s going on with you — it’s your whole life,” said Marva Brannum, the pharmacy manager and an H.I.V. specialist at Premier Pharmacy in the Los Angeles area. Ms. Brannum was mentioned in the lawsuit filed by Consumer Watchdog but she said she was not paid by the group. “In a perfect world, all of the physicians would be talking to one another and know what the other physicians are prescribing, but that doesn’t always happen.” According to the lawsuit, Aetna’s new policy requires that all H.I.V. drugs be obtained through one of its divisions, Aetna Specialty Pharmacy . Early refills of the drugs are not permitted, so members have to call or fax each month to reorder their drugs. In the statement, Aetna said that the 30-day limit on H.I.V. medications was not new, nor was the requirement that members refill their prescriptions each month limited to patients with H.I.V. The limitation on supply, the company said, allows in-network pharmacies to check in more frequently with patients to help them cope with side effects or other problems. In addition, the company said, the pharmacists “check on a member’s drug and dose and help prevent waste if their dose changes. This helps save members money.” But the lawsuit asserts that the new policy raises the out-of-pocket costs of the drugs. Previously, Aetna members had to pay $20 to $70 per prescription for H.I.V. drugs. Now they will be asked to pay 20 percent of the cost of the drug, up to $150, the lawsuit said. Aetna said a patient’s out-of-pocket costs varied depending on the plan selected, and that payment assistance programs were available for some drugs.

Aetna
Consumer Watchdog
AIDS,HIV
Discrimination
Pharmaceuticals
Health Insurance
Obamacare,Affordable Care Act
Lawsuits
Health and Human Services


A Mother’s Ability to Reproduce All by Herself

Abstract: Q. I read that some wild snakes gave birth without mating. How does such a “virgin birth” work? A. The development of offspring from unfertilized egg cells is called parthenogenesis. It is common in many invertebrate species that have two sexes for reproduction to occur without input from a male representative. Instead of combining with a male gamete to form a zygote with half of its DNA from each parent, an egg cell gives rise to the embryo stage on its own. Only since the late 1800s has it become known that such asexual reproduction also occurs in some vertebrates, including snakes, lizards like the endangered Komodo dragon , birds and even sharks . Such births were documented only in captive representatives of these species, like zoo specimens and domestic fowl. Although these births have not been seen in the wild, a 2012 study found strong suggestive evidence that they do in fact happen. The report, in the journal Biology Letters, involved two closely related species of snakes, the copperhead and the cottonmouth. The offspring of two pregnant females collected in the wild showed genetic characteristics that were identical to those of the mothers. The likelihood of this happening if mating had occurred, adding paternal DNA identical to the maternal contribution, is “infinitesimally small,” the researchers said. They concluded that their findings represented the first cases of such parthenogenesis found in the wild. question@nytimes.com

Snake
Reproduction
Biology Letters Journal
Biology and Biochemistry
Shark
Birds
Lizards


Parents Upset at School Renovation Delays

Abstract: GREENWICH AFTER 3 years of delays, the students of Hamilton Avenue Elementary will finally get to move into their newly renovated school this fall — but that may not happen until the end of October. A planned $24 million renovation of the school has taken longer than anticipated — an Aug. 15 completion date came and went — and it is also about $6 million over budget. Students began the school year on Aug. 27 along with others in Greenwich, but they reported to modular classrooms that have been set up at Western Middle School while their school is under construction. School officials had hoped that the Hamilton Avenue School would be granted a temporary certificate of occupancy last week that would have allowed them to move students and teachers into permanent quarters by Columbus Day weekend, but town inspectors turned them down. Frank Mazza, a volunteer who heads the town Building Committee, which oversees renovations of school facilities under state law, said they didn’t receive the temporary certificate because they are still waiting on an air quality report. There are also a variety of other small unfinished items including, for example, Braille characters on important signs in the building. Mr. Mazza said the electrical inspector also found some electric outlets that were not working on Tuesday. The many delays in the school’s renovation, which began after mold was discovered in the building in 2003, have angered parents and frustrated school officials. The town’s Board of Estimate and Taxation said several weeks ago that it needed more information before awarding any more money to the overdue project. When the Building Committee requested an additional $500,000 on July 31, the board of estimate told the committee to return on Sept. 8 and show what had been accomplished before any more funds would be approved. “I expect them to show us that the school is completed,” said Larry Simon, a member of the board of estimate. Betty J. Sternberg, superintendent of schools, said the school was nearly finished and students would move in as soon as possible. “Everyone is around the table trying to work through this,” she said. Hamilton Avenue is one of 11 elementary schools in town. After mold was discovered in parts of the building, school officials decided in 2005 to completely renovate the almost century old building. In March, mold was also found in the modular classrooms the Hamilton Avenue students were using at Western Middle School. The students were sent home for an entire week, missing classes. Afterward, they were dispersed to other elementary schools in town where they finished the school year. Parents were so upset they demonstrated at the Board of Education building in downtown Greenwich to voice their frustrations, and board members told them at an emergency meeting they were doing their best to minimize the disruption to their children.These latest delays have them even more upset. Mina Bibeault, a mother of two Hamilton Avenue students, said the Building Committee and the Board of Education have lost all their credibility with her and other parents. Parents are not alone in their discontent. Mr. Simon said the board of estimate is unhappy that the project is 14 months behind schedule. “That’s a long time,” he said. Officials offer different explanations for the delays in completing the project. There have been numerous delays due to design modifications, called change orders, that Mr. Simon said were unforeseen. Mr. Simon said $320,000 of the $500,000 requested by the Building Committee was allocated for change orders. Mr. Mazza, whose position as the head of the Building Committee is unpaid, said change orders were a “natural part” of any construction project. In addition to being held up by the number of change orders, Mr. Simon said, the work, which is being done by Worth Construction, a contractor out of Bethel, had not been assigned a full-time project manager from the beginning. If the board of estimate votes to disburse the funds on Sept. 8, the matter will then go before the Representative Town Meeting on Sept. 15, said Mr. Simon. The money will be released if it is approved at the meeting. Until then, the work will continue under the assumption that the money will be forthcoming. The delays and seemingly endless problems have left some parents, like Mrs. Bibeault, considering abandoning the public school system. “We’re in the process of making a decision about sending our kids to private school,” she said.


