Tracking the Progress of 2016’s Works

Abstract: Over the past six months, the Works in Progress feature has documented projects across New York City as they slowly come to life. We’ve watched workers build a new skate park in Fort Greene , Brooklyn; witnessed the beginnings of the 60-story Ferris wheel on Staten Island ; and spoken with artists and writers as they hammered out the details of their latest masterpieces. For some, the work is done or nearly so. Some have moved on to new projects. But for a few, 2016 was an incredible challenge. The web series “Ocean Parkway,” based in Brooklyn, was hit with tragedy in October when Nicole Haran, one of its creators and writers, died after a sudden recurrence of breast cancer. Before her death, Ms. Haran , 47, insisted that her friend and collaborator, Maccabee Montandon, continue working on the show, a series about “raising kids and lowering expectations.” Mr. Montandon is now exploring ways to produce both the new web episodes and the half-hour pilot that Ms. Haran and he wrote for networks or streaming services. He has been sending those scripts and other material to producers, writers, actors and friends to keep “Ocean Parkway” going. HBO had considered developing the series, but it passed on the project before Ms. Haran’s death. Image The actor David Deblinger performing his one-man show, “Lucky Penny,” in Manhattan. Credit Stephen Speranza for The New York Times Each day, Mr. Montandon can’t believe his friend and co-writer is actually gone. “It hasn’t gotten easier at all,” he said, “and part of me doesn’t want it to.” Edward R. Murrow High School , where we spent the day in Midwood, Brooklyn , watching the crew and tech team put together the sets and costumes for a production of “Into the Woods,” finished its five-show run in mid-December, selling over 2,500 tickets. “Everyone absolutely loved the set and costumes,” said Gayle Zeitlin, the coordinator of the Studio Theater Program at Murrow. Then, after weeks of labor, the set was struck shortly after the last performance. “It is back to a completely empty and black stage,” Ms. Zeitlin said. The students have already moved on to designing the set for their next big show, “West Side Story,” which runs May 10 to 13. Sen Sakana , an ambitious 190-seat Peruvian and Japanese restaurant on West 44th Street, whose menu we watched being built through a series of tastings and discussions, was expected to open in September. But because of delays in inspections and gas service, the opening has been pushed back. With some luck, Sen Sakana should be opening within weeks. Gulliver’s Gate , a miniature version of the world that will soon be on display near Times Square, is still being assembled, and has managed to stay on schedule and within its $40 million budget. Many of the models — created by artists in eight countries across the globe — are completed and heading to their new 49,000-square-foot home. The Parthenon, the Colosseum and the Great Wall of China are just a few of the landmarks featured in the display . Previews begin in April, and the grand opening is planned for May. Image Golconda skate park in Fort Greene opened in November and has been filled with skateboarders from all over the city. Credit George Etheredge for The New York Times Bronx River House , the greenest building in the borough and soon to be the base for the Bronx River Alliance, will be drilling two geothermal wells starting this month. That work should take about two months. The organization expects the building to be completed by June and opened over the summer — about eight months behind schedule, owing to late permits and delays in prep work for the drilling. In addition to the group’s offices and storage for canoes, the building will feature a moss wall, solar panels, community space and a lab to study the environment. “Lucky Penny ,” a one-man show featuring the actor David Deblinger, finishes its latest run on Jan. 28 at the Harold Clurman Lab Theater Company at the Stella Adler Studio of Acting on West 27th Street and is looking for a longer run. Mr. Deblinger, a founder of the Labyrinth Theater Company in Greenwich Village, has hired a publicist for his project, which tells the story of growing up in Queens, his relationship with his father and becoming a father himself. The 110-ton pedestals for the 60-story New York Wheel on Staten Island arrived on site in December from Montreal. Soon, its legs — which have been kept at the South Brooklyn Marine Terminal since their arrival from Italy in October — will be delivered as well. The $590 million project has been progressing on schedule and within budget, and is expected to be complete in 2018. When it’s finished, the wheel will include 36 glass pods that can each hold up to 40 people for a 38-minute ride. Back in the fall, Helen Lee of the developer F&T Group, deconstructed her family’s food court at the Shops at Queens Crossing in Flushing. She vowed to move it from dumplings and noodles to more upscale fare to match the quickly gentrifying Chinese neighborhood. Last month, several of the restaurants opened for business, including serving the Hawaiian dish poke and Japanese shabu shabu and curries. Still to come are two Korean spots — one featuring fried chicken, the other, tofu-based soup. Golconda skate park in Fort Greene opened in November and has been filled with skateboarders of all skill levels from all over the city. The park, once called Fat Kid Spot, is the size of a football field and is beneath the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway near Gold and Concord Streets (hence the name Golconda). Because of the highway running overhead, it had been a popular spot for skaters in all types of weather. And it is again. The new park was developed by the Transportation Department and designed by Steve Rodriguez, known as the city’s mayor of skateboarding.

Skateboarding
Edward R Murrow High School
Sen Sakana
Nicole Haran
David Deblinger
Steve Rodriguez
Flushing Queens
Fort Greene Brooklyn
Golconda
Bronx River


Hope Solo Takes Aim at Sweden After U.S. Women Are Ousted

Abstract: RIO DE JANEIRO — Hope Solo stood in front of the American net on Friday afternoon, desperately needing to block a shot. She had been the target of derision from Brazilian fans from the moment the Olympics tournament began, and now she needed to rescue her teammates, who had quickly fallen behind in a penalty shootout against Sweden in a quarterfinals match in Brasília. Image Sweden goalkeeper Hedvig Lindahl. Credit Celso Junior/Getty Images And Solo did step up. Guessing correctly on Sweden’s third shot, she leapt to her right to swat away the ball. Now the Americans were even. Moments later, Solo nearly blocked another shot, which would have put the United States ahead. But when that ball just eluded her outstretched left hand, it became one of the last bits of agony in a disastrous afternoon for the Americans. Christen Press missed the next shot for the United States, Lisa Dahlkvist converted for Sweden and, just like that, the United States was out of an Olympics tournament it had captured the last three times it was staged. Image United States goalkeeper Hope Solo. Credit Ueslei Marcelino/Reuters It was a stunning ending for the American women, who only a year ago had captured the World Cup to great acclaim and then been honored with a ticker-tape parade in Manhattan. On Friday, they dominated play against a team no one thought was their match, and yet, after 90 minutes of regulation and 30 minutes of overtime, all they could show for their efforts was a 1-1 tie. Then came the shootout, and the Americans were done. Or just beginning, depending on who was doing the talking after the game. Image Credit Joe Robbins/Getty Images Solo, whose flippant Twitter posts last month about the Zika virus had led to the jeers she encountered here, had trouble containing herself when she spoke to reporters. After praising her teammates for tying the game in the 75th minute, saying it “showed a lot of heart,” she ripped into the Swedes, saying they had played like “a bunch of cowards.” Image Mallory Pugh, Alex Morgan and Crystal Dunn. Credit Celso Junior/Getty Images “The best team did not win today,’’ she added. “I strongly and firmly believe that.” Solo’s gripe was that Sweden, under the guidance of Pia Sundhage, had sat back for much of the game, content to let the Americans push the action. But Sundhage had good reason to take that approach. She had coached the American team through the 2012 Olympics, knew that it was faster and generally more talented than her group and that it would be best for her players to defend, be patient and look for a chance to counterattack. Image Sweden goalkeeper Hedvig Lindahl and Alex Morgan of the United States. Credit Celso Junior/Getty Images That opportunity came in the 61st minute when a clever series of passes created a breakaway for Sweden’s Stina Blackstenius, who drove the ball past Solo and into the right corner of the net for a 1-0 lead. With the pressure now building on the Americans, Coach Jill Ellis summoned Megan Rapinoe, the astute playmaker, who had sat out for eight months after ripping up her knee before finally playing 30 minutes on Monday against Colombia. Image Sweden’s Elin Rubensson, left, and Carli Lloyd of the United States. Credit Celso Junior/Getty Images But Rapinoe could contribute little. And when the United States finally did tie the score, it was with a bit of luck, with a pass from Tobin Heath striking a Swedish defender in the face and bouncing right toward Alex Morgan, who quickly drilled it home. Then came overtime, and in the 115th minute Carli Lloyd, so often the American hero in recent years, headed the ball past Swedish goalie Hedvig Lindahl for what looked to be the game-winner. Offside, said the referees. A minute later, Lotta Schelin scored for Sweden. Offside was the ruling again. Neither ruling may have been correct, but they had the effect of canceling each other out. Image Sweden’s Nilla Fischer, left, and Alex Morgan of the United States. Credit Eraldo Peres/Associated Press The shootout quickly followed. Morgan, going first for the United States, had her shot blocked. Lindsey Horan, Lloyd and Morgan Brian all beat Lindahl, but Press faltered, floating the ball over the net. Which left Solo to figure out a way to block one more shot, and keep the shootout going. A year ago, in the World Cup semifinal against Germany, Solo had stalled before a penalty kick, hoping to unsettle the German player who was taking the shot. When the shot was eventually taken, it went wide, and the Americans went on to win. Image Credit Andressa Anholete/European Pressphoto Agency Now Solo tried to stall again. She fiddled with her gloves and then changed them. She took her time, making Dahlkvist wait. But as with everything else with the American team, what seemed to work in 2015 didn't on Friday. Dahlkvist beat Solo easily and it was over. “I’m incredibly disappointed,” Ellis said. “I told the players that there is no way to remove the pain they are feeling, but that there will always be a next game.” Which left Sundhage to offer her thoughts. So many key Americans — Solo, Lloyd, Morgan, Rapinoe — had prospered under her. Solo had been her goalie in previous shootouts with everything on the line. They had celebrated and suffered together, though Sundhage had told The New York Times in 2015 that Solo was one of the most challenging players to coach because of her tendency to create trouble for herself off the field. Now, a year later, Solo was essentially accusing her old coach of cowardice. The unflappable Sundhage took it in stride. “It’s O.K. to be a coward if you win,” she said. “They played more attacking football than we did. We defended very well.” And when the game finally went to a shootout, she added, she looked at her players and was confident they would prevail. “I’m so happy,” she said, words that will linger as the Americans go home.

