A Who’s Who of Financiers Is Expected at Trump’s New York Fund-Raiser

Abstract: Donald J. Trump is holding a fund-raiser in New York City next week to be hosted by a who’s who of the financial world, including John A. Paulson, whose hedge fund made billions betting on the collapse of the housing market. Joining him are Stephen A. Feinberg, the secretive financier and founder of Cerberus Capital Management, and Peter Kalikow, the politically connected real estate magnate. Neither man had publicly announced his support for the Republican presidential candidate and presumptive party nominee, until now. The joint Republican National Committee and Trump fund-raiser will take place on Tuesday, at an undisclosed location in the city, according to an invitation seen by The New York Times. Tickets are going for $50,000 a person, though the hosts are paying $250,000 a couple. Additional details, the invitation said, will be disclosed when a reservation for a seat is made. It is a sign that a small, but growing, crowd in the financial world is warming up to the idea of backing Mr. Trump . The financial industry represents a crucial group for the presidential candidate as he prepares to face off with Hillary Clinton, his well-financed political rival, before the general election in November. Mrs. Clinton’s donor network includes the former hedge fund star George Soros, who recently warned against the “siren song of the likes of Donald Trump.” She also has the backing of some well-known Wall Street executives. With enormous coffers, hedge fund and private equity founders have become some of the biggest political donors in this election. Some of these executives have already pumped tens of millions of dollars into “super PACs” supporting candidates, often with the hope of helping to shape the views of the political candidates they have backed. Other hosts of the fund-raiser next week will include the distressed-debt specialist Wilbur L. Ross, who was named by the Republican National Committee to its finance committee to help raise money for Mr. Trump and the party, and Anthony Scaramucci, the hedge fund executive and political operative who runs an annual hedge fund conference in Las Vegas called SkyBridge Alternatives Conference, or SALT. Mr. Scaramucci said on Thursday that he expected about 50 or 60 people to attend the dinner, which is expected to be held at someone’s home, although the Secret Service will not disclose the location until the day before the event. As to who else might emerge as Trump donors in the next few weeks, he said, “There are a lot of people saying ‘maybe’ and ‘I’m considering it.’” Mr. Scaramucci was among the first on Wall Street to publicly announce his support for Mr. Trump and has been instrumental in introducing Mr. Trump to the hedge fund and private equity world. In May, he invited Mr. Trump to make a surprise guest appearance at his SALT conference, which has been called the hedge fund Super Bowl. Instead, the former Goldman Sachs executive Steven T. Mnuchin, Mr. Trump’s campaign fund-raiser, flew to Las Vegas to meet with hedge fund managers at the Bellagio Hotel during the conference. But for some executives on Wall Street, supporting Mr. Trump has been tricky. Until recently, the candidate has spoken out against the hedge fund industry and the generous compensation packages hedge fund managers give themselves, saying that they “get away with murder.” At one point, Mr. Trump said he planned to end a tax advantage called carried interest that allows private equity and hedge fund executives to pay lower taxes by treating their income as capital gains, which is taxed at a lower rate than ordinary income. These executives and the candidate may find other issues to debate. Mr. Feinberg’s Cerberus Capital Management has come under pressure from large pensions for its controlling ownership of Remington Outdoor, the manufacturer of the gun used in the Newtown, Conn., school shootings in 2012. Mr. Trump has boasted about his endorsement from the National Rifle Association.

Donald Trump
2016 Presidential Election
Campaign finance
Hillary Clinton
RNC
Banking and Finance


Debate Over Creating a Telangana State Intensifies in India

Abstract: NEW DELHI — The Indian state of Andhra Pradesh sank into a contentious political paralysis on Monday as local lawmakers adjourned indefinitely without addressing a controversial resolution to divide the state. Elsewhere in India , demands for statehood have intensified in several regions as the issue has mushroomed into a nationwide political tempest for the governing Congress Party. In Hyderabad, the capital of Andhra Pradesh, the State Assembly adjourned Monday morning after shouting broke out and supporters of maintaining a unified state began waving banners. The authorities moved to prevent potential confrontation in the streets after hundreds of pro-unity protesters were blocked from entering the capital city on Sunday and placed in police custody. Officers also denied permission for their leader, a lawmaker, to enter Hyderabad and start a hunger strike . For the Congress Party, inundated with criticism of its handling of the situation, the turmoil began this month. A regional politician, K. Chandrasekhar Rao, staged a 10-day hunger strike demanding that the Congress Party fulfill a past commitment to pursue statehood for the Telangana region of Andhra Pradesh. Thousands of pro-Telangana students demonstrated as Mr. Rao’s health began to deteriorate. Late last Wednesday, India’s home minister announced that the central government would initiate the legislative process of creating a Telangana State. Mr. Rao ended his fast. The Telangana statehood movement has existed for decades. Advocates say the region is deprived of equitable shares of resources, jobs, educational opportunities and other benefits. But the government’s decision spurred a backlash in other regions of Andhra Pradesh that has steadily escalated. Indian news outlets reported over the weekend that protesters set two railroad stations on fire. Meanwhile, 130 members of the State Assembly tendered their resignations, though none have yet been accepted. Many of the resignations were from members of the Congress Party, threatening its majority status in the state government. News reports also suggested that as many as 90 people had started their own hunger strikes to prevent partition. At some point, the Assembly is supposed to vote on a resolution for Telangana statehood. Though the central government can create a new state under its own authority, the process had been expected to begin at the state level. Dharmana Prasada Rao, the state’s revenue minister, said Andhra Pradesh was now sharply polarized: Residents of Telangana want statehood while most people elsewhere oppose any division. “We hope the central government will resolve the issue,” he said, adding that despite the controversy, the government was functioning. “The issue is very sentimental and serious for the people. It has long-term consequences for both sides.” Late Monday, a Congress Party spokesman told the Indian news media that the central government would take no action on the issue until the Assembly in Andhra Pradesh passed a resolution calling for Telangana statehood. The Telangana situation has revived other statehood movements, even as the country’s powerful finance minister, Pranab Mukherjee, has warned that only Telangana is on the table. In the most populous state, Uttar Pradesh, Chief Minister Mayawati has sent letters to the national government requesting that three new states be carved out of her state as well as a portion of the adjacent state of Madhya Pradesh. Her critics immediately accused her of opportunism and of trying to undermine the Congress Party to elevate her own Bahujan Samaj Party. Farther east, in the state of West Bengal, advocates promoting a separate state for the Gorkhaland region have also been agitating. Advocates began a general strike in the region on Monday, and hunger strike campaigns are also under way.


Greece: Shipping Magnate Jailed Pending Money Laundering Trial

Abstract: A Greek shipping fleet owner, Victor Restis, has been imprisoned pending trial on money laundering and embezzlement charges, court officials said on Friday, making him one of only a few prominent businessmen to be jailed amid public anger over corruption. Mr. Restis, who also has a stake in Greece’s top-selling newspaper, is being investigated in connection with bad loans of up to $660 million from First Business Bank, in which his family owned a majority stake until it was wound down this year. Rated No. 56 in the Lloyd’s List of top 100 influential people in shipping, Mr. Restis has been accused of using his influence over the bank to secure a $7.7 million loan for companies linked to him. The country’s descent into a crippling recession has incited public anger against a political and business elite widely viewed as privileged and corrupt, prompting prosecutors to step up investigations into corruption cases.


Letters: Volcker and the Money Market Funds

Abstract: To the Editor: Re “How Mr. Volcker Would Fix It,” Fair Game, Oct. 23), in which Gretchen Morgenson quoted Paul A. Volcker as criticizing money market mutual funds because they aren’t subject to bank-style regulation: Mr. Volcker’s comments about money market funds read like another attempt to use the financial crisis — a crisis rooted in banks and banking regulation — to deprive the economy of the enormous benefits that these funds bring investors, businesses, and governments. Money market funds are subject to tight risk-limiting regulations. They invest in diversified portfolios of short-term, highly liquid securities. They are required to ensure that the securities they own pose minimal credit risk. And they disclose every security they own to the public every month. Contrary to your assertion that “few in Washington seem willing to discuss” reform of money market funds, our industry led the way on comprehensive regulations that tightened credit, maturity, liquidity and disclosure standards. We continue to work with the Securities and Exchange Commission and other regulators on measures to make money market funds more resilient without undermining their critical role in the economy. Paul Schott Stevens Washington, Oct. 24 The writer is president and chief executive of the Investment Company Institute, the trade association for mutual funds, including money market funds.

