Nick Denton, Gawker Founder, Assails Peter Thiel as ‘Vindictive’ Foe

Abstract: A day after Peter Thiel explained why he had given about $10 million to fund multiple lawsuits against Gawker Media, the site’s founder published an open letter to the Silicon Valley billionaire, calling him “thin-skinned” and a “comic book villain” and challenging him to a public debate about the role of journalism in society. The letter from Nick Denton, the company’s founder and majority owner, was published Thursday on Gawker, hours after the company acknowledged that it had hired an investment banker in recent weeks to help it explore strategic options, including a possible sale. Mr. Denton harshly criticized what he said was a lengthy, unnecessary vendetta Mr. Thiel waged against not only Gawker Media but also individual journalists. “This vindictive decade-long campaign is quite out of proportion to the hurt you claim,” Mr. Denton wrote on Thursday . In the letter, Mr. Denton made it clear that he would not back down against a billionaire who showed no sign of stopping his involvement in underwriting the lawsuits, even as the future of Gawker remained in question. On Wednesday, Mr. Thiel, a co-founder of PayPal and an early investor in Facebook, acknowledged in an interview with The New York Times that he had bankrolled lawsuits against Gawker, including one by the wrestler Hulk Hogan, whose real name is Terry G. Bollea. In March, a Florida jury awarded $140 million to Mr. Bollea in his case against the company for publishing a sex tape. The company is expected to appeal the verdict. Other lawsuits against Gawker, led by the same lawyer, Charles Harder, representing Mr. Bollea, are still pending. A spokesman for Mr. Thiel declined to comment on Thursday. In his interview with The Times, Mr. Thiel — who was outed as being gay by Gawker’s Valleywag blog nearly a decade ago — said he did not view his underwriting of the lawsuits as a business venture. “I would underscore that I don’t expect to make any money from this,” he said. In his open letter, Mr. Denton issued a play-by-play of past stories that drew Mr. Thiel’s ire and of two defamation lawsuits currently pending against Gawker, and criticized what he characterized as an inability by Silicon Valley figures to accept criticism from journalists. “I can see how tempting it would be to use Silicon Valley’s most abundant resource, a vast fortune, against the harsh words of the writers of a small New York media company,” he wrote. “We have our devices; you have yours.” Mr. Denton also assured Mr. Thiel that Gawker’s journalists would be reporting on his involvement in lawsuits against the company. Image Mark Patricof, a technology banker with Houlihan Lokey, has been hired by Gawker Media to provide financial advice. Credit Tina Fineberg for The New York Times “We, and those you have sent into battle against us, have been stripped naked, our texts, online chats and finances revealed through the press and the courts,” Mr. Denton wrote. “In the next phase, you too will be subject to a dose of transparency.” Also on Thursday, Gawker confirmed that it had hired Mark Patricof, a senior banker at the firm Houlihan Lokey, in recent weeks to provide financial advice. Houlihan Lokey is known for its expertise in mergers and in corporate restructuring, but the company would not directly address reports that a potential buyer had emerged. (“Everyone take a breath,” began a statement released by Gawker on Thursday.) In the statement, Gawker said that it had worked with investment bankers for some time, and that Mr. Patricof was only the latest. Gawker said word of Mr. Patricof’s hiring “seems to have stirred up some excitement, when the fact is that nothing is new.” Gawker’s strategic review is in its early stages, and Mr. Denton has not decided on how to proceed, according to the people with direct knowledge of plans. The company has been considering its options for months. Gawker had weighed potential offers earlier this year that were as high as approximately $350 million, according to people with direct knowledge of the matter. Also this year, Gawker agreed to sell a minority stake to the tech venture capital firm Columbus Nova Technology Partners. As part of the deal, Jason Epstein, a managing partner at Columbus Nova, would join Gawker’s board. The companies did not disclose the size of the stake. Gawker’s legal complications appear to have given pause to some other potential investors. Gawker confirmed in April that it had been in talks with Univision . An acquisition deal was nearly complete, according to two people briefed on the discussions, but discussions cooled after the Hogan verdict was reached. Last year, Mr. Denton revealed that Gawker Media generated about $45 million in advertising revenue in 2014 and profit of about $7 million. But the prospect of further litigation draining the company’s coffers prompted the media outlet to prepare contingency planning around what the company described as Mr. Thiel’s “revenge campaign.” In the middle of a legal odyssey that threatens to cripple the company, Mr. Denton and Gawker journalists are standing behind their reporting. On Thursday, Gawker posted an article that chronicled the reporting that it and the affiliated tech site Valleywag had done on Mr. Thiel over the years. “The refusal to engage in public relations or access journalism,” the post read, “is usually the mark of an outlet’s credibility. For Thiel and his peers in Silicon Valley, such a refusal amounts to repudiating their way of life.” The post’s headline was “This Is Why Billionaire Peter Thiel Wants to End Gawker.” For his part, Mr. Denton ended his letter with a series of reported questions that challenged points Mr. Thiel had made in the interview with The Times and elsewhere, and questioned whether Mr. Thiel’s personal political opinions had affected his decisions as a board member for Facebook. He also asked what Mr. Thiel ultimately hoped to achieve. “Is your goal to bankrupt, buy, or wound Gawker Media?” Mr. Denton wrote. “If you were to own the company after a final judgment in the Hogan case, what would your editorial strategy be?”

Gawker
Nick Denton
Peter A Thiel
News media,journalism
Mark Patricof
Lawsuits
Mergers and Acquisitions


Jets Roll Dice With Favre and Hope to Get Sevens

Abstract: FLORHAM PARK, N.J. — This may come as a surprise to those who watch Brett Favre on the football field, carving a Hall of Fame career with improvisation, taking risks foreign to other quarterbacks. “Believe it or not, I’m not a gambler,” Favre said. “I know it sounds crazy.” The subject of Favre’s weekly news conference turned to blackjack Wednesday, after Jets Coach Eric Mangini used the game as an analogy for the way Favre has always played. Favre claimed not to know his way around a blackjack table, describing himself as the guy who sat down only to have the rest of the participants stand up and leave, worried he would disrupt the table strategy. This is, after all, Brett Favre we’re talking about. He is at once the N.F.L.’s career leader in touchdown passes and interceptions, in risks rewarded and punished. Sometimes, those risks yield the kinds of plays people talk about for years. Other times, they cause more harm than good. In the Jets’ last three games, Favre has thrown a series of head-scratching interceptions, including at least two in each game and seven total. Not all of the interceptions were his fault, but he is tied for the league lead in that category with 11. The subject surfaced again Tuesday, the day Mangini and Favre meet to discuss the Jets’ evolving offense. “You just stress, don’t hit on 20,” Mangini said. “Sometimes it’s O.K. to stay and see what the dealer has.” Ever since the Jets traded for Favre in August, Favre and Mangini have been a study in how opposites work when paired. Mangini has never been the kind of coach who shows emotion, or screams at players, or relinquishes control. Favre has given coaches gray hair — and wins — his entire career. He does not show emotion so much as he embodies it. So the Jets find themselves walking a tightrope. How do they balance eliminating turnovers without taking away the skills that made Favre so successful in the first place? So far, there is no easy answer. “I’m well aware of what is expected of me,” Favre said. “I know, statistically speaking, if you turn the ball over more than your opponent, you lose. Well, that’s two times in three weeks we’ve won. Now, can you make a living doing that? Every coach, any statistician, would tell you no, and I don’t plan on doing that.” There is a balance for Favre at work, as well. Part of it includes minimizing risky throws downfield, while allowing for productive passes thrown into spaces most quarterbacks avoid. The other part includes dealing with a new team, a new system and a new home for his family, while some sort of controversy pops up every week. In the middle of last week, Favre answered questions about whether he spoke to Lions coaches and executives before their game this season against his previous team, the Packers. This week, Favre answered questions about a blog entry written by his wife, Deanna, in which she detailed the toll the events of this season had taken on her husband. Favre said, “Families are families,” but added: “It has not lingered. Has not distracted me. If you start to believe all the hype, good or bad, you’re on your way out. I am probably less affected by those stories than my family, understandably so.” Favre characterized this season as the toughest challenge in his career, but he also allowed that he may feel that way simply because he is in the moment. Bills quarterback Trent Edwards said he was surprised to hear that Favre was booed at home last weekend, but Coach Dick Jauron, who worked briefly with Favre in Green Bay, said the tape showed that little about Favre had changed. Jauron noted the Jets were 4-3, trailing Buffalo and New England by a game in the American Football Conference East. “Sometimes, they go the other way,” Jauron said of Favre’s risks. “He’s thrown more of both, of all the good, and then the interceptions, than anybody that ever lived to play the game. He’s a guy that has great confidence and vision. He’ll take the shot.”