United States Women's National Soccer Team


In Prime-Time TV, Networks Lost the War for 10 P.M.

Abstract: For the past several years, many broadcast network executives have looked at the ratings for their 10 p.m. shows and lamented that it has become impossible to build a true, breakout hit at that hour anymore. No hits at 10 p.m.? How about Thursday at 10 on MTV ? For most weeks this winter, about six million viewers 18 to 49 (the prime age group for most advertising sales) have flocked to “Jersey Shore,” a number that would constitute a blaring hit by almost anyone’s measure. Nothing at 10 on any broadcast network on any night of the week comes anywhere near that six million figure. In fact, fewer than five shows in all of the rest of television (other than sports) have averaged that many young-adult viewers this season. On another cable network, the History Channel, a growing hit called “Pawn Stars” has drawn as many as four million viewers between 18 and 49 on Monday nights, posting numbers bigger than “Law & Order: SVU” on NBC and “The Mentalist” on CBS . Dramas like those have managed to attract about 3.8 million viewers in that audience group, the most for network shows at 10. Indeed, the 10 p.m. time period has become an expensive graveyard for many hourlong network dramas — so much so that one network, NBC, tried unsuccessfully to insert Jay Leno in that hour five nights a week. NBC had conducted research that mainly blamed the diminishing audiences at 10 on the growing playback at that hour of programs from digital video recorders. But playback of recorded shows does not seem to be unduly affecting shows like “Jersey Shore” and “Pawn Stars” — along with other 10 p.m. cable successes like “The Game” on BET, “Teen Mom” on MTV, “Tosh.0” on Comedy Central and “Real Housewives of Beverly Hills” on Bravo, all of which are thriving at 10. In that 18 to 49 age group, of the top 15 shows on cable television last week, eight played in the 10 p.m. hour. To some longtime observers of the medium, the apparent eradication of the 10 p.m. network hit still feels incongruous because 10 p.m. once housed many of the best — and riskiest — shows the networks had to offer, like “Hill Street Blues,” “NYPD Blue” and “L.A. Law.” Brad Adgate, Horizon Media’s senior vice president for research, who has tracked the business for three decades, pointed out that “every year from 1979 to 2000, the Emmy Award for best drama went to a network 10 p.m. show.” Last season it also went to a 10 p.m. show: “Mad Men,” on the cable channel AMC. “Cable is getting all those cutting-edge shows,” Mr. Adgate said. “The really fresh ideas seem to all be on cable now.” The shift is not accidental. “You go where the competition ain’t,” said Van Toffler, the president of MTV Networks. Citing what he called a chronic network problem that MTV has tried to exploit since the late 1990s, when it created what it called “The Ten Spot” for its best programming, Mr. Toffler said, “We noticed back then that what you had on network channels at 10 was local news and aging dramas.” Nancy Dubuc, the president of the History Channel, said there was an element of simplicity to the cable emphasis on 10. “The Fox network goes off at 10,” she noted, “so does the CW network.” But she added, “Once you get into the minutia of it, it is less about the time period than it is about taking risks” with program ideas. She argued that “media savvy” younger viewers respond less and less to the standard offerings that populate the 10 p.m. landscape. Even those network shows that work at 10 tend to appeal mainly to viewers older than 50, she noted. But for one broadcast network, CBS, the laundry list of standard offerings has produced a solid track record at 10 p.m. — and that success is not accidental, either. Like the other networks, CBS has no real breakout hits at 10, in terms of those advertiser-desirable younger viewers, though it does well in amassing total viewers. Shows like “The Mentalist” pull in about 14 million total viewers, in contrast to about eight million for “Jersey Shore.” But the audience group for the CBS 10 p.m. shows is tilted heavily toward older viewers. The median ages for the CBS 10 p.m. lineup range from a low of 54.6 years for “Hawaii Five-0” (new this season, though resurrected from the CBS program vault) to a high of 60.6 years for another new drama, “Blue Bloods.” By contrast, “Pawn Wars” is a more broad-based success with a median age of 45.4, and “Jersey Shore” is almost preposterously young, with a median age of 22.8. What CBS and the other networks are doing, Ms. Dubuc said, is essentially “giving the viewers the same choices over and over again.” Crime dramas occupy by far the biggest chunk of real estate in the 10 p.m. hour on network television. CBS is more than content to go down that road, however, because lately it has ended in a pile of money. Kelly Kahl, the chief scheduler for CBS, said, “We’re in a slightly different business from the cable guys.” He credited those networks with shrewdly identifying where the networks are most vulnerable “first during the summers and now at 10 p.m.” But, he said, “There’s kind of a new job we have at 10. We’re not in the business of us versus the other guys anymore. Now it’s about asset management.” Simply defined, Mr. Kahl said, those assets are dramas owned by CBS, ones that tell contained stories each week, that can be nurtured and nudged through at least four seasons, and then sold in syndication and to cable outlets. The shows tend to be well-produced, by-the-numbers crime dramas because those shows can be repeated better than other forms of drama, like serialized soap operas. ABC has had success with serialized shows like “Grey’s Anatomy,” but those shows are far less valuable as long-term assets. At the same time, ABC has generated a long list of 10 p.m. failures, at a daunting cost. If a broadcast network cannot produce reliable, long-term dramas like CBS has, the economics of 10 p.m. are punishing, especially when compared with the finances of cable’s programming. Hourlong dramas on networks cost $2 million to $3 million an episode to produce. Few survive, and many more die unseen by the public after pilots that can cost several times as much. In contrast, Mr. Toffler said, MTV’s shows come in “well under $1 million” an hour. And the hits on the History Channel, like “Pawn Stars,” are even cheaper. They run $250,000 to $300,000 an hour. Underscoring exactly how much the 10 p.m. hour has become part of a calculated formula, Mr. Kahl suggested that if one of CBS’s carefully manufactured 10 p.m. crime shows somehow managed to break through as a must-see hit on a scale like that of “E.R.,” it would not last long at 10. “We would probably move it to 9,” Mr. Kahl said — the better to use it to set up some other dependable, if less stellar, performer at 10 p.m.

Television
Ratings and Rating Systems
Advertising and Marketing
MTV Networks
CBS Corp
Fox Broadcasting Co
ABC Inc


Marlins’ Turnabout Continues

Abstract: Casey McGehee hit a two-out, two-run single to cap a four-run eighth for the Miami Marlins, who flexed their newfound offensive muscle yet again to beat the visiting Colorado Rockies, 8-5. The Marlins scored 27 runs while winning three of four games in the season-opening series. It took them 14 games to score 27 runs last year, when they finished last in the majors in runs and in batting average and lost 100 games. McGehee has led the resurgence, batting .462 with eight runs batted in after spending last year in Japan. Giancarlo Stanton, who singled home the go-ahead run with two outs in the eighth, is batting .375 with seven R.B.I. “It’s definitely different than what we’re used to,” Stanton said. “It has been fun. We’re having a good time.” GIANTS 8, DIAMONDBACKS 5 Angel Pagan hit a three-run homer in San Francisco’s five-run eighth inning, and the Giants rallied to beat Arizona in a game that was halted briefly in the top of the first because of a swarm of bees in the outfield. Paul Goldschmidt and Mark Trumbo each hit two-run homers, and Arizona led, 5-3, after seven, but the visiting Giants teed off on reliever Will Harris (0-1) in the eighth to take three of four games from the Diamondbacks. CARDINALS 7, REDS 6 St. Louis overcame a rain delay of 3 hours 42 minutes and Todd Frazier’s two homers, holding on to win in Cincinnati and take two of three in the teams’ season-opening series. CUBS 3, PIRATES 2 Jason Hammel pitched two-hit ball into the seventh inning, and Chicago prevailed in Pittsburgh for its first win of the season. RED SOX 4, ORIOLES 3 David Ortiz had three of Boston’s 12 hits off Wei-Yin Chen, and the Red Sox got an effective pitching performance from Felix Doubront and four relievers in a victory at Baltimore. RAYS 7, BLUE JAYS 2 Chris Archer threw six solid innings, Evan Longoria hit a three-run homer, and Tampa Bay split a four-game series with visiting Toronto. Archer and the Rays agreed to a $25.5 million, six-year deal Wednesday. TWINS 10, WHITE SOX 9 Chris Colabello had a career-high six R.B.I. and doubled twice, Oswaldo Arcia hit a go-ahead triple, and Minnesota avoided a season-opening sweep with a comeback win in Chicago.