Regulation and Deregulation of Industry
Volcker Paul A
Securities and Exchange Commission
Mutual Funds


How Courtney Lavine, a Ballerina, Spends Her Sundays

Abstract: It’s going to be a busy fall for Courtney Lavine, a ballerina. Ms. Lavine, a corps de ballet member with American Ballet Theater, is scheduled to perform in Twyla Tharp’s “Brahms-Haydn Variations” and Benjamin Millepied’s “Daphnis and Chloe” at Lincoln Center. She will also appear in an advertising campaign for Avon’s new fragrance, Prima . Ms. Lavine, 27, lives with her Maltese, Oopsie, on the Upper West Side. SLEEP NO MORE I wake up at 8, but if I had it my way, I’d sleep till 10. I don’t have that luxury now because I have tons to do. Normally, I’m in bed by midnight so it’s not like I’m sleep-deprived, but I could easily sleep 10 hours or more. Image Ms. Lavine during a pilates class. This type of workout helps maintain her core strength, she said. Credit Emon Hassan for The New York Times GROOVE I turn on my Spotify on my phone and listen to music using my portable speakers. I always change up what I’m listening to. It could be Top 40 — right now, I’m digging “Starboy,” by the Weeknd — or ’90s R&B. I want upbeat songs to wake me up. GROOM Normally, I’m in a rush to get out the door, but on Sundays, I can take my time. I make coffee in my French press and take a long shower, where I use a scented body scrub. I like lavender. BREAKFAST OF CHAMPIONS With my speakers and phone in tow, I go to the kitchen and make breakfast. Usually, it’s two fried eggs and whole wheat toast topped with peanut butter and jam, or plain butter and jam. I also have a small salad. People think that dancers don’t eat, but we are athletes, and you can’t be an athlete if you’re not fueling your body because you’d get injured all the time. I sometimes dance 10 hours a day and am burning tons of calories so I need to make sure I’m eating enough, especially enough protein. Image Ms. Lavine joins other dancers to rehearse for a music video. Credit Emon Hassan for The New York Times CHASING SQUIRRELS Between 10 and 11, I head out with Oopsie. We go to the dog run inside Riverside Park, but she doesn’t always play with the other dogs. If she’s not in a playful mood, I’ll take her to a grassy area of the park near the water, and she runs around and chases squirrels. Since I have her on a leash, I’m running around with her, which gets my heart pumping a little. PROJECTS I usually don’t do work for the A.B.T . on Sundays, but do engage in something dance-related. It could be helping other dancers with choreography or a session with photographers. Right now, I’m rehearsing with a principal dancer, James Whiteside, for a music video. He composed the music — it’s sort of like pop — and is also doing the singing. SOCIALIZING, FOR SANITY Around 2 or so, I meet up with friends, to eat. I like to try restaurants in other neighborhoods. I like everything from typical brunch food, like pancakes, to tacos, and have a couple of different groups of friends that I try to see — there are my dancer friends, my church friends and my high school friends — and socializing with them is my sanity. Image Ms. Lavine watches Netflix while cuddling with her dog, Oopsie. Credit Emon Hassan for The New York Times DOWN TO THE CORE I have a Pilates session at 4 with this amazing teacher, Carrie, who I’ve trained with for four years. The classes are a mix of using two machines and mat work, and they help keep my core strong, which is so important. SWEATS AND SHOWS When class ends at 5, I head home, change into sweatpants and settle on the couch to watch Netflix for a few hours. I just finished “Stranger Things,” this cool sci-fi mystery show. I’m also into “Parks and Recreation” and “The Office.” Oopsie is cuddled up next to me. SEAMLESS TO THE RESCUE For dinner, I’ll order in from Seamless. Sometimes it’s Thai food: I like this eggplant, pork and shrimp dish from Senn Thai Comfort Food . Or it could be fettuccine Alfredo from Patsy’s Pizzeria . Otherwise, I get the Latin spiced roast chicken from Fairway and make some noodles and broccoli to go along with it. I eat on the couch while I’m watching my shows. CATCHING UP, WINDING DOWN After dinner, I’ll talk to my dad, who lives in Fairfax, Va., where I grew up, or to my friends. My best friend, Allie, still lives in Fairfax, and sometimes we talk for two hours. Eventually, I clean up, and by midnight, the lights are out.

American Ballet Theatre
NYC
Courtney Lavine
Dance


Helicopter Carrying Injured Skier Crashes in Italy, Killing 6

Abstract: ROME — A helicopter taking an injured skier to a hospital crashed against a mountain in central Italy on Tuesday, killing all six people on board, officials said. The accident was a further blow to an area struggling to emerge from many days of heavy snowfall, a series of earthquakes and an avalanche last week that killed at least 17 people, with 12 still missing. The cause of the crash was not immediately clear, though television images from the site, which showed that only the rear of the helicopter remained intact, were occasionally blurred by fog. Gianluca Marrocchi, the mayor of the nearby town of Lucoli, told RAI state television that he had seen the helicopter and had wondered “why it was flying so low.” The helicopter was taking the skier from Campo Felice, a ski resort in the Apennine Mountains, when it went down, according to the National Agency for Flight Safety, which has ordered an investigation. The agency sent a team to the site of the crash, noting in a statement that the area is difficult to reach because of “adverse meteorological conditions.” News of the crash dealt a fresh blow to the Abruzzo region, where rescuers have been involved in countless operations over the last week after heavy snow and power cuts isolated many towns and an avalanche demolished a hotel after strong earthquakes last Wednesday. The death toll rose to 17 on Tuesday after the body of a woman was removed from the ruins of the hotel. Twelve people are still missing, while nine were rescued last week. Two of the people who died in the helicopter had searched for survivors at the hotel, a spokeswoman for the Civil Protection Agency said. After hearing of the helicopter crash, Luciano D’Alfonso, president of the Abruzzo region, used his Twitter account to express his condolences to the families of the victims. He said he was praying “for the end of the sequence of tragic events that has struck Abruzzo.” Rescuers continued to work at the Hotel Rigopiano, searching for survivors. Funerals were held for two of the victims on Tuesday. A spokesman for the Italian fire service, Luca Cari, said rescue operations had been carefully planned using diagrams of the hotel and taking into account the impact of the avalanche. “We are working on a hypothesis” of finding areas where people might have survived, he said. But even though rooms free of snow have been identified, “unfortunately there were no people in them,” he said. “We are continuing to search, but we are not finding people alive,” he said.

Helicopter
Avalanche
Earthquake
Hotel Rigopiano
Italy


European Officials Reach Deal on Failed-Bank System

Abstract: BRUSSELS — European Union lawmakers and finance officials reached a political agreement early Thursday on the structure of a system meant to prevent failing banks from unleashing the kind of havoc that has periodically threatened the survival of the euro in recent years. The agreement — a preliminary deal among leaders of the political parties in the European Parliament and representatives from member states and the European Commission — responds to complaints by the European Central Bank and others that earlier plans were insufficiently financed and too cumbersome to deal with a fast-moving financial crisis. The accord, compared with earlier draft versions, would make more shared funds available sooner to pay for shutting down failing banks in a crisis. It would also set up a procedure for shutting down a terminally ill bank quickly to avoid a wider contagion like the one caused by the failure of the investment bank Lehman Brothers in 2008. The agreement, a result of an all-night session typical of decision-making in the European Union, represents a crucial piece of a multilayered effort to bring greater coherence to Europe’s financial affairs by creating a banking union, and to weaken the vulnerability of European nations to the problems of their big banks. The accord is also important to efforts to clean up banks in the euro zone, many of which remain weak and unable to lend, creating a credit crisis that has hobbled economic growth. Leaders in the euro zone have already given the European Central Bank responsibility for overseeing the region’s largest lenders, and the central bank has begun scouring bank books in search of hidden problems. But there was still a need to create a body, to be known as the Resolution Board, to deal decisively with banks that needed to be rescued or shut down. “It is a very good agreement,” Mario Draghi, the central bank’s president, said on Thursday in Brussels. European Union officials said on Thursday that the central bank would begin the process of shutting down a bank but that the actual work would be done by the Resolution Board. The Resolution Board would also be able to begin a bank closing, but individual governments would have the final word in some cases of disagreement about whether to save a failing bank. Image Under a proposed system, the European Central Bank, led by Mario Draghi, could start the process of shutting down a bank. Credit Georges Gobet/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images Michel Barnier, the European commissioner responsible for overseeing financial services, conceded that the system “might not be a perfect construction.” But because the agreement sets tight deadlines for all the official organizations involved, in theory the process could be carried out in a matter of days. Mr. Barnier said the agreement was a crucial step toward the formation of a banking union that would “put an end to the era of massive bailouts” and help create “the right conditions for the financial sector to once again lend to the real economy, which is essential to consolidate the economic recovery and to create jobs.” Emma Marcegaglia, the president of BusinessEurope, a powerful industry lobby, said her group “would ideally have liked to see a stand-alone resolution authority, with more independence from national political interests.” Even so, Ms. Marcegaglia said the deal should help “resolve the access-to-finance problems that many companies are facing.” The deal is subject to the approval of the full European Parliament in April, at what will be the lawmakers’ last session before elections in May. For the proposal to take effect, European Union governments would also have to give their consent. That includes the government of Germany, which, since a banking union was first hashed out in principle in late 2011, has resisted many of the details along the way. Wolfgang Schäuble, the German finance minister, praised the agreement on Thursday. “Our goal was a sensible decision-making mechanism with effective control of the resources deployed and minimal risk for the taxpayer,” Mr. Schäuble said in a statement. “That is now possible on a legally sound fundament.” During a long night of discussions, Sven Giegold, a German member of the European Parliament from the Greens group, complained at one point that negotiators were having trouble getting through to influential finance ministers to gauge their approval. “More than one hour of waiting for a response from Schäuble & colleagues,” Mr. Giegold said on Twitter at around 6.30 a.m. Later in the morning, Mr. Giegold said that the Parliament had shown its teeth. Mr. Schäuble “basically had to make concessions to the Parliament, much more concessions than to his partner and fellow member states,” Mr. Giegold told reporters. Nicolas Véron, a French economist and visiting fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics in Washington, said that even with the agreement, authority for closing banks would remain diffuse. The powers of the European Commission, the European Union’s administrative arm, would overlap in some cases with the powers of the Resolution Board and governments of individual states in decisions on whether to shut down a sick bank. Image Martin Schulz, European Parliament president, left, with Dalia Grybauskaite of Lithuania and François Hollande of France. Credit Francois Lenoir/Reuters But Mr. Véron added that the deal was better than expected and that failure to reach an accord could have upset financial markets. The agreement also makes it possible for a banking union law to be passed before elections potentially change the composition of the European Parliament, he said. “It is a step in a much longer journey toward banking union,” Mr. Véron said. “Not having it adopted would have added to the general legal uncertainty, and that would have been a clear negative.” The future Resolution Board, consisting of national authorities and officials who would include representatives from the European Commission and European Central Bank, would be based in Brussels with a full-time staff of about 300 people, officials said. The Resolution Board would begin operations in 2015 but banks would not have to begin contributing until 2016 to a fund that would help pay the costs of shutting down a failed bank. The fund would take eight years to reach its full capitalization of 55 billion euros, or $76 billion. European Union officials said on Thursday that the Resolution Board should have enough latitude to make many of the decisions about how to shut down failing banks. But in some cases of disagreement, individual governments would have the final word about whether to save a failing bank. Mr. Barnier, the commissioner, conceded that the system “might not be a perfect construction.” Martin Schulz, the president of the European Parliament, said at a news conference early Thursday that the deal was “an enormous success” that improved “enormously what was on the table.” The agreement responds to concerns that the previous framework for the system was too cumbersome. Danièle Nouy, a top European Central Bank official who is the de facto bank regulator for the euro zone, told a parliamentary committee this week that it must be possible to shut down a sick bank over the course of a weekend. Otherwise there is a risk that the failure of one bank can spread to others, she said. In a statement on Thursday, the European Parliament said the deal streamlined decision making, would avoid political interference in individual cases and would make it possible to approve the shutting down or rescue of a bank “within a weekend, from the closing of the U.S. markets to their opening in Asia.” Christian Schulz, an economist at Berenberg Bank in London, said in a note to investors that a banking union was “not the solution to the recent crisis but a preparation for the future.'’

