Shaken by Taliban Victory in Kunduz, Afghans Flee Another Provincial Capital

Abstract: KABUL, Afghanistan — The test facing the Afghan government now is not just whether it can quickly mount a counterattack and retake all of Kunduz, the northern city that fell to the Taliban on Monday, but whether it can prevent a nearby provincial capital from falling as well. Accounts from the neighboring province of Baghlan on Wednesday showed that the collapse of government forces in Kunduz against less numerous Taliban forces was prompting a crisis of confidence in the province, where wealthier citizens and those with government connections have been leaving for the relative safety of their hometowns. In the midst of one of the gravest moments for the American-backed government in Kabul, military leaders spoke Wednesday about launching a decisive counterattack against the Taliban in Kunduz. But it was becoming clear that most of the reinforcements for such an attack had been waylaid in Baghlan. The reinforcements “will not be able to reach Kunduz without a big fight,” said Ted Callahan, a Western security adviser based in northeastern Afghanistan. But early Thursday, reports from the area suggested that the promised counteroffensive might be underway. Afghan officials, speaking to the BBC and Reuters, said the Afghan military had retaken some areas of the city. Sayed Sarwar Hussaini, a spokesman for the Kunduz police chief, told BBC Afghan that the military had regained control of the governor’s office, the police chief’s office and the building housing the intelligence agency. It was unclear which Afghan forces were involved in the counteroffensive, and details of the fighting were not immediately available. More Than 14 Years After U.S. Invasion, the Taliban Control Large Parts of Afghanistan At least one-fifth of the country is controlled or contested by the Taliban. The Taliban have proved in the last few days just how tight a grip they hold on a part of northern Baghlan that abuts Kunduz Province. Reinforcements from either Kabul or the government stronghold in Mazar-i-Sharif must pass through the area to reach Kunduz City, and some convoys have been ambushed there. It was not clear on Wednesday whether the front line in the north was still in Kunduz or was rapidly shifting south into Baghlan. That, at least, was how residents of Baghlan’s provincial capital, Pul-i-Kumri, were feeling. “It is true, people are evacuating the city today,” Zabihullah Rustami, a former member of the provincial council, said by phone. He had done so himself, he said, moving to his rural district to the east. “People who are enemies of the Taliban are leaving,” he said, and the city was rife with “rumors that the Taliban might attack and take over the city.” Pul-i-Kumri, about 90 miles north of Kabul, could become the next flash point if the Taliban’s momentum in the north is not checked in the next few days. Taliban fighters have been creeping up to the city’s outskirts over the last six months. Gun and mortar fire are often heard, and skirmishes have become regular occurrences on near the city. “In Pul-i-Kumri, the situation is not in the favor of the government,” Mr. Rustami said. “If any Taliban come out and shout ‘Allahu akbar,’ the city will fall. The Taliban are close to the city.” In a worrisome sign, two units of the Afghan Local Police surrendered their bases just outside Pul-i-Kumri to the Taliban on Wednesday and joined the insurgents, while a third base there was overrun, said Mohammad Leqaa, a former general who commanded police forces in several provinces. Other military units in the area were also said to have fled. Mr. Leqaa estimated that as much as 10 percent of the city’s population left on Wednesday alone. “The residents were influenced by waves of people fleeing Kunduz by way of Baghlan,” he said. “We tried to announce to people not to panic and don’t leave. They weren’t listening.” Video Residents of Kunduz in northern Afghanistan fled Wednesday after the Taliban took over the city on Monday. Afghan security forces are trying to regain control. Credit Credit Ajmal Omari/European Pressphoto Agency Mr. Callahan, the security adviser, said he expected government forces to put up more of a fight in Pul-i-Kumri than they did in Kunduz. “I think you’ll see much more resistance” from the police and pro-government militias, Mr. Callahan said. “Mind you, Baghlan is big, and most of the security forces are drawn from the eastern parts of the province, so there is a big pool of potential reinforcements.” Even so, he said, a strong defense could not be taken for granted because if panic took root in Pul-i-Kumri, a Taliban victory could be “a self-fulfilling prophecy,” and a small Taliban force could sow enough fear “to more or less walk in” as security forces retreated. “It would be the same movie we’ve seen in Kunduz,” Mr. Callahan said. The Taliban’s resurgence in Baghlan over the past two years is a complicated story of ethnic rivalry and local politics as much as ideology. Baghlan’s sprawling and populous northern district, known as Baghlani Jadid, is largely Pashtun, Afghanistan’s largest ethnic group — from which Taliban members are traditionally drawn. Pashtuns live in settlements across the north, but they are outnumbered in the region by Afghanistan’s second-largest group, the Tajiks. In Baghlan, many Pashtuns have felt left out of the provincial power structure, especially after a leading Pashtun candidate failed to win the provincial council chairmanship in last year’s election. Since then, Pashtun support for the government appears to have waned in northern Baghlan and insecurity has been rising, especially along the stretch of national highway running through the province. On Tuesday and Wednesday, convoys of reinforcements headed toward Kunduz were fighting pitched battles with the Taliban in two areas, said Abdul Shaker Urfani, a member of a community council in northern Baghlan. By his count, more than 1,000 Afghan soldiers and police officers bound for Kunduz were stuck in the province on Wednesday. “They can’t break through the Taliban resistance,” Mr. Urfani said. The capture of Kunduz, a city of 300,000 people, three days ago appeared to be the Taliban’s largest victory in a war that has gone on for more than a decade. Kunduz is the first urban center the Taliban have held since 2001. Image Afghan soldiers at the Kunduz airport prepared on Wednesday for a counteroffensive to try to retake the city from the Taliban. Credit Nasir Waqif/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images Soon after the city fell, Afghan military officials spoke of using its airport, five miles to the south, as a staging ground for a swift counterattack. Now, though, the airport is imperiled as well, caught between Taliban forces approaching from Kunduz and the insurgent-controlled countryside in every other direction. By Tuesday night, Taliban fighters had pushed through the airport perimeter, threatening several hundred soldiers and at least as many civilians who had fled to the airport from the city. One police officer was killed and at least 17 were wounded defending the area, officials said. Their situation improved somewhat when American jets struck Taliban positions at 11:30 p.m. and at 1 a.m., an American spokesman said. The Afghan Air Force also fired weapons. Around the same time, American Special Forces soldiers and Afghan commandos left the airport headed for Kunduz, according to Afghan government officials. Whether the Americans were there to take Taliban positions or to call in airstrikes was not known. By morning, the Americans appeared to have returned, said people there who spoke by telephone. An American military spokesman refused to discuss the matter. It appeared that at least one American operation in the city ended in failure. An Afghan security official, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said that a group of 100 or more Afghan soldiers, trapped in a fortress north of the city, had held the Taliban off for more than two days. But when American forces tried to airdrop arms and ammunition to them, the official said, “they missed the base and dropped the weapons in the river.” It was not clear whether the weapons actually landed in the water of the nearby Kalagaw River or had merely missed the defenders’ position by a long distance. That position fell Wednesday morning, and about 60 soldiers surrendered or were captured by the Taliban, although at least a few dozen managed to escape, the official said. Questions about how thousands of army, police and militia defenders could continue to fare so poorly against a Taliban force that most local and military officials put only in the hundreds were hanging over President Ashraf Ghani’s government and its American allies. The government forces and militiamen defending Kunduz Province were said to number more than 7,000 when the city fell. Some fell back to the airport, some fled to their homes, and some are unaccounted for.

Afghanistan War
Taliban
Kunduz
Afghanistan
US Military
Afghan Air Force
Afghan National Security Forces


90,000 Protest U.S. Base on Okinawa

Abstract: TOKYO — More than 90,000 Okinawans rallied Sunday to oppose the relocation of an American air base on their island, adding to the pressure on Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama to resolve an issue that has divided Tokyo and Washington. The demonstrators, in one of the largest protests on Okinawa in years, demanded that Mr. Hatoyama scrap a 2006 agreement with the United States to move the Futenma Marine Corps Air Station to a different site on the island. Many of the protesters wore yellow to signal they were giving Mr. Hatoyama a warning for appearing to waver on election promises to move the busy base off Okinawa altogether. Since his party’s landmark election victory last summer, Mr. Hatoyama has promised to come up with an alternative plan that would reduce the heavy American presence on the southern Japanese island, home to nearly half of the 50,000 United States military personnel in Japan. He has given himself until the end of May to put together such a plan that would also be acceptable to Washington. So far, his efforts to find a new location for the base have not appeased Washington; it initially demanded that Tokyo adhere to the original 2006 deal but has recently signaled greater flexibility. The 2006 deal calls for moving the base from its current location, in the center of the city of Ginowan, to Camp Schwab, an existing Marine base in less-populated northern Okinawa. The perception that Mr. Hatoyama has mishandled the relationship with the United States, Japan’s longtime protector, has contributed to his falling approval ratings, which have dropped below 30 percent. Opposition leaders and media commentators have begun calling on him to resign if he fails to find a compromise by the end of May. While Mr. Hatoyama has remained tight-lipped about what his plan may look like, officials from his government have made repeated visits to Okinawa to sound out local leaders. Okinawan politicians and the local news media have described the emerging plan as a modified version of the 2006 agreement. They said the government was considering building a smaller airbase at Camp Schwab than under the 2006 agreement and moving at least part of Futenma’s functions — most likely some of its training operations, and perhaps some of its helicopters — to Tokunoshima, a smaller island about 120 miles north of Okinawa. Japanese news media have interpreted this proposal as a token gesture to appease Okinawans by moving at least some of the Marines off the island. Okinawan leaders and local media reports have also said the government is considering constructing a new air base on an artificial island to be built off the Okinawan city of Uruma. Japanese media reports have said the island could take decades to build and would serve as a longer-term home for the Marines. However, on Sunday, local leaders told the demonstrators that they rejected any plan that kept the air base on Okinawa. Toshio Shimabukuro, the mayor of Uruma, said he opposed the construction of the island, which he said would turn his city in “a major military site,” according to Japan’s Kyodo News . The governor of Okinawa, Hirokazu Nakaima, who dropped his earlier support for the 2006 plan to join a rising movement against the base, called on the rest of Japan to share more of the burden of the American military presence. “This is not a problem that concerns only Okinawans,” he said, according to Kyodo.