At Puerto Rico’s Power Company, a Recipe for Toxic Air, and Debt

Abstract: As a lab director at Puerto Rico’s power authority, Abraham Ortiz uncovered what he suspected was a pattern of lawlessness in the authority’s purchasing department, a secretive place where officials controlled contracts to buy billions of dollars’ worth of oil. For years, he reported to his superiors, the authority bought cheap, residual oil that failed to meet federal clean-air standards, and faked tests to make it look like it had passed. Ledgers were falsified too, he said, to make it appear as though the authority had actually bought the higher-grade oil, which cost more. The higher price was then passed on to consumers. Giving some credence to Mr. Ortiz’s first complaints in the 1990s, the Environmental Protection Agency found that the oil being burned by the authority did, indeed, contain unacceptable levels of sulfur, which rained down in a toxic mix on neighborhoods near the power plants for years. Where did the warnings get Mr. Ortiz? The utility closed his lab and sent him to work in another department, where he would not have oversight duties for the testing of oil. Now, about 25 years later, Mr. Ortiz is being heard. A committee of the Puerto Rico Senate has been pulling back the curtain on the mysterious purchasing department, the Fuel Procurement Office. And Mr. Ortiz, now retired, has been a star witness. “It was a scheme,” he told the senators last week, “and it went on for years.” The questions about the oil are part of a much larger mandate the Senate has taken on — determining how the authority became mired in more than $9 billion in debt it says it cannot pay. The debt troubles could not be more pressing, as the legislature faces a deadline on Tuesday for a vote on the authority’s plan for renegotiating that debt. While it is clear that the authority’s financial downfall is complex and multifaceted, the question of whether it bought dirty oil while billing customers for clean oil stands out as one of the most charged issues it is facing. If true, the accusations would go beyond errors in judgment and amount to a decades-long fraud. “It is a criminal matter. Hell yes, it is a criminal matter,” said Eduardo Bhatia, the Senate president, who is overseeing the hearings. In a recent interview in Puerto Rico’s imposing capitol building, known as the Palace of Laws, he said the power authority’s longstanding mission was to bring about development and prosperity on the island, but instead it had become an anchor, pulling Puerto Rico down. Among the unfulfilled promises the authority made, for example, was to use money from the bonds it sold to upgrade its plants and phase out oil as its fuel for generating electricity — something most power utilities in the United States did years ago. In Puerto Rico, that change has still not happened, and the Senate investigators are trying to learn whether goings-on in the Fuel Procurement Office help explain the reason. “For more than 25 years, I’ve been auditing and evaluating this situation,” Mr. Ortiz said of his beliefs about the oil quality. “I’ve turned to many agencies that had the responsibility and duty to deal with situations like this one.” He named half a dozen of them. “No one did anything,” he said. Mr. Ortiz is not alone in his suspicions about the fuel, which was purchased over the years from, among others, the deeply troubled Brazilian state-owned oil company Petrobras. This month another witness, a former chairman of the utility’s board, said it was “no secret” that a few large companies were rigging the prices the utility paid for oil at purported auctions. “You don’t have to catch people with their hands in the dough to know what a cartel is,” said that witness, Luis Aníbal Aviles. The Senate hearings are scheduled to continue into March. Similar claims are contained in a highly detailed class-action lawsuit filed by plaintiffs in Puerto Rico who say they were harmed by the dirty oil. They are invoking the federal Racketeering Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act, or RICO. The suit names a host of officials, oil suppliers and testing labs as defendants. It estimates that since 2002, Puerto Ricans have paid more than $1 billion too much for their electricity, because they were supporting a scheme of “undisclosed kickbacks or commissions,” run out of the Fuel Procurement Office. It seeks reimbursement plus triple damages. While not addressing the complaint in any detail, the authority has asked the court to dismiss the lawsuit, saying the plaintiffs have not shown that a racketeering conspiracy even existed, much less harmed them. Lawyers for the many other defendants have done the same. Arturo Díaz-Angueira, a lawyer for the power authority, called the Senate investigation politically motivated and said the assertions made no sense. “I would be willing to bet my house that this didn’t happen — that there was no corruption,” he said. Mr. Díaz-Angueira said the utility had effective systems in place to make sure the oil it burned complied with all federal clean-air standards. Regulators made unannounced inspections to check, he said, and have not found anything wrong. “This was instigated by a disgruntled employee, named Abraham Ortiz,” he said. He added that it was particularly troubling that the Senate had decided to hold its hearings now, when the power authority was in talks with its creditors to restructure its $9 billion debt. Image A power generator facility in Puerto Rico. Credit Dennis M. Rivera Pichardo for The New York Times “The message being sent to the other side of the ocean is that you’re dealing with crooks here, and that’s terrible,” Mr. Díaz-Angueira said. If the negotiations break down there could be major defaults, and blackouts, this spring and summer. Senator Bhatia said he had become interested in the utility’s affairs several years ago, when he noticed it had borrowed hundreds of millions of dollars for construction projects that had not been built. “It’s the most outrageous thing,” he said. “They were borrowing money to meet the payroll. They were borrowing money to run the company. It’s a recipe for having a huge debt, having inefficient equipment, and then going bankrupt.” Mr. Ortiz did not touch on the utility’s finances in his testimony, but offered a wealth of detail on how it received, stored and tested oil. Hour after hour, under oath, he told of documents doctored by the hundreds with Liquid Paper. He told of lab technicians who recalibrated their equipment to get desired test results. He described off-the-books “rebates” paid to suppliers that were not entitled to the money. He took the senators through an audit report page by page, pointing out each line where he said the findings had been watered down. He recalled the cat-and-mouse games he played with allies in the utility who put him onto audit teams before the Fuel Procurement Office could find out and block him. During one highly contentious field audit in 2012, he said, a man from the Fuel Procurement Office chased him down in a parking lot, screaming. “He stuck his finger in my face,” Mr. Ortiz said. “He told me the trouble I was making was the source of all the authority’s problems with oil.” In fact, the authority’s problems with oil had started decades earlier, when residents of Cataño, an industrial community near San Juan, fed up with dirty air and frequent illnesses, waylaid the head of the E.P.A. at a Caribbean conference and persuaded him to do a study. The researchers found that Puerto Rico’s power authority was by far the biggest polluter in its E.P.A. region (which includes New York and New Jersey), spewing an estimated 100 million pounds of sulfur dioxide mist over Cataño and other communities in the shadow of its smokestacks. The federal regulators found that the authority was burning something known as “sludge,” the oil that is left after more desirable distillates are removed from crude oil. Sludge is filthy to burn in any case, but in Puerto Rico it was worse because the power authority in those days had no emissions controls on its smokestacks. The E.P.A. brought its findings to the Justice Department and several years of litigation followed. In 1999, the authority came under a federal consent decree, requiring it to limit emissions of sulfur and other hazardous substances. The decree was amended in 2004. Much of the skewed testing that Mr. Ortiz described in his testimony involved what he said were efforts to skirt those limits during and after the litigation, and to continue buying and burning sludge. “I can’t tell you the reason,” Mr. Ortiz said in his testimony. “I can only tell you that it happened, that it was bad, and that it has had horrible consequences for the authority.”

Puerto Rico
Oil and Gasoline
Abraham Ortiz
Air pollution
HazMat
EPA


Chrysler Says Government Loans Are Now Unnecessary

Abstract: DETROIT — Chrysler will soon pay back its government loans because they have become “redundant and unnecessary” now that the automaker is more financially stable, its chief executive, Sergio Marchionne , said Thursday. Mr. Marchionne said Chrysler would save enough interest by refinancing the loans to “make a material difference on our profit-and-loss table.” He declined to say how much less the company expected to pay. “The markets are there now, and our performance is consistent with the objectives we set for ourselves,” he told reporters at Chrysler’s sport utility vehicle plant on the east side of Detroit. “It’s time to try and close the loop on what had been an incredibly necessary intervention.” Mr. Marchionne has said repeatedly that the interest payments to the two governments were the sole reason that Chrysler was in the red. But he stopped short of saying that Chrysler would be profitable after repaying the $7.5 billion in loans to the American and Canadian governments later this quarter. The company lost $652 million last year and paid $1.23 billion in interest on the bailout loans. In February, Mr. Marchionne complained that Chrysler was forced to pay “shyster” interest rates on its government loans before later apologizing for using the term. Chrysler said it planned to sell bonds to investors and take out a credit line from several banks to repay the loans. Mr. Marchionne said the deal was not finished but expressed confidence that the company was “quite attractive to the capital markets.” “When we become accountable to the capital markets, it’s much healthier,” he said. At the same time, the Italian automaker Fiat, which owns 30 percent of Chrysler, intends to pay $1.27 billion for an additional 16 percent. Fiat can become Chrysler’s majority owner after Chrysler begins selling a car that is rated at 40 miles a gallon, the last of three milestones laid out in the two companies’ partnership agreement. Mr. Marchionne spoke after giving the Treasury secretary, Timothy F. Geithner, a tour of the Detroit plant, which builds the Jeep Grand Cherokee and Dodge Durango . Mr. Geithner told the Detroit Economic Club that the government would lose money on its investment in the auto industry — though less than expected. Still, Mr. Geithner said, the Treasury was working to get the best possible return on taxpayers’ investment. “We didn’t do these things to maximize return. We did them to save jobs,” he said. “The biggest impact of these programs was in the millions of jobs saved.” The Treasury still owns 26 percent of General Motors, which repaid $8.1 billion in government loans a year ago, but shares of G.M. have fallen below their $33 initial public offering price. “We are in a much stronger position today as a country” because of the intervention, he said. Mr. Marchionne said that eliminating its government ownership would not result in significant changes in Chrysler’s operations but it could help sales somewhat. “There’s no doubt in my mind the perception of our brands and the perception of this house is going to improve,” he said. Jesse Toprak, vice president for industry trends and insight at TrueCar.com , which researches the auto industry, said only a small percentage of consumers were likely to see Chrysler differently after it repaid the loans, because most people did not follow the company closely enough. Chrysler has more work to do before it can be considered healthy, Mr. Toprak said, but it has made enormous progress since being close to collapse two years ago. “Chrysler made the best of what they could in this period of recovery and this limbo ownership situation,” he said. “They were actually surprisingly good in some of their new vehicle introductions.”