Baseball
Rockies
Miami Marlins
Casey McGehee


Clijsters Wins Rematch of 2011 Final

Abstract: MELBOURNE, Australia — The reassuring news on a miserable afternoon for Li Na was that one actually can forget these moments. Li Na let a major opportunity slip away. In 2003, Kim Clijsters lost to Serena Williams in the semifinals of the Australian Open after holding a 5-1 lead in the third set and two match points. Nine years later, the memory has faded. “I don’t think I had match points,” Clijsters said Sunday in the interview room at Melbourne Park. “I did?” Indeed she did, and on Sunday in the same arena, it was Li’s turn to blow an opportunity, this time against Clijsters. Li failed to capitalize on the ankle injury that left Clijsters wincing in pain in the seventh game of the opening set. Most importantly, she failed to capitalize when she held a 6-2 lead and four match points in the second-set tiebreaker. One by one, her precious opportunities to reach the quarterfinals slipped away: a forehand return in the net, a forehand unforced error, a floating passing shot that Clijsters pounded with a swing volley for a winner and, most revealingly at 6-5, a forehand topspin lob that left the fleet-footed Li rooted to the spot as she watched (and watched) the ball loop over her head for a winner instead of giving chase. Why didn’t Li run? “Of course, was nervous,” Li said. “If you nervous you could not think too much, right?” Li, who has a good sense of humor, was unable to find a lighter side after this 4-6, 7-6 (8-6), 6-4 defeat. She struggled to maintain her composure, responding defensively while answering questions in English. When it came time for questions in Mandarin, she lasted only a short time before breaking down in tears and leaving the room. It was a match worthy of tears, a rematch worthy of tears in fact, considering that Clijsters and Li last played each other in the final of last year’s Australian Open, with Clijsters winning in three sets. But while the rest of Clijsters’s 2011 season was spoiled by injuries, Li went on to win the French Open, becoming the first Chinese player to win a Grand Slam singles title. Only then did she stop winning, matches that is, struggling to keep her eye on the ball with all the attention and new sponsorship contracts rumbling her way. But both Li and Clijsters made it back to Melbourne, and both were particularly hungry to win Sunday. At age 29, Li wants to get her game back on track. At 28, Clijsters wants to make this Australian Open, which she believes will be her last, a fulfilling one. In a sense, Clijsters already has granted her own wish. This improbable victory surely deserves a spot on her career short list. “I can’t believe I won,” she said in her on-court interview. She flirted with a collapse of her own in the third set after jumping to a 5-1 lead, finally serving out the match on her second attempt at 5-4. But the damage done in this victory could also hurt Clijsters’s chances for continued success in the second week. Her quarterfinal opponent Tuesday will be the No. 1 seed, Caroline Wozniacki, who defeated the former No. 1 Jelena Jankovic, 6-0, 7-5, in the fourth round. The other quarterfinal in the top half will match No. 3 Victoria Azarenka against No. 8 Agnieszka Radwanska. Azarenka beat the unseeded Iveta Benesova, 6-2, 6-2, in one hour 17 minutes Sunday; Radwanska overwhelmed the No. 22 seed, Julia Goerges, 6-1, 6-1, in only 54 minutes. But Clijsters and Li had to play for 2 hours 23 minutes in the late afternoon heat on a day when temperatures soared to 34 degrees Celsius (93 Fahrenheit). The oft-injured Clijsters arrived in Melbourne with more physical concerns after injuring her hip and retiring from the tournament in Brisbane. She injured herself against Li while serving at 3-3, 30-15 in the first set. Clijsters rolled her left ankle after hitting a forehand. She fell, quickly got up and continued the rally while hobbling, but once Li had won the point, Clijsters walked gingerly to her chair for treatment. One of the reasons the Australian Open shifted from its rubberized Rebound Ace surface to a cushioned acrylic hard court in 2008 was to cut down on just such leg injuries. But it has been a rough start to the year for ankles. Maria Sharapova did not play a warm-up tournament because of a problem with hers, and Serena Williams tore ligaments in one of hers in Brisbane. Clijsters’s injury looked less severe, but she had the ankle wrapped and clearly struggled to cover as much court in the games after her injury. Clijsters, who gave her news conference with her left leg resting on a chair to maintain elevation, said she did consider retiring. “A couple of times it went through my mind,” she said. “But on the other hand I was thinking, ‘Well, I don’t want to quit in my last time at the Australian Open. I don’t want to quit my match.’ So I was like, just keep fighting and keep trying to get back into it. Like I said before, you never know what goes on on the other side of the court.” Li maintained her focus well for a while, playing brilliant defense and attacking effectively. She closed out the first set and then broke Clijsters early in the second to take a 3-1 lead, but Li played a poor next service game and was broken back. When the tiebreaker came, she took command, then relinquished it even when Clijsters hit a mediocre forehand drop shot on Li’s fourth match point to Li’s stronger, backhand side. “I’m not saying that that forehand drop shot was a good choice, but, you know, you make decisions,” Clijsters said. “Luckily that one turned out O.K.” Li sprinted forward but did not put the short ball away, and Clijsters then hit the lob that Li will be seeing for years to come but perhaps not the rest of her life.

Australian Open (Tennis)
Tennis
Clijsters Kim
Li Na


Journal Critique of Romney Shows Murdoch Doubt on Candidacy

Abstract: To hear Rupert Murdoch tell it lately, Mitt Romney lacks stomach and heart. He “seems to play everything safe.” And he is not nearly as tough as he needs to be on President Obama . Mr. Murdoch’s thoughts on the Republican presidential candidate’s prospects? “Tough O Chicago pros will be hard to beat unless he drops old friends from the team.” Chances of that? “Doubtful,” he tapped out in a Twitter message from his iPad last weekend. Then, on Thursday, Mr. Murdoch’s flagship newspaper, The Wall Street Journal , published a blistering editorial criticizing Mr. Romney’s campaign, accusing it of being hapless and looking “confused in addition to being politically dumb.” Mr. Murdoch has never been particularly impressed with Mr. Romney, friends and associates of both men say. The two times Mr. Romney visited the editorial board of The Journal, Mr. Murdoch did not work very hard to conceal his lack of excitement. “There was zero enthusiasm, no engagement,” said one Journal staff member who was at the most recent meeting in December. The editorial was a stern reminder of Mr. Romney’s failure to win the trust of the Republican Party ’s core conservatives, a group that pays close attention to Mr. Murdoch’s newspapers and cable news outlets. Though political strategists debate the ultimate impact of any single media outlet, what is written in the pages of The Journal and The New York Post and talked about on Fox News — all Murdoch properties — could have the collective power to shape the thinking of millions of voters. Mr. Murdoch’s dim view of Mr. Romney points to a palpable disconnect between the two men, one that has existed since Mr. Romney’s first run for president four years ago, people who know them both said. More than a half-dozen friends and advisers to the two, speaking mostly anonymously to reveal private and frank conversations, said the Murdoch-Romney relationship could be summed up simply: They do not have much of one. They have met only a handful of times. Their lukewarm feelings toward each other stem from their encounter at a meeting of The Journal editorial board in 2007, when Mr. Romney visited to pitch himself as the most capable conservative candidate about two months before the Iowa caucuses. Romney and Journal staff members who attended said that despite being deeply prepared and animated — particularly on his love for data crunching — Mr. Romney failed to connect with either Mr. Murdoch or The Journal’s editorial page editor, Paul A. Gigot. Instead of articulating a clear and consistent conservative philosophy, he dwelled on organizational charts and executive management, areas of expertise that made him a multimillionaire as the head of his private equity firm, Bain Capital . At one point, Mr. Romney declared that “I would probably bring in McKinsey,” the management consulting firm, to help him set up his presidential cabinet, a comment that seemed to startle the editors and left Mr. Murdoch visibly taken aback. The Journal’s write-up of that meeting would later glibly refer to Mr. Romney as “Consultant in Chief.” Mr. Romney followed up later in the campaign with a second meeting in Mr. Murdoch’s office, but that, too, failed to light a spark. “I don’t think he ever got excited about Romney,” said one associate of Mr. Murdoch’s. By the time the first Republican primaries of 2012 were closing in, Mr. Romney met again with The Journal’s editorial board. Mr. Murdoch sat in. “America doesn’t need a manager. America needs a leader,” Mr. Romney told the board. He wore a suit, which he changed out of for a more casual appearance on David Letterman ’s show that evening. And at one point, according to a Journal staff member, he said lightheartedly, “I hope I’m getting better at this.” The Romney campaign felt the meeting went well — so well that it was surprised when The Journal kept hammering him, reprising its complaints about his “inability, or unwillingness, to defend conservative principles.” Fundamentally, Mr. Romney and Mr. Murdoch are very different. Mr. Romney is said to respect Mr. Murdoch as a visionary business mind and deeply admire how he built the company he inherited from his father into a $60 billion global media power. But a teetotaling Mormon from the Midwest and a thrice-married Australian who publishes photos of topless women in one of his British newspapers are bound to have very different world views. Mr. Murdoch’s wariness about Mr. Romney is similar to the way many Republican primary voters initially felt about the candidate. Mr. Murdoch wanted anybody else, and could not resist getting swept up in the flavor-of-the-week fickleness that characterized this year’s Republican nominating process. He wrote glowing Twitter messages about Rick Santorum , calling him the only candidate with a “genuine big vision” for the country. Along with Roger Ailes , chairman of Fox News, Mr. Murdoch urged Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey to run. Both men admire Mr. Christie’s gusto and toughness — a sharp edge they have themselves. “He really wanted Christie,” said one of Mr. Murdoch’s friends. Mr. Ailes, a former campaign strategist for Richard M. Nixon and Ronald Reagan , shares Mr. Murdoch’s disdain of how the Romney campaign is being run, telling people privately that it is too soft. Although Fox News has been cast by liberal critics as an arm of the Romney campaign, its coverage of the presidential election has been far more aggressive toward Mr. Obama than it has been kind to Mr. Romney. Mr. Murdoch does much of his sounding off on Twitter, as he did last weekend when he suggested Mr. Romney replace his staff. Andrea Saul, a spokeswoman for the Romney campaign, politely brushed off Mr. Murdoch’s concerns about the staff’s competence. “Governor Romney respects Rupert Murdoch, and also respects his team and has confidence in them,” Ms. Saul said. Those who know him say that his fondness for Twitter is classic Murdoch. A compulsive e-mailer and phone caller, he has always had a hyperactive mind. And the impetuous, unfiltered nature of Twitter suits his shoot-from-the hip style. Mr. Murdoch’s political influence in the United States has never been anywhere near as potent as it was in Britain , where he once slipped into a private meeting with Prime Minister David Cameron through the back door of 10 Downing Street. But the phone hacking scandal has left him greatly diminished there and rendered him something more of a complicated figure in this country. Mr. Romney’s advisers say privately that having Mr. Murdoch sniping at them is better than the alternative. To be praised by him would open the campaign up to criticisms that it is a tool of the conservative establishment. “To his credit , the idea that Rupert Murdoch doesn’t think something could be better run is unimaginable,” said one Romney adviser, who requested anonymity to assess Mr. Murdoch’s well-known self-confidence. “That’s just how he is.” Last week, when the campaign invited a few dozen leaders from Wall Street, the news media and Republican politics to an informal discussion with Mr. Romney at a private Manhattan social club, Mr. Murdoch was one of the first to offer a suggestion. Kellyanne Conway, a Republican pollster who was there, recalled that Mr. Murdoch spoke up after the chief executive of Univision, Randy Falco, told Mr. Romney that Mr. Obama had appeared on his network a dozen times and was building a considerable edge with Latino voters. (The meeting was first reported by Politico.) “Every campaign attracts a fair number of critics,” Ms. Conway said. “But not every critic is created equal. Rupert Murdoch is a very important voice in the national conversation.” When he spoke, Mr. Murdoch did not have much of a question — just more unsolicited advice, this time about the need to win over Latino voters. “I hope that you’ll take the fight to President Obama,” he told Mr. Romney.