Okinawa and Other Ryukyu Islands (Japan)

United States Defense and Military Forces


Virulent E. Coli Strain Hits Germany and Puzzles Officials

Abstract: BERLIN — An unusually lethal strain of E. coli bacteria has infected more than 1,500 people in Germany , mystifying public health officials, ravaging Spain ’s agricultural heartland, and touching off panic in Europe as people weighed whether it was safe to eat raw vegetables. The source of the outbreak, which has killed at least 16 people — 15 in Germany and a Swede who visited there recently — remained unknown. Public health officials are alarmed because a startlingly high proportion of those infected suffer from a potentially lethal complication attacking the kidneys, called hemolytic uremic syndrome, which can provoke comas, seizures and stroke. Dr. Robert Tauxe, deputy director of food-borne disease at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta , said the rate of cases of acute kidney failure in the outbreak was unprecedented. “That makes this an extraordinarily large and severe event,” he said. While most of the infections were among people who had traveled to northern Germany, the authorities acknowledged that the outbreak had spread to virtually every corner of the country. Shoppers and vegetable sellers in Berlin expressed a blend of confusion, anger and stoicism; about 20 cases of E. coli infection have been reported in the capital city. “A lot of people are afraid or worried,” said Nursan Usta, 43, who runs a fruit and vegetable stall in Berlin’s blue-collar Neukölln district. “They aren’t even buying cherries” — even though the authorities have mentioned only cucumbers, lettuce and tomatoes as potential sources of infection. In Motril, a town in Spain’s agricultural heartland, greenhouses were empty of workers as demand for vegetables collapsed after the German authorities initially — and most likely mistakenly — pointed to Spain as a source of the outbreak. “Working in a greenhouse can be tough, but I’ve never felt more exhausted and empty inside than now,” said Miguel Rodríguez Puentedura, who had been picking cucumbers until Monday, when the greenhouse that employed him shut down. Health officials in Hamburg , the center of the outbreak, appealed Wednesday for donors to contribute blood. Scientists are at a loss to explain why this little-known organism, identified as E. coli 0104:H4, has proved so virulent. The European authorities have reported several differences from previous outbreaks, including that women make up more than two-thirds of those affected and that young and middle-aged adults account for a very high percentage of the most severe cases. Dr. J. Glenn Morris, director of the Emerging Pathogens Institute of the University of Florida , said that the German strain might have undergone genetic changes or mutations to make it more potent. The high number of cases of acute kidney failure represents a much higher percentage of the total number of illnesses than in previous outbreaks associated with different strains of E. coli. Generally, 5 to 10 percent of E. coli illnesses result in this complication. Among the confirmed cases, according to the Robert Koch Institute, Germany’s disease control agency, 470 people had been diagnosed with the kidney syndrome. That could be because German doctors are using a broader definition of kidney failure that captures more cases. Or it could mean that the total number of illnesses is much greater than has so far been revealed, which ultimately would lower the percentage of acute cases. Or it could be a signature of this form of E. coli. There are many types of E. coli, most of which are harmless. But a small number have come under increasing scrutiny as dangerous pathogens. These all produce a poison known as shiga toxin and generally have the ability to cling to a person’s intestinal wall, allowing them to release the poison in large enough amounts to make people sick. Dr. Phillip Tarr, a professor of microbiology at the Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis , said that there were two main forms of shiga toxin found in E. coli, and that the strain detected in the outbreak in Germany appeared to have the more potent version. But he said the organism appeared to have other quirks that made it unusual, and potentially difficult to detect by conventional means. “This outbreak is still evolving, and everyone is still in the fog of case definition,” Dr. Tarr said. With the source of the contagion unknown, the Robert Koch Institute on Wednesday warned against eating “ raw tomatoes, cucumbers and lettuces to prevent further cases ,” particularly in northern Germany. European and German officials pledged to track down the cause of the outbreak and to pinpoint where in the food supply chain the contamination had taken place. “Hundreds of tests have been done,” the German agriculture minister, Ilse Aigner , said in a television interview. So far, those tests had determined that “most of the patients who have fallen ill ate cucumbers, tomatoes and leaf lettuce primarily in northern Germany.” Two people in the United States were hospitalized with kidney failure after returning from travel to Hamburg, said Dr. Tauxe of the Centers for Disease Control. He said tests were being done to see if they were sick with a strain of E. coli that matched the German strain. Dr. Tarr said the outbreak in Germany pointed to a basic gap in public health systems worldwide. If samples from sick patients were routinely tested for the presence of shiga toxin, it could lead to much faster identification of problems. After a lethal outbreak of E. coli in 1993, Dr. Tauxe said the United States created a government database that gathered information on laboratory testing of pathogens and shared it with health officials around the country. He said no similar system existed in Europe that would allow separate countries to quickly share lab results. “This could be an important game-changing event in Europe,” he said. John Dalli, the European Union health commissioner, told a news conference in Brussels that the outbreak was on the decline, with fewer hospitalizations in recent days. “We would therefore consider a ban on any product as disproportionate,” Mr. Dalli said. Tests by the German authorities on Spanish cucumbers had identified some E. coli, Mr. Dalli said. But those tests had not identified the highly virulent strain that had led to such serious health problems. “There is no proof at this point in time that the Spanish cucumbers are the cause of this contamination in Germany,” he said. Still, some shoppers remained wary. In a store specializing in organically grown produce in the upscale Wilmersdorf area of the capital, Miriam Schäfer, a sales attendant, said Spanish cucumbers had been removed from the shelves — even though they were no longer the direct suspects — and replaced by locally grown ones. “People are buying less,” she said. “They are asking a lot of questions about what is safe.” But some shoppers insisted that the risk was minimal. The cause of the outbreak “is not yet proven,” said Corinna Kasper, 24. “First they say it’s one thing and then another.” European farmers sought to pre-empt economic damage caused by the outbreak. “It is totally unacceptable to impose trade bans when the source of contamination remains unknown," said Pekka Pesonen, the secretary general of Copa-Cogeca, a group representing European farmers and cooperatives. Major growers in Germany are losing up to $7 million daily and two-thirds of all vegetables, including lettuce and tomatoes, produced by his members were being destroyed, according to Karl Schmitz, the director of the German Federal Association of Producers of Fruit and Vegetables. In Spain, the damage is much broader, estimated at about $286 million a week.


After Taking Early Lead, Liberty Beat the Atlanta Dream

Abstract: Cappie Pondexter had 14 points and a season-high 13 assists, and Essence Carson added 14 points in the Liberty’s 73-60 victory over the Atlanta Dream on Tuesday night. The Liberty never trailed after Leilani Mitchell pulled up for a 15-foot fast-break jumper to make it 13-12 late in the first. The Liberty (4-7) had plenty of incentive after last Friday’s debacle, a 42-point loss at Connecticut that was the worst in team history and included a 34-point halftime deficit that was the largest in league history.

Basketball
New York Liberty
Atlanta Dream
Pondexter Cappie
Carson Essence


Defector Finds Niche in South

Abstract: SEOUL — Choi Se-woong’s day is just like that of many other businessmen here. He wakes up at 5:30 a.m., checks the news headlines with a cup of coffee and then drives to work in the financial district of Yeouido. What makes Mr. Choi different is the unusual path he took in his life. He defected from North Korea in 1995 and has since built a reputation as one of the most prominent North Korean entrepreneurs in the South. “I have Kim Jong-il to thank for finding the job of my life,” said Mr. Choi, 49, referring to the North Korean leader. He spoke between puffs on a cigarette at a coffee shop in a Seoul hotel recently. Growing up, Mr. Choi was one of the privileged few, eventually studying German literature at Kim Il-sung University. His family had connections to the government — his father is Choi Hee-byeok, who was North Korea’s de facto finance minister as director of the finance and accounting department of the Workers’ Party. It was Kim Jong-il who suggested to the elder Mr. Choi that his son should learn finance. Today, Mr. Choi is a managing director of foreign exchange marketing with NH Investment & Futures, a futures brokerage house in Seoul. He lives with his two children and wife, Shin Yeong-hee, who was once a dancer at Mansudae Art Theater, a prestigious art troupe in North Korea. Mr. Choi’s first encounter with capitalism was in 1984, when he went to work in Vienna at the Golden Star Bank, which at that time was the only North Korean bank abroad. (The bank eventually shut down in 2004, long after Mr. Choi’s time there, as international suspicion about illegal activities at the bank rose.) Several years after he arrived in Vienna, Mr. Choi moved on to London and worked at Development Investment Bank, a foreign exchange trading firm that has since closed and was set up by Daesong Bank of North Korea and a British entrepreneur. “The education I got associated capitalism with imperialism and aggression,” he said. “I thought it would be cold, like lacking humanity and loyalty among friends.” While in London, Mr. Choi ended up lending the money he had made to the North Korean Embassy. “The embassy didn’t get much support from the regime in the ’90s,” he said. It was while in London that Mr. Choi decided he would not go back to North Korea. He said that he had become “fed up” with the system and did not want to raise his children there. He declined to be more specific because he feared retaliation against family members still in the North. Before his defection, his father lost his position in a political reshuffle, meaning that Mr. Choi’s life upon return would be less privileged. He arrived in South Korea on Dec. 12, 1995, via a route he declined to disclose to prevent a crackdown on potential defectors. Now, 15 years later, Mr. Choi is still fighting. “It’s a constant battle,” he said. In 2009, 2,927 North Koreans defected to the South, up from 1,000 in 2002. The number is rising each year, and the Unification Ministry predicts that the total number of defectors will soon exceed two million. Getting a job is a big challenge for North Korean defectors, in part, observers say, because of education and in part because of prejudice. A recent survey showed that 13.7 percent of defectors between 15 and 64 years old were jobless as of last November, about four times the unemployment rate for South Koreans. Those who landed jobs earned an average of just 1.27 million won, or about $1,100, a month last year, which is less than half of the average income in Seoul. Mr. Choi has had more luck, thanks to his education and experience. Soon after he arrived in South Korea, he got a job at Korea Financial Telecommunications and Clearings Institute, a company that manages payment systems between banks. At the height of the Asian financial crisis, Mr. Choi tried his luck in the restaurant business. In 1998, he opened a restaurant named Jinadallaegak, specializing in North Korean-style naengmyeon, or cold noodles. The restaurant gave him enough capital by the year 2000 to set up SN Bank, a company providing 24-hour online foreign currency trading for individuals and small businesses. It was believed to be the first such service in South Korea. SN Bank was having financial problems and he sold it in 2006. He held several other finance jobs, increasing his pay all the while. Most recently, he joined NH in October, having been recruited after conducting a training course for employees there. Not all has been smooth. He was once sued by an employee at his restaurant when he refused to give the worker a raise. And when he developed the 24-hour online foreign currency trading service, his business partner tried to take credit for it. There are certain things anybody doing business in Korea should learn, he said: drinking and golf. Kim Jong-il ordered all North Koreans living overseas to stop drinking alcohol. So when he arrived in the South, he flatly refused to drink. Only later did he realize it was considered rude, and he now drinks alcohol. As for golf, Mr. Choi joked that his game had gotten so good that no one could tell anymore that he came from the North. Kim Hyung-eun is a business reporter at Korea JoongAng Daily.