Chrysler LLC
Automobiles
Credit and Debt
Marchionne Sergio


Logano, 22, Prevails at Pocono

Abstract: Joey Logano slipped past Mark Martin in the closing laps at Pocono Raceway for his first victory since 2009 to become the first Sprint Cup driver this season to win from the pole. Logano, 22, rallied past the 53-year-old Martin for a thrilling finish in the first 400-mile race. Pocono shortened the race by 100 miles this season. Tony Stewart was third.

Automobile Racing
Pocono Raceway
Logano Joey
Martin Mark


Assessing Cisco’s Growth Strategy

Abstract: John T. Chambers, chief executive of the networking giant Cisco Systems, is keeping the acquisition machine humming. The company’s $2.9 billion deal for Starent Networks is the second of roughly that size in October alone. And he has promised that more deals are coming. It’s too bad this strategy hasn’t quite paid off for shareholders recently. Cisco’s rationale has been consistent. It argues that by combining, it can sell more stuff than Starent could alone, and there may be something to that. Starent produces software and equipment to manage data traffic for wireless devices; Cisco sells lots of related products to telecommunications operators. So the sum of the two companies may end up being more than the parts. Yet this deal is bigger than Cisco’s typical $1 billion or smaller target. Small companies usually have weak relationships with potential customers and a small sales staff, so plugging these groups into Cisco’s marketing machine maximizes revenue. Starent’s maturity means that kind of so-called revenue synergy will be harder to come by. Moreover, the deals this month for Starent and Tandberg are the fifth- and sixth-biggest acquisitions Cisco has ever made, according to Dealogic. This smacks of Cisco, a $139 billion company, having to perform larger acquisitions — with arguably more execution risk — to move the needle. Cisco does not agree. The company says it is merely being opportunistic and taking advantage of depressed valuations. Perhaps so. But it is paying a hefty 39 times Starent’s estimated 2010 earnings. The record suggests that Starent’s shareholders have gotten the better end of the stick. They are being offered a 21 percent premium to relinquish control. Cisco’s shareholders, on the other hand, have seen the value of their stock decline by roughly a third over the last decade, despite — or perhaps partly because of — its prolific deal-making. It might be time for Cisco to slow the M&A machine and prove that it works. Name That Industry Should private equity get a new name? David M. Rubenstein of the Carlyle Group reckons the leveraged buyout business should rename itself “change capital” or “value-added equity.” He has a point. Some private equity firms and funds are public themselves, and regulators may step up the public disclosures required from buyout firms. So “private equity” is no longer the best description of the industry. But other possible names may be closer to reality than the one Mr. Rubenstein suggests. “Underwater equity,” for instance. The historical record of the private equity business is pretty good. The better firms have delivered high returns for pension funds, college endowments and other investors. But with private equity’s secret sauce, high leverage, now out of the picture, the valuations of the holdings in their funds have fallen. Some companies are worth less than what is owed to creditors. Several huge buyouts, including those of Harrah’s Entertainment and Clear Channel Communications, may be in this position. That means equity investments in these companies are under water, too — and may remain so for quite some time. Or how about “fee-squared capital?” Private equity firms may make money for investors, but not before raking off plenty for themselves. Mr. Rubenstein, for instance, was recently ranked No. 123 on the Forbes 400 list of richest Americans. Most money in private equity is made by charging annual management fees of 1.5 percent or so and then taking 20 percent of any profits. But private equity firms collect additional fees when they buy companies, while they own companies, and again when they sell companies — whether investors profit or not. Or just maybe “PUPA equity.” That stands for “private until public again.” Buyout firms like to tout the value of taking a company off the public market. It can be easier to make messy decisions — like firing staff or changing top management — when a company is out of the public eye. But to make any money, private equity firms need to sell their holdings for a profit. Sometimes that involves deciding that the public market would be best again for the company concerned. The Blackstone Group, for instance, has just told investors it plans to float a clutch of companies now that stock markets have improved. Mr. Rubenstein thinks the private equity industry is due for a name change. But maybe it just needs to go back to its roots and haul itself up by its bootstraps.

Cisco Systems Inc
Mergers Acquisitions and Divestitures


Israel: U.S. Immigrant Convicted in Palestinian Deaths

Abstract: A Jerusalem court on Wednesday convicted an American immigrant who lived in a West Bank settlement of killing two Palestinians in 1997. Known as “the Jewish terrorist,” Yaakov (Jack) Teitel was also convicted of other crimes, including bombings in 2008 that wounded a leftist Israeli professor and a teenage boy belonging to a community of Jews who believe in Jesus. Sentencing is planned for February.

Decisions and Verdicts
Israel
Murders
Bombs
Yaakov Teitel


Yemeni Opposition Leaders to Meet With Gulf Bloc

Abstract: SANA, Yemen — Opposition leaders from Yemen said on Sunday that they planned to travel to Saudi Arabia later in the day to discuss an agreement with the Gulf Cooperation Council on a timetable for President Ali Abdullah Saleh to leave office. Separately, on Sunday afternoon, security forces opened fire on protesters who were marching through Sana, the capital, according to witnesses. At least 15 protesters were shot, according to doctors at a makeshift clinic at the main gathering area for protesters at Sana University. The protesters were trying to march to the house of Mr. Saleh’s son, Ahmed, a leading military commander whom it is believed the president wanted to be his successor . The protesters had marched about a mile from the main sit-in area at the university, and witnesses said they were less than a quarter mile from the house when security forces fired tear gas and live ammunition. It appeared to be the largest such march yet outside the demonstration area in the capital. At the clinic Sunday night, there was a frantic rush to pull hundreds of men, coughing from tear gas, out of emergency vehicles, off motorcycles and out of taxis, even from the trunks. An elderly man sat on the ground, gripping his face. Some protesters said that they were beaten with sticks by security officers in cars as they were trying to retreat from the clash. Others there had a more casual demeanor. “They started with tear gas, and, after that, they fired bullets,” said Ghasim Saleh, a tribesman from just outside the capital who was shot in the leg. After his wound had been treated and bandaged, he sat on the ground and smoked a cigarette while chatting on a cellphone, reassuring his wife on the other end that he was fine. A soldier who had defected and was shot in the back walked around the clinic casually as well. A group of women standing in corners nearby were crying. They said that their husbands had been marching and that they still had not heard from them. “This is peaceful! Peaceful!” Amina al-Shaouby shouted from behind her tears. “Every day we sit here. And we want to march so we can show those outside the sit-in that we are peaceful and we don’t have weapons.” Yassin Saeed Noman, the leader of a coalition of opposition parties known as the Joint Meeting Parties, or J.M.P., said that he and three other opposition leaders would travel to Riyadh, the Saudi capital, to meet Sunday with Gulf Cooperation Council officials about an initiative discussed earlier this month. It calls for Mr. Saleh to transfer presidential powers to his deputy and leave office. The draft agreement also gives the president and his family immunity from prosecution, presumably to head off a situation similar to that in Egypt, where the military has detained former President Hosni Mubarak and his two sons. Saudi Arabia, Yemen’s largest donor, dominates the Gulf Cooperation Council , a Persian Gulf regional bloc that also includes Oman, Bahrain, Qatar, Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates. Yemen does not belong to the council. Senior Yemeni officials have said in recent days that the United States and the European Union are pressing for a plan — in conjunction with the Gulf Cooperation Council — that would have Mr. Saleh hand over his powers immediately and formally leave office within the next three months. It was not immediately clear whether any Western officials would join the gathering in Riyadh. Leaders of the Joint Meeting Parties have previously insisted that they would not meet with the Gulf Cooperation Council in Riyadh unless an agreement on a transfer of power was in place. One of the opposition leaders, Mohammed Abdulmalik al-Mutawakil, said Sunday that the opposition group was not going to Saudi Arabia for a dialogue, nor would the group compromise on its demands for Mr. Saleh to step down.

Middle East and North Africa Unrest (2010- )