Banking and Finance
EU
European Parliament
Michel Barnier
Daniele Nouy
Europe


United Nations: Sanctions Against ISIS Adopted

Abstract: The United Nations Security Council on Thursday unanimously adopted a legally binding resolution aimed at preventing banned terrorist groups from making money and using the international banking system, with an emphasis on the Islamic State group. The resolution builds on previous Council measures, also legally binding, that make it illegal to donate money to terrorist groups, trade in oil and antiquities or make ransom payments. Those prohibitions are sometimes ignored, and the new resolution, drafted by Russia and the United States, is intended to strengthen it. The resolution calls on countries to describe what steps they are taking to prevent terrorist organizations from making money , including interdicting oil sales. The effects may be limited: The Islamic State group draws a large share of its revenues from “taxes” imposed on the people who live in its territories. Perhaps the most incongruous element of the resolution is that one of its sponsors is the government of Syria.

UN
Terrorism
ISIS,ISIL,Islamic State
UN Security Council
Russia
US
Finance
International relations
Syria


MetLife’s Profit Increases to $1.16 Billion

Abstract: MetLife , the nation’s biggest life insurer, said fourth-quarter profit surged on earnings from derivatives . Net income advanced to $1.16 billion, or $1.06 a share, from $82 million, or 5 cents a share, a year earlier, the company said Tuesday . Excluding some investment results, profit was $1.31 a share, beating the $1.24 average estimate of 19 analysts surveyed by Bloomberg. MetLife expanded in Asia, Europe and South America with the $16 billion acquisition of the American Life Insurance Company in November 2010. The company’s derivatives, used to generate income and guard against interest-rate declines, produce losses when bond yields rise, as they did in the last quarter of 2010. MetLife is integrating Alico and spending on advertising. The company put the name MetLife Stadium on the home of the National Football League’s New York Jets and Giants last year. The company’s blimps, with depictions of the cartoon dog Snoopy, fly over sporting events in the United States and Japan. MetLife is leaving banking to reduce federal oversight and scaling back variable-annuity sales to ease liabilities on the equity-based products. MetLife agreed in December to sell about $7.5 billion of bank deposits to the General Electric Company after the insurer’s plan for a dividend increase was rejected by the Federal Reserve. MetLife is shutting a mortgage origination business and eliminating most of that unit’s 4,300 jobs. MetLife, which had more than $270 billion of derivative contracts at the end of September, guards against interest rate declines because the company depends on bond coupons to help finance customer obligations and record profits. MetLife held more than $350 billion of fixed-maturity securities as of Sept. 30. The company posted its results after the close of trading.