Rupert Murdoch
Mitt Romney
2012 Presidential Election
News media,journalism
Conservatism in the United States
Wall Street Journal


Melanie Oudin Puts Face on Future of U.S. Women’s Tennis

Abstract: Wimbledon, England It never takes very long here to be reminded how much of a catty-to-carnivore’s world women’s tennis has become since the days when Chris Evert and Martina Navratilova would share bagels before going out to Centre Court to settle another championship fortnight. For me, that moment occurred upon arrival at the credential desk early Saturday afternoon, when an American junior girl, also checking in, commented to her coach how much makeup her young countrywoman appeared to be wearing during a match against the former world No. 1 Jelena Jankovic. Frankly, from the picture on the small wall-mounted television, I couldn’t tell if Melanie Oudin, 17, was red-cheeked from blush or from the beating she was giving Jankovic at balmy Wimbledon after dropping the first set. But seeing how exhausted and exasperated Jankovic looked, I hustled to Court 3 to watch Oudin grow stronger on the way to a 6-7 (8), 7-5, 6-2 victory that distracted the tournament from its usual middle-weekend preoccupations to ask, “Who’s she?” A home-schooled qualifier, to begin with. And an American not named Williams in the fourth round, though she and her Zimbabwe-born coach, Brian Devilliers, had bought plane tickets home to Atlanta for 3 p.m. Saturday. As fate and a steady forehand would have it, this was also about the time Oudin (pronounced oo-DAN) was adding $80,000 to her minuscule career earnings that she recently dipped into to buy a five-year-old Toyota 4Runner. Devilliers said his charge had promised to buy him a Porsche when the purses get U-Haul big, but that would assume the defeat of Jankovic, the No. 6 seed, has signaled the emergence of the first American women’s player to take seriously since the Williams sisters authored the greatest sibling story in sports. Asked about her earliest memories of watching Wimbledon at her family home in Marietta, Ga., Oudin said: “Yes, when I was, like, 7, when I started playing tennis, I saw Venus and Serena Williams playing here and I was, like, Mom, I really want to play there one day.” That was a decade ago, when Venus and Serena were teenagers turning tennis’s developmental and demographic rules upside down. We all know about the Eastern European tennis revolution since, but how can a country as large as the United States not have produced a single player over that period who made you think, she’s got next? Considering that Andy Roddick is the only remaining American man, there must be an indictment waiting to be served, somewhere, especially when considering the fragility of many of the top-ranked women. For example, Svetlana Kuznetsova, who blew Dinara Safina out in the French Open final, was humbled on Saturday by someone named Sabine Lisicki of Germany, 6-2, 7-5. As for Jankovic, she — like Safina, the top seed here — has managed to be No. 1 without winning a Grand Slam tournament. No wonder Venus and Serena Williams have been able to retreat from maximum commitment only to reinvent themselves at the majors. The last time I was here, two years ago, their mother, Oracene Price, called the American drought behind Venus and Serena almost statistically unfathomable, while poking the United States Tennis Association for not knowing where, exactly, to look for Grand Slam contenders. Devilliers, who trains Oudin at the Riverside Club in Atlanta, doesn’t want to believe that is the case, if only because Oudin is an undersize 5 feet 6 inches in this generation of Big Babe Tennis. “It annoys me when people say let’s get the other athletes playing the sport,” he said, without explaining who the others are. “That’s nonsense. We’ve got plenty of talented American kids.” After losing, Jankovic was ungraciously moved to suggest that Oudin isn’t one of them. As I said, the women do not quite reach the model comportment level of Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal. Jankovic’s excuse was that she was wobbly from the heat — she required two medical timeouts — and the cyclical nature of “some woman problems.” She said of Oudin: “She can play if you let her play. But she cannot hurt you with anything. She doesn’t have any weapons, you know, from what I have seen.” It wasn’t what we saw. Oudin did hit winners from either wing and even mixed in a few deft volleys. The serve needs work before anyone compares it to her idol’s, the retired Justine Henin (for their similar stature). In Oudin’s defense, Devilliers cited her mobility, endurance and especially her mental toughness. He advised her to pretend she was playing back home against her boyfriend, Austin Smith, or her twin, Catherine, who attends high school and is planning to play in college. By the third set, she was in against a shadow of Jankovic’s former top-ranked self. Now Oudin’s parents have to fly here to join the half-dozen Riverside Club members forming her private cheering section. Some French journalists have joined in, making note of her father’s French descent, prompting Oudin to say, “I’m totally American, for sure.” Is she America’s next sure thing? Let’s not go there. But someone has got to start somewhere.

Wimbledon Tennis Tournament
Tennis
Oudin Melanie
Jankovic Jelena
Athletics and Sports


Media Outlets Embrace Conferences as Profits Rise

Abstract: Financially struggling media companies are racing to add conferences, festivals and other live events to their business strategy, convinced they can provide a reliable revenue stream and expand the reach of their brands. The number of organizations staging live events has surged in recent years, say publishers and their business partners, and concerns over conflict of interest, though still a delicate issue at some media companies, are largely bygone relics at others. The Huffington Post will soon announce that it will host three conferences next spring built around its lifestyle rubric “The Third Metric.” In mid-October, Cosmopolitan said it would initiate two conferences in 2014 focused on women in their 20s. Atlantic Media, which publishes The Atlantic, National Journal and Quartz among other brands, now puts on more than 200 events a year, ranging from small exclusive dinners to weeklong conferences, and will add European and Asian events in the next year. The New York Times had one conference in 2011 but is holding 16 in 2013, in conjunction with the new International New York Times. Fortune is expanding its Most Powerful Women Summit overseas and says that total revenue for its live events business is growing at 60 percent annually. But it would not provide revenue figures. New digital-only companies, including Mashable and Business Insider, consider live events critical to their business plans. “Everyone is getting into the game,” said Ned Desmond, chief operating officer of TechCrunch, a technology Web site that is expanding its successful Disrupt conferences overseas, “because it is a good business, and it definitely has better margins, when done right, than the regular equation of journalism and writing.” One of the most lucrative conferences was conducted by the popular technology news site AllThingsD. When the site’s owner, Dow Jones, recently severed ties with its editors, Kara Swisher and Walt Mossberg, both sides rushed to lay claim to a new conference business. Dow Jones immediately announced that it would sponsor an international technology conference, while Ms. Swisher and Mr. Mossberg said they would seek investors to start their own conference business. The Wall Street Journal will stage its sixth annual C.E.O. Council, a gathering of more than 100 of the world’s top chief executives, next month. Most media companies do not break out their revenue from events, so it is hard to pinpoint how profitable they are, but executives familiar with the business say there is little doubt they can be reliable moneymakers. A successful event can generate several million dollars in revenue, mostly from ticket sales and corporate sponsorship. At a time of shrinking ad sales and mixed results with digital subscriptions, media companies say conferences provide an alternative revenue stream that can be sustained year after year. Mr. Desmond said it was “entirely possible” that a large conference could bring in revenue in the low eight figures, but that would be on the very high end. Image At the AllThingsD conference, the editors Walt Mossberg and Kara Swisher, with Elon Musk, Tesla chief. Credit Asa Mathat/D: All Things Digital For the media companies, the benefits go beyond revenue. Live events promote their brand. They help companies give more prominence to valuable employees whom they want to reward. And interviews and panel discussions supply entertaining and cheap video content that can be used for other purposes and sold. In addition, conferences could generate news that would be covered by other organizations. Conferences also allow news organizations to solidify and even expand their readership base; The New Yorker, for example, says that the average age of people who attend its annual festival is 44, seven years younger than the average age of the magazine’s readers. In many ways media outlets are natural partners for live events, because they have access to prominent people in the fields they cover and can promote events through their products at almost no cost. The New Yorker and other publications like Fortune have had successful live events for more than a decade. Yet when news companies had wide profit margins, many kept the event business at arm’s length, viewing it as an ethical minefield filled with potential conflicts of interest. Many of the headliner names that event planners rely on to drive ticket sales are the same people those journalists cover. Since then, however, advertising has plummeted. Industrywide 2012 newspaper advertising revenue was $22.3 billion, down nearly 55 percent from 2006 levels, according to the Newspaper Association of America and Huber Research. In that light, what was once perceived as a liability is now viewed as an advantage. Interviewing specialists onstage is now called “live journalism,” and conference centers are considered just another social platform with Twitter, Facebook and online video. “Basically, the concept of a news organization has to be expanded,” said Thomas Rosenstiel, executive director of the American Press Institute, which is studying the profitability of the events business. “The question is, ‘What is the fundamental purpose the news organization plays for its community?’ And the modern answer is that news organizations create knowledge for their communities, and you can do that in a lot of different ways. Events are another way of bringing people together.” Eileen Murphy, the vice president for communications at The New York Times Company, which has added six conferences in addition to those run by the former International Herald Tribune, said the company viewed them “as another opportunity to show the convening power of The Times — we view conferences as N.Y.T. journalism on a ‘live’ platform.” Times conferences — like the business-focused DealBook conference and the Global Forum, the latest of which was held last week in Singapore — routinely feature panelists from companies and organizations that The Times covers regularly. Ms. Murphy said the company had written guidelines governing the ethics of staging live events. Jed Hartman, group publisher of news and business worldwide at Time Inc., which publishes Fortune, said that journalistic ethics could be preserved, if managed correctly. “If respected media properties apply the same ideology to live events that they do to their other platforms and screens, it shouldn’t get folks nervous,” he said. Still, it is easy to get something wrong. The Washington Post faced a wave of criticism in 2009 when it invited lobbyists and industry groups to pay $25,000 or more to sponsor private “salons” at the publisher’s home with Post journalists and government officials. It issued a public apology, and a marketing executive at the center of the plan resigned. Other blurry areas include who is selected to be on panels. “Sometimes we have the same companies on the list for sponsor and speakers, and sometimes those conversations get merged,” said Julie Hansen, president and chief operating officer of Business Insider, a digital publication, “but you can’t come to us with a fat checkbook and expect to buy your way into an event.” Mr. Rosenstiel says that events are increasingly crucial to small, local papers. For the nonprofit Texas Tribune, he said, events are a source of income nearly equal to corporate gifts. In 2012, events brought in almost $800,000 and corporate gifts totaled nearly $1 million. M. Scott Havens, president of The Atlantic, says that live events now account for 20 percent of his company’s revenue. “The best part is that once you have the infrastructure in place it can be very scalable,” he said. “There is very little incremental cost to adding a fixed sponsor.” Media executives said that the public’s appetite for engaging in person was powerful. “Though digital is at the center of our world, live is more popular than ever,” said Arianna Huffington, president of The Huffington Post Media Group. “The need to actually be live and connect with human beings and listen to people in the flesh seems to be the paradox of our age.”