Ken Rees of Think Finance, on Leading a Growing Company

Abstract: This interview with Ken Rees , president and chief executive of Think Finance , a developer of financial products, was conducted and condensed by Adam Bryant .  Q. You worked for many years as a management consultant. How did that help you prepare for a C.E.O. role? A. As a consultant, I learned that you really have to listen to the lowest-level people in a company, because that’s where the answers are — with people who are interfacing with the customers. A lot of what consultants do is stuff that senior management ought to be doing, which is really communicating effectively at all levels and putting those ideas together. That’s a big part of my approach as a C.E.O. I find that hierarchy’s a killer, particularly in a fast-paced company. You have to go out of your way to keep ripping out those levels and barriers between people. Q. How do you do that? A. Some of it, frankly, is a bit corny. I have “Cookies With Ken” every couple of weeks, and we bring in about a dozen employees from across the company and talk about what’s going on. At the end, I always ask, “Tell me one thing you really like about the company and one thing that frustrates you about the company.” I always come out with at least one thing that is eye-opening. We also have a quarterly town hall meeting where everybody in the company gets together. We walk through all the financials — the good, the bad and the ugly. Then, each quarter, we have five things that we’re focused on doing, and we get that widely communicated. At the end of the quarter, we discuss how we did, and we grade ourselves. Q. How has your leadership style evolved as the company has grown? A. As a start-up C.E.O. without a lot of resources, you’re involved in the details of everything. As we grew, I was lucky enough to bring in a really talented executive team. And, candidly, I was driving them crazy, because the things I was doing that were working really well as a small-company C.E.O. were hurting my ability to be successful as a larger-company C.E.O. We brought in an executive coach to work with us. We discussed how I was being a bulldozer and I needed to be more of a bus driver. We also made a big deal of that insight and created a Bulldozer Award. The person who wins it each quarter gets a big plastic bulldozer that makes noises. We wanted to recognize people who are pushing things forward, which allowed me to really step back. The executive team also gets together every day to review our performance so that there aren’t any surprises. That’s also helped me work better as a larger-company C.E.O., because no C.E.O. wants to be surprised. We have also recently added the Bus Driver Award. We’re moving into the stage where we’re big enough that we’re using a lot of cross-functional teams and initiatives. We wanted to recognize people who do a really good job of putting together effective teams. We have another set of awards that are all bottom-up, and those are linked to our cultural values. Q. And what are your company’s values? A. Well, the first ones I developed myself. But four months later, I said: “That really isn’t the way you create cultural values. Let’s do this in a more broad-based fashion.” So we opened it up, and we had the whole company talking about this, with a lot of very detailed discussions about every word. We created six cultural values: Always improve. Play nice. Meet the numbers. Respect the customer. Think big. Do the right thing. Q. What made you decide that you had to hit the reset button on your values? A. I think a good C.E.O. should have a certain level of insecurity about whether they really get it. Nobody wants to be the pointy-haired boss from “Dilbert.” And it just came to me: “My gosh, I came up with these cultural values. Does everyone agree with them? They tell me they do. But I don’t know if it’s really representative. So let me push this out, and make sure that we get those ideas straight from the horse’s mouth.” Q. Is there anything unusual about how you run meetings with your executive team? A. We do a daily huddle, and we always start out with good news. If you’re trying to change a lot of things, and you’ve got challenges, sometimes people can get pretty beaten down. So we do try to start things off with one piece of good news from each person. And there’s always one person who says, “I can’t think of any good news.” And we say, “No, you’ve got to come up with some good news.” Q. How does that help the meeting dynamic? A. If there’s one thing that personally I’d like to be better at, it’s celebrating success. In an environment that’s changing as quickly as ours, there are so many things to be worried about. It’s easy to get focused on the fact that you’re not where you want to be, as opposed to all that you’ve accomplished. So taking a moment to talk about good news just keeps things more upbeat than they otherwise would be. For a lot of C.E.O.’s, I think, we’re so focused on where we need to be that we don’t necessarily have the fun we need to have along the way. Q. Let’s shift to hiring. How do you do it? What questions do you ask? A. What’s worked best for me is trying to get job candidates to tell a story about themselves. I ask for two stories — “Tell me about the time in your professional career when you were the most charged up and passionate and happiest about what you were doing. And then, tell me about the time that you were most frustrated.” Q. What else is unusual about the way you run your company? A. We started something called Think Tank to reward that rarefied group of people who make such a difference in the organization that you can’t pay them enough, they’re just that valuable. If you lost them, it would be devastating. So we created this team. They’re now part of our executive off-sites, so that they understand how important they are. And we also carve off a piece of our earnings for the group that vests over three years. It’s a cool program to let people really understand their value, and give them an ownership in the company.

Rees Ken
Think Finance Inc
Executives and Management (Theory)
Hiring and Promotion


Democratic Senators Tell White House of Concerns About Health Care Law Rollout

Abstract: WASHINGTON — Democratic senators, at a caucus meeting with White House officials, expressed concerns on Thursday about how the Obama administration was carrying out the health care law they adopted three years ago. Democrats in both houses of Congress said some members of their party were getting nervous that they could pay a political price if the rollout of the law was messy or if premiums went up significantly. President Obama’s new chief of staff, Denis R. McDonough, fielded questions on the issue for more than an hour at a lunch with Democratic senators. Senator Jeanne Shaheen, Democrat of New Hampshire, who is up for re-election next year, said, “We are hearing from a lot of small businesses in New Hampshire that do not know how to comply with the law.” In addition, Mrs. Shaheen said, “restaurants that employ people for about 30 hours a week are trying to figure out whether it would be in their interest to reduce the hours” of those workers, so the restaurants could avoid the law’s requirement to offer health coverage to full-time employees. The White House officials “acknowledged that these are real concerns, and that we’ve got to do more to address them,” Mrs. Shaheen said. Senator Tom Harkin, Democrat of Iowa and chairman of the appropriations subcommittee on health care, said he was extremely upset with Mr. Obama’s decision to take money from public health prevention programs and use it to publicize the new law, which creates insurance marketplaces in every state. “I am greatly disappointed — beyond upset — that the administration chose to help pay for the Affordable Care Act in fiscal year 2013 by raiding the Public Health and Prevention Fund,” Mr. Harkin said. The administration said it had transferred $332 million from the prevention fund to pay for “education and outreach” activities publicizing the new insurance markets, or exchanges. Image Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius at a hearing Wednesday. Credit Doug Mills/The New York Times To express his displeasure, Mr. Harkin has blocked Senate action on Mr. Obama’s nominee to be administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services , Marilyn B. Tavenner. By putting a “hold” on the nomination, aides said, Mr. Harkin hopes to draw the White House into negotiations on the future of the prevention fund, which he has championed. At Congressional hearings this week, Kathleen Sebelius, the secretary of health and human services, said it was necessary to tap the prevention fund because Congress had refused to provide money requested by the president for outreach and education activities. Senator Max Baucus, Democrat of Montana and chairman of the Finance Committee, said last week that the administration deserved “a failing grade” for its efforts to explain the law to the public. “I just see a huge train wreck coming down,” Mr. Baucus said then. But after hearing White House officials on Thursday, Mr. Baucus said he was encouraged, and he praised the administration’s efforts to get healthy young people to sign up for insurance coverage. Senator Benjamin L. Cardin, Democrat of Maryland, said he told White House officials on Thursday that he was concerned about big rate increases being sought by the largest health insurer in his state. The company, CareFirst BlueCross BlueShield, has sought increases averaging 25 percent for individual insurance policies that will be sold in the state insurance exchange, and it is seeking increases of about 15 percent for small businesses. The company said the higher premiums reflected costs of complying with the new law. Senator Cardin said he was also distressed by the administration’s failure to require health insurers to provide affordable coverage of dental services for children. The law lists pediatric dental care as one of 10 categories of “essential health benefits” to be provided by all health plans. Under a rule issued by the administration, Mr. Cardin said, “there is no guarantee or requirement that families have pediatric dental coverage, and the coverage could be provided in a stand-alone plan with a separate deductible, so that a family with two children might have to pay as much as $1,400 in out-of-pocket costs for dental coverage.” In that case, he said, many families would go without dental coverage. Congressional leaders wrestled at the same time with a more parochial concern, health insurance for members of Congress and their aides. A provision of the 2010 law, sought by a Republican senator, says members of Congress and many of their aides must get their health benefits through the new insurance exchanges. Some lawmakers and their aides are worried that the government may not continue to pay its share of the premiums. Michael Steel, a spokesman for Speaker John A. Boehner, said this was the “Democrats’ problem to solve.” But Adam Jentleson, a spokesman for Senator Harry Reid of Nevada, the Senate Democratic leader, said, “No legislative fix is necessary.”

Obamacare,Affordable Care Act
Democrats
Barack Obama
US Politics
Tom Harkin
Election
Health Insurance


Travis d’Arnaud Leads a Rally and Breaks Out of a Slump

Abstract: Before his first at-bat Monday night, Mets catcher Travis d’Arnaud looked like a golfer approaching the first tee trying to cure a case of the yips. D’Arnaud took a measurement by laying his bat down behind home plate. He then walked out of the batter’s box, tapped his cleats, jerked his arm and adjusted his gloves. As Los Angeles Dodgers starter Brett Anderson prepared to offer his first pitch of the bottom of the second inning, d’Arnaud settled in, his legs spread wide and his right foot resting on the back chalk of the box. Seconds later, d’Arnaud lined a 90-mile-per-hour fastball into center field, sending home Yoenis Cespedes for the Mets’ first run in Game 3 of their National League division series. He went on to score on a three-run double by Curtis Granderson, having ignited a four-run inning as the Mets erased an early 3-0 deficit. In the next inning, Anderson approached d’Arnaud differently. He led off by pulling an 83-m.p.h. changeup out of his bag, and d’Arnaud golfed it over the left-field wall at Citi Field for the first postseason home run in the ballpark’s history, putting the Mets ahead by 6-3 en route to a 13-7 win and a 2-1 edge in the best-of-five series. If one Mets regular needed an offensive awakening, it was d’Arnaud, who finished 3 for 5 with three runs scored. Before his single in the second, d’Arnaud had been 0 for 7 with four strikeouts in the playoffs. He drove in a run in the eighth inning of a 9-3 loss to the Miami Marlins on Sept. 15, and that was his last R.B.I. until Monday. “Today I was just trying to keep things simple,” d’Arnaud said. “I feel like, the last few weeks, I’ve been overthinking and trying to do too much instead of just seeing the ball and hitting the ball.” Earlier in the series, d’Arnaud often swung early in the count, only to bounce balls into easy outs for the Dodgers. Manager Terry Collins said before the game that d’Arnaud’s aggressiveness was not necessarily a fault. “One of the things as you go back, you can even tell, when he was swinging good, he jumped the count,” Collins said. To correct his timing, d’Arnaud spent Monday afternoon working with the hitting coach Kevin Long, making minor adjustments to his approach. The results of the session now have the Mets one win from a berth in the National League Championship Series. D’Arnaud was not the only catcher to break out of a prolonged slump Monday. Yasmani Grandal spotted the Dodgers their three-run lead with a bases-clearing single in the top of the second. Two of the runs were earned; Carl Crawford came home on a throwing error by Granderson on the play. Grandal’s decline had been even more precipitous. Since Aug. 16, Grandal had had three hits in 76 at-bats, including the postseason. Grandal was named an All-Star, slugging .526, hitting 14 home runs and driving in 36 runs before the break. With a sore shoulder, he hit .218, with two homers and 11 R.B.I., in the second half of the season. For Game 4, the Dodgers may return to catcher A. J. Ellis, who has hit safely in 14 of 15 career postseason games and also caught Clayton Kershaw during Game 1. D’Arnaud, however, will almost surely be penciled in to start Game 4, as well as however many more contests the Mets play this October. D’Arnaud, who has dealt with a number of injuries this season, has often come through in the clutch when healthy. Seven of his 12 home runs during the regular season gave the Mets a lead or tied a game. D’Arnaud’s home run on Monday only extended a lead, but it effectively ended the Dodgers’ chance of a comeback: They never brought the tying run to the plate after the hit.