Welcome, Stranger. Here’s a Speeding Ticket.

Abstract: DRIVING through a tiny Vermont town a few weeks ago on my way to drop off my daughter at camp, I saw flashing yellow lights appear in my rearview mirror. My car had picked up speed coming down a hill, and a police officer pulled me over. As I waited for a ticket, I wondered: Does this town supplement its finances by giving tickets to visitors like me? I never got to the bottom of the situation in that particular town, but the broader question — whether police officers in some towns are motivated by fund-raising as well as safety when writing traffic tickets — has been examined systematically by others. Michael D. Makowsky, a doctoral student in economics, and Thomas Stratmann, an economics professor, both at George Mason University, studied the issue in a recent paper, “Political Economy at Any Speed: What Determines Traffic Citations?” They examined every warning and citation written by police officers in all of Massachusetts, excluding Boston, during a two-month period in 2001 — over 60,000 in all. Their conclusion wasn’t shocking to an economist: money matters, even in traffic violations. They found a statistical link between a town’s finances and the likelihood that its police officers would issue a speeding ticket. The details are a little sticky, but they show that tickets were issued more often in places that were short on cash, and that out-of-towners received tickets more often than drivers with local addresses. First, some background: In Massachusetts, a police officer is given the discretion to decide whether to issue a warning, which carries no fine, or a citation, which does. The fines for the tickets issued in that period by local police officers totaled $1.8 million, with state troopers issuing $1.7 million more in tickets. The study focused on the local police. Municipal finance in Massachusetts is affected by Proposition 2.5, which in 1980 placed a cap on overall property tax levies and on their rate of growth. It turns out that traffic tickets are affected by the proposition, too — or at least that’s what the study found. Under Proposition 2.5, total property tax collections cannot rise more than 2.5 percent a year, but local voters can override that restriction by passing a referendum. The researchers assumed that, on average, towns that had proposed to override referendums but failed to pass them were more constrained financially than other towns. In fact, they found that for drivers who exceeded the speed limit by any given amount, the probability of receiving a fine rather than a warning from a local police officer increased by 28 percent if the town’s voters had rejected a Proposition 2.5 override in a referendum. Mr. Makowsky and Mr. Stratmann also showed that out-of-town drivers — especially out-of-state drivers — were much more likely to get citations. A driver from out of town had a 10 percent higher probability of getting a ticket than a local driver, holding speed and other characteristics constant. Out-of-state plates added 10 percent to the probability of getting a ticket. Furthermore, if an out-of-town driver happened to be driving in a town that had rejected a Proposition 2.5 override, he or she had a 37 percent higher chance of getting a ticket than a local driver traveling at the same speed. “This suggests that the local voters who voted down the tax increases have had some success in passing off their tax burden to nonvoters,” Mr. Stratmann said. He and his co-author speculated that the seeming discrimination against out-of-towners by the local police might be explained by two factors: a desire to avoid antagonizing local voters and a preference for ticketing people who were less likely to travel to court to protest a ticket. The phenomenon noted in the study may have implications beyond speeding tickets. During the housing price run-up, property tax revenue in the United States rose substantially — by 20 percent over all from 2002 to 2005. With housing prices now flat or down, town governments may try to seek property tax rate increases, and voters may resist. Historically, economists have noticed that when there is a lid on property taxes, towns turn to user fees and other sources of revenue — like speeding tickets — to avoid spending cuts. Assuming that the study’s results have some predictive power for other states, it may seem surprising that I received only a warning from the officer who stopped me in Vermont, despite my Connecticut license plates. In their paper, Mr. Makowsky and Mr. Stratmann did find that ticketing was modestly lower in towns with high levels of employment in the hospitality industry, suggesting that police departments might consider the effects of aggressive ticketing on local commerce. Perhaps the officer wanted to make sure that my daughter would return to camp next summer — or perhaps he really just wanted me to slow down.