News media,journalism
Conflict of interest
New York Times
Atlantic Media
advertising,marketing


1.5 Million Displaced After Chile Quake

Abstract: RIO DE JANEIRO — A strong aftershock struck Chile on Sunday, a day after a destructive 8.8-magnitude earthquake left hundreds of people dead and a long swath of the country in smoky rubble. The death toll was expected to rise, particularly around Concepción, Chile's second-largest metropolitan area, which is roughly 70 miles from the quake's center. The aftershock was reported around 8:30 local time Sunday morning from the capital of Santiago, where it shook buildings, according to Reuters. More than 1.5 million people have displaced by the quake, according to local news services that quoted the director of Chile's emergency management office. In Concepción, which appeared to be especially hard hit, the mayor said Sunday morning that 100 people were trapped under the rubble of a building that had collapsed, according to Reuters. Elsewhere in Concepción, cars lay mangled and upended on streets littered with telephone wires and power cables. A new 14-story apartment building fell, while an older, biochemical lab at the University of Concepción caught fire. In the nearby port of Talcahuano, a giant wave flooded the main square before receding and leaving behind a large fishing boat on the city streets. “It was terrible, terrible,” said Adela Galaz, a 59-year-old cosmetologist who said glasses and paintings fell to the floor of her 22nd-floor apartment in Santiago , 200 miles from the quake’s center. “We are grateful to be alive.” President Michelle Bachelet , speaking at a news conference on Saturday night, called the quake “one of the worst tragedies in the last 50 years” and declared a “state of catastrophe.” While this earthquake was far stronger than the 7.0-magnitude one that ravaged Haiti six weeks ago, the damage and death toll in Chile are likely to be far less extensive, in part because of strict building codes put in place after devastating earthquakes. The quake Saturday, tied for the fifth largest in the world since 1900, set off tsunami waves that swamped some nearby islands before moving across the Pacific. Hawaii began evacuations before dawn, but by early afternoon there — more than 15 hours after the earthquake first struck 6,500 miles away — the fears of a destructive wave had passed. Countries including Japan and the Philippines were on alert and ordered limited evacuations in anticipation of waves hitting Sunday. Chileans were only just beginning to grapple with the devastation before them, even as more than two dozen significant aftershocks struck the country. In Santiago, the capital, residents reported having been terrified as the city shook for about 90 seconds. Some people ran screaming from their downtown apartments, while car alarms and sirens wailed during the middle of the night. At least one apartment building collapsed, according to local media, and one highway buckled, flipping cars. “We are in panic because it has been trembling all day,” said Cecilia Vial, 65, an interior decorator in Santiago, who dashed out of her apartment only to return at night because she had nowhere else to go. “We cannot go against nature,” she said. “This is something that nature did.” Paul E. Simons, the United States ambassador to Chile, said in a telephone interview from Santiago that people he spoke with at the embassy said those 90 seconds “felt like five minutes.” He added: “It was definitely an emotional experience.” Mr. Simons said that although the United States had offered aid, Chile’s government had not yet requested assistance. All international relief groups were on standby, and the International Federation of Red Crosses and Red Crescents said the Chilean Red Cross indicated that it did not need external assistance at this point. Although there were long lines at supermarkets and gas stations, and damaged buildings and roads, the capital city, according to residents there, was mostly calm by the late afternoon Saturday. But the scene was grimmer in Concepción and surrounding areas to the south. In Talca, 167 miles south of Santiago, almost every home in the center of the city was severely damaged, and on Saturday night, people slept on the streets in the balmy night air near fires built with wood from destroyed homes. All but two of the local hospital’s 13 wings were in ruins, said Claudio Martínez, a doctor at the hospital. “We’re only keeping the people in danger of dying,” he said. Dr. Martínez said the hospital staff had tried to take some people to Santiago for treatment in the morning, but the roads were blocked at the time. Eduardo Martínez, 57, a local resident, said many people on his street had died and that he and his five brothers all lost their homes. In Chillán, 69 miles from Concepción, a crumbling wall allowed 300 prisoners to escape and incite a riot, according to La Tercera, the nation’s largest newspaper. The police captured 60 inmates, but more than 200 were still at large, the newspaper reported on its Web site. With major highways and bridges destroyed, and slabs of concrete jabbing diagonally into the air, transportation slowed or was halted altogether. Major seaports and airports, including the main airport in Santiago, were out of operation across the central region, Chilean officials said. TV Chile reported that part of the ceiling at the airport had collapsed, but that runways appeared intact. Cellphone and Internet service was sporadic throughout the country, considered one of the most wired in Latin America, complicating rescue efforts. On Robinson Crusoe, one of the coastal islands hit by early waves, authorities said at least four people had been killed. President Obama spoke briefly outside the White House on Saturday afternoon, expressing concern for the country and saying the United States would offer aid in rescue and recovery efforts. “Early indications are that hundreds of lives have been lost in Chile and the damage has been severe,” Mr. Obama said. He told Mrs. Bachelet that the United States was ready to help if needed. “We will be there for her should the Chilean people need assistance,” he said State Department officials said that Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton , who had been planning a trip to South America beginning on Monday, was also contacting Mrs. Bachelet, with whom she has long had warm personal relations. Ban Ki-moon , the United Nations secretary general, also offered his condolences, as well as longer-term aid should Chilean officials signal the need for it. The earthquake struck at 3:34 a.m. in central Chile, centered roughly 200 miles southwest of Santiago at a depth of 22 miles, the United States Geological Survey reported. The Geological Survey said that another earthquake on Saturday, a 6.3-magnitude quake in northern Argentina, was unrelated. In Salta, Argentina, an 8-year-old boy was killed and two of his friends were injured when a wall collapsed, The Associated Press reported. The most powerful earthquake ever recorded was also in Chile: a 9.5-magnitude quake struck in the spring of 1960 that struck near Concepción and set off a series of deadly tsunamis that killed people as far away as Hawaii and Japan. But that earthquake, which killed nearly 2,000 people and left more than two million homeless at the time, prepared officials and residents in the region for future devastating effects. Shortly after a 7.8-magnitude earthquake struck in Valparaíso in 1985, the country established strict building codes, according to Andre Filiatrault, the director of the Multidisciplinary Center for Earthquake Engineering Research at the University at Buffalo . “There is a lot of reinforced concrete in Chile, which is normal in Latin America,” Professor Filiatrault said. “The only issue in this, like any earthquakes, are the older buildings and residential construction that might not have been designed according to these codes.” This was in direct contrast to Haiti, which was unprepared for the Jan. 12 earthquake, Professor Filiatrault added. “If you are considering this magnitude is 8.8, I would be very surprised if the death tolls come close,” Professor Filiatrault said.


Defying Israeli Blockade, Vessels Head for Gaza

Abstract: JERUSALEM — Israel braced Friday for a showdown with a flotilla of nine vessels carrying hundreds of pro- Palestinian activists and thousands of tons of supplies headed for Gaza . It was the most ambitious attempt so far to break Israel’s maritime blockade of the Hamas-run coastal enclave. The flotilla of cargo ships and passenger boats, led by the Free Gaza Movement and a Turkish organization, Insani Yardim Vakfi , converged at sea from a number of countries over the last 10 days. Israel, which says it allows basic supplies into Gaza through points along the land border, denounced the flotilla as a political provocation and has vowed not to let the boats reach Gaza. It has invited the flotilla to land at an Israeli port, Ashdod, instead. Gaza has been under an Israeli- and Egyptian-imposed blockade since Hamas, the Islamic militant group that does not recognize Israel’s right to exist, took over the territory by force in 2007. Israel, the United States and the European Union classify Hamas as a terrorist organization. The activists said the boats, which were expected to reach the coast sometime this weekend, were carrying 10,000 tons of cargo including cement, school supplies and medical equipment aimed at easing the hardship in Gaza. In a statement emailed to reporters on Friday, organizers of the aid voyage, nicknamed the Freedom Flotilla, said that “for over four years, Israel has subjected the civilian population of Gaza to an increasingly severe blockade, resulting in a man-made humanitarian catastrophe of epic proportions.” Maj. Gen. Eitan Dangot, the Israeli military’s chief liaison with the Palestinian-controlled territories, said Israel’s policy was very clear. Briefing a group of foreign reporters in Tel Aviv this week, he said that Israel had offered the activists the chance to unload their cargo at Ashdod. Israel, he said, would be willing to transfer it, after inspection, to Gaza. But he added, “We will not allow ships to come to Gaza while Hamas is in control there.” In a news statement issued by Israel’s Foreign Ministry this week, Sarah Weiss Maudi, the ministry’s expert on maritime and humanitarian law, said the maritime blockade was in force “because Israel is currently in a state of armed conflict with the Hamas regime” in Gaza. Hamas, she continued, “has repeatedly bombed civilian targets in Israel proper with weapons that have been smuggled into Gaza by various routes, including the sea.” The flotilla organizers described Israel’s suggestion of sending the aid to Gaza through official Israeli channels as “both ridiculous and offensive. Their blockade, their ‘official channels,’ is what is directly causing the humanitarian crisis in the first place,” the organizers’ statement said. Israel was preparing to intercept the boats and divert them, if necessary, to Ashdod. Large tents and other facilities have been set up at the port to receive the activists, who number up to 800 and include public officials. An Israeli Arab lawmaker was aboard one of the boats. From Ashdod, the activists will either be voluntarily deported or detained. The approaching flotilla has set off a public-relations war regarding the situation in Gaza. General Dangot and other Israeli officials insist that no humanitarian crisis exists. Anticipating the bad publicity that was bound to accompany the arrival of the boats, the military and the Foreign Ministry published detailed reports this week of the almost 100,000 tons of supplies that Israel says it has allowed into Gaza this year. Israel says the importing of cement and iron has been greatly restricted because Hamas uses those materials to manufacture rockets and bunkers. Nevertheless, it has allowed some building materials for about a dozen infrastructure projects supervised by international bodies. Many additional goods are smuggled into Gaza through tunnels running under the border with Egypt. In a sarcastic e-mail message to reporters this week, Israel’s Government Press Office recommended a high-end restaurant in Gaza, the Roots Club, attaching the menu and a link to its Web site . “We have been told the beef stroganoff and cream of spinach soup are highly recommended,” the office said. The restaurant would, of course, be out of reach for most of Gaza’s 1.5 million residents. Israeli military officials put unemployment there at almost 40 percent. International organizations active in Gaza paint a bleaker picture. A United Nations Development Program report published on Sunday determined that about three-quarters of the damage caused by Israel’s military offensive in Gaza in the winter of 2008-9 had not yet been repaired. And a report by the United Nations humanitarian coordinator blamed the blockade for “suffocating” the agricultural sector in Gaza and said that insufficient food was now a problem in more than 60 percent of households. The Free Gaza Movement has organized at least four aid voyages since the summer of 2008, usually consisting of one or two vessels. The earliest ones were allowed to reach Gaza. Others have been intercepted and forced back, and one, last June, was commandeered by the Israeli Navy and towed to Ashdod. In other developments, police officers in Jerusalem on Thursday arrested two ultranationalist Israeli activists after they hurled insults at the White House chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, as he toured the Old City with his family, a police spokesman said. Angry at what they view as the Obama administration’s anti-Israel policies, right-wing activists had been waiting to confront Mr. Emanuel, who was in Israel on a private visit to celebrate the bar mitzvah of his 13-year-old son. One of the arrested ultranationalists, both of them well-known provocateurs, could be heard yelling, “Shame on you, You hate Israel” and “Traitor,” according to Agence France-Presse.