Baseball
Playoffs
Mets
Dodgers
Travis d'Arnaud


Draghi Says Government Spending Could Help Eurozone Economy

Abstract: Mario Draghi, the president of the European Central Bank, on Thursday stepped up pressure on countries like Italy to improve the climate for business. But he also said there was room for governments to use public spending to reinvigorate the stalled eurozone economy. Speaking in English in Milan, Mr. Draghi both amplified and clarified themes he raised last month during a speech in Jackson Hole, Wyo. , in which he surprised many Europeans by appearing to step back from the E.C.B.’s longtime insistence that countries focus above all on reducing budget deficits and debt. According to a text of the speech , Mr. Draghi said government stimulus should come in the form of lower taxes, financed by cuts in “unproductive” government spending. Countries should remain within the deficit and spending limits that are a condition for eurozone membership, Mr. Draghi said. He made no mention of the French government’s admission this week that it will not meet its budget targets until 2017. But Mr. Draghi also suggested that countries that can afford it should consider higher spending. “It may be useful to have a discussion on the overall fiscal stance of the euro area,” he said, “with the view to raising public investment where there is fiscal space to do so.” The call for more spending was probably aimed at Germany, which has a balanced government budget but which critics say has not invested enough in transportation networks and other public infrastructure. In addition, Mr. Draghi said, governments should consider offering guarantees to encourage lending to small businesses. Specifically, he said, they should consider support for asset-backed securities, bundles of bank loans that are resold to investors. By packaging and selling their loans, banks free up money for more lending. Last week, the E.C.B. said it would begin buying asset-backed securities in an aggressive new effort to pump money into the eurozone economy. But the market for such securities is relatively small, and the E.C.B. has been trying to encourage banks to issue more. Government guarantees would serve as an incentive for them to do so. In recent weeks Mr. Draghi has increasingly pushed for countries to roll back work rules and other regulations that he said stymie business investment and job creation. Monetary policy, he has stressed, will not be effective unless it is accompanied by such changes. The pressure from Mr. Draghi on Thursday may have had extra significance because it was delivered in Italy, his home country, often regarded as one of the eurozone’s most sclerotic economies. Mr. Draghi, who rarely criticizes countries explicitly, cited France and Italy as examples of how government red tape throttles growth. Estonia regulates just 45 professions, he said, quoting European Union figures, but Italy regulates 170 and France regulates 219. (Slovakia, which regulates 304 professions, is the most extreme.) “Such barriers to entry limit competition and employment, creating undue rents for a select few to the detriment of customers,” he said. Mr. Draghi said business investment had bounced back in the United States since the financial crisis but had improved only slightly in the eurozone. Investment will recover only when there is ample bank lending, better conditions for entrepreneurs and government stimulus, he said. “We are currently facing a set of conditions — low growth and low inflation, high debt and high unemployment — that can only be addressed by concerted action on both the demand and supply sides of the economy,” Mr. Draghi said. “This requires all actors — both at national and European level — to play their parts.”

EU
Mario Draghi
European Central Bank
Economy
Euro Crisis


New York Taxis to Start Charging Increased Rates

Abstract: Yellow taxis may begin charging more on Tuesday, ushering in an approved fare increase for riders, whose rates have remained virtually unchanged since 2006. The city’s Taxi and Limousine Commission announced late Monday that operators of yellow taxis would be allowed to put the new fares — which increase rates by about 17 percent — into effect as of 12:01 a.m. on Tuesday, once they have recalibrated their meters and updated external markings. Operators will not be required to institute the fares until their first scheduled inspections after Sept. 30, meaning that the city’s taxi fleet will most likely include a mixture of old and new rates for the next several weeks. “We anticipate that many taxicab operators will implement the new fare structure as of Sept. 4, so it is extremely important that taxi riders know and understand it,” David S. Yassky, the chairman of the taxi commission, said in a statement. “The taxi industry appears to be experiencing a smooth transition to the new structure, and we want passengers to experience a smooth transition as well.” The commission approved the increase in July. Under the new price structure, the base fee charged before a ride begins will remain unchanged. But the cost for each fifth of a mile traveled, or each 60 seconds in stopped or slow traffic, will rise to 50 cents, from 40 cents, placing an added burden on passengers who take long rides. Trips between Kennedy International Airport and Manhattan will rise by $7, to $52 plus tolls. The surcharge on rides to Newark Liberty International Airport will also rise, to $17.50, from $15. The last across-the-board fare increase occurred in 2004, when metered rates rose about 26 percent. In 2006, the city increased the rate charged for each minute a cab was stopped or moving slowly. In 2009, a 50-cent surcharge was added to help support the Metropolitan Transportation Authority.

Prices (Fares Fees and Rates)
Taxicabs and Taxicab Drivers
Taxi and Limousine Commission
New York City


Mets’ Dickey Strikes Out 11 and Bullpen Holds Its Ground

Abstract: PITTBURGH — Mike Nickeas seemed a bit frazzled after the Mets’ 3-2 win over the Pittsburgh Pirates . But on nights when he catches for R. A. Dickey, that is generally a good sign for the team. Nickeas, who said catching Dickey’s knuckleball was the most stressful thing he has to do in baseball, unfurled a stream of superlatives to describe the pitch Dickey displayed Tuesday night: “ridiculous,” “outstanding,” and “really good,” among others. “It’s the best I’ve ever seen in a game,” Nickeas said. “That’s tough to catch.” Dickey worked swiftly through the Pirates’ order with his knuckleball wiggling devastatingly through the strike zone. He allowed five hits and struck out 11 — a career high — and did not issue a walk in seven innings. He threw 88 pitches, 67 strikes. Dickey said that he felt as if he had three different varieties of the pitch and that he was able to manipulate its movement in the strike zone. “I felt like I had a really good one, and I had a couple of different kinds of knuckleballs, which was really, really fun,” Dickey said. “I am always in the state of becoming, always hoping to get better, and I think tonight I grew a little bit.” Despite Dickey’s brilliance, the Mets still had to endure a tense game. Their offense has struggled lately, and Tuesday was no different. With that in mind, Dickey was pulled for a pinch-hitter in the eighth inning with the score tied, 1-1. Manager Terry Collins said he was looking for a rally, but added that he had a discussion with the pitching coach Dan Warthen about leaving Dickey in the game to hit. “I said, ‘The way we’re swinging the bats, I’m not sure we’re any worse having him lead the inning off.’ ” Indeed, Andres Torres, who pinch-hit for Dickey, struck out. But Mike Baxter doubled against Juan Cruz, and Kirk Nieuwenhuis followed with a walk. David Wright struck out, but Lucas Duda ripped a single through the right side of the Pirates’ infield, scoring Baxter. Then Pedro Alvarez bobbled Daniel Murphy’s grounder to third base, allowing Nieuwenhuis to cruise home and give the Mets a 3-1 lead. The Mets’ offense looked more feeble than usual because Wright went 0 for 4, lowering his average to .403. “David’s certainly carried his share of the load thus far, and we’ve got to help him out,” Collins said. “Some other guys have got to start getting some hits. Tonight, Lucas got a big hit, which is good to see.” Dickey, who was given a one-run lead in the second through Nickeas’s run-scoring hit, held off the Pirates, working around one-out doubles by the Pirates in the first and fifth innings. But he could not do the same in the sixth. He allowed a one-out triple to Josh Harrison, who scored easily when Andrew McCutchen lofted a fly ball to right field to tie the score at 1-1. The Mets’ unearned run in the eighth proved vital because the Pirates cut the deficit to one run in the bottom of the inning against Jon Rauch, part of a bullpen that entered the game with a 5.11 earned run average. But Tim Byrdak entered to get the final out of the eighth before Frank Francisco pitched a perfect ninth for his 11th save. Francisco, who has struggled this season, said his second consecutive save was not any more meaningful than usual, even considering his rough start this year. “It wasn’t the first time that it happened to me,” he said of his poor form, “and I know it’s not going to be the last time.” The Mets’ bullpen has faced unusual pressure, Collins said, because the offense has struggled. The most visible disappointment has been Ike Davis, who went 0 for 4 Tuesday as his average dropped to .156 . Davis, who entered Monday’s game as a defensive replacement and struck out twice, flied out weakly twice and struck out twice, both times looking at backdoor breaking balls. But Davis has not been the only culprit. Torres was benched Tuesday, with Collins saying he needed to try something new to kick-start the team’s offense. Nieuwenhuis played center field and Baxter was the team’s leadoff batter. Torres’s strikeout in the eighth was his 11th in his last 34 at-bats, a span during which he has had just one hit. His average dropped to .187 . Until Davis, Torres and their teammates get going, the Mets will have to eke out wins the way they did Tuesday night.