MetLife Inc
Life Insurance
Derivatives (Financial Instruments)
Company Reports


A Battle in Ukraine Echoes Through the Decades

Abstract: MOUNT MAKIVKA, Ukraine — In a conflict that cost millions of lives, destroyed four empires and introduced Europe to the horrors of chemical weapons and total war, the battle on a pine-covered mountain in what is today western Ukraine was a modest affair. A few hundred soldiers died, and the outcome was so muddled that all sides claimed victory. For Ukrainians, however, the battle nearly a century ago was a singular event not only in World War I, but also in a longer conflict with Russia that rumbles on today at the eastern end of their country. For it was at Makivka, according to a Ukrainian version of events that is celebrated in museum displays, monuments, patriotic songs and a recent movie, that Ukrainian soldiers achieved an extraordinary feat: They held their ground against the Russian Empire. “Makivka was a turning point,” said Andriy Tkachik, a forest ranger in the mountainous area southwest of the city of Lviv who has set up a small private museum to display rusty rifles, bayonets and other war detritus dug up from the battlefield. “It showed we could fight.” It was also early evidence of the divided loyalties, or at least the conflicting demands on those loyalties, that a century later cast a long shadow over Ukraine’s efforts to create a functioning and united state. Their historic lands claimed by both the Russian czar and the Hapsburgs, Ukrainians fought on both sides of World War I. Some, like the 800 or so members of a unit called the Sich Sharpshooters that held off the Russians at Makivka in April 1915, served as volunteers for the Austro-Hungarian Empire of the Hapsburg dynasty, which had governed the western part of Ukraine since the late 18th century. An additional 250,000 served the Austrians as conscripts. About 3.5 million Ukrainians, a vast majority of them conscripts, fought for the Russians, who controlled the central and eastern parts of what is now Ukraine. Of the three powers that did most of the fighting on the eastern front during the war — czarist Russia on one side, the Austro-Hungarian Empire and the German Empire of Kaiser Wilhelm II on the other — none survived the cataclysm. For Ukraine, however, World War I delivered not only catastrophic suffering but also its first modern experience as an independent state. It was an experiment that lasted only a few months and was scarred by anarchy and infighting, but it laid the foundations for Ukraine today. “Without World War I,” said Oleh Pavlyshyn, a historian at the Ivan Franko National University of Lviv, “it would have been impossible to imagine that Ukraine would be a separate country.” But the war, which Russia initially saw as a chance to unite within its empire all of its Slavic brethren in “Little Russia,” as it called Ukraine, also planted suspicions that poison Russia’s dealings with Ukraine to this day. It left many Russians convinced that Ukrainian national sentiment and even the Ukrainian language, dismissed by czarist officials as a “Little Russian dialect,” were fictions invented by its enemies to undermine Russian rule. In Russia, the wartime exploits of Ukrainian troops at Makivka and other battles in the Carpathian Mountains are remembered, when they are mentioned at all, not as an example of Ukraine’s fighting spirit, but as evidence of the perils of division among Slavic peoples. “Now is the right moment,” the czar’s foreign minister said in 1916 after a series of military setbacks, “to rid ourselves of the Ukrainian movement once and for all.” Austria and Germany constantly stoked nationalism among Ukrainians, Poles, Finns and other peoples then ruled by the Russian Empire. The United States, a late entrant to the war, did not fight on the eastern front. But it added to Russia’s alarm when President Woodrow Wilson in 1918 enunciated his famous Fourteen Points, proclaiming the right of “self-determination,” a principle that encouraged Ukrainians and others to demand their own countries. Russia had long played the same game, fanning nationalist resentments against the Hapsburgs in Serbia and other territories governed or coveted by the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Reinforced during World War II by the collaboration of some Ukrainian nationalists with the Nazis, Russian suspicions of a Western hand behind Ukraine’s national movement helped shape Moscow’s response to protests in Ukraine this year, which toppled President Viktor F. Yanukovych and led to the establishment of what Russia condemned as a fascist government engineered by the West. In western Ukraine, which declared itself an independent West Ukrainian People’s Republic in 1918, nearly every town now has a street named after the Sich Sharpshooters, who shot mostly at the Russian Army. At Makivka, the battleground has become a pilgrimage site, dominated by a memorial for the 49 Ukrainians who died fighting here for Austria against Russia. Mr. Pavlyshyn, the Lviv historian, said the role of the Sich Sharpshooters was perhaps overblown as part of what he said had become “the cult of Makivka,” but he added that every country needed a “heroic cult that honors those who were willing to shed their own blood.” While often killing only their own brethren on the battlefields of World War I, Mr. Pavlyshyn said, Ukrainians who served on opposite sides discovered for the first time “that they were the same people and started to think like Ukrainians.” A nationalist cause that had been mostly limited to intellectuals and politicians expanded to “create a real national consciousness.” Image A private museum of World War I and World War II artifacts in Tukhlia, Ukraine, is dedicated to the "heroes of Makivka" — a mountain in what is now western Ukraine that was the site of a battle with Russian forces. Credit Maciek Nabrdalik for The New York Times Instead of a single Ukrainian state, however, the war produced two: one in Kiev formed from what had been Russian-controlled territory in central and eastern Ukraine, and another based in Lviv on western Ukrainian lands that had been ruled until World War I by the Hapsburgs. Neither had much authority. The Bolsheviks, who seized power in Russia in 1917, also created a third, nominally Ukrainian state in the eastern city of Kharkiv, but their principal purpose was to thwart the Ukranians’ efforts to take advantage of the chaos created by the war and run their own affairs. When the war erupted nearly a century ago, Russian forces mobilized and swiftly captured the western city of Lviv and the surrounding region of eastern Galicia. Aleksei Brusilov, a Russian commanding officer, proclaimed the territory — under Hapsburg control for more than two centuries and ruled before that by Poland — as “Russian land from time immemorial, populated after all by Russian people.” Instead of rallying behind Russia and its ruler, Czar Nicholas II, however, many Ukrainians in the west sided with the Hapsburg dynasty, which had granted them a political voice and freedoms unimaginable to Ukrainian speakers living under the Russian Empire to the east. Eager to make use of this loyalty, Austrian authorities agreed to let Ukrainians set up their own unit within the Austrian Army, the Sich Sharpshooters. More than 25,000 Ukrainians volunteered, but the Austrians, worried about the force becoming too big to control, accepted only about 2,000 when the unit was set up in August 1914. That so many Ukrainians would volunteer to join the army of Russia’s enemy made the whole episode a taboo subject in the Soviet Union, which seized western Ukraine in 1939 and set about obliterating all traces of Ukraine’s divided loyalties. Lyubomir Horbach, the director of “The Battle for Mount Makivka,” said he had never heard of the battle until the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991 and his grandmother, whose husband was killed fighting for anti-Soviet nationalist forces during World War II, told him that Ukrainians had a long history of fighting the Russians stretching back to World War I. “I wanted to put a memorial on my grandfather’s grave,” Mr. Horbach said, “but did not know where he was buried. I decided to make the film instead.” In their determination to eliminate memories of the Sich Sharpshooters, the Communist authorities demolished a burial ground for them at Lviv’s Yanivske Cemetery. They used broken stone crosses from the gravestones to help support a statue of Lenin outside the city’s opera house. The crosses were found stuffed in the granite-faced pedestal when protesters tore down the statue in 1990, and they have now been returned to the burial ground, which was restored after the collapse of the Soviet Union. Despite the Sharpshooters’ eagerness to defend Hapsburg rule, Russia seized Lviv in September 1914 and began hunting down those accused of being traitors and spies, often Ukrainians who had embraced what one czarist official described as “extremely dangerous Little Russian separatism.” The region’s new Russian governor shut down Ukrainian-language schools that had been nurtured by the Austrians, arrested the head of the Ukrainian Catholic Church and started an aggressive campaign to destroy the idea that Ukrainian interests could ever legitimately diverge from those of Russia. Austrian forces later recaptured Lviv, which they called Lemberg, in 1915. With help from Germany, they moved deep into what had been Russian-ruled Ukrainian territories, including Kiev, where they helped prop up the Ukrainian National Republic, a short-lived independent state, and a German puppet state that followed. Ravaged by hunger, incompetence, a typhoid epidemic and bloody spillover from Russia’s civil war between Lenin’s Bolsheviks and czarist loyalists known as White Russians, the Ukrainian government proposed an alliance with the loyalists. But their commander, Gen. Anton Denikin, was a firm believer that Ukraine belonged to Russia and rejected working with an independent Ukrainian state that he abhorred — a decision President Vladimir V. Putin has referred to approvingly on several occasions in recent months. The victorious Western allies in World War I put a final nail in the coffin of an independent Ukrainian state by agreeing in 1919 that Poland, not Ukraine, should take over former Hapsburg territory around Lviv. Russia kept the east. The two Ukranian states previously declared on these lands vanished. Scattered bands of Ukrainian nationalists, sustained by tales of the battle of Makivka, continued to fight on, first against Polish and then Soviet authorities, well into the 1950s. “Everyone talked about Makivka when I was growing up,” said Yuriy Shukhevych, an 81-year-old veteran nationalist who spent more than three decades in Soviet prisons and whose father, Roman, led the Ukrainian Insurgent Army against Polish and then Soviet rule. The Sich Sharpshooters, Mr. Shukhevych added, “set an example as the first Ukrainians who took up arms, entered battle and did not betray their military honor.” By fighting in the Austrian Army, he added, the unit “fought for Russia’s enemy, but it was not our enemy. Our enemy was Russia.”


Kobe Bryant’s Finale a Triumph of Volume Over Value

Abstract: It would perhaps be forgivable for anyone glancing at the box score of Kobe Bryant’s final N.B.A. game on Wednesday to assume his point total was a typographical error. Somehow, a 37-year-old player closing out his 20th season, who had not scored more than 38 points in a game since November 2014, dropped 60 points on the Utah Jazz. Opinions of Bryant have softened in the closing seasons of his career for many fans, and the praise Thursday morning came in heaps, with bold declarations that his exit from the Los Angeles Lakers was perhaps the greatest in history and that he alone had upstaged the Golden State Warriors, who had set the N.B.A. record for wins in a season, with 73, on the same night. Image Anthony Davis of the New Orleans Pelicans had 59 points and 20 rebounds in a February game. Credit Carlos Osorio/Associated Press That final game provided in many ways a perfectly accurate portrait of Bryant, a player whose game could never be described as efficient but who had a knack for relentlessly pursuing victory at all costs. To Bryant’s legions of fans, the fact that it took him 50 shots to get 60 points was entirely irrelevant, because no matter how the sausage was made, his team came away with a win. The 60 points eclipsed the 59-point game by the New Orleans Pelicans’ Anthony Davis for the highest-scoring game of the season, but when you set aside their emotional significance and try to discern where Bryant’s finale ranks among the best games of the season statistically, you find a wildly different result. Determining the quality of a performance is mostly subjective, but John Hollinger, the statistical whiz who now works in the front office of the Memphis Grizzlies, came up with the statistic game score in an effort to sum up a player’s productivity. The scores are adjusted to have a familiar feel, with 40 game score points considered an outstanding performance, 10 considered average, and so on. By that measure, Bryant’s final game, which featured little beyond points, garnered a score of 36.3, which ranked as the 34th-best game of the season. It did not even prove to be the best game of the season’s final night: Stephen Curry of the Warriors, in his team’s record-setting win, garnered a game score of 40.2. Though Curry scored 14 fewer points than Bryant, he did so on 26 fewer shots. The top of the game score heap for the season belongs to Davis’s 59-point game against the Detroit Pistons on Feb. 21. Davis went 24 for 34 from the field and 9 for 10 from the free-throw line, had 20 rebounds and 4 assists, and committed just 1 foul and 2 turnovers. That resulted in a game score of 53.9, the sixth-highest total since 1983-84 (the earliest year for which Basketball-Reference tracks the statistic). Davis’s game had the best mark since Bryant’s signature 81-point game in 2006. In a league becoming increasingly obsessed with efficiency, Bryant was a throwback in the truest sense of the word. To him, more was always more, and he gave the basketball world one last glimpse at a profligate style of play that is very likely headed toward extinction. But years from now, there will be plenty of people who will be able to tell you Bryant scored 60 points in his final game. It is his method of getting there that will most likely be lost to history.


Convenience and Comfort Food for the Family Crowd in Brooklyn

Abstract: This cozy local standby — “Comfortable Food,” its awning says — sits in a tiny storefront at 1310 Cortelyou Road in Ditmas Park, Brooklyn, a neighborhood that has been saddled recently with the modifier “slowly gentrifying” because of its influx of economically unchallenged residents. Serving brunch, burgers and a decent-looking meatloaf, it attracts a family crowd, including two sisters who grew up around the corner on Rugby Road. One of them was accompanied by her 2-year-old daughter. IN THE SEATS Sophia Francis, co-owner of the Cortelyou Early Childhood Center (a family business located down the block); her toddler daughter, Christina; and the elder Francis sibling, Donette, an English professor at Binghamton University specializing in African-American and Caribbean literature. ON THE PLATES For Sophia, a half-pound turkey burger on whole wheat toast with a side of French-fried sweet potatoes ($10); for Donette, the buttery-crusted chicken pot pie with mushrooms and your basic fancy lettuce ($15.) Christina was interested almost exclusively in the fries. WHY THEY CAME Convenience: The sisters were born and raised and still live in Ditmas Park (Donette, quite the Brooklyn hardcore, commutes to work in Binghamton, about 180 miles away). Also, community: The sisters like to keep things in the neighborhood. WHAT THEY TALKED ABOUT “We were actually just discussing a proposal for a charter school in the community that’s due in Albany on Monday,” Sophia said. Donette, the wordsmith of the two, added between a bite, “I’m her editor.” The school is to be called the Una Clarke School, in honor of the area’s former councilwoman, and if its charter is accepted by the state, it will educate 282 students from kindergarten through fifth grade. “It’s a good proposal,” Donette said. “I mean, it’s much improved from the first go-round. I plan to work on it for the next eight hours. That’s why she’s buying me lunch.”