Latest Suburban Plea: Enough Banks Already!

Abstract: WHEN Commerce Bank used Bronxville as a backdrop for a TV commercial several years ago, company officials were apparently more enamored with the village than local leaders were comfortable with. “The president of the bank looked around and said he’d like to open a branch here,” said Harold Porr III, the village administrator. “We just sort of cringed because we have too many banks already.” Bronxville would probably have even more banks if it had not enacted a moratorium in 2004 on new banks, financial institutions and real estate offices in ground-floor spaces downtown to stop them from smothering smaller businesses that draw shoppers and diners. “We’d rather see more boutique shops than banks,” Mr. Porr said. The preponderance of banks throughout the county has spurred several Westchester municipalities to enact similar restrictions so banks do not take over their streets, and has prompted residents in other places to band together to stop the growth of banks. For example, before enacting restrictions similar to Bronxville’s recently, downtown Rye — known for stylish shops and eateries — experienced a surge in the number of banks about a year and a half ago, when four or five opened in six months, Mayor Steven Otis said. Eight of the nine banks downtown, he noted, are clustered within two short blocks of one another. In Scarsdale, which has long restricted banks to areas adjacent to but not in the village center, Webster Bank recently received approval to open a satellite branch next to the local train station, even though the bank already has a branch around the corner, said Elizabeth Marrinan, the village planner. In Larchmont, residents grouse about having eight banks in its one square mile, including a new Commerce Bank building on the site of a former gas station and two Chase branches across the street from each other. And since acquiring Bank of New York branches last year, Chase has essentially doubled its presence in Westchester, bringing to 106 the number of local branches, said a Chase spokesman, Michael Fusco. (Chase is likely to close 40 to 50 of its 800 branches in the tristate area because of duplication, he said.) Such numbers have residents saying enough is enough. “In a small walking town like this one, I always hope that when a space opens up, it’s filled by a business I can actually use,” said Leslie Bradley, 44, a Larchmont mother of a 3-year-old son. “When a bank moves in, I see it as a missed opportunity for something new that can fill a need for a greater number of residents.” Bank representatives, however, say they are filling a need, one they wouldn’t pursue if it weren’t worthwhile. “It’s really just a matter of convenience for customers,” Mr. Fusco of Chase said. “A lot of Westchester County residents commute to the city, and we want them to be able to bank where they live and where they work.” Another factor driving banks’ interest, local officials and business people say, is the high cost of Westchester real estate, which banks can afford but keeps small business owners at bay. “It’s getting ridiculous,” said Diane Shapiro, who is closing her Larchmont shop, Bead Dazzled, which specializes in accessories for young girls, after a 10-year run. Ms. Shapiro, whose monthly rent has risen to $3,250 from $1,700 since she opened (and will soon rise to $3,500), said those costs, combined with competition from big retailers that can offer discounts small business owners can’t, can make staying open prohibitively expensive. “I think people are really hurting in town,” Ms. Shapiro said. Local leaders agree that it is difficult to retain or find new businesses, even in communities that have restricted downtown uses. “We have very few vacancies, but it’s constant work to keep those storefronts filled,” said Mr. Porr, the Bronxville administrator, adding that maintaining the economic health of the village makes that effort worth it. “We are trying to keep our downtown vibrant,” Mr. Porr said. “We think having these kind of restrictions helps create a mix that makes downtown attractive and draws people into our community.”

Banks and Banking
Westchester County (NY)
Retail Stores and Trade
Advertising and Marketing


Iran: U.S. Offers $5 Million for News on Ex-F.B.I. Agent

Abstract: The United States announced Monday that it had increased to $5 million its reward for information that could lead to the safe return of Robert A. Levinson, a former F.B.I. agent who disappeared in Iran in 2007. The move comes as the Obama administration appears to be closing in on an agreement with Iran under which Tehran would accept limits on its nuclear program in return for the lifting of economic sanctions. The fate of Americans who have been detained by Iran — or in Mr. Levinson’s case who have disappeared there — is not formally part of the talks. Monday was the eighth anniversary of Mr. Levinson’s disappearance, which occurred during a visit he made to Kish Island, Iran. His family received photographs and a video in late 2010 and early 2011. The F.B.I. offered a $1 million reward in 2012 for information about Mr. Levinson and increased it by $4 million on Monday. Iran has denied that it knows his whereabouts.

Robert Levinson
Iran
FBI
Missing person
Kish Iran


Rhoden: In Detroit and Oakland, Coaches Combat the Culture of Losing

Abstract: Indianapolis On Thursday afternoon, in a crowded hallway at Lucas Oil Stadium, Tom Cable and Jim Schwartz stood about 25 yards apart, holding court with reporters in impromptu conversations at the N.F.L. combine. Cable and Schwartz don’t know each other well, not beyond exchanging pleasantries over the years, but this season they are official members of the fraternity of N.F.L. head coaches. Cable, 44, was named the interim coach of the Oakland Raiders in September at the end of a series of bizarre events that led to the team’s firing of Lane Kiffin. Earlier this month, Cable was introduced as the Raiders’ head coach. Schwartz, 42, the Tennessee Titans ’ defensive coordinator last season, was named coach of the Detroit Lions last month. Beyond being first-year head coaches, Cable and Schwartz share an additional burden. While other coaches here scout rookie players and generally think of ways to improve their teams, Cable and Schwartz have to transform cultures in which losing and negativity ooze from every pore. Detroit became the N.F.L.’s first 0-16 team last season. The Lions won their last N.F.L. championship in 1957. They have never been to the Super Bowl , have reached the playoffs only nine times in more than 50 years and have won one playoff game during that time. The Raiders are owned by Al Davis. Enough said. “You’ve got to change everybody,” Cable said Thursday. “It’s not just changing the left guard and the linebacker and this and that. You got to change the building. Change how they think, how they perceive the organization, how they come to work every day. It’s much deeper than just a handful of football players. It’s everybody who walks in the building.” All of that is true, of course, but Davis looms large — part shadow, part cloud. The Raiders have had six head coaches since 2001: Jon Gruden, Bill Callahan, Norv Turner, Art Shell (for the second time), Kiffin and now Cable. Kiffin made the mistake of taking on Davis in a public battle of wills. He was fired Sept. 30. Cable, the Raiders’ offensive line coach since 2007, watched the Davis-Kiffin disaster and took survival notes. You can accept Davis’s eccentricities and pick your spots, or you can force the issue. “If you do that with him, he already feels that way and believes that way and thinks that way, so it’s going to be like two cars heading at each other at 100 miles per hour,” Cable said. “It’s going to be ugly when they collide.” Early in his tenure, Cable was careful to pick his battles and concentrate on the larger — and more winnable — target of transforming the culture of the Raiders. “When you have losing and a culture of negativity, you got to find the core of it, cut it all out and start over again,” Cable said. “Jim will go through the same things, I’m sure.” Across the hall, Schwartz was having a similar discussion with reporters. Schwartz’s greatest challenge, like Cable’s, goes beyond getting a player here and a player there, but, rather, establishing the Lions as a credible professional football team. As Davis is hands-on to the nth degree, the Lions’ ownership has sleepwalked through the last several seasons. Schwartz recalled a conversation he had with a coach who was taking over a college program that had gone years without a winning season. The coach told the staff not to recruit any player, no matter how great, who did not play in a winning program. He wanted players who knew how to win and he wanted a high concentration of team captains. “It was all about changing the culture,” Schwartz said. Unlike in college football, in which recruiters must persuade players to choose their programs, N.F.L. teams draft whom they want. And the system allows the worst teams to select the best talent. Generally, winning teams have room under the salary cap to acquire free agents because there aren’t many players a losing team is trying to keep. With wisdom and luck, an N.F.L. franchise can make the transition from a losing to a winning culture fairly quickly. For a team like the Lions, wisdom and luck have not been in abundance. On Thursday, Schwartz said he wasn’t interested in weeding out players. “We want guys to prove that they are people we can build around,” he said. Schwartz is an avid chess player. What he likes about the game of kings is that it is a bottom-line game. The object is to win, and it doesn’t matter how. Schwartz will approach the coming season as a chess player would. Forget about style points. The bottom line is winning. No one cares how. From Oakland to Detroit, that has to be good news.