Pittsburgh Pirates
New York Mets
Dickey R A
Baseball


National Geographic Adventure Magazine Folds

Abstract: National Geographic announced on Thursday that it was ceasing regular publication of National Geographic Adventure, its 10-year-old magazine about travel and the outdoors published eight times a year. However, it will keep the brand alive in two annual newsstand-only publications, in books and on the Web. The company had been in talks to sell the magazine, but those fell apart after it refused to part with the “National Geographic” portion of the title, said John Q. Griffin, executive vice president and president of the magazine group at the National Geographic Society. “The reason we didn’t sell it is that the name of the magazine is National Geographic Adventure,” he said. Because the company continues to publish other National Geographic magazines, “to have another brand out there selling might have caused confusion in the marketplace.” Potential buyers were not interested in just buying a magazine called “Adventure,” he said. “Much of the value is tied up in the brand. I think that was very difficult to do,” Mr. Griffin said. The company plans two Adventure newsstand-only issues, on topics that might include Adventurer of the Year or adventure travel, Mr. Griffin said. Seventeen employees, almost all of them in editorial, will be dismissed because of the closure. Mr. Griffin said it was unclear whether John Rasmus, the founding editor of the magazine, who also was the founding editor of Men’s Journal and the top editor at Outside, would stay with the company. “We’re working with John Rasmus during this transition. As we figure out exactly how to go forward, I am certainly hopeful that he will go forward in some capacity,” he said. The final regular issue of National Geographic Adventure will be the December/January one, now on newsstands, and subscribers can choose to receive either National Geographic or National Geographic Traveler instead. There are no plans to close Traveler, Mr. Griffin said. The poor advertising market led to the closing of National Geographic Adventure, the same reason cited in most magazine closings this year. Pages at Adventure declined 44.1 percent, to 190 pages, in the first three quarters of this year compared with the period last year, according to the Publishers Information Bureau. National Geographic’s other publications fared better: National Geographic declined 21.4 percent, to 251 pages, National Geographic Traveler declined 39.5 percent, to 249 pages, and National Geographic Kids increased ad pages by 0.8 percent, to 54 pages. The company had cut Adventure’s frequency earlier this year to eight issues a year, from 10. “We thought we could get enough ad revenue in the remaining issues to allow us to continue to publish, and unfortunately, that is not how it turned out,” Mr. Griffin said.

National Geographic Adventure
Magazines
National Geographic
Shutdowns (Institutional)
Advertising and Marketing


Charles R. Ellis, President of John Wiley & Sons, Dies at 72

Abstract: Charles R. Ellis, an executive who led the venerable family-owned publishing house John Wiley & Sons back to fiscal health in the 1990s after a period of misdirected expansion, died on May 4 in Paris. He was 72 and had homes in Paris and Manhattan. The cause was cancer, said Susan Spilka, a spokeswoman for Wiley. Wiley, now an international publisher of textbooks, business books and scholarly journals as well as trade books (including Frommer’s travel guides, the “CliffsNotes” study guides and the “For Dummies” how-to series), was founded in a Lower Manhattan print shop in 1807 and celebrated its 200th anniversary last year. Mr. Ellis was president and chief executive from 1990 to 1998, taking over after the company made forays outside its core businesses, in particular into business education and training. Mr. Ellis refocused the company, selling off a new acquisition, the Wilson Learning Corporation, and strengthening the core areas with acquisitions of his own, including Alan R. Liss Inc., a leading life-sciences publisher. “There was a period in the ’80s when the company floundered, and he brought it back to profitability,” Ms. Spilka said. During his tenure the company was listed for the first time on the New York Stock Exchange and began an Internet business, putting all its journals online in 1997. Mr. Ellis, who was keenly interested in intellectual property protections, made Wiley one of the first publishers to develop a digital object identifier — or D.O.I. — system, for embedding identifying marks in electronic books and journals to track their use in cyberspace. From 1992 to 1994, he was chairman of the Association of American Publishers. Charles Richard Ellis was born in Manhattan on July 20, 1935. He graduated from Princeton and for a time worked as an assistant for the philosopher Bertrand Russell, later receiving an M.A. from Columbia. Before joining Wiley, he had worked at several other publishers, including Pergamon Press, D.C. Heath and the science and health publisher Elsevier, based in the Netherlands. He is survived by his wife, Sandi; a son, Kenneth, from an earlier marriage; four stepchildren, Christopher Moore of Baltimore, Shannon Moore of Paris, Patrick and Nicholas Moore; nine grandchildren; and one great-grandchild.

Wiley John & Sons Inc
Executives and Management
Deaths (Obituaries)
Ellis Charles R.
Books and Literature
Book Trade


Prosecution Rests, Then Terror Trial Enters Secret Session to Hear Defense Testimony

Abstract: GUANTÁNAMO BAY , Cuba — After military prosecutors rested their case against Osama bin Laden’s former driver, the military judge on Thursday closed the courtroom to the news media and other observers for the first time so the tribunal could hear defense testimony in secret. The closed-door proceeding came in the second week of a trial that has become a test of the Bush administration’s military commission system. Defense lawyers for the detainee, Salim Hamdan , the first terror suspect to face a war-crime trial here, said the government had required the closed session for their first two witnesses. “It is my hope that the American public will someday hear Mr. Hamdan’s defense,” said one of his lawyers, Lt. Cmdr. Brian L. Mizer. The secret session was one signal of a new stage for the trial, which has moved from being a largely open proceeding to one studded with references to classified information that was not mentioned in public. That first defense witness, Col. L. Morgan Banks III of the Army, has in the past been publicly identified as a senior army psychologist responsible for the military’s program for training its members to withstand interrogations. The program is known as SERE, which stands for Survival, Evasion, Resistance, Escape. The program has been the subject of wide comment because it was used beginning in 2002 to devise interrogation methods for terror suspects. When the defense began its case, Commander Mizer, in his Navy whites, said government officials had set the rules for the testimony. “It is not the defense that has requested this closed session,” Commander Mizer said, “but it is necessary, according to the government, to protect the information.” The military judge, Capt. Keith J. Allred of the Navy, was prepared. “We’ll have to clear the gallery,” he said. The proceedings have increasingly moved toward secret references and classified filings. Some witnesses have been referred to only with names like “Witness Two” and “Sgt. Major A.” There have been secret filings dealing with claims of abusive treatment of detainees and references to American interrogators who work for agencies that are not identified by name. These are referred to only as “another government agency.” On Thursday, Judge Allred issued a decision dealing with defense claims that Mr. Hamdan had been subject to coercive treatment at Guantánamo. He rejected the assertion in a five-page ruling that included two pages that were entirely blacked out and three that were nearly entirely blacked out. American civilian courts on occasion take testimony and evidence in secret for national security reasons. But one reason some Bush administration officials have argued for the war court here is the tight control security officials can maintain over information. Critics have said they feared that secrecy rules would be used to shield information about the treatment of detainees, some of whom have been subjected to harsh techniques patterned on the SERE program. The only information about why the defense called Colonel Banks and a second witness, Lt. Col. G. John Taylor, was provided by a defense statement. It said defense lawyers were calling the two special-forces witnesses who were at the American detention facility at the Bagram military base in Afghanistan when Mr. Hamdan arrived there on Dec. 28, 2001. Mr. Hamdan’s lawyers have repeatedly suggested that he was mistreated at Bagram and might have been mistreated before his arrival at Bagram when he was held in Afghanistan’s Panchir Valley. Witnesses have said Mr. Hamdan might have been held there by Afghan forces, and suggested they might have been assisted by clandestine American agents. In an earlier ruling, Judge Allred agreed with defense assertions that Mr. Hamdan was subjected to coercive treatment at Bagram. But there has been almost no public testimony about his treatment in the Panchir Valley. On Thursday morning, as the prosecution’s case drew toward a close, prosecutors called a final witness, a federal agent who had interrogated Mr. Hamdan here, Robert McFadden. Mr. McFadden, an agent for the Naval Criminal Investigative Service, gave the prosecution its most damaging testimony against Mr. Hamdan. He said that during more than nine hours of interrogation in 2003, Mr. Hamdan had said he had sworn allegiance to Mr. bin Laden. Mr. McFadden said Mr. Hamdan had explained that he was committed to jihad and its goal of “killing Jews and Christians, expelling them from the Arabian Peninsula.” That testimony too, though conducted in public, included suggestions of secrets. Mr. McFadden, a law enforcement agent, said he knew nothing of how Mr. Hamdan had been handled at Guantánamo by the “intelligence side,” an apparent reference to intelligence officers who also conducted interrogations here. Harry H. Schneider Jr., a defense lawyer, held up a book and said he wanted to ask Mr. McFadden a question based on it. There was a stir at the prosecution table. “I’m told it’s classified, so I can’t ask you,” Mr. Schneider said. The book was the 9/11 Commission Report, a former best seller.