Taking Stock, 5 Years After the Attack

Abstract: With little fanfare or public grief, an anniversary slipped by this week: It was five years ago that homegrown suicide bombers in London killed 52 travelers, turning Britain inward to wonder why its increasingly diverse society had molded people who wanted to destroy it. No one who was in London on July 7, 2005, will easily forget the stunned silences, the anguish of the survivors, the stoic legions on the streets after the subways and buses stopped running, the fear that Britain’s military campaigns at America’s shoulder had brought home a dire cost in human lives. Five years later, what has changed? Certainly, the security services have claimed successes in thwarting serial conspiracies, in building the ranks of their own watchers and listeners and operatives, in delivering seemingly safer streets where the echo of July 7 has, if not faded, then become muted. But that is not the whole story. Britain, like other countries, is fighting Islamic militants on many fronts, and there is little unequivocally good news from any of them. The legacy of July 7 is one of unease and uncertainty, a work in progress at best. On the anniversary itself, there were reports that MI5, Britain’s domestic intelligence agency, was tracking two active cells of conspirators. On the same day, the British police arrested a young Pakistani man accused of links to conspiracies in Britain and the United States. On July 7, too, British officials chose to announce the replacement of their forces in Sangin, a hotly contested area of Afghanistan, by the U.S. Marines. The redeployment — the authorities insisted it was not a retreat — raised anew the question of whether the price of fighting in Afghanistan had been too high to bear: almost one-third of the 312 British combat deaths since the war began in late 2001 were in Sangin. The presence of British soldiers in Afghanistan, politicians keep on saying, is designed to bring stability and security to a land that has known neither for decades and thus deny a base for terrorists to plot attacks in the West. But that argument finds little resonance, particularly among those who associate Afghanistan only with loss. “Why did we go in?” asked Robin Hollington, the father of Richard, a British Royal Marine, who died in Sangin shortly before the planned withdrawal was announced. In The Guardian, the columnist Simon Tisdall wrote: “Now the British are leaving Sangin, many will ask what it was all for, why they went there in the first place, and what, if anything, was achieved at the terrible cost of so many brave young men and women killed and maimed?” In Britain, as elsewhere, terrorism is a hydra-headed creature, a collision of faiths and extremes, of Western societies challenged by those who dream of a new caliphate, of zealots offering recruits a gruesome catalogue of deadly primers, down to coaching for the mandatory posthumous video claiming martyrdom. But militancy seeks a fertile niche, too, in the unhealed fissures of European societies that have yet to find ways of absorbing the habits and ways of onetime immigrant outsiders who have become insiders as citizens with their own perspectives. In a few days, the French Parliament is to vote on legislation to ban full-face coverings in public places, making exemptions for carnival masks or Santa Claus beards, but not for the niqab full-face veil or the full-length burqa that is used by only a fraction of women in France’s Muslim population of five million, Europe’s largest. Following examples set in Belgium and Spain, the French action is designed ostensibly to synchronize the “other” with its vaunted republican values and all-embracing secularism. But those measures deal with symbols, not souls, and the risk is that, by moving against such a tiny minority, they will unsettle the majority, reinforcing the conclusion that a broader, more sinister campaign is under way. In Britain, just before the July 7 anniversary, human rights groups investigated a plan by the authorities in Birmingham to deploy 218 surveillance cameras, some hidden, all of them supposed to combat crime. In fact, the surveillance had been funded by the counterterrorism authorities and was concentrated in areas of the city with large Muslim populations. In response to an outcry that Muslims were being stigmatized, the authorities backtracked, saying they would cover the cameras with plastic bags. But, said Salma Yaqoob, a prominent Muslim politician in the city, “In terms of reassurance, it’s going to take a lot more than plastic bags.” From the authorities’ viewpoint, it is hard to see how counterterrorism agencies can move against covert extremism without adopting covert tactics of their own: wiretaps and tails, informers and infiltrators, disinformation and deceit — the gamut of tradecraft developed to deal with the Irish Republican Army or foreign spies in the Cold War, now updated for the Internet era. In January, MI5 raised its terrorism threat assessment level to “severe,” meaning that some new attack is, by its definitions, “highly likely.” A reminder of what “highly likely” might portend came Thursday when a London court found three men guilty of plotting to commit murder by attacking airliners bound for the United States and Canada in 2006, a conspiracy that could have claimed hundreds of lives. The plan to withdraw from Sangin, moreover, deepened a sense among some Britons that the intensifying conflict with the Taliban had embroiled their forces in an unwinnable — and increasingly U.S. — war with ever higher casualties. Like its historical antecedents in the 19th and 20th centuries, the Afghan campaign has not unfolded the way the politicians promised. Talk of exit strategies is no longer taboo, and the new coalition led by Prime Minister David Cameron is doing little to discourage it. “I don’t believe in short-term timetables,” Mr. Cameron said recently while discussing the war in Afghanistan. “But having a big sense that this is something we won’t be doing in five years, I think that is right.”

London (England)
Terrorism
Bombs and Explosives
Monuments and Memorials


At Least 59 Die in Fire at Bangkok Nightclub

Abstract: BANGKOK — A fire at a high-end Bangkok nightclub killed at least 59 people — most of them apparently foreigners — and injured more than 200 shortly after midnight on Thursday as revelers were celebrating the new year, the police said. Nightclub workers said fireworks had been set off around the midnight countdown, but the cause of the fire had not been confirmed, said Lt. Sutin Pongkhamphan, the police officer in charge of the case. He said that 54 people had died at the scene at the popular club, the Santika, and that five more had died at hospitals. An additional 212 people were injured, including 21 with severe injuries. Gen. Jongrak Jutanont of the police was quoted on the Web site of the Nation newspaper as saying that most of the dead were foreigners, including people from Austria, Nepal and Japan. He added that about 30 bodies were “very difficult to identify.” The general had earlier been quoted by The Associated Press as saying that people from Australia, Nepal, Japan and the Netherlands were among the injured. Scores of bodies were laid out in white sheets on the street in front of the blackened nightclub as sirens sounded throughout the night in the crowded streets of central Bangkok. “We were all dancing, and suddenly there was a big flame that came out of the front of the stage and everybody was running away,” Oh Benjamas, a partygoer, told Reuters. “People started running for the doors and breaking the windows.” Most of the deaths and injuries were caused by a stampede in the three-story club, which has one main exit and was packed with about 1,000 people, Lieutenant Sutin said. Other deaths came from burns and smoke inhalation. “The fire spread very quickly because there was a lot of fuel in the club, like alcohol, foam and balloons,” he said. One employee said that explosions were heard shortly after the New Year countdown, according to The Nation’s Web site. “After the explosions, someone shouted, ‘Fire!’,” the employee said. He said the fire had started on the top floor and spread quickly, sending smoke through the building and causing panic. The New Year’s Eve party was advertised as “Bad Boy Party” on the club’s Web site. It also called the party “Goodbye Santika,” apparently because the owner was planning to move to a new location. The Santika, in the city’s Ekamai district, is popular with local Thais and the foreign jet set. “It attracts an affluent Thai student crowd, with Euro models and Westerners also popping in,” according to one Thai entertainment Web site. In the words of another site: “Beautiful music. Beautiful lights. Beautiful babes. Beautiful dudes. Beautiful. Beautiful. Beautiful.” The Web site adds: “This is a place to go and display yourself. You wanna be seen? You can’t go wrong with this place.”