Football
National Football League
Oakland Raiders
Tennessee Titans
Detroit Lions
Rhoden William C
Cable Tom
Davis Al
Schwartz Jim (1966- )


Pakistani Leader Moves Quickly to Form Government

Abstract: LONDON — Former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif moved confidently to form a new government in Pakistan on Monday, signaling his choice to be the next finance minister even as votes from Saturday’s election were still being tallied and protests continued over alleged vote-rigging in some cities. Mr. Sharif’s spokesman, Siddiqul Farooq, said that given the party’s priority on the economy, the likely choice for finance minister would be Ishaq Dar, who served in the post twice in the 1990s — a critical job in a country suffering from sharp economic decline that is likely to necessitate a bailout from the International Monetary Fund. “No official announcement has been made yet but Mr. Dar is the most experienced man for the finance job. He is an expert in finance and audits and accounts,” Mr. Farooq said, adding that Mr. Sharif was also finalizing other cabinet choices during his meetings in Lahore throughout the day. During the election campaign, Mr. Sharif, a former steel baron, campaigned heavily on his ability to turn around the ailing economy and end electricity shortages that can last for 18 hours in some parts of the country. A fiscal conservative, he is seen as favoring free market economics and deregulation. News of his apparent victory has prompted a large rally on Pakistan’s main stock exchange, in Karachi. Successive projections since the voting on Saturday have put Mr. Sharif’s party, known by the abbreviation PML-N, ever closer to an outright majority in the 272-seat cabinet. Mr. Farooq said the party was sure to win at least 125, just 12 short of a majority, and that most of the 23 independent candidates that seemed sure to win seats had already begun talking about joining in coalition with Mr. Sharif. Still, the vote tally was still very much in progress on Monday, with election officials saying that final results would not come before midweek at earliest. Still, Arif Nizami, the caretaker information minister, said at a news conference in Islamabad that the new government would easily take shape before the June 2 constitutional deadline. Meanwhile, Imran Khan, the anti-corruption crusader whose campaign generated wide excitement but failed to make the predicted inroads against Mr. Sharif, concentrated his efforts on forming a government in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa Province, in northwestern Pakistan. Javed Hashmi, a senior official with Mr. Khan’s party, said it was in negotiations with the religious Jamaat-e-Islami Party to form a coalition administration in the province, which has borne the brunt of Taliban violence and adjoins the tribal belt where the C.I.A. has concentrated its campaign of drone strikes. Projections give Mr. Khan’s Tehreek-e-Insaf party 35 out of the 99 seats in the Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa Legislature, making it the single largest party. Jamaat-e-Islami is thought to have about seven seats. Video Declan Walsh, the Pakistan correspondent of The New York Times who was expelled from the country, reports on the results of the recent election and his personal experience. Speaking from his hospital bed in Lahore, where he suffered a serious fall in the final days of the election campaign and badly injured his back, Mr. Khan broadly welcomed the election. “We are now moving toward democracy,” he said. But his supporters have been driven several protest efforts since the voting, claiming extensive fraud in Karachi and Lahore. New demonstrations were held in both cities on Monday. The furor over vote-rigging highlighted a phenomenon in Pakistani politics: the emergence of social media as a tool of both electoral mobilization and protest. While the last poll, in 2008, was influenced by a raft of new private television channels, this weekend’s election gave new weight to Twitter and Facebook. Candidates appealing to the youth vote, like Mr. Khan, rallied supporters through the Internet, and since the vote, have used it to engage in tight, real-time scrutiny of the ballot process. Mr. Khan’s supporters have posted video taken on cellphones of alleged rigging. In one, Khawaja Saad Rafique, the candidate who defeated Hamid Khan in Lahore, is seen having a heated argument inside a polling station for women. Still, the impact of social media is mostly confined to the country’s wealthy minority and had little effect in places like Baluchistan, the western province where the threat of violence caused a very low turnout. Two other major parties in the election, the formerly governing Pakistan Peoples Party and the Awami National Party, announced on Monday that they had accepting projections showing that they had lost extensive ground to Mr. Sharif’s PML-N party. Asfandyar Wali Khan, the leader of Awami National Party, which was routed in its traditional stronghold of Khyber-Pakhtunkwa province, said in a news release t that despite reservations over a terrifying campaign of violence against his party in the run up to the elections, he accepted the results. Yusuf Raza Gilani, the former prime minister and senior vice president of Pakistan Peoples Party, also announced his resignation from party position Monday evening. Mr. Gilani was barred from contesting for the parliament by the Supreme Court last year. Three of his sons and one brother lost the Saturday election in Multan, which was earlier considered their stronghold. Almost all leading Pakistan Peoples Party politicians lost their seats in Punjab. “I accept responsibility,” Mr. Gilani said. “I accept public’s decision,” he said, stressing that the crippling power shortages and a critical media led to his party’s downfall.

Pakistan
Nawaz Sharif
Politics
Election
Imran Khan


Far-Right Party Posts Gains in Voting for Swiss Parliament

Abstract: GENEVA, Oct. 21 — After a campaign widely criticized as racist, Switzerland ’s far-right Swiss People’s Party strengthened its position as the biggest single party in Parliament in a general election on Sunday, according to a projection after voting ended. The party appeared set to win 29 percent of the vote and gain 7 parliamentary seats, for 62 seats in the 200-seat federal Parliament, after campaigning aggressively on an anti-immigrant ticket that featured posters showing white sheep kicking a black sheep away from a Swiss flag. “It’s the party’s best score since 1919,” said Yvan Perrin, a party member in Parliament. The largest party on the left, the Social Democratic Party, was projected to win 19.1 percent of the vote and emerge with 43 seats, losing 9. The projection was made by the state-owned SRG television and radio networks, which based the numbers on voting returns. Analysts said the gains by the Swiss People’s Party portended more of the polarization that had accompanied the party’s ascendancy in the past four years, straining Switzerland’s tradition of consensus politics and leaving cracks in its carefully nurtured image abroad as a bastion of tolerance. The party is likely to take the results as a popular endorsement of its policies, said Bianca Rousselot, a political scientist at Gfs.Bern, a research institute. “They will push for more conservative policies in foreign affairs as well as on issues like asylum and immigration ,” she said. The party’s costly campaign, spearheaded by Christoph Blocher, a billionaire industrialist and Switzerland’s justice minister, called for the deportation of foreign-born criminals once they had completed their sentences. Other party initiatives include a drive for a ban on the construction of minarets for mosques and cuts in social security benefits. The outcome still leaves the party dependent on the votes of other parties to get legislation through Parliament.