Hamdan Salim Ahmed
Guantanamo Bay Naval Base (Cuba)
Detainees
Military Commissions Act
Bagram Air Base (Afghanistan)


Sallie Mae to Be Accused of Overcharging Military Personnel on Loans

Abstract: Federal regulators plan to accuse Sallie Mae , the giant student lending corporation, of charging military personnel excessive interest on student loans, and the government is looking into similar allegations against other lenders. Sallie Mae revealed the pending action against it this week in its quarterly earnings report , stating that the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation warned in July that it planned to take “new formal enforcement action” against the lender. Both corporations declined to describe the allegations, but Sallie Mae said they would deal in part with the Servicemembers Civil Relief Act . That law caps interest on loans to military personnel at 6 percent, along with providing protections against default judgments and garnishments, and a person briefed on the matter said compliance with the 6 percent limit would be a key part of the F.D.I.C. action. Under the law, if a person borrows money at a higher rate and then enters the military and requests a lower rate, the lender must reduce the rate to 6 percent, and forgive any interest above that level. “We’ve invested a lot in our compliance efforts, but we understand some concerns persist, and we realize that the bar is getting higher,” said Martha Holler, a Sallie Mae spokeswoman, adding that the corporation is “open to our regulator’s recommendations for improvement.” In recent months, Sallie Mae has created a Web site specifically for military personnel, and has taken other steps to notify them of their legal rights regarding student loans. In enforcing the 6 percent rule and other credit protections for service members, the government has focused primarily on mortgage borrowing. In the last three years, the Justice Department and the states have reached several settlements with banks, directing billions of dollars in payments to service members, some of whom had lost their homes, and subjecting new foreclosure actions to more scrutiny. In October, the government’s new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau identified improper student lending as “the next front” in protecting service members financially. And in a July 31 hearing of the Senate Committee on Veterans Affairs, when asked about predatory student lending, a Justice Department official said that the department was looking into some of the same kinds of violations as the F.D.I.C. “We are concerned with loans that are taken out while not on active duty, and then when someone becomes activated, whether they get the full benefits of the 6 percent reduction when they request it,” said Eric Halperin, special counsel for fair lending in the Civil Rights Division. “And we do have active investigations in that area, looking into a failure to provide servicemembers the full benefits,” Mr. Halperin added. Sallie Mae said that in addition to the law protecting service members, the F.D.I.C. action would deal with the Equal Credit Opportunity Act , which prohibits discriminatory lending. But that law addresses many bases for discrimination, like race and whether a borrower is on public assistance, and neither Sallie Mae nor the F.D.I.C. would say what kind of discrimination would be alleged. Sallie Mae began four decades ago as a government-sponsored enterprise, like the mortgage lenders Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, but has been independent since the end of 2004. It lists as its primary assets $145.6 billion in student loans. The company also acts as a servicer and collector for loans made by banks and the federal government. The F.D.I.C. primarily oversees local and regional banks, not major national institutions, but Sallie Mae comes under its jurisdiction because of the role of its Utah-based arm, Sallie Mae Bank , which provides banking services directly to consumers and is an F.D.I.C. member.

US Military
Student loan
Sallie Mae
FDIC


Seeking to Create a Timeless Space

Abstract: HUDSON GROPING around in the dark, the artist Marina Abramovic searched for a light switch inside an old, abandoned theater here, the occasional foreign-sounding expletive passing her lips. The pungent odor of dust and dampness hung in the air of the unheated interior, where it was several degrees below freezing. “This is my life’s dream,” she said, flicking a switch to reveal an extraordinary, cavernous space framing a jungle of shipping crates. Welcome to the future home of the Marina Abramovic Foundation for Preservation of Performance Art. One of the world’s most famous performance artists, Ms. Abramovic, 61, plans to establish a nonprofit foundation dedicated to the teaching and preservation of performance art, with artist workshops, public courses, a library and a grants program. Her work is cut out for her. The future center, built in 1933 as a community theater, is a classical-style structure that in more recent times was used for indoor tennis. It has to be gutted and renovated. Ceiling, plumbing, heating, electricity — everything needs to be repaired or replaced. But none of this deters the artist. “You know, I looked around for two years for a suitable place for the school,” Ms. Abramovic said. “I looked at factories in Brooklyn and buildings in other places, even an old church, but when I saw this I just knew it was perfect. I knew that I had to have it.” Ms. Abramovic paid the $950,000 purchase price by selling a property in Amsterdam, where she moved from her native Yugoslavia in 1976. She is hoping to raise additional money through grants and gifts to help restore the building and create an endowment for the foundation. She intends to begin programs at the center sometime in the summer. Her plan is to invite four or five young performers from all over the world to come each year and stay for two to three months to train and to produce performance art to be presented publicly as part of a program of art-related activities and events. Ms. Abramovic says she is most interested in supporting artists making performance works that continue over several hours. “There is no place to show long durational performance pieces anymore,” she said. “Nobody will commit to them because of the culture in which we live, a culture in which everything has to be instant. I am interested in performance work that can stop time. You go there and forget time — that is the point of it. That’s why in the foundation there will be not a stage but only a space dedicated to performance.” Born in Belgrade in 1946, Ms. Abramovic began her career in the early 1970s using her body as a canvas. Her works at that time involved pain, suffering and endurance, the artist making use of knives, violence and burning and cutting the skin. In 1976, she met the German photographer and performance artist Ulay and over the next decade they collaborated on performances; memorably, in 1988, when together they walked the entire length of the Great Wall of China from opposite ends, meeting at the middle, where they ended their personal and professional relationships. But what was once alternative and experimental is now in the mainstream. In 1997, Ms. Abramovic was awarded a Golden Lion Award at the Venice Biennale , and in 2010 she will have a full-dress retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art in New York organized by Klaus Biesenbach, the museum’s chief curator of media. A biography of Ms. Abramovic, by James Westcott, is also in preparation. “Her retrospective at MoMA will try to give a time and a space to an art form that is not present through objects but through the artist herself, every day, for three months,” Mr. Biesenbach wrote in an e-mail message. “Many art schools, foundations and institutions have tried to compel Marina to start a performance art center, but being who she is, she will do this completely by herself. Her choice to do that in Hudson was a surprise to me, but in my experience she never fails in timing and the right placement.” Mr. Westcott describes Ms. Abramovic as “the most important performance artist today.” Her gift, he says, is that she is part artist and part stage actress. “As well as being such a charismatic performer, Marina also has an amazing aesthetic awareness,” Mr. Westcott said. “She’s expert at creating searing images that endure well beyond the fleeting moment of the performance.” Ms. Abramovic’s many career milestones have encouraged her to think about the future. “When you have a retrospective at a place like MoMA it is a reward for a life’s work, but it is also a kind of death for an artist,” she said. “It is like they are saying your life and career are over. With that thought in mind, I knew I wanted to do something new, to give something back.” A WILLOWY, dark-haired, fast-talking woman who is always on the move, Ms. Abramovic plans to devote her considerable energies to teaching. “I have been teaching for more than 20 years, giving art workshops and seminars on performance art all over the world,” he said. “I feel passionate about this. Teaching is a way to connect with a younger generation and do something positive.” Meanwhile she is working on more prosaic issues, like finding contractors and working with a local architect on the renovation and design of the building. Part of the plan, developed with the architect Dennis Wedlick, involves a street-side cafe with a public video library and archive about performance art along with video monitors screening performance artwork. “We are not just teaching artists,” Ms. Abramovic said. “We also want to educate the public.” Inside the building, on the ground floor, there are plans for a large, open central area where artists can practice and perform. Upstairs would be more rehearsal studios, foundation offices and video production and editing facilities. The space would be open to the public for screenings, performances and lectures, all with a focus on raising awareness and appreciation of performance art. Ms. Abramovic hopes to eventually have a second building in town to house visiting artists and performers. But with money tight, she says she is looking to the Common Council of the City of Hudson for help. Carrie Haddad, a Hudson alderwoman and a local gallery owner, said she is extremely supportive of Ms. Abramovic’s efforts. “We are excited that someone of her stature would be coming to Hudson, but so far she has not presented a formal proposal to the council,” Ms. Haddad said. “We look forward to receiving it.” When she is not traveling for exhibitions in museums all over the world, Ms. Abramovic, who is based in New York City, is a part-time resident of the region; two years ago she and her husband, the artist Paolo Canevari, bought a home near Chatham. It is a short car ride from there to Hudson, enabling her to keep an eye on the redevelopment of the foundation building in the coming months. “You have to have a vision,” Ms. Abramovic said, showing off the view from a roof balcony. We looked out over the Catskills, rising up and off into the distance, a picture of loveliness. “Performance is fleeting,” she said. “But this, this place, this is for time. This is what I will leave behind.”