Bangkok (Thailand)
Nightclubs and Cabarets
Fires and Firefighters
Accidents and Safety


Wyeth Posts 19% Higher Profit; 2 Rivals Fare Less Well

Abstract: The drug maker Wyeth posted a 19 percent increase in fourth-quarter profit on Thursday while AstraZeneca reported a 12.5 percent drop in profit and Bristol-Myers Squibb posted a loss, albeit a narrower one. Bristol-Myers also took a hefty $275 million charge for losses on investments in securities backed by subprime mortgages. Wyeth, which is based in Madison, N.J., said its revenue rose 10 percent, and higher costs for materials were more than offset by lower spending on sales, administration and research. The company, which makes Effexor, the world’s top-selling antidepressant, reported net income of $1.02 billion, or 75 cents a share, in the October-December quarter, up from $855.4 million, or 63 cents a share, a year earlier. Excluding an after-tax charge of $48 million, or 3 cents a share, for the company’s three-year-old productivity initiative, net income would have been 78 cents a share. That just missed the 79-cent expectation of analysts surveyed by Thomson Financial, who typically exclude one-time items. But Wyeth said new generic competition for a key drug would keep total revenue flat this year, as it embarks on a sweeping reorganization. Bristol-Myers Squibb, which is based in New York, said that fourth-quarter losses narrowed on better sales of a key drug, Plavix. The company said the charge for its losses on the subprime mortgage securities did not affect liquidity or financial flexibility, but that additional write-downs were possible if economic conditions worsen. “Obviously if the credit crisis continues to expand across the market, there may be risk to some of our corporate bonds,” said the company’s chief financial officer, Andrew Bonfield. For the quarter ended Dec. 31, the New York-based company lost $89 million, or 5 cents a share, compared with a loss of $134 million, or 7 cents a share, a year ago, when sales of Plavix, a blood thinner, plunged. Including earnings from its recently spun-off medical imaging business, earnings totaled 35 cents a share. Revenue rose 33 percent, to $5.38 billion, from $4.06 billion, as worldwide sales of Plavix nearly tripled to $1.37 billion. Worldwide pharmaceutical sales increased 39 percent, to $4.4 billion in the fourth quarter, helped by the weaker dollar. AstraZeneca, the British drug maker, said fourth-quarter profit fell 12.5 percent, to $1.27 billion, on restructuring and acquisition costs, as well as falling demand for Nexium and slowing sales growth of its Crestor cholesterol pill. Full-year profits fell 6.5 percent, to $7.98 billion. Still, AstraZeneca raised its outlook for 2008, forecasting core earnings of $4.40 to $4.70 a share, compared with $4.38 in 2007. AstraZeneca said it faced stiff competition in the United States for drugs like Nexium, which treats gastrointestinal problems. It bought MedImmune Inc., based in Gaithersburg, Md., in June for $15.6 billion to bolster its portfolio. Revenue rose 14 percent over the quarter, to $8.17 billion, and 7 percent over the year to $29.56 billion. Wyeth shares closed down 3 cents, at $39.67. Bristol-Myers fell 24 cents, to $23.02, and AstraZeneca rose 8 cents, to $42.10.

Company Reports
Wyeth
AstraZeneca
Bristol-Myers Squibb Co


Top Chef Gave No Hint of Distress Before Apparent Suicide

Abstract: LONDON — Just days before the star French-Swiss chef Benoît Violier was found dead at his home in Switzerland, after apparently shooting himself with his own gun, the soft-spoken 44-year-old chef gave little hint that he was troubled in his last interview. Mr. Violier’s apparent suicide shook the culinary world and spurred global debate about the intense pressures chefs face in a macho industry of punishing rankings and sometimes cruel food critics that has pushed several chefs in recent years to take their own lives. Mr. Violier, an avid hunter and master of cooking game, had reached the apex of gastronomic excellence, and friends and fellow chefs have been baffled by his death. In December, his Restaurant de l’Hôtel de Ville in Crissier, near Lausanne, was designated the best restaurant in the world in La Liste, a guide ranking 1,000 restaurants in 48 countries that was commissioned by the French Foreign Ministry. He had written a thousand-page encyclopedia devoted to European game birds. He worked side by side at the restaurant with his wife, Brigitte, and had a 12-year old son, Romain. In his last interview, given to the French newspaper Libération just three days before he died, Mr. Violier, whose clients included Sharon Stone, former Chancellor Gerhard Schröder of Germany and the former king of Spain, Juan Carlos, suggested he did worry about whether his success would last. “It’s all about clients coming back,” he told the newspaper in the interview, which was published on Tuesday. “I hope that it lasts,” he added. “You have always to remain concentrated.” He described being a chef as all consuming. Mr. Violier bemoaned television shows that made young people believe that in three months, they could become stars. He said he was not in thrall to rankings or Michelin stars, suggesting that he preferred to let his food speak for itself. His restaurant had three Michelin stars, the highest possible number. He also noted that his small and elegant restaurant was located in a somewhat gritty industrial area near the exit of a highway. “You know people don’t come here for the sea views,” he joked. In the rarefied world of star chefs, Mr. Violier was firmly perched at the top, and fellow chefs and friends said there was little to suggest that anything was amiss. Pierre-Marcel Favre, his editor, who spent six years working with him on his encyclopedia devoted to European game birds, told Libération that he remained perplexed by Mr. Violier’s death. “He was in control, relaxed, serious, had lots of ongoing projects,” he said. There has been speculation that it could have been an accident, but Mr. Favre said this was unlikely, given that Mr. Violier was a seasoned hunter. The hypothesis that he may have been attacked was equally fanciful because Mr. Violier owned guns and could have defended himself, he said. The Swiss police, who are investigating the circumstances of his death, have suggested that he ended his own life. In a hypercompetitive industry where chefs can be demoted overnight and where there are heavy demands to match culinary perfection with global branding, Mr. Violier’s death has renewed a debate over whether the system of ranking chefs, inherently subjective, needs updating. In 2003, Bernard Loiseau , the chef and owner of the Côte d’Or, a Michelin three-star restaurant in the Burgundy region of France, committed suicide at age 52, after the Gault & Millau lowered his rating, fanning alarm that he could lose one of his Michelin stars. This week, the Michelin Guide demoted his Relais Bernard Loiseau to two stars. His widow, Dominique, was quoted by Le Monde as saying she was “shocked and disappointed” by the demotion after more than 25 years, adding that the restaurant would do everything to try to regain the star. The guide declined to comment. But Michael Ellis, managing director of Michelin Restaurant and Hotel Guides was quoted by Agence France-Presse as saying that “it was a difficult decision but it is part of the job.” “We made numerous visits to be absolutely sure,” he said. “I hope the Relais Bernard Loiseau gets the star back as soon as possible.” Mr. Violier, for his part, conveyed notable insouciance when it came to the honors bestowed upon him. Mention of his three stars is conspicuously underplayed on his restaurant’s website . He told Libération that he had not been aware of La Liste, the rankings commissioned by the French ministry of foreign affairs, until the A.F.P. informed him that he had been given the top spot on the list. “I didn’t want to go to the prize-giving ceremony,” he said. “I had planned to change my menu that day.”

Benoit Violier
Suicide
Chef
Restaurant de l'Hotel de Ville
Restaurant
Michelin Guide


Closing the Gender Gap by Changing Minds

Abstract: Women have represented a majority of college graduates for over 30 years and outperform men at all ages, in all subjects. They remain, however, significantly underrepresented at the top of corporations and the highest paid professions, as well as within the ranks of elected officials. The persistence of this incongruity suggests that our economy and society have been leaving a lot of value on the table for a long time. This simple observation animated Sheryl Sandberg’s 2013 best seller , “Lean In: Women, Work and the Will to Lead” (Knopf). Although the observation is simple, Ms. Sandberg made clear that the solutions were not and that the optimal strategies for individual women would vary based on their positions and their desires. Ms. Sandberg also acknowledged that parts of the book were “most relevant to women fortunate enough to have choices” rather than those “struggling to make ends meet.” The real achievement of “Lean In,” however, is its success in synthesizing, in an accessible and actionable way, a wide swath of social science research touching on multiple distinct impediments to progress for women. Its practical recommendations are addressed to employers, policy makers and life partners as much as to women themselves. Shortly before the publication of “Lean In,” Anne-Marie Slaughter wrote an article for The Atlantic called “Why Women Still Can’t Have it All” that became one of the magazine’s most read. In her telling, many of the most significant obstacles to progress generally highlighted by Ms. Sandberg were not major issues for Ms. Slaughter personally. Her essay was prompted by her decision to return to work at Princeton from a two-year stint at the State Department – a choice many academics have made, Ms. Slaughter points out, to avoid losing tenure. She notes that her husband, who had remained behind with the children in New Jersey, willingly took on the majority of care responsibilities, and she insists that Hillary Rodham Clinton was a sensitive and accommodating boss. And Ms. Slaughter leaves no doubt that she has no problem “leaning in.” What instead infuriated Ms. Slaughter – she describes it as triggering a “blind fury” – were the judgmental and patronizing reactions she confronted on her departure from Washington. These apparently treated her choice as not only “sad or unfortunate” but suggested that her parenting or commitment to her profession “were somehow substandard.” Ms. Slaughter has turned The Atlantic article into a book : “ Unfinished Business: Women Men Work Family ” (Random House). If Ms. Sandberg was primarily focused on actions, Ms. Slaughter is still preoccupied with attitudes. Although there are plenty of policy recommendations, mostly seen before elsewhere, the emphasis is on changing minds, not laws. An entire chapter, for instance, is devoted to the way we talk, which includes a discussion of whether the terms “juggling” and “balance” are offensive and concludes with Ms. Slaughter’s preference for the awkward phrase “work/life fit.” Ms. Slaughter describes the book’s ambition as making us “come together as women and men” to “change how we think, how we talk, how we plan and work and vote.” Image Anne-Marie Slaughter is the president of New America and author of "Unfinished Business: Women Men Work Family." Credit Paul Morigi/Getty Images for Fortune “Unfinished Business” retains the form and tone of the shorter original but adds extensive excerpts from the “thousands of readers” who Ms. Slaughter says either wrote her directly or otherwise commented on the article. In addition, Ms. Slaughter went on a “listening tour,” giving hundreds of speeches she describes as a form of “call and response research.” Given its genesis and aspirations, “Unfinished Business” is surprisingly condescending toward other women’s views and efforts. Ms. Slaughter’s treatment of Ms. Sandberg, whose perspective is largely complementary to Ms. Slaughter’s, is indicative. Ms. Slaughter complains that “Lean In” tells women “that the fate of their careers and families is within their control,” which is ”just not true.” The difficulty with the critique is that “Lean In” doesn’t make this claim in the first place. Ms. Slaughter also understates the influence of Ms. Sandberg’s book, which has led many chief executives and husbands (including me) I have encountered to reconsider the extent to which they have been part of the problem. The first third of Ms. Slaughter’s book is devoted to demolishing this and other straw men (or women as the case may be). In place of these “half truths” thus vanquished, she suggests that she alone has seen the “whole truth.” Ms. Slaughter goes on to forgive Ms. Sandberg her youth and inexperience: “I would have written a very similar book to ‘Lean In' at 43.” Ms. Slaughter, who is in her mid-50s, reserves her greatest condescension for those in their 60s and 70s. It is this “increasingly judgmental” group, in her view, that is most responsible for perpetuating false assumptions about the ease and importance of “having it all.” For an author whose expertise is international relations, the lack of diplomacy in “Unfinished Business” feels strange and gratuitous. Where Ms. Slaughter has opportunity to make common cause, she goes out of her way to create division. Even when promoting well-worn and sensible policy ideas on topics like flexible work schedules and valuing care work, Ms. Slaughter manages to position herself as an innovator. This is likely to grate on those who have spent decades in the trenches working to make these reforms a reality. Establishing “having it all” as a target in the first place – a phrase about which she now manages to express “ambivalence”– seemed intended to generate artificial conflict. After all, as Ms. Sandberg pointed out in her book, without mentioning Ms. Slaughter, “the very concept … flies in the face of the basic laws of economics and common sense.” Toward the end of “Lean In,” Ms. Sandberg reviewed the social psychology literature around the tendency of women themselves in certain environments to perpetuate gender bias and recommended some ways to avoid falling into this trap. The institutional tendency to use minor disagreements among women as an excuse to do nothing, she argues, requires women to choose their battles carefully. “We should resolve our differences quickly, and when we disagree, stay focused on our shared goals. This is not a plea for less debate, but for more constructive debate,” Ms. Sandberg wrote. Based on Ms. Slaughter’s book, it would seem that persuading other powerful women to respond positively to Ms. Sandberg’s appeal is another piece of unfinished business.