New York’s 2010 Primary Could Arrive a Little Early

Abstract: It is hard enough to get New York voters to the polls for any September primary. But a proposal that was easily passed by the United States Senate last month could move next year’s primary to a date that may be even more challenging — the end of August. That is the conclusion of the State Board of Elections and election lawyers who have examined the bill. Such a change would complicate the calculus for next year’s races for United States Congress, governor, attorney general and other offices. The possible date change is the byproduct of a little-noticed amendment sponsored by Senator Charles E. Schumer in the annual defense authorization bill, which passed the Senate on July 23 and is now in a House-Senate conference committee. The amendment’s goal was to give those serving overseas in the military more time — 45 days, to be exact — to receive their absentee ballots for the general election on Nov. 2, 2010, and to mail them back in. Military personnel have long complained about the difficulty in getting their votes counted, and the issue was especially pronounced during last year’s presidential election. General election ballots, of course, cannot be printed and sent out until after the primary. But New York’s primary is traditionally in mid-September, which is later than in most other states. So that 45-day provision would mean that next year’s Sept. 14 primary would have to move up by at least two weeks, said Douglas A. Kellner, a co-chairman of the State Board of Elections. “My belief is that it is literally impossible to comply with the new federal law if the primary date is any later than Aug. 31, 2010, and even Aug. 31 puts a lot of pressure on the county boards of election,” Mr. Kellner said. “But there’s an issue with August, because August is a month when people are traditionally on vacation, then you have to see whether you have the primary in August, or whether you have the primary in June.” Mr. Kellner mentioned June because that was when New York held its primary until 1974, when the Legislature pushed it to mid-September. But whether the Legislature would agree to return to holding primaries in June, when lawmakers are usually still in session, remains to be seen. It is also not clear whether Congress will amend the proposal. But few substantive changes are expected, if the overwhelming bipartisan support for Mr. Schumer’s amendment is any indication. Under the Senate bill, New York could apply for a waiver under the amendment. So could nine other states with September primaries, including Massachusetts, Maryland and Minnesota. But Mr. Kellner said in an Aug. 3 memo to state officials and Democratic leaders that he thought it was unlikely that the federal government would grant such a waiver, in part because of New York’s poor track record in modernizing its electoral process. And Lawrence A. Mandelker, chairman of the election law committee of the New York County Lawyers Association , agreed. “We’re the last state to implement electronic voting machines, so why should the federal government be sympathetic to us?” he said. In an interview, Mr. Schumer played down the possibility of a date change, saying, “I am not very concerned.” He said the state could, for example, post the ballots on a Web site so that military personnel could download them and mail them in. “New York has three choices,” he said. “Only one is unacceptable, and that is to deprive soldiers of voting. The other two are to modernize their system or change their primary date, and I hope they will modernize the system.” Publicly, anyway, Gov. David A. Paterson and the Assembly speaker, Sheldon Silver , both Democrats, say that they are supportive of any effort to ensure that the votes of military personnel overseas are counted. “Speaker Silver is aware of this issue, and it’s something that he will be discussing with his conference,” said Dan Weiller, a spokesman for Mr. Silver. But privately, Democrats say an earlier date could be problematic for Mr. Paterson, who needs as much time as possible, especially if he has a strong Democratic primary challenger, to improve his poor approval ratings . Should New York be forced to change the date, the process will not be easy. “If we were dealing with a functional Legislature this would not be a huge problem,” said Mr. Mandelker. “But you have to move all the other dates related to the primary: when do you start petitioning, when do you start the challenges to the petition, when do you start the election law litigation, when are you preparing the ballot, when do the absentee and military ballots get printed prior to the primary. It will all have a domino effect.”

Primaries and Caucuses
New York State
United States Politics and Government
Voter Registration and Requirements
Board of Elections (NYS)
Schumer Charles E
Paterson David A
Silver Sheldon
Politics and Government