South Korea
North Korea
Defectors (Political)
Entrepreneurship


Jockeying for Position in the Bond-Fund Sweepstakes

Abstract: AS he came to early prominence in the 1980s, Bill Gross was sometimes called the Peter Lynch of bonds, after the better-known manager of the Fidelity Magellan stock mutual fund. But Mr. Lynch’s reign as the king of stock investors was brief compared with that of Mr. Gross as king of bonds. When Mr. Lynch stepped down in 1990 at the age of 46, Magellan had been the largest stock fund for just seven years. The Pimco Total Return bond fund run by Mr. Gross, 70, has been the largest bond mutual fund for 17 years. But how much longer will he reign? Lately, the bond king has been under siege. Mr. Gross’s management style was questioned after the departure this year of Mohamed A. El-Erian, former chief executive of the Pacific Investment Management Company. Bad bets, bad press and a mid-2013 spike in interest rates led investors to pull $64 billion, or 22 percent of the fund’s $293 billion in peak assets, from May 2013 through June this year. The good news for Mr. Gross is that two of his top rivals, Michael Hasenstab of Franklin Templeton Investments and Jeffrey E. Gundlach of DoubleLine Capital, also had investor outflows at their funds, according to a tally by Morningstar. The bond funds that have been getting the most inflows are still relatively small, and some of them have already faltered this year. And so, even now, none of his taxable-fund competitors are anywhere near the size of Pimco Total Return. “Many people have been drawing conclusions about Bill Gross; they thought he lost his touch,” said Eric Jacobson, co-head of bond fund research at Morningstar. But Mr. Gross remains “a titan in the world of investing,” and “one of the best around,” Mr. Jacobson added. Though he has trailed the market slightly this year, he has outperformed the bond market over the long run — in his case, the 27-year history of the fund. Two Vanguard index funds — one with $118 billion and the other with $82 billion — could well move up in the next few years. But the nearest actively managed rival, the $72.5 billion Templeton Global Bond fund, suffered a slight, 1.7 percent outflow in the 14 months through June. Managed by Mr. Hasenstab, 41, the fund generated returns of 10.6 percent, annualized, in the 10 years ended in 2012, based on bold bets on out-of-favor debt such as emerging markets, compared with 6.8 percent for the flagship Pimco fund. For example, Mr. Hasenstab loaded up on bonds of Ireland and Hungary during the eurozone debt crisis of 2011. But since 2012, the fund’s returns have moderated. Although its return of 2.2 percent last year still beat the Pimco fund and both domestic and global indexes by more than four percentage points, its holdings of Ukraine bonds alarmed some investors this year. The fund’s return of 3.3 percent this year through June trailed the Citigroup World Government Bond Index, at 5 percent, and Mr. Gross’s Pimco fund, at 3.7 percent. In recent interviews, Mr. Hasenstab said that the bond market’s “periodic panic” over Federal Reserve policies was overstated, and that his Ukraine bet should pay off, even if it takes a few years. He declined to comment for this article, as did Mr. Gross. Image Jeffrey Gundlach, of DoubleLine Capital, runs a rival fund. Credit Eduardo Munoz/Reuters Another competitor, the $33.5 billion DoubleLine Total Return Bond fund, has an outspoken manager with his eyes on the bond throne, according to some fund watchers. That manager, Mr. Gundlach, 54, was actually called “the king of bonds” by Barron’s in early 2011, a little over a year after he broke away from his former employer, Trust Company of the West, or TCW. In its first two full years of operation, 2011 and 2012, this mortgage-heavy flagship fund had an annualized return of 9.3 percent, compared with 6 percent for the Barclays U.S. Aggregate Bond Index and 7.2 percent for Pimco Total Return. But last year, the same DoubleLine fund came back to earth, eking out a barely positive return of 0.02 percent. While that beat both Mr. Gross’s fund and the Barclays index by about two percentage points, the fund still suffered from the same stampede by investors frightened of losses to rising interest rates, with a net outflow of 17 percent, or $7 billion, in the 14 months through June this year. But flows actually started turning positive in February, and returns have improved to 4.5 percent for the first six months of this year, as Mr. Gundlach correctly predicted falling rates. In a statement, Mr. Gundlach indicated that he would limit the DoubleLine fund’s size before it reaches $100 billion to avoid the risk of “asset bloat,” which, he said, could impair the ability of a “megafund” to find “enough undervalued securities to move the performance needle.” A number of other actively managed funds in the same size range gained assets in the same 14-month period ended in June. The $37.1 billion Pimco Income fund pulled in $7 billion; its two managers don’t include Mr. Gross. The $35.9 billion Lord Abbett Short Duration Income fund, led by Robert A. Lee, pulled in $3.6 billion. And the $30.3 billion Metropolitan West Total Return Bond fund had inflows of $4.4 billion. Among exchange-traded funds, inflows have been dominated by funds that specialize in safer short-term debt and other narrow categories, such as loans, high-yield bonds and floating-rate debt, a Morningstar tally said. The three leaders are the $7.2 billion PowerShares Senior Loan Portfolio , which pulled in $3.4 billion, and the $5.1 billion Pimco 0-5 Year High Yield Corporate Bond Index E.T.F. and the $4.3 billion SPDR Barclays Short Term High Yield Bond E.T.F. , both of which added $3.1 billion. Among actively managed bond funds with more than $20 billion, two of the fastest-rising are new “unconstrained” funds that aren’t tied as closely to the Barclays index. One of them, Goldman Sachs Strategic Income , a four-year-old fund led by Jonathan Beinner and Michael Swell, has mushroomed from $3.9 billion in April 2013 to $24 billion. Its annualized return of 9.6 percent for 2012-13 beat the index by more than eight percentage points with heavy doses of risky low-rated corporate and mortgage debt. But this year, the fund stumbled when it bet on rising rates, and its return of 0.2 percent through June trailed the index by more than three percentage points. As Mr. Jacobson of Morningstar put it, “one of this fund’s greatest advantages thus far — its use of tactical bets — is also a potentially powerful weakness.” The second big fund in the unconstrained category is the $26.5 billion JPMorgan Strategic Income Opportunities fund, run by William Eigen, 46. The fund had a huge return of 18.7 percent in 2009, its first full year. But since then, it has trailed the Barclays index by nearly a percentage point, with an annualized return of 3.5 percent. While Mr. Eigen avoided losses in 2013 by curbing his interest-rate risk, his fund, like Goldman’s, has trailed the index this year as rates fell. It pulled in $10.4 billion in the 14 months ended in June. JPMorgan officials say the fund seeks positive annual returns in all markets, and it has managed that feat so far. In 2013, it gained 2.8 percent, according to Morningstar, compared with a 2 percent loss for the Barclays index. With a hefty cash position of 60 percent in June, Mr. Eigen says he doesn’t want to be stuck holding bonds at current “dangerous” price levels. “I don’t want to be trying to sell high-yield bonds” when prices start falling, he said in mid-June. “I have to go where the puck is going to be.”