Anne-Marie Slaughter
Sheryl K Sandberg
Women and Girls
Work-Life Balance
Unfinished Business
Books


Pullback in Manufacturing in November

Abstract: WASHINGTON (AP) — American manufacturing declined in November to its weakest level since July 2009, one month after the recession ended. Worries about automatic tax increases next year cut demand for factory orders and manufacturing jobs. The Institute for Supply Management, a trade group of purchasing managers, said on Monday that its index of manufacturing conditions fell to a reading of 49.5. That is down from 51.7 in October. Readings above 50 in the institute’s survey signal growth, while readings below indicate contraction. Manufacturing grew in October for only the second time since May. A gauge of new orders dropped to its lowest level since August, a sign that production could slow in the coming months. Manufacturers also sharply reduced their stockpiles, indicating companies expect weaker demand. “Today’s report suggests that the manufacturing sector is likely to remain a weak point in the recovery for a few months yet,” Jeremy Lawson, an economist at BNP Paribas, said in a note to clients. The weak manufacturing survey overshadowed other positive economic reports. An uptick in home building increased construction spending in October by the most in five months. Manufacturing activity in China grew in November for the second consecutive month. And American auto sales rebounded last month after Hurricane Sandy held sales back in October. American manufacturers are concerned about what happens when trillions of dollars in tax increases and automatic spending cuts take effect in January if Congress and the Obama administration fail to strike a budget deal before then. Those worries have led many companies to pull back this year on purchases of machinery and equipment, which signal investment plans. The decline could slow economic growth and hold back hiring in the October to December quarter. A measure of hiring in the I.S.M. survey fell to 48.4, the lowest reading since September 2009. Companies “are just backing off and not making any moves until things clear up a bit,” said Bradley Holcomb, chairman of the I.S.M.’s survey committee. The American economy expanded from July through September at an annual rate of 2.7 percent, largely because of strong growth in inventories. Separately, the Commerce Department said Monday that construction spending rose 1.4 percent in October, for its largest gain since a 1.7 percent increase in May. The increase raised spending to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of $872.1 billion. That is nearly 17 percent higher than a 12-year low hit in February 2011. Still, even with the gain, the level of spending on construction remains only about half of what’s considered healthy. Housing construction spending jumped 3 percent in October. Nonresidential building rose 0.3 percent. The government said Hurricane Sandy, which hit New Jersey, New York and Connecticut in late October, had only a minimal effect on the figures. Sales of new homes fell slightly in October, dragged lower by steep declines in the Northeast partly related to Hurricane Sandy. New-home sales were still 17 percent higher in October than a year earlier.

Factories and Manufacturing
United States Economy
Institute for Supply Management
Building (Construction)


Cuomo and Schneiderman Prepare to Fight Over JPMorgan Settlement

Abstract: ALBANY — Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo has asked people if they think Eric T. Schneiderman, the attorney general of New York State, wears eyeliner. Mr. Schneiderman has told people that he believes Mr. Cuomo’s administration is Machiavellian and is out to undermine him. A little backbiting by the officials and their aides, who occupy power suites at opposite ends of the State Capitol’s second floor, might be chalked up to the kind of rivalry that is an unseemly but unsurprising fact of life atop the state’s political food chain. But this relationship, as described in repetitive detail by many in New York Democratic circles, has gone from bad to toxic. “The two men are like oil and water,” said one Democrat who knows both of them well, “and lately fire seems to have been added.” Numerous people in the two camps were interviewed for this article. None would allow their names to be used when describing the content of such private and sensitive conversations. Now, the fractiousness between Mr. Cuomo and Mr. Schneiderman is spilling over into the running of state government. With the annual state budget process about to begin, the two leaders are girding for battle over how to spend $613 million obtained by the attorney general’s office in a settlement of securities litigation with JPMorgan Chase. Mr. Schneiderman and the bank negotiated the terms so that he would be given sole discretion over how to allocate the money. He has big plans for it: preventing avoidable foreclosures for thousands of struggling homeowners and expanding his office’s efforts to fight financial fraud. But Mr. Cuomo, who is up for re-election this year, wants the money deposited in the state’s general fund, where it would be used as the governor and legislators see fit. The governor’s budget, to be announced on Tuesday, will outline how to pay for various programs. While the JPMorgan settlement will not cover any expenses in the current state budget, it could finance a number of big-ticket items, including a year’s worth of universal prekindergarten and programs for middle-school students in New York City or future tax cuts for businesses. This is hardly the first time the two men have clashed. Mr. Schneiderman was elected attorney general in 2010, succeeding Mr. Cuomo, who was elected governor. But Mr. Cuomo did not support Mr. Schneiderman’s bid in the primary for attorney general. And while Mr. Schneiderman is said to want Mr. Cuomo’s job someday, Mr. Cuomo has at times seemed to want to hold onto part of Mr. Schneiderman’s. Not long after they both took office, the governor set up a new agency, the Department of Financial Services, that conspicuously overlaps the duties of the attorney general in its pursuit of financial wrongdoing, and installing a loyal and aggressive Cuomo lieutenant to lead it. Mr. Schneiderman has found ways to make a name for himself. In his three years as the state’s top law enforcement officer, he has won major victories in health care and succeeded in closing a loophole that allowed firearms to be sold at gun shows without background checks. In 2012 alone, he announced more than $335 million in Medicaid fraud recoveries. On Wall Street, he was a central player in concluding the JPMorgan litigation, recently brought a high-profile case against the asset manager BlackRock, and has been forceful in challenging financial data providers that release potentially market-moving information to favored subscribers ahead of others. “In just three years in office, Attorney General Schneiderman has revitalized virtually every aspect of his office, making it a more effective champion for fairness and equality for all New Yorkers,” his spokesman, Damien LaVera, said. “We’ll stack Attorney General Schneiderman’s track record against any of his predecessors any day.” Still, Mr. Schneiderman has not earned the kind of hard-charging “sheriff of Wall Street” image that Mr. Cuomo and, before him, Eliot Spitzer, gained in the job. Now, Mr. Cuomo and his advisers, past and present, are increasingly raising concerns with allies and certain lawmakers about Mr. Schneiderman’s tenure as attorney general. Mr. Cuomo’s bill of particulars against Mr. Schneiderman includes several missteps, according to these people. Among them: Mr. Schneiderman’s $613 million settlement with JPMorgan, one of the largest such settlements in the state’s history, should have been turned over to the general fund, not kept under the attorney general’s control. Equally troubling, they argue, the enormous payment was structured to allow the bank to use the entire amount as a tax deduction — significantly reducing its state tax bill. In addition, the handoff of another securities case, against Bank of America, which was investigated during Mr. Cuomo’s tenure as attorney general, was fumbled, these people say, when Mr. Schneiderman’s office failed to settle quickly enough. Private lawyers negotiated their own settlement first, hampering the state’s ability to obtain the strongest result for itself. If the interest of Mr. Cuomo and his team has strayed into chatter about whether the attorney general’s eyes show signs of cosmetic intervention, Mr. Schneiderman has a simple, though little-known, explanation: People told of his condition say he has glaucoma, for which he takes a medication whose published side effects include increased eyelash “thickness” and “darkness.” Mr. Cuomo, 56, and Mr. Schneiderman, 59, are cut from decidedly different cloth. Mr. Schneiderman is a liberal product of the Upper West Side of Manhattan who is devoted to yoga. Mr. Cuomo, bred in Queens and apprenticed by a three-term governor, is a workaholic given to tinkering with muscle cars. The two met in the early 1980s while working on the campaign for governor of Mario M. Cuomo, according to longtime friends; Mr. Schneiderman was a new Harvard Law graduate, Mr. Cuomo his father’s aide. But their paths thereafter seldom crossed. Mr. Schneiderman spent years in private legal practice, with a sideline in pro bono advocacy, before winning election to the State Senate in 1998. Mr. Cuomo by then had risen to federal housing secretary. The two men’s circles did overlap in one noteworthy way: Mr. Schneiderman’s ex-wife, Jennifer Cunningham, from whom he was divorced in 1996, later became an adviser to Mr. Cuomo. Ms. Cunningham, a partner at the political consulting firm SKDKnickerbocker, remains on good terms with Mr. Schneiderman. When Mr. Cuomo first ran for governor, in 2002, Mr. Schneiderman sided with much of the state Democratic establishment in backing H. Carl McCall, whose broad support drove Mr. Cuomo to quit the primary. But Mr. Schneiderman did support Mr. Cuomo’s comeback as a candidate for attorney general in 2006. Yet in 2010, Mr. Cuomo quietly aided the primary bid of Kathleen M. Rice, one of Mr. Schneiderman’s opponents in the Democratic primary for attorney general. Tensions between the two politicians surfaced almost immediately, when Mr. Cuomo created the Department of Financial Services and put Benjamin Lawsky, a longtime aide and former federal prosecutor, in charge. Mr. Cuomo wanted Mr. Lawsky to be able to investigate violations of the Martin Act, the sweeping New York securities law that has been a crucial tool in pursuing financial-industry malfeasance. But the governor backed down after business groups raised concerns. Still, the decision to install Mr. Lawsky created a powerful rival. “If you support the attorney general, you don’t do that,” said Jonathan R. Macey, a Yale law professor who closely follows Mr. Schneiderman’s office. Although it is unclear whether Mr. Lawsky is interested in running for political office, among some Wall Street lawyers he is already being called “future attorney general.” The relationship is further complicated by the fact that Mr. Schneiderman inherited some of Mr. Cuomo’s major cases, including the one against Bank of America. What remains to be seen in Albany is who will decide how the $613 million from JPMorgan is spent. Mr. Cuomo’s spokeswoman called talks with Mr. Schneiderman’s office “productive”; a spokesman for Mr. Schneiderman called them “constructive.” The money now sits in an interest-bearing account. “It’s a pretty big slush fund,” one official close to the governor said. “The question now is whose slush fund is it going to be.”