Europe’s Case Against Google Might Help Rivals More Than Consumers

Abstract: In a persistent (and thus far fruitless) effort to hobble giant American technology companies, the European Union has again taken aim at Alphabet’s Google search engine. Last week , European antitrust regulators claimed that Google had “abused its dominant position” because Google search is preinstalled on most mobile devices, which harms consumers by “stifling competition” and “restricting innovation.” At first blush, it might seem the Europeans are onto something. If device manufacturers want to preinstall the Google Play app, they must agree to install Google search and its Chrome browser as well — and make Google the default search engine. With some manufacturers, Google pays to have its search function preinstalled as the default option — an estimated $1 billion a year to Apple, according to a court filing last year. If these claims seem a little like déjà vu, that’s because anyone over the age of 20 has seen this before: Microsoft embedded its Internet Explorer browser in its Windows desktop operating system, a so-called tying arrangement. In the late 1990s, the Justice Department and European Union regulators accused Microsoft of illegally trying to extend its dominant position in operating systems to Internet browsers and search. (Microsoft ultimately settled the cases.) But the rapid rise of mobile and tablet devices has pretty much rendered all that irrelevant. The latest version of Internet Explorer still has the largest market share for desktop Internet browsers, but it has only a negligible share for fast-growing mobile and tablet devices, where Google Chrome is far ahead. Image Google’s search engine has more than a 90 percent market share in Europe, according to the European Union. Credit Pier Marco Tacca/Getty Images Technological change has also undermined the superficial similarities between the old Microsoft case and the new Android one. Back then, consumers who wanted a rival browser like Netscape to run on their Windows operating system rather than the (free) Explorer had to go to a store, pay for a disk with a rival program and then install it. Today, a free rival browser is a tap away. When I checked into Google Play this week, there were more browser choices than I knew what to do with, including some I’d never heard of (Maxthon?). But I’m satisfied with Google’s offering and have no interest in further cluttering my phone’s display screen. It’s so easy to substitute or add apps that it’s not even clear Google’s agreements with manufacturers would be deemed tying arrangements. “I don’t think they meet the requirement,” said Herbert Hovenkamp, an antitrust expert at the University of Iowa College of Law. “There’s almost no limit to your ability to add additional apps or to delete the Google app and substitute a different one.” Of course, there’s obviously an advantage to being the default app, or else Google wouldn’t be paying Apple such a large sum. “On the other hand, anyone can change if they’re unhappy,” Professor Hovenkamp said. Nor do manufacturers have to preinstall any Google apps on devices using Android, which is an open source system, available free. Amazon’s Fire was an Android mobile device with a built-in Amazon shopping app, but it didn’t come with Google Play or Search preinstalled. Fire was deemed a flop, in part because it lacked popular Google apps like Gmail and Maps. Even if Google is found to be using a tying arrangement, that’s not necessarily illegal or bad for consumers. Scott Hemphill, an antitrust professor at New York University School of Law, said tying arrangements are common across a wide array of products and industries. “No one complains because they don’t have a choice of transmission manufacturers in their cars,” Professor Hemphill said. These same issues were raised last year in a class-action suit in a Federal District Court in California. The two named plaintiffs both bought Android phones, one in Louisville, Ky., the other in Des Moines, Iowa, and complained that they hadn’t realized they came with Google search already installed. Judge Beth Labson Freeman of Federal District Court struggled to find any evidence that either had suffered any harm. Video James B. Stewart says the European Union's case against Google may help rivals instead of its customers. She found that Google’s conduct had no impact on the price of the phones, since both Android and the rival apps are free. And their broad accusation that Google’s behavior “threatened harm to innovation and consumer choice” — almost the same words adopted by the European Union — was “entirely too conclusory and speculative,” she ruled . There was no evidence Google’s behavior prevented consumers “from freely choosing among search products or prevented competitors from innovating.” She dismissed the suit. So who exactly is being hurt by Google’s behavior? It’s not, apparently, consumers, in whose name this battle is being fought. Google’s search engine is even more popular in Europe, where it has a more than 90 percent market share, according to the European Union, than it is in the United States. The driving force pushing the European action was a consortium of Google’s corporate rivals — foremost among them, ironically, Microsoft, which once complained loudly about European overreaching. It has backed a lobbying group called FairSearch, which hailed the European action against Google as “a crucial step to end abusive business practices.” (Microsoft and Google said this week that they were burying the hatchet and would withdraw regulatory complaints about each other around the globe. Microsoft has said it will no longer back FairSearch.) If Microsoft really wants to compete with Google’s search engine in Europe, it has the wherewithal to outbid Google and pay manufacturers to make Bing their default search engine. The Russian Internet company Yandex has been the most vocal in urging European action against Apple, which is even more ironic considering that Russia is not a member of the European Union and has been sanctioned over its annexation of Crimea. Yandex has dominated Internet search in Russia but has recently been losing ground there to Google. It filed — and, no surprise, won — similar claims in Russia. (Google is appealing that outcome.) Even if competitors like Yandex would stand to benefit, “the purpose of antitrust law, at least in the U.S., is to protect consumers, not competitors,” Professor Hemphill said. Professor Hovenkamp echoed that thought. “Europe is moving pretty far into left field with this case,” he said. “It seems like over-regulation for the benefit of competitors that won’t end up doing consumers any good.”

EU
Google
Microsoft
Competition law
Search Engines
Alphabet
Mobile Apps
Android


Football Player, 21, Ruled Ineligible on High School Team

Abstract: A central Michigan high school football team may have to forfeit some victories after officials learned that a player was 21 years old. The young man enrolled at Mount Pleasant High School this fall under an alias, Javier Jones. Athletic Director Jim Conway told The Morning Sun that an investigation began with a tip from a parent. The student was expelled Thursday. Conway said documents were altered and forged. Under state rules, a student isn’t eligible to play if he or she is 19 before Sept. 1. The Michigan High School Athletic Association was notified. The Oilers had a 4-5 record.