PIMCO Pacific Investment Management Company


Stanford’s Kevin Hogan is Focused on Winning, Like Andrew Luck

Abstract: LOS ANGELES — Kevin Hogan simply stood there, his eyes despondent, fixated on something in the distance. Hogan and Stanford had just upset Oregon, on the road, in Hogan’s second career start, and a television reporter was trying to elicit excitement, or at least a grin, during a postgame interview. This was the same player who, as his teammates were screaming and searching for someone to hug in the moments after the game, had found his coach and apologized for a now-meaningless fumble that a teammate had recovered. For the reporter, no excitement would come. A few teammates watched the interview on the flight home. Back at Hogan’s suite, they watched again, laughing and debating whether Hogan was a robot. “You would think he just lost a high school football game,” said Kevin Reihner, a backup center and one of Hogan’s roommates. “We always joke, Kevin Hogan is probably the least interesting person you’ll ever meet in your life.” Of course, they used to say the same thing about Hogan’s predecessor, Andrew Luck, the top pick in this year’s N.F.L. draft. But Hogan is no Luck, Stanford Coach David Shaw said. He laughed, adding, not even close. Maybe someday, Hogan will get there, Shaw hoped. The reason Hogan started and won Stanford’s last four games, and the reason the Cardinal will play in Tuesday’s Rose Bowl against Wisconsin, is that he plays and behaves like Luck. During his redshirt year, Hogan had been told to emulate Luck, mimic his every move, said Pep Hamilton, Stanford’s offensive coordinator. He watched how Luck rolled out and evaded would-be tacklers and improvised; how he read defenses and chose plays; and how he showed poise in the huddle. Those skills would be expected of any Stanford quarterback thereafter. Josh Nunes tried to be like Luck. He beat out Brett Nottingham, Luck’s backup last season, to be Luck’s successor. With Nunes, Stanford beat Southern California but lost to Washington and Notre Dame. Then the offense sputtered against lowly California and Washington State. Nunes could not run like Luck, or Hogan, for that matter. At first, Hogan could not play like Luck, either. It took Hogan a season and a half to emulate Luck, until Shaw trusted him enough to split time with Nunes against Colorado on Nov. 3. “Of all the guys we had in the quarterback room, his skill set was more like Andrew’s than anybody else,” Hamilton said. “The system had evolved and really had been built around Andrew’s talents. So why not give a guy with similar talents an opportunity?” Watch how and when Luck runs, Hogan had been told. At 6 feet 4 inches and 224 pounds, Hogan stands tall and is sturdy, like Luck. His teammates knew Hogan had long been ready physically. They had played pickup basketball with him and watched him throw down windmill dunks with ease. “He’ll hit a jump shot and not stop talking trash all the way down the court,” Reihner said. Colorado quickly learned, too. Stanford scored touchdowns on each of Hogan’s first four drives. On a third-and-9, Hogan recognized man-to-man defense, which left him unaccounted for. He rolled right and took off down the sideline for 20 yards. Hamilton reintroduced the quarterback rollouts and runs that he had set aside when Nunes was starting. The offense resembled what Luck had mastered. On third down, Hogan threw or ran as he pleased. Before the Colorado game, Stanford had converted 34.5 percent of its third downs. Since then, the Cardinal have converted 45.2 percent. Shaw had no choice but to play Hogan, who led Stanford to victories over three ranked teams — Oregon State, Oregon, and U.C.L.A — before he helped to beat U.C.L.A. again in the Pacific-12 championship game Nov. 30. Watch how Luck studies film, Hogan had been told. With Stanford, the quarterback is often given a choice of three or four plays and the freedom to choose which one he likes based on how the defense is aligned. Training a quarterback to think like a Stanford quarterback takes time. Hogan devoured film on his tablet device while going to and from class, on the way to practice and before he went to bed at night. Some nuances still escaped him. It helped when Hamilton walked Hogan through hypothetical plays in practice. Hogan memorized the choreographed footwork for each play, practicing as if dancing in a ballroom. Sometimes, Hogan hears Luck’s voice explaining a concept while he is executing it. In his first career start, against Oregon State, ranked 11th then, Hogan audibled from a run to a pass with Stanford trailing, 23-21, in the fourth quarter. He stood in the pocket and threw a tight spiral to tight end Zach Ertz for a 13-yard touchdown. “For him it was so matter of fact like, ‘Yeah, of course I did it, because that’s what we’re supposed to do,’ ” Shaw said. “That gives a coach such a comfort level, that we can put the game in this young man’s hands, that he can get us in the right play and make the throw to win the game.” Watch how Luck leads, how he wins, Hogan had been told. Hogan has completed nearly 73 percent of his passes, thrown for 973 yards and 9 touchdowns, and once in a while he might halfheartedly pump his fist. His résumé already includes four game-tying, or winning, drives in the fourth quarter. Sam Schwartzstein, the fifth-year center who snapped for Luck and now Hogan, said Luck had a demanding, physical presence in the huddle. Hogan’s style is more one of quiet confidence, like when he led an 11-play, 78-yard drive to tie Oregon, which was ranked second, and send the game to overtime. “When you see that fire in Kevin’s eyes, that’s what gets you going,” Schwartzstein said about the late drive against Oregon. He said he felt like, “We’re definitely going to win this game, the way this kid looks right now.” It is hard for those who know Hogan and Luck to determine who is more competitive. They speak regularly; Luck is clearly excited about Stanford’s season. He never won a Pac-12 championship. He never played at the Rose Bowl. He, too, used to play basketball with his teammates. Ertz called Luck “a hustle player,” a rebounder not a shooter. Whenever Hogan plays, he is a star. Asked who would win a game of one-on-one, Hogan smiled wider than he did after Stanford beat Oregon. “Oh, that’s a tough one,” Hogan said. “He’s bigger, stronger, but I don’t know if he has the ball-handling skills or the jump shot. That’s a tossup.” Maybe Hogan was just being nice. “I don’t think either one of them wants the spotlight,” Ertz said.

College football
Stanford
Kevin Hogan
Andrew Luck


Visions of the Past Propel Colts’ Taj Smith Forward

Abstract: NEWARK — Bernadine Smith raised eight children here, five boys and three girls, 13 years separating the oldest from the youngest. Her boys were inseparable, and she tried to keep them together, keep them home, with board games and cooking lessons and movie nights. “If I could have kept my kids in a bubble,” she said, “I would have.” Instead, she has already buried the two oldest. One burned to death in 2004 at age 22 in a murder that remains unsolved. The other shot himself in 2009 at 30 as the police burst into his hotel room. Tajiddin, once third, is now her oldest, and the tattoos that decorate his skin show he has not forgotten two brothers swallowed by these streets. His five N.F.L. games with the Indianapolis Colts last season — after three itinerant years as an undrafted free agent — are also evidence he could get out of and beyond Newark, perhaps taking his family with him. Smith, then, needs football, needs more than five games, needs a real career. In three N.F.L. seasons, spent mostly on the practice squad of the Colts, Smith banked little of his earnings. He helped his family, paid rent in Indianapolis and bought some 70 pairs of sneakers. His mother has had health problems, and his car windows need repairs. Smith’s agent, Wes Bridges, said Smith is in the second year of a three-year contract, little of which is guaranteed. His window of opportunity in professional football, which opened later than most, is small to begin with, so every paycheck, every workout bonus matters for his family and his future. But of course Smith now resides in the limbo created by the N.F.L. lockout, hopeful but uncertain. No games. No organized practices. No paychecks. Nothing to be done that could secure his future in the game. Back in Newark, as the sport’s labor dispute moves slowly through the federal court system, Smith has driven through the familiar, rough streets of his childhood, reacquainting himself with all that he wants to leave behind, including the building where he was robbed at gunpoint and the alley where his friend was killed. The “PSP” inked on his right forearm refers to Smith’s old neighborhood, the Prince Street projects, where he said another eight friends had died. The “BMLS” on his right hand, the one he kisses before games, stands for “Brothers’ Memories Live Strong.” The death that most affected Smith, the one he said that still kept him awake at night, that served as the impetus for giving back, took place 12 years ago. That night, according to Smith, an armed man stopped his friends as they walked home and told them to remove their sneakers. When Smith’s friend balked, he was shot, and his blood splattered across Smith’s face. He washed it off at the nearest gas station, went home and curled up in bed. He told neither his parents, nor the police. Instead, he repeated to himself: “That could have been me.” In the coming years, Smith would make plenty of trouble of his own. He admits to playing his own part in perpetuating the dead-end pathology of violence begetting violence. He says he is not looking for sympathy. Just work. Nicknamed Taj, Smith estimated he fought 25 to 30 times in high school. After one brawl his junior year, in which Smith said he broke another student’s nose and jaw, he was expelled and charged with aggravated assault. In another instance, Smith said he fought six combatants, one after another, in a local parking lot. But at a school for juvenile offenders, Smith’s personal file crossed the desk of Ian Scott, who was a consultant for the school. Even among arsonists and murderers, Smith was deemed dangerous, high risk, Scott said. Yet in walked this skinny, scraggly, unassuming kid with glasses. Scott said Smith rarely even spoke. Smith’s background — liked football, came from Newark — resonated with Scott, a local kid who played in the N.F.L. for Tampa Bay. To get Smith back into football, Scott had to meet with the principal at Weequahic. He said she told him Smith and his older brother were the reason she was retiring. Scott talked Smith onto the team, but under one condition: he could not enter any building on school property, even the locker room. He dressed and spent halftimes in the parking lot. His senior year marked his first real football season, and he played everywhere from defensive end to quarterback. He also won two state championships in basketball. While Smith fought to finish high school, one older brother, Al-Mutakabbir Smith, moved to Atlantic City. He sold drugs there, Smith said, everything from cocaine to heroin to prescription pills. And so Smith, who worked at a local T-shirt shop after high school, decided he needed to leave Newark, and he landed at Bakersfield College in California in 2004. “Do not come back until you graduate,” Scott told him. “There’s nothing for you here.” Smith switched to receiver from cornerback there, but not before he was kicked off the team at least once. Early on, Jeff Chudy, the coach at Bakersfield, said Smith “was kind of flopping around” and that “his purpose for being here was debatable.” In October 2004, his mother called one game day and pleaded with Smith to speak to an assistant. Smith knew, from the coach’s reaction, something had happened, something bad. When he returned home, his mother said she saw him cry for the first time as an adult. They sat on the bathroom floor in silence. The senior investigator in the case, Ronald Moten of the Camden County Prosecutor’s Office, said the police found Al-Mutakabbir Smith burning in an alley, his body wrapped in an oversize black plastic trash bag, duct taped around his midsection. “In 10 years in homicide, that case stands out,” Moten said. “It broke my heart, man. It will always stay with me.” The police identified the body after the girlfriend watched a news story that mentioned a lion tattoo on the burned man’s right biceps. Bernadine Smith identified her son that way, and during her conversations with Moten, she mentioned another son, a college football player. In his second year at Bakersfield, Smith met a teacher, DeAnn Sampley, who taught him sign language and took Smith and other students to Romania, where they visited orphanages. Smith, at long last, started to meaningfully mourn his brother’s death. Chudy said he sensed a real leap in maturity in Smith. “Honestly, it shocked me,” Chudy said. After Bakersfield, Smith went to Syracuse, which he chose over Rutgers because it was too close to home. A broken collarbone ended his first season after four games, and he left in 2008 with a year of eligibility remaining. Smith bounced around the N.F.L. before he clawed his way onto the Colts’ practice squad. He was there when his mother called in tears again in November 2009. Another brother, Fuquan Wilson, Smith’s chess partner and confidant, had died, under circumstances Smith still struggles to accept. The police account sketched out the particulars this way: Wilson, married with two children, wound up in an argument with his brother-in-law, a fight that ended when Wilson slashed his relative’s throat and shot him in the head. Wilson then fled to Virginia, where the police said he shot himself as they entered his hotel room seeking his arrest. “I’m still trying to figure out what happened,” Smith said. “I can’t see my brother just killing himself like that.” After Wilson died, Smith said he turned to alcohol, and he was arrested for suspicion of drunken driving in January 2010. Early into the next preseason, he tore his hamstring on the final play of the final practice. Yet Smith kept training, kept hoping, and late in the season, the Colts signed him once again. In Smith’s first N.F.L. game, in December against his favorite team, the Dallas Cowboys, he blocked a punt and recovered it in the end zone. Bernadine Smith, who watched the Cowboys game by herself at home, said her landlord thought 50 people were partying in the apartment. Through his face mask, she saw relief on her son’s face. “Like he had made it,” she said. “For him. For his brothers. For all of us.” Last month, Smith spoke to teenagers in his hometown. He scheduled a camp for July and worked to establish what he hopes will be his own nonprofit foundation. As Smith drove through his old neighborhood, he pointed to the T-shirts hanging from fence posts, surrounded by flowers and candles, to commemorate the dead. His mother is not sure she wants to leave. She has lived in Newark her entire life. She says she loves it here, and yet, she believes her recent health problems stem from her sons’ deaths. Taj serves as the family’s inspiration, lockout or no lockout. “What he’s gone through, most young men would never recover from,” Scott said. “This is not a ‘Blind Side’ story. This is way deeper than that. He had people that played roles in his life. But he walked the walk alone.” While home, Smith stopped by Weequahic, with its new stadium, new field and new track, a school as transformed as the student it once kicked out. He laughed. Here he had traveled all over to reach the N.F.L. at 27, and yet he found himself back where it all started, the lockout in effect, the dream held up. He glanced at his right hand. Brothers’ memories live strong.