Switzerland
Elections
Immigration and Refugees
Legislatures and Parliaments


President Erdogan’s Authoritarian Tilt Threatens Visa Deal With Europe

Abstract: BERLIN — The increasingly authoritarian tilt of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey and the ouster of his prime minister this week have European leaders newly questioning their reliance on him and the viability of an already divisive deal struck this spring that has largely halted the flow of migrants to Europe. The widening gulf in democratic values — combined with Mr. Erdogan’s deepening intransigence — has now run up against provisions in the deal that would allow Turks visa-free travel to Europe. All this is threatening even to undo the deal. The gap between the sides and the growing pressure on the accord became clear this week when the European Commission called on Turkey to narrow its application of antiterrorism laws and bring them in line with European Union standards — one of more than 70 conditions it has set for visa-free travel. Turkey has very broad terrorism laws, which the Europeans fear are being used by Mr. Erdogan to crack down on his opponents. In fact, Mr. Erdogan recently said the government should widen the definition of terrorist to include journalists and academics who are deemed by the authorities to have provided support for terrorists. But on Friday, Mr. Erdogan proclaimed with typical defiance that Turkey “will not change its antiterror law for the sake of a visa deal” that would allow the 75 million Turks easier access to Europe for three months at a time. “We will go our way,” Mr. Erdogan said. “You go yours.” The episode was a fresh reminder of the political costs of holding together a deal that has helped the European Union to avoid a replay of the chaotic tide of migrants that nearly collapsed its system of open borders last year. Video A look at how Turkey has taken an increasingly authoritative turn under the rule of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. Credit Credit Turkish Presidential Press Office/European Pressphoto Agency In return, however, Turkey has been promised up to 6 billion euros over three years to meet the costs of sheltering refugees from Syria and Iraq , as well as the possibility of the visa-free travel arrangement and fresh consideration of talks to enter the European Union. But the continuing viability of the deal was called into question this week with the ouster of the Turkish official who has been most closely associated with it: Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu. He was pushed out on Thursday by Mr. Erdogan, in what was widely interpreted as a move by the president to tighten his hold on power. Two weeks ago, Mr. Davutoglu was the only Turkish leader who accompanied European Union officials as they visited Gaziantep, on the Turkish-Syrian border, to see how the deal was working. “It is clear that Davutoglu was the decisive man for the deal,” said Sylke Tempel, editor in chief of Internationale Politik, published by the German Council of Foreign Affairs. Echoing that thought, the conservative Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung noted Friday that “this means that the success of the deal will now be even more vulnerable to Erdogan’s whims.” European leaders should be “on red alert for rocky relations with Ankara in the future,” it said. Carl Bildt, the former Swedish foreign minister, appeared to be pessimistic about the future of the migration pact now that Mr. Davutoglu has resigned. Mr. Bildt wrote in a post late Thursday to his Twitter account that, “prospects for progress on EU-Turkey deal and relations have now dimmed considerably.” How Turkey’s Promise to Stop the Flow of Refugees Is Creating a New Crisis No European leader has a greater stake in making the deal work than Chancellor Angela Merkel, who took the lead in negotiating it with Mr. Davutoglu. On a visit to Italy, the chancellor noted cautiously on Friday that “we have made good progress with the deal with Turkey. The European Union — at least Germany and Italy — is ready and stands by its commitments. We hope of course that that is mutual.” Whether Europe and Turkey can continue to work closely together may now rest on whether Mr. Davutoglu’s replacement also embraces a vision of Turkey with one foot in Europe or Mr. Erdogan’s authoritarian bent, said Volker Perthes, a Middle East expert and director of the government-funded German Institute for International and Security Affairs. “For now, I don’t think the costs are actually higher for Merkel” than for other European leaders, Mr. Perthes said, although “she is more personally involved in a deal which pro forma is between the E.U. and Turkey, not the member states.” Under the deal, Turkey has already begun taking back refugees who had made their way to Greece, and the flow of migrants has virtually stopped. The aim of robbing smugglers of business and preventing refugees risking their lives across the Aegean has thus been achieved, noted Ms. Tempel of the German Council on Foreign Relations. But the other aspect of the deal — influencing Turkey’s internal development through conditions for travel and eventual European Union membership — is much more fragile, Ms. Tempel suggested. If anything, it is Mr. Erdogan who has used the deal to extend his influence. That became clear for Ms. Merkel after a German satirist lampooned the Turkish leader in a crude poem that prompted Mr. Erdogan to sue under a 19th century law on offending foreign leaders. Amid suggestions that she was effectively championing censorship, the law forced Ms. Merkel to allow the suit to go forward. She also acknowledged that she had made a mistake in initially passing judgment on the poem, agreeing with Mr. Davutoglu that it was deeply offensive. With Mr. Davutoglu now leaving office, Ms. Merkel and the rest of Europe are left hoping for a replacement they can do business with. Mr. Erdogan’s tough talk on Friday is probably less worrying than the fact “that we are losing one of Erdogan’s team who had a very strong interest in linking Turkey to Europe,” Mr. Perthes said. “I think he really wanted to do the deal with the Europeans, achieving this collaboration would have been a big victory for him, also as a person.” In Turkey, some analysts said they believed Mr. Davutoglu had to go because he was cutting an increasingly independent and popular figure. Aykut Erdemir, a former opposition lawmaker and senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, said, “Erdogan feared that Davutoglu could use his international profile as leverage against Erdogan to carve an autonomous sphere of action domestically.” He added, “Such a power-sharing arrangement is not something that Erdogan can tolerate.” Mr. Perthes, the German analyst, noted that Mr. Erdogan often surprises, and not always negatively. He expressed hope that a new prime minister might be appointed with a mandate to finish the visa and other deals with Europe. But Manfred Weber, a German lawmaker of Ms. Merkel’s conservative bloc who leads the center-right European People’s Party at the European Parliament, voiced wariness about granting visa-free travel to Turkey unless it also makes concessions. “The resignation of the Turkish prime minister is not a good signal,” Mr. Weber said by email. The European Parliament would only hold a vote on visa waivers “if all criteria are met.” One of the five conditions Ankara must still meet is to revise laws and practices to balance the fight against terrorism with respect for human rights. Cem Ozdemir, a leader of Germany’s Greens and among the country’s best-known politicians of Turkish descent, said Mr. Davutoglu’s departure “underscores how much Erdogan is trying to change Turkey into a one-man state.” It showed, he said, that Mr. Erdogan is the only negotiating partner who matters and “that you can only bet moderately on the reliability of Ankara.” Ms. Merkel, he added, had long evinced little interest in Turkey and opposed its bid to join the European Union. Now, he said, “it is not without irony that when Turkey is going completely in the wrong direction, she is the one opening the gates” to Europe. Ms. Merkel’s lack of Turkish allies outside the government, Mr. Ozdemir said, “is coming back to bite her.”

Middle East and Africa Migrant Crisis,European Migrant Crisis


North Korea Releases a Video of a U.S. Veteran Confessing to ‘Hostile Acts’

Abstract: BEIJING — North Korea has accused an American veteran of war crimes and on Saturday released a video of him confessing to what it said were “hostile acts” during the Korean War and while he was visiting the country in October. The veteran, Merrill Newman, 85, of Palo Alto, Calif., who has been held since Oct. 26, appeared on the video dressed in casual Western clothes and wearing glasses as he read excerpts from an apology written on several sheets of white paper. The text contained several awkward English constructions and grammatical errors. In the apology, Mr. Newman said he was an adviser for the Kuwol Unit of the United Nations Korea Sixth Partisan Regiment, which served with the Intelligence Bureau of the Far East Command. A person familiar with Mr. Newman’s military record and his current situation in captivity in North Korea said that Mr. Newman served as an adviser in that unit in 1953 before the armistice. The unit operated behind the lines in North Korea, but Mr. Newman conducted his duties as an adviser on Chodo, an island off the west coast of what is now North Korea, the person said. In the beginning of the video, Mr. Newman mentioned Chodo as the place where he was stationed. The person speaking about Mr. Newman’s situation declined to be identified because of the delicacy of the case. The Swedish ambassador visited Mr. Newman on Saturday, and told his family that he was in good health and being treated well, according to a statement from the family. The United States has no diplomatic relations with North Korea and has been dealing with Mr. Newman’s situation through the Swedish Embassy, which represents its interests in the North. “Our focus now is on getting him home quickly to join his loved ones, who miss him deeply,” the statement said. “We are asking that the D.P.R.K. authorities take into account his health and his age and, as an act of humanitarian compassion, allow him to depart immediately for home.” The Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, or D.P.R.K., is North Korea’s official name. In the apology, Mr. Newman describes how he wanted to meet “surviving soldiers and pray for the souls of the dead soldiers” from the unit he worked with. If he met any surviving soldiers he planned to put them in touch with members of the Kuwol Partisan Comrades-in-Arms Association who had escaped to South Korea, the apology said. Image In a photo released by the Korean Central News Agency on Saturday, 85-year-old Merrill Newman reads what the agency said is a written apology for his actions during the Korean War. Credit Kcna/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images An email from Mr. Newman to friends in South Korea telling them of his impending trip to North Korea and his hopes of meeting with relatives of the partisan group is embedded in the video of the apology. Mr. Newman said in the apology, the text of which was released by the state-run Korean Central News Agency, that he had asked his tour guide to look for families and relatives of the Comrades-in-Arms group, which is described in the apology as “an anti-Communist strategic plot organization.” In a statement also released by the Korean news agency that accompanied the apology, North Korea characterized Mr. Newman’s activities during the tour as “trying to look for spies and terrorists who conducted espionage and subversive activity” and to “connect them” to an anti-North Korean organization. It charged that Mr. Newman was “slandering” North Korea and had “perpetrated acts of infringing upon the dignity and sovereignty” of the country. The statement also referred to Mr. Newman’s wartime activities. “As I killed so many civilians and K.P.A. soldiers and destroyed strategic objects in the D.P.R.K. during the Korean War, I committed indelible offensive acts against the D.P.R.K. government and Korean people,” the apology said. Col. Ben S. Malcom, who commanded a unit of about 800 North Korean anti-Communist partisans during the war, said American soldiers commanded and advised more than 20 partisan units that did everything from raiding North Korean military redoubts to counterfeiting North Korean currency, robbing banks and stealing oxen. “We were the people who were leading the North Korean guerrilla forces” against the North Korean Army, said Colonel Malcom, 84. “That’s probably the reason they are holding him at the present time,” he said of Mr. Newman. Speaking Saturday from his home in Atlanta, Colonel Malcom said that given the partisan fighters’ destructiveness, he was not surprised at North Korea’s treatment of Mr. Newman. “I wouldn’t even consider going into North Korea,” he said. According to American military documents declassified in 1990, the United Nations partisan warfare mission organized in 1951 eventually mobilized about 23,000 guerrillas to fight against North Korea, overseen by about 200 American advisers. Mr. Newman, a retired technology executive and a world traveler, went to North Korea on a trip organized by a licensed tour group to fulfill a longtime desire to return to the Korean Peninsula, his family said. There was no indication from North Korea what the next steps in his case would be. On Saturday, the United States urged North Korea to release Mr. Newman immediately along with another American detainee, Kenneth Bae, said Caitlin Hayden, a White House spokeswoman. Mr. Bae, 44, a Christian missionary, was arrested last year during a visit to North Korea and sentenced to 15 years of hard labor for committing “hostile acts” against the North. Image KCNA claims this hand-written statement with red thumb prints is an apology from Mr. Newman. Credit KCNA via KNS/Associated Press In the written apology, which was dated Nov. 9, Mr. Newman is quoted as saying: “If I go back to U.S.A., I will tell the true features of the D.P.R.K. and the life the Korean people are leading.” The fact that Mr. Newman made a televised apology could lead to his release fairly soon, said Andrei Lankov, an expert on North Korea and the author of “The Real North Korea.” “So far, such public acts of repentance have usually been followed by the release of those detained, and this is likely to happen again,” Mr. Lankov said. An American Christian missionary, Robert Park, who crossed into North Korea in December 2009 and was held for more than a month, was released shortly after he signed an apology, Mr. Lankov said. Mr. Newman was pulled off a plane on Oct. 26 as it was preparing to leave North Korea. Something appeared to have gone awry on the last full day of Mr. Newman’s tour when he was asked to talk to one of his guides in the presence of another North Korean and without his traveling companion, a fellow retiree from California, his son, Jeff Newman, said after his father’s detention. Mr. Newman told his companion, Bob Hamrdla, that the conversation had not gone well and that he had a bad feeling about it, Mr. Newman’s son said. Jeff Newman had appealed to the North Korean government for the return of his father so that he could be home for Thanksgiving. The two Americans traveled with two Korean guides on a trip organized by the London-based Juche Travel Services, an outfit that says it appeals to “smart, independent” travelers. The State Department’s special envoy for North Korea, Glyn T. Davies, said in Tokyo last week that the United States was considering strengthening economic sanctions against North Korea, partly in response to the situation involving Mr. Newman. After his detention, the State Department stiffened its travel advisory, warning Americans they could be subject to arbitrary arrest if they went to North Korea as tourists.

War Crimes,Genocide,Crimes Against Humanity