Extraordinary Medical Effort Can't Stop the Deadly Work of 3 Bullets

Abstract: By any measure, it was an extraordinary effort to save the life of Officer Eric Hernandez. Quick work by emergency workers and skilled hands in the operating room kept him from dying in the minutes and hours after he was shot three times in a White Castle parking lot in the Bronx on Jan. 28. In the days that followed, Officer Hernandez underwent at least four operations, including the amputation of a leg. Police officers doubled as deliverymen to make sure an enormous supply of blood was on hand for him at the hospital. That he survived so long with such severe injuries was testament to his youth and great physical conditioning, doctors said of the officer, who stood 6 feet tall, weighed 190 pounds and played running back on the Police Department football team. "It was heroic to say the least," Deputy Chief Charles Martinez said yesterday. "A normal person would not have survived as long." Officer Hernandez, 24, who was off duty when a fellow officer shot him at 5 a.m. in the White Castle parking lot, was taken to St. Barnabas Hospital within minutes of the shooting. Officer Hernandez had been drinking, blood tests showed, and was shot as he held his service revolver over a man he mistakenly thought had been part of a group that had beaten him inside the restaurant. Three 9-mm bullets struck him, once in the abdomen, and once in each thigh. The bullets in his legs severed major arteries, and the one in his stomach tore apart his intestines. Over 11 days, doctors pumped more than 300 pints of blood product into him to try to replace the blood he had lost and continued to lose from the torn arteries. A man his size normally has about 10 pints of blood in his body. Doctors removed a large portion of his colon and amputated his right leg at the knee. His kidneys were so badly damaged that he was put on dialysis. His eye socket had been broken, probably from the beating. The Fire Department medical workers who arrived at the White Castle that morning knew instantly that his wounds could be fatal, and that without the equipment available in a hospital, trying to stop the profuse bleeding on the scene would be a waste of time. Dr. Stephen DiRusso, the chief of surgery at St. Barnabas, said that Officer Hernandez would have died quickly had the transport time been any longer. Dr. DiRusso said on that first night that the officer had suffered "extremely, extremely grave injuries." He was placed on life support, as Dr. Fausto Vinces, the hospital's director of trauma surgery, tried desperately to stop the arterial bleeding, but that proved to be extremely difficult. Damage was so great to the arteries and veins in the pelvis that led to his legs that blood had spilled into his lower abdomen. In a first operation, the surgeons clamped the aorta, the body's main artery, and tried compressing the ruptured vessels. When that did not stop the bleeding, they operated again. Still, the bleeding continued, hospital officials said. The only chance of saving Officer Hernandez was to have a large reserve of blood on hand, so police officers were dispatched to get some from an Upper Manhattan blood bank. Later, police helicopters flew back and forth between the hospital and a Westchester County blood bank. When that was not enough, officers transported more from a blood bank on Long Island. Three days after the shooting, Officer Hernandez had undergone four operations, including a six-hour procedure to remove his right leg. The ruptured arteries had disrupted circulation in that leg for so long that the leg muscles had become starved of blood and oxygen and then wasted away, leaving surgeons no choice but to amputate. The judgment to amputate had been a hard one for the doctors to make. On Sunday, eight days after the shooting, surgeons decided it would not be necessary to amputate the left leg as well. But the next day, his body was racked by seizures. Yesterday, at 1:03 p.m., after a CAT scan showed he was brain dead, Officer Hernandez's family decided to remove him from life support.


‘We Sleep Afraid, We Wake Up Afraid’: A Child’s Life in Yemen

Abstract: Image My son, Yousef, 2. Mohammed al-Asaadi is a father of four in Sana, the capital of Yemen, which has been caught in a war between Iranian-backed rebels and Saudi Arabia for more than two years. He is a former journalist now working in communications for Unicef. My son, Yousef, calls the bombings “fireworks.” He sinks in fear when explosions wake us up from sleep. He runs to the person closest to him to hide. My little boy will be 3 in December, but he is already three wars old. During one of our evening meetings, I asked my three daughters to write about what is happening around them and posted their words on Facebook. My oldest, Kholud, who is 15, wrote: We, the children of Yemen, want to achieve our hopes: to study and play and achieve our goals. We sleep afraid, we wake up afraid and leave our homes afraid. When the bombs are close enough, the shock waves shake the house badly, blowing open doors and windows. It feels as if the explosions are inside your ears. My son and youngest daughter — Haneen is 12 — wake up screaming, running in all directions through dark rooms. This video, taken by a friend, shows a bombing last month that was so close it threw us out of our beds. Video Eyewitness video shows the moment a bomb strikes a building in Sana, Yemen, in August 2016. My wife and I have agreed on a division of roles. She takes care of our little boy, who sleeps in our room. I take care of the girls in the room next door. The first words we tell them are: “You are fine. We are all fine. The blast is far from our house. Don’t panic. We are all O.K. You are O.K.” I gather them all together and we make a group hug. If the night is particularly bad, we all sleep together. Way back when the war started, I explained to my daughters what this is all about: who is fighting whom and why. They understand that we are not a direct target for any of the fighting parties, but could be collateral damage should we happen to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. So we limit our movements. My children call this being “under house arrest.” School is the one place I feel they should go, despite all my fears. Simply, I am a strong believer that education is the gateway to a safer future. Image My three daughters: Kholud, 15; Asma, 14; and Haneen, 12. Asma, who is 14, is the first to spend money and the last to save it. She loves children and her friends. I cried when I read what she had written for the Facebook post. We are afraid of catastrophe, as it is painful when a person kills others; mothers, fathers and children. It is as though the people’s consciousness are like stones. And every person with authority does what he wants. Haneen, the 12-year-old, is outspoken and creative. She is always asking what things have not yet been invented because she says she wants to invent something that will benefit everyone. Once, when I apologized for being late because I was at work helping the children of Yemen, she confronted me: “We are also the children of Yemen.” Here is an excerpt from her Facebook essay: The situation is getting worse daily. Our studies have stopped, playing is forbidden. They cut off the water and electricity on all the residents. Every day, the noises get louder and louder next to us. However, I have two questions that are confusing me: How will our future be beautiful if they have destroyed Yemen? When will this war end and Yemen will be liberated and the future will be beautiful, God willing? My children were at home on Saturday when the bombs killed more than 100 people at a Sana funeral hall. I was live on BBC Arabic speaking on behalf of Unicef about the cholera outbreak. On my way back home, I saw the lines at one hospital. Image On my way home, I saw crowds of people at a hospital entrance, looking for their loved ones. Credit Mohammed Al-Asaadi My children learned about the attack hours later, once they had finished all their homework. They always have questions. They asked if any of my friends had been killed. I told them one: the mayor of Sana. They were in a state of shock. I checked their homework to keep busy. But as soon as they went to bed, an airstrike rocked our house. Two more followed. I moved from their room to the middle of the house. They sleep next to each other on the same mattress, where I can hug them all if an airstrike hits the area. Image At home with my family. This is life in a war zone. Every day, you wake up to an unpleasant surprise: the death or injury of a friend or a family member. You witness the destruction of your childhood neighborhood, school and the little shop where you once bought candy. You have to live without electricity, water, fuel and social services. You don’t want to live a life where your utmost achievement is surviving another day and your ultimate pleasure is having an uninterrupted internet connection. Wars are destructive not only to towns and cities, but also to souls.