Football
Smith Taj
Newark (NJ)
Indianapolis Colts
National Football League
Lockouts
Organized Labor


Bloomberg’s Recollections of a Lifetime of Motherly Advice

Abstract: As the sun set over a Staten Island community meeting last month, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg sped through questions about budget cuts, wind power and, inevitably, ferry service. But when a woman thanked him for helping save a popular local Boy Scouts camp, he slipped into unscripted territory. “I don’t know why it just occurred to me,” Mr. Bloomberg said. “I went up to Boston to see my mother yesterday, who’s failing. She’s 102 years old and never had a bad day in her life.” Mr. Bloomberg, 69, smiling widely, then recounted his own return from summer camp decades earlier, when he told his mother, Charlotte Rubens Bloomberg, that the food at camp was better than home cooking. “Go back! I don’t want to be a cook,” his mother told him, he recalled. Mrs. Bloomberg, who died on Sunday in her home in Medford, Mass., was a touchstone for her son as he rose from a modest childhood to become one of the wealthiest and most powerful men in the world. Mr. Bloomberg often worked his mother into speeches. Earlier this month, while announcing a plan to offer wireless Internet service in city parks, he used one of his favorite lines, “My mother remembers when the telephone came in,” and then last week, when asked about an education issue, he spoke about driving by his elementary school recently while visiting his mother. And during this spring’s round of commencement speeches, the mayor often offered some variation of his favorite piece of parental advice: “Call your mother.” It is advice he took to heart — throughout his adult life, he called his mother every day. His mother nurtured him as he moved from Boston to New York, from working class to billionaire, from anonymous to ubiquitous. In recent months, as Mrs. Bloomberg’s health worsened, Mr. Bloomberg took time in meetings to reflect on her life and regale assistants with stories. And he traveled to his mother’s home in Medford much more frequently to visit her, his daughter Georgina said. “She doesn’t have a TV downstairs, so they sit there and talk,” she said in an interview last month. “She always asks questions.” Like her son, Mrs. Bloomberg was candid and pragmatic. But she largely shunned the spotlight. When strangers asked if she was related to “the Bloomberg,” she sometimes said no, hoping to avoid the attention. When reporters showed up at her doorstep, she told them she had more pressing things to do. While Mr. Bloomberg lavished other family members with multimillion-dollar residences, Mrs. Bloomberg declined, choosing to stay in the simple two-story home that she and her husband, William, bought more than 60 years ago. When her son sent limousines to pick her up, she sent him back a check. When his private jets arrived, she groaned. Their relationship was defined in the aftermath of William Bloomberg’s death, of heart failure , when his son was 21. Mrs. Bloomberg did not let her husband’s sudden health problems slow her down; instead, she devoted herself to learning to use a manual gearshift so she could chauffeur the family. “She doesn’t get upset when things are beyond her control,” Mr. Bloomberg wrote in his memoir. “She never complains. I think I’ve inherited that ‘just do what you can do and go on to the next thing’ approach.” Mary Kay Shartle-Galotto, a college friend of Mr. Bloomberg’s, recalled his devastation, and resolve, in the days after his father died. “He said, ‘I’m the man of the family now, and I’ll always take care of my mother,’ ” recalled Dr. Shartle-Galotto, one of several friends of the Bloomberg family interviewed for this article in recent weeks. “She’s really an independent lady and she’s been a source of strength for him all his life.” And Sharon E. Baum, a former girlfriend of Mr. Bloomberg, said he could be obsessive about checking in with his mother. “He was always very attentive to her,” she said. “He was a fabulous son.” As Mr. Bloomberg rose to prominence on Wall Street, Mrs. Bloomberg was the humbling voice in the back of his mind. After each bit of good news, she would say, “Don’t let it go to your head,” the mayor recalled in his memoir. In 2002, Mrs. Bloomberg held the family Bible as her son was sworn in. She appeared on the campaign trail (senior centers were her specialty) and accompanied him on trips to Israel in 2003 and 2007. Ethel Nanes, a friend of Mrs. Bloomberg’s for 50 years, said Mrs. Bloomberg was proud of her son, especially for his philanthropy, but sometimes seemed skeptical about politics. “I think she wonders why he needs it or why he wants it,” Ms. Nanes said. “She believes that sometimes people do things to see if they can do things.” Mrs. Bloomberg, who was born in Jersey City, seemed most comfortable in Medford, where her routine was predictable: services at Temple Shalom, chocolate ice cream at Brigham’s, lunch at Legal Sea Foods and piano-playing in the quiet of her home. She participated in a book club, played Scrabble and read two daily newspapers, The Boston Globe and The New York Times . In Medford in recent years, she was considered something of a wonder, the diminutive centenarian who still ate steak dinners and sat through hours of religious services in a metal chair, although her attendance at services waned along with her health. She took a keen interest in local politics and education, giving her son’s home telephone number to Medford’s mayor, Michael J. McGlynn, in case he needed advice. “She walks around like he’s just her little boy,” Mr. McGlynn said. In Medford, friends and neighbors reacted with disbelief on Monday. “I thought she was going to stay around forever,” said June Klein, a friend. “She was just so tenacious and gracious and everything good you could say about a person.” And Mr. Bloomberg, it turned out, was not the only Bloomberg renowned for financial management. His mother, who earned an accounting degree from New York University in 1929, devoted a decade to overseeing the bingo operations at the synagogue, ultimately making the contentious decision to end the games because they were too costly. “She was able to handle all the pitfalls of the bingo management,” said Herb Sandberg, who ran the games with her. “It’s like running a little country. Everybody’s coming to you with little complaints.” When she was 93, Mrs. Bloomberg was elected as a co-president of Temple Shalom, where a wing is named for her and William Bloomberg, courtesy of a $1 million donation from her son. Mr. Bloomberg returned to Medford for Jewish holidays, and his mother visited New York several times a year. Mr. Bloomberg’s sister, Marjorie B. Tiven, the mayor’s liaison to the United Nations , visited Medford more often, and was Mrs. Bloomberg’s frequent companion. Mr. Bloomberg has donated millions in his mother’s name, to hospitals, to Hadassah and to the mayor’s alma mater, Johns Hopkins University , which will open a children’s hospital named for Mrs. Bloomberg next year. In a birthday letter to the actress Kitty Carlisle in 2003, Mr. Bloomberg imparted his mother’s advice for longevity: “Never eat anything that tastes good,” he wrote. “When you lean over to pick something up, see if there is anything else you can do while you’re down there.”


Kentucky Built a Title Team on Underclassmen Expected to Leave Early for the N.B.A.