Abramovic Marina
Restoration and Rehabilitation
Theater
Art


Paul Ryan, Pledging Openness, Eases Path for Amendments

Abstract: WASHINGTON — The House on Tuesday debated and voted on dozens of amendments to an important highway bill as Paul D. Ryan sought to use his first week as speaker to demonstrate his commitment to a more inclusive style of legislating. But the highway measure, which contains six years of major infrastructure projects but money for only three years, also loomed as a first test of Mr. Ryan’s ability to balance the political imperatives of his fellow Republicans against the hard realities of governing. Hard-line conservatives who pushed out the previous speaker, John A. Boehner, had demanded changes that would empower individual lawmakers, including a more freewheeling and open amendment process. Mr. Ryan, at his first news conference as speaker, said on Tuesday that the highway bill would represent a first step in that direction. “This week, you will see the highway bill is a good place to start,” Mr. Ryan said at the news conference, in the lobby of the Republican National Committee headquarters. “We’re opening up the process,” he continued. “We’re allowing members to participate in a way that the founders intended. And we’re advancing an issue that is a big priority to the hard-working taxpayers of this country, fixing our roads and our bridges, improving our transportation infrastructure.” With nearly 300 amendments filed on the highway bill, however, freewheeling could easily turn unwieldy. “It’s a balancing act,” said John Feehery, a former senior aide to House Republican leaders, including Speaker J. Dennis Hastert. “This is the hardest part of being speaker, knowing when to take over. And it’s not easy because the temptation is always to just make it happen if you are the speaker. And he has the power to do that, but you have to work through your committee process.” Still, the amendment process on the highway bill was not fully open. Rather than allowing any amendment to be brought to the floor, Republicans were using the usual Rules Committee procedures to approve groups of amendments to be debated and voted on. House Democrats said they did not expect any amendments that would change provisions on paying for the bill, including tax provisions on which Republicans and Democrats have their most serious disagreements. It was perhaps fitting that Mr. Ryan’s big legislative test was to preside over a debate that is actually less a fight about transportation infrastructure than a battle over tax policy, which has been his main area of interest in Congress. The problem is relatively simple: Virtually everyone agrees on the need to maintain the nation’s roads, but there is fierce disagreement over how to pay for it. The Highway Trust Fund, which pays for many federal transportation infrastructure programs, is financed largely by a tax on gasoline, currently set at 18.3 cents per gallon. The tax, however, was never indexed for inflation, and that, combined with the greater fuel economy of modern cars, has left the highway fund woefully short of cash — by more than $53 billion since 2008. Congress has made up the difference in recent years using general funds, but to make matters even tougher, existing law calls for the gas tax to be cut next year to 4.3 cents per gallon. Congress is almost certain to forestall the cut, as it has repeatedly in the past. Congressional analysts said that if the tax had been indexed for inflation in 1993, when it was last increased, it would now total about 30 cents per gallon. Mr. Ryan, who before becoming speaker was the chairman of the powerful tax-writing Ways and Means Committee, has long opposed any increase in the gas tax, a position shared by many Republicans. The stalemate over how to finance the trust fund led lawmakers to draw up a highway bill that includes six years of policy prescriptions — generally regarded as an optimum length of time for states to plan roadwork and other projects — but with enough money to cover only three years’ worth of the measure. That created an awkward situation in which Mr. Ryan and Representative Bill Shuster, Republican of Pennsylvania and chairman of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, contradicted each other on Tuesday. “This six-year bill creates more certainty for folks out there that are doing the work on our roads and infrastructure around the country,” Mr. Shuster said But when Mr. Ryan was pressed on the three years of financing, he said: “Well, it’s a three-year bill that has three years of financing. And if we can come up with more financing down the road, we can add more years to the bill.” Raising the gas tax would be the most straightforward approach, and many business groups support doing so, especially given the low price of gasoline. Yet Republicans oppose such a tax increase, especially because it would hit individual motorists who could take revenge at the ballot box. Some Democrats are also resistant because they view the tax on gasoline as having a disproportionate impact on lower-income Americans. One alternative would tax corporations earnings repatriated from overseas, but that proposal also has critics. Mr. Feehery, the former Republican leadership aide, who is now a lobbyist, said that Mr. Ryan was confronting the complicated politics of paying for transportation programs, and that the absence of a clear tax policy was not Mr. Ryan’s fault, even though he led the Ways and Means Committee, which has the authority to formulate a solution. “I don’t think you can blame it on Ryan; I think it was a leadership call on what he could and couldn’t do because of the politics behind it,” Mr. Feehery said. “And you also have to take a look at the Senate.” He added, “The view from the speaker’s chair is much different from the view from the Ways and Means Committee.” Mr. Shuster, the chairman of the transportation committee, said that some 280 amendments had already been filed, setting the stage for debate that could last three days or more. On Tuesday, 45 of those amendments were debated and voted on. Representative Louise M. Slaughter of New York, the senior Democrat on the Rules Committee, said that she, like the Republicans, was happy to have a more free-flowing debate. “That’s the way we operated when we first got here,” Ms. Slaughter said. “I have no objection whatsoever to watching democracy at work.” Noting that the Rules Committee was accustomed to working late, she added: “I brought an apple to work today. A New York apple.”

Highway Trust Fund
Infrastructure,public works
Paul D Ryan Jr
Roads and Traffic
House of Representatives
Congress
Transportation
Legislation


Transistors, 1948

Abstract: According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the first time the word “transistor” appeared in print was in The New York Times on July 1, 1948, in a Page 46 roundup headed “The News of Radio.” The unsigned article opened with a report of two new radio shows, one called “Mr. Tutt,” and the other titled “Our Miss Brooks,” “with Eve Arden playing the role of a school teacher who encounters a variety of adventures.” The column’s last item began, “A device called a transistor, which has several applications in radio where a vacuum tube ordinarily is employed, was demonstrated for the first time yesterday.” There followed a technically accurate description of the gadget, a small metal cylinder consisting of two fine wires connected to a tiny piece of semi-conductive material soldered to a metal base. The transistor, it said, was used as an amplifier in a radio receiver “which contained none of the conventional tubes.” But the first transistors did not work well, and it was not until Jan. 1, 1952, that an article — on Page 30, by William Laurence — reported on the development of a new and more practical “junction transistor.” On Dec. 30, 1952, an unsigned article on Page 29 described the first consumer product to use transistors: a hearing aid produced by the Sonotone Corporation. The transistor radio? “Tubeless Radios Due,” read a Page 35 headline on Oct. 18, 1954, over an unsigned article reporting the announcement of a plan to mass produce transistor radios. The appliance, about the size of two packs of cigarettes , was available in time for Christmas, and sold for $49.95, with an additional $12.60 for the battery, earphone and leather case. Grand total in 2009 dollars: $494.61. On Nov. 2, 1956, a Page 1 headline read “Nobel Physics Prize Goes to 3 Americans.” The transistor’s developers, William Shockley, Walter H. Brattain and John Bardeen, shared a $38,700 prize.

Electronics
Radio
Science and Technology


China Launches Spacewalk Mission

Abstract: SHANGHAI — The Chinese Shenzhou VII spacecraft blasted off at 9:07 p.m. Thursday, carrying three Chinese astronauts into space on this country’s third manned space mission in five years. The three-day mission is expected to include the country’s first attempt at a spacewalk. The Chinese government has spent billions of dollars in recent years building up a space program that it hopes will help China establish a space station by 2020 and eventually will put a man on the moon , accomplishments that would certainly bring the country international prestige. The launching of Shenzhou VII from Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in Gansu Province, which is in western China, was shown live on state television. At a ceremony before the launching, President Hu Jintao praised the space project’s effort. “You will definitely accomplish this glorious and sacred mission,” he told the astronauts before the launching. “The motherland and the people are looking forward to your triumphant return.” China sent into space three experienced fighter pilots, all of them 42-year-old men. One is expected to walk in space for 30 minutes on Friday or Saturday, according to the state media. The three taikonauts — the Chinese term for astronauts — plan to run tests in space and launch a small satellite monitoring station. They are carrying traditional Chinese medicine on board, in case of sickness, and their diet includes shredded pork sautéed with garlic and grilled beef with spicy sauce. One astronaut is wearing what the state-run news media has dubbed “the most complicated, advanced and expensive suit in the world,” a $4.4 million space suit designed and produced in China. The spacecraft was launched by what the Chinese space agency calls the Long March II-F carrier rocket, which took the spacecraft into a low orbit, about 210 miles above Earth. The mission, which is being covered extensively in the Chinese media, is another milestone for a country that got a late start in space exploration but is now aggressively launching commercial satellites, putting humans in space and even shooting down aging satellites. “They have joined a very exclusive club; only the U.S. and Russians are members,” said Roger D. Launius, a senior curator and expert on space history at the National Air and Space Museum in Washington, referring generally to China’s space program. “It’s a great start, even though it’s nowhere near what the Russians and the U.S. have accomplished with space flight.” Russia and the United States conducted their first spacewalks in 1965, and in 1969 the United States became the first country to put a person on the moon. But Michael D. Griffin, the administrator of NASA , has repeatedly warned that despite the head start by other nations, the Chinese program is moving swiftly and could overtake American efforts to return to the moon by 2020. In testimony to the Senate last year, Mr. Griffin said it was likely that “China will be able to put people on the Moon before we will be able to get back.” He added: “I admire what they have done, but I am concerned that it will leave the United States in its wake.” The Chinese government also hopes the national space program will aid the nation economically by helping to create technological breakthroughs that may someday be applied to computers or other digital equipment. India and Japan are now aggressively developing their own space programs, creating some competition in Asia for space flight, and the Europeans have joined forces to explore space. But China says its space program is speeding along, often with Chinese technology, helping establish the country as a technological power and bringing another dose of pride to the nation after the Olympic Games in Beijing this summer. Because spaceflight requires large booster rockets and other sophisticated technology that often has military applications, national space programs are often veiled in secrecy, and cooperation among nations is complicated. Indeed, on Wednesday, the F.B.I. arrested a Chinese-born physicist in Newport News, Va., on charges of illegally exporting space launching technical data and services to China beginning in January 2003. The physicist, Shu Quan-Sheng, 68, was born in China but was a naturalized American citizen. He has a doctorate in physics. Mr. Shu was also accused of offering bribes to Chinese government officials in exchange for a business contract, according to an F.B.I. statement.

National Aeronautics and Space Administration