Children
Yemen
Sana Yemen
Bombs
Military


Microsoft to Release New Version of Halo Video Game on Sept. 25

Abstract: Microsoft plans to announce today that the third installment of Halo, the company’s biggest video game franchise, will be released on Sept. 25. As Microsoft continues its foray into the video game business, taking on established Japanese game giants like Sony and Nintendo, the Halo franchise has proved to be one of its most formidable weapons. Since the original Halo was introduced in 2001, the series has sold more than 14 million copies. In November 2004, Halo 2 generated more than $100 million in sales in 24 hours. Set in a science-fiction environment, Halo became wildly popular because it was one of the first games to successfully use the first-person shooter technique on a console plugged into a television rather than on a personal computer. Until Halo, a mouse and keyboard were generally thought necessary to provide an engaging first-person experience. Halo demonstrated that the small joysticks on a console controller could also deliver first-person action. The first Halo was essential in building the credibility of Microsoft’s original Xbox game machine. Now Microsoft is trying to fend off the latest contender from Sony, the PlayStation 3, with its Xbox 360. Microsoft is hoping that Halo 3, which will not be playable on the Sony console, will increase the Xbox 360’s momentum in the market. In a draft version of the announcement, Peter Moore, corporate vice president of Microsoft’s interactive entertainment division, called the release of Halo 3 “more than a video game release; it’s the biggest entertainment event of the year.” Microsoft is already starting to build publicity for the game. This week, online players are getting their first peek at the game in the form of a test, or beta, version that Microsoft is distributing over its Xbox Live Internet service.

Microsoft Corp
Computer and Video Games
Sony Corp
Nintendo Company Limited
Computers and the Internet
Franchises
Halo