Abstract: NEW ORLEANS — Rarely has a national title seemed to yield so little to celebrate. The starting five for the champion Kentucky Wildcats — a mix of freshmen and sophomores — are expected to enter the N.B.A. draft , and never again play for the college they ever so briefly attended. Mark Emmert, the president of the National Collegiate Athletic Association , had already expressed regret that the N.B.A. ’s so-called “one-and-done” rule allows universities to recruit athletes who show little interest in getting an education. That said, Emmert was not going to be forfeiting any of the tens of millions of dollars his organization made as a result of the tournament the Kentucky team was so spectacular in winning. For his part, John Calipari , the Kentucky coach, said he did not like the state of affairs, either. But he said he nonetheless was going to hit the recruiting trail this week to seal deals with the best high school players in the country, and see if he could repeat the feat: persuade talented teenagers to spend seven months or so with him in pursuit of a college title and maybe National Basketball Association riches. The confetti inside the Louisiana Superdome on Monday night, then, showered a remarkable basketball team, but also fell with a certain joylessness on a college sport many believe has been cynically compromised. “John Calipari is doing what the system allows him to do,” said David Ridpath, an assistant professor of sport administration at Ohio University. “I guess in that sense, congratulations. Anyone who thinks that this has anything to do with the collegiate or educational model is flat-out wrong.” Calipari is not the first coach to recruit and win with freshmen so talented that the minute they step on campus, it is assumed they will stay only one season. Syracuse, for instance, won the 2003 men’s basketball national title behind the freshman Carmelo Anthony, who promptly left for the N.B.A. Yet Calipari has become synonymous with the phrase “one-and-done,” in the same way Tom Izzo’s Michigan State teams are known for playing formidable defense or Mike Krzyzewski is known for populating Duke’s roster with great shooters. (Duke guard Austin Rivers, the son of Boston Celtics Coach Doc Rivers, will also leave college for the N.B.A. after just one season.) The rule is actually enforced by the N.B.A., which has no plans to change it. It was put in place in 2005 as part of the league’s collective bargaining agreement, after teams spent years investing in athletic but unproven teenagers who were jumping straight to the N.B.A. from high school. Some, like Kobe Bryant and Kevin Garnett, turned into stars. Others flopped. Technically, the rule does not force talented players like Kentucky’s Anthony Davis to go to college, but it states that they must be one year removed from their graduating high school class to be eligible for the N.B.A. draft. Academics have criticized the rule and the N.C.A.A. has complained, but neither had the power to make any changes. Even a former Kentucky president, Lee T. Todd Jr., has expressed uneasiness with the situation, one which can give players little incentive to attend class, let alone excel academically, after a certain point in the season. “If you don’t recruit them, you’ll play against them very likely,” Todd told The Herald-Leader in 2010. “It’s a system problem, I think.” N.B.A. Commissioner David Stern told The associated Press on Tuesday that while he would like to see star players return after their freshman season, he was happy that the rule has kept N.B.A. scouts away from high school gyms. Calipari, who throughout the tournament cited his team’s grade point average, refuses to apologize for how he built the team that earned him his first national title. He has complained about the rule in the past, but has no problem utilizing it to build top-ranked teams. “I don’t think it’s a good rule,” Calipari said Monday night. “I hope we can change it before this week’s out so all these guys have to come back.” Louisville Coach Rick Pitino, a longtime Calipari rival whose team lost to Kentucky in the semifinals, said he marveled at the way Calipari operated at Kentucky. But he added: “I couldn’t do it. I can’t say hello and goodbye in seven months. It’s just not me.” Few could argue the on-court benefits of Calipari’s approach. Six of his last seven teams at Memphis and at Kentucky advanced at least to the regional final of the N.C.A.A. tournament, among the final eight teams remaining. The seventh, Memphis in 2009, lost in the regional semifinals. (Two teams that Calipari led to the Final Four — Memphis in 2008 and Massachusetts in 1996 — later had their victories vacated by the N.C.A.A., although Calipari was never implicated in any wrongdoing.) Calipari has also had 13 players selected in the first round of the N.B.A. draft, with Derrick Rose and John Wall being selected first over all. Davis, the most outstanding player in this Final Four, is expected to be taken first over all in this summer’s draft. That history, in turn, will help Calipari recruit another round of fabulous freshmen for next season and the season after that, for as long as Calipari chooses to remain in the college ranks. Calipari rankled basketball purists when he said that the day in 2010 when five of his players were picked in the draft’s first round ranked among the greatest in the history of the storied Kentucky program. Up to six of his players from this year’s team could be drafted, including the senior Darius Miller, who started a few games early in the season. During the Final Four, Calipari mocked the notion that players going to school for just a year undermined the educational mission of the university, invoking the names of famous college dropouts like Steve Jobs and Bill Gates. “The integrity of their schools were at stake when they left,” Calipari said. “They should have stayed and not changed the world.” Ridpath, a member of the Drake Group, a network of professors who lobby for academic integrity in college sports, and the author of “Tainted Glory: Marshall University, the NCAA and One Man’s Fight for Justice,” does not blame Calipari. Nor does he blame the players. Nor the N.B.A., which essentially benefits from a free farm system. He blames the N.C.A.A. “The one and done is not about an education,” Ridpath said. Calipari has been able to determine how his players can do the minimum amount of work so Kentucky’s Academic Progress Rate, the metric used by N.C.A.A. to measure how well universities are educating their athletes, is not adversely affected. “I think he represents the refinement of the system, that’s what he does,” William C. Friday, the former president of the University of North Carolina, said of Calipari. “If we’re going to be perfectly open and honest about it, we know what we’re doing is acting as a farm club for the commercial advancement of the N.C.A.A.” Ridpath recommended adopting the model used in baseball, in which players who do not enter the draft directly out of high school and choose to attend college are not eligible again until after they turn 21 or complete their junior season. For years, basketball stars skipped college altogether, Ridpath noted, and college basketball thrived anyway. Until then, Ridpath said: “Calipari will have another team loaded with freshmen next year, and they’ll do a darn good job. It’s an excellent business model but a travesty on all sides. Everybody knows it’s a complete facade.”

University of Kentucky
National Collegiate Athletic Assn
National Basketball Assn
Draft and Recruitment (Sports)
Calipari John
Emmert Mark
Basketball
College Athletics
NCAA Basketball Championships (Men)
Basketball (College)


Fire Commissioner Faces Challenge in Fatal Blaze

Abstract: The party was a large affair, held in a private room of the Russian Tea Room in Midtown, celebrating the career of the outgoing commissioner of the Administration for Children’s Services, Nicholas Scoppetta . It was early December 2001, the horrifying events of Sept. 11 still close behind. The commissioner was 69 years old and had served five years, and he said he was looking forward to going into teaching. It was no small shock to the guests, then, when a few weeks later, the new mayor, Michael R. Bloomberg, announced his choice for commissioner of the New York City Fire Department: Mr. Scoppetta. “What do you know about fires?” one close friend recalled asking him, although using language more colorful. It is a question Commissioner Scoppetta has, in a way, been struggling to answer ever since. Now 74, Commissioner Scoppetta is faced with what is widely considered to be the greatest crisis of his career with the Fire Department. On Aug. 18, two firefighters died on the burning upper floors of the former Deutsche Bank building , trapped in a maze of demolition equipment and blocked stairwells and cut off from water by a disconnected standpipe. It has since been revealed that the dead men’s fellow firefighters might have played some role in making the building a needlessly more dangerous site to fight a fire: not having conducted building inspections or created a detailed plan to combat a blaze at the site, 130 Liberty Street. This week, Commissioner Scoppetta announced the reassignment of three fire officers responsible for those duties. “We have more questions than we have answers at this point,” the commissioner said in an interview on Thursday in his office at department headquarters in downtown Brooklyn. Stressing that it was “grossly unfair to judge them or their conduct” this early in the investigation, he said, “I’m the ultimate judge of what happens to them.” But the problems for Mr. Scoppetta and the department may go well beyond the tragic circumstances at the former bank building. The city has ordered, in effect, a complete review of the department’s program for inspecting buildings of all sizes and complications across the city. Some in the department fear what that inquiry might reveal about its diligence in recent years. And so Mr. Scoppetta finds himself in the harsh light of scrutiny from without and within, an outsider who has never completely ingratiated himself into the deeply traditional and insular agency he leads. But his allies from more than three decades of public service in New York City say that it is just this sort of crisis that brings out the best in Commissioner Scoppetta, a former state and federal prosecutor known for staying levelheaded and sticking to facts at times like this. “To be willing to do that, you have to have a clear head, a good mind,” said Robert Leuci, 67, a former police officer who testified against fellow officers in corruption cases in the 1970s. His story became the basis of the book and film “Prince of the City,” and Mr. Scoppetta was the prosecutor at his side. “He grew up in a very tough environment,” Mr. Leuci said, “and he comes away one of the most gentle guys you could meet.” Commissioner Scoppetta was born in 1932 and was abandoned, along with his two brothers, by his parents when he was 5 and living on Spring Street in Little Italy. He spent several years in foster care, a period of his life that he guarded for many years before he was named commissioner of children’s services in 1996. He called the job an “emotional fit, given my history, as a kid,” but said his place as an outsider of that agency had people wondering about his effectiveness, given his background working as, among other jobs, a prosecutor and as the commissioner of the Department of Investigations. “It was, ‘Why do you have a prosecutor here?’” he said. “You can’t worry too much about that. Do the job. Everyone will see this is genuine; you can be effective.” Linda I. Gibbs, deputy mayor for health and human services, who worked under Commissioner Scoppetta at children’s services, said he relished difficult jobs. “Anyone who takes a job like this knows they’re going to be constantly under fire,” she said. “You can’t be defined by what others say about you.” It was later in December 2001, after the party at the Russian Tea Room, when Commissioner Scoppetta was summoned before Mayor-elect Bloomberg, three days before the inauguration, and asked to lead the Fire Department. “That was a little bit of a surprise,” Commissioner Scoppetta recalled with typical understatement. “I said: ‘I’ve been a prosecutor. I know something about the Police Department, and I’ve worked with the police. This is something new to me, the Fire Department.’ ” But he said the idea thrilled him. “It seemed irresistible, post-9/11, to be connected to the Fire Department and do whatever any of us could to help rebuild,” he said. Peter Madonia, 53, was Mr. Bloomberg’s chief of staff, and remembered thinking that Commissioner Scoppetta’s temperament was what the battered department needed. “Nick was really an elder statesman,” he said. “Almost like a father figure.” But those who serve under Commissioner Scoppetta have been less kind during his time at the department. He is frequently described by some within the department as being out of touch with its nuts-and-bolts workings, and has appeared to some to be ineffectual in ways that his counterpart at the Police Department, Raymond W. Kelly, is not. In 2005, Mr. Bloomberg adopted Mr. Kelly’s view in a dispute over who should control the scene at terrorist attacks and other emergencies, further cementing the perception that the Police Department stands in front of firefighters in line for money and responsibility. Mr. Scoppetta remains unruffled by these beliefs. “I don’t know that people who have been fire commissioner who grew up in the department got any better reception than people who came from the outside,” he said. “It’s a really unusual culture in the Fire Department, and a lot of it is much to our benefit.” A common complaint, he said, is low morale among firefighters. “From time immemorial, you’ll hear that morale has never been lower,” he said. “When that is said to me, I just can’t help but have this reaction: ‘Compared to who? Compared to what?’ ” Of firefighters, he said, “Every one of them looks forward to coming to work.” “It is traditional at the department to take their shots at headquarters,” he said. “When I was in the Army for two years, we felt the same way about officers. No matter what you do, the commissioner is always headquarters, is identified with the mayor. I think the mayor has been extremely helpful.” When the fire began in the former Deutsche Bank building, Commissioner Scoppetta was at his home in Amagansett, in Suffolk County, preparing to have dinner with John E. Zuccotti, the former first deputy mayor. “I told my wife: ‘I’m sorry, I can’t do it. I’ve got to get out of here,’ ” he said. He speeded to Manhattan with police escorts and visited the hospital where the dead men lay, the burning building and the stricken firehouse in SoHo. “That’s always the hardest part of all this,” he said. “You have to be at one of these things to appreciate the emotion, the bond between the men.” In the days that followed, it was revealed that a battalion chief, William Siegel, had outlined his concerns about the building in memos, calling for a specific firefighting plan for the building and recommending weekly inspections. “In the week following the fire, I learned that there had been this review of the building and there was a memo written to the division commander,” he said, declining to discuss specifics while the investigation was active. “There was no prefire plan. Perhaps that building deserved it.” On Monday, he and Mr. Bloomberg announced the reassignment of the three officers, Deputy Chief Richard Fuerch, 55, who is the Division 1 commander; Battalion Chief John McDonald, 52, the commander of Battalion 1; and Capt. Peter Bosco, 48, of Engine Company 10, the company responsible for conducting the inspections. Since then, Captain Bosco’s brother, John M. Bosco, has said there was a policy understood by firefighters to have been approved up the chain of command to not enter the building because of the toxic substances inside. Others, including union leaders, have called the officers scapegoats and accused the commissioner of protecting the higher-ups at headquarters. “I don’t think that’s fair. It seems clear the inspections weren’t done,” the commissioner said. “It’s prudent to remove them from operations until the investigation is done.” He said he hoped this latest crisis would lead to improvements in the department. “Out of every crisis I’ve been involved with in government, as terrible as it might be, there is an opportunity,” he said. “Opportunity to address what might have gone wrong that’s created the crisis. I think building inspection, for example, may be considered a mundane activity by some. It’s enormously important. We have this example at the Deutsche Bank.”