Haiti Fears Cholera Will Spread in the Capital

Abstract: MEXICO CITY — With the number of dead rising above 200, health officials battling a cholera outbreak in Haiti grew ever more pessimistic Saturday that the disease could be contained to a rural area and braced for a medical disaster in the capital. Haitian officials have confirmed 208 dead and a total of 2,674 cases, but with people streaming into hospitals and clinics and suspected cases far from the outbreak’s epicenter — in St.-Marc, 60 miles north of the capital, Port-au-Prince — doctors were certain the toll would rise. Five Port-au-Prince residents were found to have the disease on Saturday, said Imogen Wall, a spokeswoman for the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs. But they acquired it in the region outside the capital where the bulk of the cases are, and so it remained unclear if the disease was spreading in Port-au-Prince. Ms. Wall said all five patients were receiving treatment in isolation. An International Red Cross spokeswoman, Sophie Chavanel, who arrived Friday night in St.-Marc, said by telephone Saturday that doctors and nurses were rushing about, trying to treat people weakened with the severe vomiting and diarrhea that are the disease’s hallmarks. “It is difficult to see,” said Ms. Chavanel, part of a team bringing drinkable water, water purification kits, plastic sheets, tents, mattresses and other supplies to the area. “It is really heartbreaking, actually.” Health officials were investigating cases in several towns near Port-au-Prince, where 1.5 million people displaced by the January earthquake live in tent encampments with the kind of questionable sanitation and contaminated water in which cholera, a bacteria carried in human feces, flourishes. The Associated Press reported that those suffering from the disease included 50 inmates in the Mirebalais prison, about 30 miles northeast of Port-au-Prince. It is possible that people with diarrhea caused by other germs suspect they have cholera, an acute bacterial infection that results in a far more severe form of diarrhea that quickly dehydrates and kills its victims unless they are treated, primarily with plenty of water and antibiotics , at the onset. Authorities have braced for months for water-borne diseases in Haiti, given persistent sanitation problems. But they were not preparing specifically for cholera, which last appeared in Haiti 50 years ago. There are an estimated three to five million cholera cases and 100,000 to 120,000 deaths every year worldwide, according to the World Health Organization. Outbreaks have been reported this year in Cameroon, Chad, Niger, Nigeria, Pakistan, Papua New Guinea and Zambia. Ms. Wall and representatives of relief organizations said there was enough clean water for the sick and, for the most severe cases, antibiotics for now. A public awareness campaign aimed at getting people to diligently wash their hands after going to the bathroom is under way. But a major concern is that Haitians, who fled the capital in droves after the earthquake for places like St.-Marc, often go back and forth and from village to village to live with or see relatives, raising the likelihood that the disease will spread. “Our single greatest challenge is containing this,” she said. Andrew Marx, a spokesman for Partners in Health, a nongovernmental organization that works closely with the Ministry of Health in rural areas, said that it had been warning of such a calamity away from the capital but that authorities had focused disease prevention mostly on Port-au-Prince. “We tried to make the case not to focus exclusively on Port-au-Prince,” he said, noting that considerable effort has been made to provide clean water in the capital, but rural areas remain lacking. The St.-Marc River has tested positive for cholera. Relief workers said rural hospitals and clinics were overwhelmed, particularly in St.-Marc. “There are significant numbers of patients in St. Nicholas Hospital in St.-Marc, which does not have the capacity to handle a cholera emergency,” Federica Nogarotto, a Doctors Without Borders coordinator in St.-Marc, said in a statement. She said that it was important to keep those with cholera away from other patients, and that work was under way to set up an isolated cholera center. Relief workers said additional supplies were being flown in, in anticipation that the number of cases would spiral upward.


Spain’s Leader Sees Tough Year Ahead

Abstract: MADRID — The Spanish prime minister on Sunday called his country’s banking rescue by Europe a victory for the euro zone but hastened to describe it as a deal that was drawn up on his country’s own terms. “Nobody pressured me, I was the one who pressured to get credit,” Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy said at a news conference here. The aid, worth up to €100 billion, or about $125 billion, for its cash-starved banks, is a deal, he said, that ensured “the credibility of the European project, the future of the euro , the solidity of our financial system and the possibility that credit will flow again.” Mr. Rajoy also insisted on Sunday that Spain was merely receiving “a line of credit” and not a full-flegged bailout. The money would be channeled to its bank restructuring fund in order to replenish the reserves of its weakest institutions, a loan structure different from the bailouts and tough conditions negotiated by international creditors to help the ailing economies of Greece, Portugal and Ireland. Despite the sense of relief at avoiding a banking meltdown, Mr. Rajoy also warned of more pain as Madrid pushes ahead with austerity cuts to clean up public finances. “This year is going to be a bad one,” Mr Rajoy said Sunday. Alfredo Pérez Rubalca, leader of the main Socialist opposition party, suggested on Sunday that Mr. Rajoy was being disingenuous in his portrayal of the Spanish rescue. “The government is trying to make us believe that we’ve won the lottery, that the Three Kings of Orient have arrived, and that isn’t so,” Mr. Rubalcaba said during a separate news conference. In any case, analysts say that Spain’s economic problems will not vanish overnight as a result of the assistance, nor is the future of the euro guaranteed by the deal reached Saturday. While the agreement removes the threat of an immediate banking collapse in Spain, it was unclear whether financial markets would respond Monday with optimism. “Market reaction is unlikely to be favorable, given that the bailout places even more strain on Spain’s creditworthiness, sets a precedent that the eurozone’s other bailed-out countries — in particular Ireland — are likely to object to and risks putting pressure on Italy,” said Nicholas Spiro, managing director of Spiro Sovereign Strategy, a consulting firm in London that assesses sovereign debt risk. In addition to Spain’s banking woes, Mr. Rajoy is also having to fight the economic crisis on several other fronts. Madrid is struggling to meet agreed budget targets and impose greater fiscal discipline upon regional governments. The country recently entered its second recession in three years, with unemployment at a record high of more than 24 percent. Spain is set to receive the emergency loan via its Fund for Orderly Bank Restructuring, which was set up at the onset of the crisis but has been almost depleted after being used to wipe out the losses of some smaller collapsed banks. While Madrid could have raised more money on the debt markets, its borrowing costs have been kept close to record highs since early May, when it forced to seize control of Bankia, a giant mortgage lender in need of €19 billion in additional capital. That has basically made it impossible for Spain to auction bonds at an affordable cost, as well as threatening its ability to refinance existing debt. Spain and its European partners still need to finalize in coming weeks the exact amount of the credit line, and any conditions attached to it. On Saturday, Luis de Guindos, the Spanish economy minister, said that Spain expected to receive “very favorable” terms for the European loan, at a below-market rate. He also suggested that Spain would not need the full €100 billion on offer, saying that this figure included “a safety margin” to cover any further difficulties that might emerge from ongoing audits of its banking sector Two independent consultancy firms are to deliver their assessments of Spanish banks on June 21. The International Monetary Fund estimated on Friday that Spanish banks would need an additional €40 billion of capital. Despite the 11th-hour agreement in Spain, European leaders remained deeply divided about the way to carry out a more lasting solution to the euro debt crisis . Ahead of a summit meeting this month, members of the euro zone are debating a variety of fixes related to forming a tighter political and fiscal union. Still, “on the euro zone level, Spanish bank recapitalization will significantly facilitate the road to a banking union,” said Erik F. Nielsen, chief economist of UniCredit in London. The agreement reached Saturday also received endorsements beyond the boundaries of the euro zone. Christine Lagarde, the managing director of the I.M.F., said the scale of the financing offered to Spain “gives assurance that the financing needs of Spain’s banking system will be fully met.” And the U.S. Treasury secretary, Timothy F. Geithner, called the support European partners were showing Spain “important for the health of Spain’s economy.” He said that Spain’s request for aid and Europe’s agreement were “concrete steps on the path to financial union, which is vital to the resilience of the euro area.” Jens Boysen-Hogrefe, an economist at the Kiel Institute for the World Economy, called the deal “a calming signal at a time when calming signals are badly needed.” But he added that “the uncertainty is still high and bad news can pop up anywhere in the euro area. This is not a final solution.” On Sunday, Mr. Rajoy said Spain should have intervened in its most troubled banks as long as three years ago, following the example of countries including Britain. Mr. Rajoy’s Popular Party, however, only came to power after winning a general election last November. Since then, Mr. Rajoy has also been blamed for failing to tackle more forcefully the banking problems, as well as underestimating massively the problems at Bankia. Whatever the final amount needed to clean Spain’s banking sector, “I guess it all illustrates the cost of procrastination,” Mr. Nielsen of UniCredit said. Nicholas Kulish contributed reporting from Berlin, Paul Geitner from Brussels and Annie Lowrey from Washington.

European Sovereign Debt Crisis (2010- )
Banking and Financial Institutions
Rajoy Mariano
Spain


Investigators Said to Take Closer Look at Lehman

Abstract: Federal prosecutors from three jurisdictions have stepped up their investigations into the collapse of the investment bank Lehman Brothers , issuing at least a dozen subpoenas including one to the chief executive, Richard S. Fuld Jr. , people close to the matter said Friday. Federal prosecutors in Brooklyn, Manhattan and New Jersey are all examining events leading to Lehman’s collapse and its subsequent bankruptcy filing, these people said. One area of focus for New Jersey prosecutors is whether Mr. Fuld or other Lehman executives made misleading statements about the bank’s condition to investors who took part in a $6 billion infusion of capital announced by Lehman on June 9, one person close to the matter said. The new capital came as Lehman disclosed a $2.8 billion second-quarter loss that sent its shares plunging. The New Jersey Division of Investment, which put money into the capital raising, has received a subpoena, the person said. William Clark, director of the division, did not return a call seeking comment. Prosecutors in Brooklyn and Manhattan are looking, among other things, at comments Lehman executives made during a Sept. 10 conference call five days before the company filed for bankruptcy. They are also investigating whether Lehman put proper values on its large commercial real estate holdings, people close to the matter said. People with direct knowledge of the inquiries requested that their names not be published because the investigations are at an early stage and no conclusions have been drawn. Press officers for all three prosecutors’ offices declined to comment. A spokesman for Mr. Fuld said he would not comment. Mr. Fuld has said publicly that all his statements about Lehman Brothers’ condition were based on the best information he had available at the time. The federal investigations and subpoenas were disclosed at a federal bankruptcy hearing on Thursday by Harvey R. Miller, a lawyer at the firm Weil, Gotshal & Manges who represents Lehman Brothers, and reported Friday morning in The New York Post. Other current and former Lehman executives who have been subpoenaed include Joseph Gregory, the former president, and Erin Callan, former chief financial officer, a person with knowledge of the matter said. Both executives were removed from their jobs shortly after Lehman reported the second-quarter loss. Mr. Gregory did not return calls for comment. Ms. Callan declined to comment through a spokeswoman for her current employer, Credit Suisse. Legal experts said prosecutors would probably try to build fraud cases against Lehman executives by trying to find internal documents that contradict public statements made about the bank’s financial health. “The way they tend to present these sorts of cases is to contrast official public statements to investors with what seemed to be the true condition of the institution as discussed in e-mails and internal reports,” said David Gourevitch, a defense lawyer and former prosecutor. “That is what happened in Enron and some of the other financial fraud investigations.” Mr. Gourevitch suggested it would be easier to bring cases based on possibly misleading statements than on the valuation of assets. “The defense is that nobody really knew what these things were worth,” he said. While the three prosecutors’ offices have different areas of focus, their investigations could overlap and it remains unclear which, if any, offices will ultimately bring cases. Prosecutors often compete for high-profile targets and any case involving Mr. Fuld could be among the biggest to emerge from the Wall Street meltdown.

Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc
Fuld Richard S Jr
Subprime Mortgage Crisis
Subpoenas
Frauds and Swindling
Justice Department