Fires and Firefighters
Scoppetta Nicholas
Deutsche Bank Building (NYC)
Accidents and Safety
New York City


Third Round Awaits After 2 Years for Former No. 1 Caroline Wozniacki

Abstract: MELBOURNE, Australia — Caroline Wozniacki, once the No. 1 player in the world, advanced to the third round at the Australian Open for the first time in three years with a 6-1, 6-3 win over Donna Vekic on Thursday. Wozniacki, who reached the semifinals here in 2011, lost in the second round in 2015 and in the first round last year. Wozniacki, who was a semifinalist at the United States Open last year, will face Johanna Konta in the next round. Konta, who made it to the semifinals last year before losing to the eventual champion Angelique Kerber, advanced over Naomi Osaka, 6-4, 6-2. Konta, who was voted the WTA Tour’s most improved player of 2016 after moving from 48th to 10th in the rankings, opened the season by winning the Sydney International title last week. Like Konta, Karolina Pliskova is riding a hot streak after winning a warm-up event, the Brisbane International. She has dropped just four games in the first two rounds and beat the 18-year-old Russian qualifier Anna Blinkova, 6-0, 6-2, in less than an hour. She will next play Jelena Ostapenko, who beat No. 31 Yulia Putintseva, 6-3, 6-1. On the men’s side, No. 18 Richard Gasquet beat Carlos Berlocq, 6-1, 6-1, 6-1, and No. 32 Philipp Kohlschreiber beat Donald Young, 7-5, 6-3, 6-0. No. 30 Pablo Carreño Busta beat Kyle Edmund, 6-2, 6-4, 6-2, to earn a third-round match against either the six-time Australian Open champion Novak Djokovic or Denis Istomin. One player attracted plenty of attention without the benefit of a match: top-seeded Andy Murray, who took to the practice court under the watchful eye of his coach, Ivan Lendl. Murray, a five-time runner-up here, was apparently untroubled by the ankle he had rolled in a second-round victory over Andrey Rublev.

Tennis
Australian Open
Karolina Pliskova


Hope, Growth and Opportunity Shows Limits of Disclosure Rules

Abstract: WASHINGTON — In early 2010, a new organization called the Commission on Hope, Growth and Opportunity filed for nonprofit, tax-exempt status, telling the Internal Revenue Service it was not going to spend any money on campaigns. Weeks later, tax-exempt status in hand as well as a single $4 million donation from an anonymous benefactor, the group kicked off a multimillion-dollar campaign against 11 Democratic candidates, declining to report any of its political spending to the Federal Election Commission, maintaining to the I.R.S. that it did not do any political spending at all, and failing to register as a political committee required to disclose the names of its donors. Then, faced with multiple election commission and I.R.S. complaints, the group went out of business. To Democrats and some campaign finance watchdogs eager to force more transparency in spending by independent groups, Hope, Growth and Opportunity stands out as the kind of “pop-up” organization that operates in virtual secrecy, with legal impunity. “I still don’t know who they are,” said John Spratt, the former chairman of the House Budget Committee, who lost his 2010 re-election bid after facing a deluge from the group. “It’s a classic case.” Efforts to require more public accounting of campaign money hit a new roadblock Monday evening in the form of a Republican filibuster that stopped the Senate from formally debating it. The measure fell 9 votes short of the 60 required to clear the procedural hurdle, with no Republicans voting in favor. But Democratic senators planned to keep discussing the bill — the Democracy Is Strengthened by Casting Light on Spending in Elections Act — into the night, and Senator Harry Reid of Nevada, the majority leader, voted no so that under Senate rules, he could bring it up for a second vote on Tuesday to highlight Republican opposition. Republicans blasted the effort as grandstanding at a time when the nation faces far more pressing challenges. “This amounts to nothing more than member and donor harassment and intimidation, and it’s all part of a broader government-led intimidation effort by this administration,” said Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the Republican leader, who once advocated broader disclosure but has become the legislation’s fiercest critic. Advocacy groups say the lesson of the Commission on Hope, Growth and Opportunity is that the nation’s campaign finance laws are in tatters, and without changes, such organizations will proliferate. “C.H.G.O.’s story is a tutorial on how to break campaign finance law, impact elections, and disappear — the political equivalent of a hit and run,” Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington , a watchdog group, wrote in a new report. Since the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision, prominent nonprofit organizations like Priorities USA, which supports Democrats, and Crossroads GPS, which backs Republicans, have pulled in tens of millions of dollars from anonymous donors to focus on high-profile contests, like the presidential race. But groups like Hope, Growth and Opportunity can serve as a conduit for large donors focused on races beneath the radar. The main donor behind Hope, Growth and Opportunity appeared intent on knocking off Mr. Spratt, a House veteran from South Carolina and one of only three committee chairmen who lost in the 2010 Republican tsunami. The group’s initial spokesman was Scott Reed, a prominent Republican strategist who managed Bob Dole’s 1996 presidential campaign. Its officers included Steven Powell, a Republican media consultant; James Warring, a Maryland certified public accountant; and William B. Canfield, a longtime Republican lawyer. Its application to the I.R.S. said it did not plan to spend any money trying to influence the selection, nomination, election or appointment of any person to federal, state or local public office. Instead, it would exist to advance “the principle that sustained and expanding economic growth is central to America’s future.” The group raised $4.8 million, $4 million from one contributor. Mr. Reed, now a senior strategist for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce’s political efforts, declined to discuss Hope, Growth and Opportunity. Mr. Canfield called the group a client, not an employer, and said he had not had contact with it since signing its 2010 tax return early last year. The group’s other officers did not respond to phone calls. But the promotion of economic growth was at best indirect. Within weeks of winning the I.R.S.’s designation as a “social welfare organization,” the group began running the first of nearly a half-million dollars in ads in South Carolina depicting Mr. Spratt as a profligate spender. It encouraged voters to join his Republican opponent, Mick Mulvaney, in his “fight against the big spenders in Washington.”

Commission on Hope Growth and Opportunity


Toyota Questions Case of Runaway Prius

Abstract: DETROIT — Toyota said on Monday that the account given by a San Diego man who claimed his Prius hybrid car accelerated out of his control for 30 miles was “inconsistent” with the findings of its initial examination of the car. The company statement followed a similar one from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, which said its investigators could not find evidence explaining the incident and that they might never know what happened. While Toyota executives did not accuse the man, James Sikes, of lying or staging the incident, they did say that their examination showed that the car would have stopped when the driver firmly applied the brakes. Engineers found no evidence of friction in the accelerator pedal or that the pedal could have been pinned down by the floor mat. The front brakes were severely worn, but Toyota said that could have resulted from continual light pressure on the brake pedal. The car’s self-diagnostic system showed evidence of “numerous, rapidly repeated on-and-off applications of both the accelerator and the brake pedals,” a Toyota spokesman, Mike Michels, said. The car’s braking system, which cuts power to the engine when the brake pedal is moderately depressed, “was working as designed and would have easily stopped the vehicle,” Mr. Michels said. Mr. Sikes’s lawyer, John H. Gomez, said he would not comment until investigations were completed. The incident on Monday, March 8, on a rural stretch of Interstate 8 east of San Diego has been widely publicized and has hindered Toyota’s efforts to reassure customers about the safety of its vehicles. The next morning, a woman in Harrison, N.Y., said the Prius that she was driving accelerated suddenly before it crashed into a rock wall. That driver, who was not seriously injured, was on the way to a Toyota dealership to have the vehicle inspected. Toyota said it was sending engineers to examine the Prius involved in the New York crash on Wednesday. Federal regulators are looking into both incidents, as well as whether Toyota acted quickly enough in recalling more than eight million vehicles worldwide. James Bell, an automotive analyst with Kelley Blue Book, said that while Toyota’s investigation might cast some doubt on Mr. Sikes’s story, it left many questions unanswered. “It is still not clear if it is possible that their cars may momentarily malfunction and work inconsistently to design,” Mr. Bell said. “We appreciate that such an issue is difficult to replicate and test, but we don’t believe this press conference has put the public’s mind at ease just yet.” Mr. Sikes told a 911 operator that he was unable to slow the car, which reached a speed of 94 miles an hour, by pressing the brakes and that he was afraid to put the car into neutral. He stopped the car about 30 miles from where he said the problem began after a California Highway Patrol officer pulled alongside and gave instructions through a loudspeaker. Mr. Sikes, 61, has said he does not plan to sue Toyota. Many other Toyota owners, along with relatives of people killed in crashes, have filed suit against the carmaker. A conference for lawyers who intend to sue Toyota is scheduled to take place next week in San Diego, which has become a focal point of the company’s problems after a crash there in August that killed four people, including an off-duty highway patrol officer.

Automobile Safety Features and Defects
Toyota Motor Corp


Weiner vs. Heckler in a Brooklyn Bakery

Abstract: Just when Anthony D. Weiner seemed to be fading from public view — his poll numbers sagging, his entourage of supporters dwindling — he walked into a bakery in Brooklyn. Mr. Weiner, a Democratic candidate for mayor, was nibbling on a cheese danish during a campaign stop on Wednesday when a man began hurling insults in his direction. The man said Mr. Weiner was a “scumbag” and went after Mr. Weiner’s wife, Huma Abedin, saying Mr. Weiner was “married to an Arab.” Several times, he called Mr. Weiner “disgusting” for sending lewd pictures to women online. Mr. Weiner, still chewing, turned irate. “You’re a perfect person?” he said, pointing his finger in the man’s face. “What rabbi taught you that you’re my judge?” The man interjected. “You’re a bad example for the people,” he said. “Your behavior’s deviant.” He advised Mr. Weiner to “stay out of the public, go home and get a job.” Mr. Weiner, however, would not let up. “I’ve fought very hard for this community and delivered more than you will ever in your entire life,” he said. “You know nothing. Your ignorance is being shown to the entire world.” The quarrel, which went on for more than two minutes, spread quickly across the Internet after a blogger, Jacob Kornbluh, posted a video online. Critics took aim at Mr. Weiner for engaging in a screaming match just hours before the start of Rosh Hashana, the Jewish New Year. But shortly after the encounter, he defended his behavior. “Stood up to a heckler,” he wrote on Twitter. “That’s what mayors have to do sometimes.”


Goldman Earns $3.19 Billion, Beating Estimates

Abstract: Just a year after surviving the financial crisis with billions in federal aid, the banking giant Goldman Sachs reported strong results Thursday that beat expectations and promptly went on the defensive about its bonuses. In part to allay criticism of its profits and bonuses, Goldman announced a $200 million contribution to its foundation, which promotes education. The bank said that it earned $3.19 billion in the third quarter, powered by strong trading and gains on its own corporate investments. Revenue was $12.37 billion. The earnings of $5.25 a share easily exceeded analysts’ estimates of $4.18 a share or $2.34 billion. Earnings in the corresponding quarter a year ago were $845 million on revenue of $6 billion. “Although the world continues to face serious economic challenges, we are seeing improving conditions and evidence of stabilization, even growth, across a number of sectors,” the chief executive, Lloyd C. Blankfein, said in a statement . Goldman also disclosed how much it had set aside for its annual bonus pool. It said that it had earmarked $5.35 billion in compensation and benefits, an increase of 84 percent from the year earlier period, putting it on course for a record payout to its executives by the end of 2009. During a conference call, the chief financial officer, David A. Viniar, rejected criticism that the bank’s high bonus levels ignored the tougher times experienced by other people elsewhere in the economy. By paying the bonuses, Mr. Viniar said, the bank was trying to make a difficult “trade-off” between “being fair to our people who have done a remarkable job” and “also what’s going on in the world.” “We are very focused on what is going on in the world,” he said. “We are focused on the economic climate. We are focused on what is going on with other people.” Mr. Viniar also rejected criticism that Goldman was paying out bonuses while receiving an implicit guarantee of its survival from the government, after the federal aid and guarantees on its debt it received in the last year.“We don’t think we have a guarantee,” he said. “We certainly don’t operate the company that way. We operate the company as an independent financial institution that stands on its own two feet.” On Wednesday, another big bank that accepted federal assistance, JPMorgan Chase reported $3.6 billion in profit for the third quarter. The latest profit for Goldman continues a turnaround for the bank, which has emerged as one of the stronger of the big Wall Street institutions. In the second quarter, Goldman posted the richest quarterly profit — $3.44 billion — in its 140-year history. The latest three months are slightly down on the record second quarter because of the seasonally slower summer period. But they continue the string of blowout periods for Goldman since it recorded a single loss in the final quarter of last year, triggered by the financial crisis. As it has recovered, Goldman’s share price has soared 128 percent this year, closing at $192.28 on Wednesday. The stock is still off its record high of $250.70, reached in 2007. Goldman said its bonuses reflected performance and were necessary to retain top staff. But the return to big profits and hefty bonuses will raise questions for Washington policy makers. They come even as memories are still fresh that just a year ago taxpayers had to step in to save Goldman and other banks on Wall Street. Earlier this year, Goldman paid back $10 billion in federal aid that it received last fall under the government’s Troubled Asset Relief Program . But in addition, Goldman, along with other banks, benefited from a government program that allowed it to issue debt cheaply with the backing of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation. And it received money from the government’s bailout of the American International Group, the insurance giant, receiving 100 cents on the dollar for its $13 billion counterparty exposure to the insurer. Amid the crisis, it converted from an investment bank to a more regulated bank holding company. Bonuses have become a hot topic again recently. The special federal paymaster is trying to persuade the American International Group to reduce a coming bonus payment of $198 million. And there is also anger over Bank of America’s failure to adequately disclose to its shareholders the bonuses that were paid by Merrill Lynch before its merger with Bank of America. Wall Street’s culture of excessive bonuses in the last decade is widely perceived as having encouraged some of the risk-taking that triggered the financial crisis. In its statement, Goldman said fixed income, currency and commodity units generated quarterly revenue of $5.99 billion, a significant increase from the third quarter of 2008, reflecting “strong performances in credit products and mortgages.” Equities generated $2.78 billion, 78 percent higher from a year earlier, helped by gains in global indexes. And the tier-1 capital ratio, a common measure of financial strength, was 14.5 percent as of Sept. 25, up from 13.8 percent in late June. Still, there was some evidence of weaker performance in the report. Overall net revenue from investment banking was $899 million, down 31 percent on the same quarter a year earlier, while revenue from asset management was $1.45 billion, a decline of 29 percent from a year earlier, “primarily reflecting the impact of changes in the composition of assets managed.” The bank said it would pay a dividend of 35 cents a common share at the end of the calendar year.

Goldman Sachs Group
Company Reports
Subprime Mortgage Crisis


Rangers’ Nash Intends to Play in Switzerland During Lockout

Abstract: Forward Rick Nash, the Rangers ’ top off-season acquisition, is headed to Switzerland to play for H.C. Davos during the N.H.L. lockout, his agent confirmed Tuesday. Nash’s agent, Joe Resnick, said reports that Nash had signed with the Swiss club were inaccurate but that Nash intended to sign with Davos once issues involving insurance and transfer papers were resolved. At Davos, Nash will skate alongside the San Jose Sharks star Joe Thornton. Nash and Thornton formed a powerful scoring partnership for Davos during the 2004-5 N.H.L. lockout, helping the club to its 27th championship in the National League A, Switzerland’s top tier. Nash scored 46 points in 44 games, and Thornton, with 54 points in 40 games, won the league’s Most Valuable Player award. After returning from Davos in 2005, Nash said: “It turned out to be the best experience you could have besides actually playing in the N.H.L. I just got to experience a whole different side of the game, a whole different side of the world.” Thornton’s agent, his brother John, confirmed that Thornton had signed with Davos and that another client, San Jose’s Logan Couture, had signed with Geneve-Servette of the Swiss N.L.A. The Islanders captain Mark Streit will return to his native Switzerland to play for S.C. Bern , the club announced. The Rangers acquired the high-scoring Nash in a trade with Columbus in July, sending Brandon Dubinsky, Artem Anisimov and Tim Erixon and a first-round pick to the Blue Jackets in exchange for Nash, a minor league player and a third-round pick. Nash has scored 289 goals in 674 N.H.L. games, giving the Rangers a second goal-scoring threat to go along with Marian Gaborik.

Nash Rick
Hockey Ice
New York Rangers
Lockouts


West Bank: 103-Day Hunger Strike Ends

Abstract: The longest-ever Palestinian hunger strike has ended after 103 days in exchange for Israel ’s pledge that it would release the protesting prisoner five months early, said Kadoura Fares, the leader of a Palestinian advocacy group for prisoners. Sivan Weizman of the Israel Prison Authority confirmed that the prisoner, Akram Rikhawi, ended his hunger strike on Monday. Mr. Rikhawi, 39, stopped eating on April 12 and demanded to be released on medical grounds; he is said to be suffering from asthma and diabetes. Mr. Rikhawi is serving a nine-year sentence for transporting suicide bombers. His official release date is next June. Mr. Fares said that in exchange for ending the strike, Mr. Rikhawi would be released in January.

Hunger Strikes
Israel
Palestinians
Rikhawi Akram
Prisons and Prisoners