Andrew Cuomo
Eric T Schneiderman
JPMorgan Chase
Department of Financial Services NYS
New York
Attorney general


Pradhanica Brings the Rhythms of Kathak Dance to New Jersey

Abstract: A couple of years ago, after graduating from Rutgers University , Mike Lukshis left his childhood home in East Brunswick to move in with a cluster of acquaintances in Edison and study the tabla, a traditional Indian percussion instrument, under their guru. His family was worried, he said last month after a rehearsal for a show by Pradhanica , the rhythm and dance group for which he plays tabla. “They thought I was joining a cult,” said Mr. Lukshis, seated cross-legged on the floor at the Highland Park Dance Studio . “My grandparents were like, ‘Oh, my God. We’re losing our grandson.’ They couldn’t figure out what was happening to me.” Mr. Lukshis said what he was experiencing was more of an awakening than a brainwashing. “When you find someone as disciplined and as hard-core about what he does as Guru-ji, it pulls you in almost like a funnel,” he explained. “After I met him I very quickly realized that he was a man who could teach me this thing, the tabla, better than anyone else I’ve ever met in my life could teach anything.” Image Members of the group practice playing their instruments during a Pradhanica rehearsal. Credit Bryan Anselm for The New York Times Pandit Divyang Vakil, the philosopher and artist Mr. Lukshis calls Guru-ji, an honorific meaning “respected teacher” in Hindi, is the composer for Pradhanica, whose other members include Vincent Pierce and Kaumil Shah, percussionists; Indrajit Roy-Chowdhury , a sitar player; and Jin Won, a Kathak dancer who is also the group’s leader. Mr. Lukshis and Ms. Won both live with Mr. Vakil in a four-bedroom house in Edison, which has a small music studio. The living arrangement is not so much cultlike as practical. Mr. Vakil travels several months each year, and in his absence, the housemates maintain the home. Additionally, Mr. Lukshis and other musicians teach Mr. Vakil’s students, as well as their own clients, who total about 150 in New York and New Jersey, at various locations through the Taalim School of Indian Music , an organization established in 2004 by disciples of Mr. Vakil. Taalim has no physical address and was described by Mr. Lukshis as “a community of place.” Nitin Dhar, a software engineer who lives in Queens, has been studying tabla with Mr. Lukshis and other Taalim instructors for four years at a rented studio space in Manhattan. Mr. Vakil’s leadership was what attracted Mr. Dhar to the school. “In Indian music, the most respected schools have gurus leading them,” he said. Image A musician playing the sitar during a rehearsal. Credit Bryan Anselm for The New York Times At the recent rehearsal of Pradhanica, in preparation for an Aug. 13 concert at Musikfest in Bethlehem, Pa., Ms. Won spun while Mr. Pierce, Mr. Lukshis, Mr. Roy-Chowdhury and Mr. Shah played their instruments in unison before her. Her whipping ponytail drew a circle, as she pirouetted, dizzyingly, in time to the music. “Pradhanica means ‘female leader,’” Ms. Won said later after catching her breath. The group, formed in 2013, blends Indian Kathak dance with other forms of music, dance and rhythm — “always rhythm,” Ms. Won said. “I had listened to one of Guru-ji’s lectures about the philosophy of rhythm, and I got this idea that everything is vibration. The reality of the world is vibration, so everything can be presented through rhythm,” she said. “I thought, is it possible to express emotions just through rhythm?” She ran the idea for the group by Mr. Vakil, who assembled the players and began experimenting. By the end of the year, he had written a 90-minute composition and christened the group Pradhanica. Image Mike Lukshis playing the tabla drums. Credit Bryan Anselm for The New York Times On Aug. 27, Ms. Won will demonstrate how to play the tabla as part of the exhibition “Sounds of India” at the Morris Museum , in Morristown. Watching her masterful whirls and tambourine-like foot stamps — during performances, her ankles are ribboned with jingle bells from calf to ankle, making them a percussive part of Pradhanica — you could be forgiven for forgetting that Kathak, which dates to ancient India, was once as foreign to Ms. Won, who is Korean, as it is to many Americans. Ms. Won moved to India in 1996 from Korea, where she had worked as an actress, because she was fascinated with the country’s culture and spirituality. She studied tabla under Mr. Vakil in India before joining him in New Jersey in 2011. “If someone points at me and says, ‘Oh, she’s not doing that from tradition,’ it’s O.K. Because I’m only trying to show traditional Kathak in one section of the performance,” said Ms. Won. “I’m not pretending it has been passed down in my family through generations.” Image The bells on Jin Won’s ankles. Credit Bryan Anselm for The New York Times Of Pradhanica’s members, only Mr. Roy-Chowdhury’s heritage matches his instrument, the sitar. But Mr. Roy-Chowdhury, who was born in New York, is as American as he is Indian. Pradhanica’s cultural mash-up was an accident. “It wasn’t a choice,” said Ms. Won. “It’s just what happened, and a really interesting circumstance.” Mr. Pierce and Mr. Lukshis met as teenagers, at East Brunswick High School . Both went on to earn degrees in music at Rutgers. “We’ve played together and in different bands for years,” Mr. Pierce said. “We had a couple of mutual friends who all started playing tabla, just because we’re musicians and we love rhythm, and tabla has this amazing rhythm,” he explained, citing the Beatles song “Within You Without You” as an example. In 2004, Mr. Pierce saw an ad for tabla classes in a New Brunswick yoga studio. He and Mr. Lukshis signed up. “A month later our guru came over from India. We hit it off,” Mr. Pierce said, referring to Mr. Vakil. Mr. Pierce emphasized the uniqueness of the project and the diversity of the musicians who are part of it. “When you present it properly and for the right audience, it opens people up to ideas about how we as musicians can complement each other regardless of where we’re from and the instruments we play,” he said. “I’m basically into the mixing-of-different-cultures thing,” added Ms. Won. “I’ve noticed that whenever there’s an Indian culture program, you see a lot of white people and a lot of Indian people. You don’t see a lot of Chinese people, Korean people, Japanese people. So I want something that brings us all together. We’re all living together, so why shouldn’t we all come together?”


Lawmakers Renew Push for Deal on Cutting Deficit

Abstract: WASHINGTON — Despite growing fears that world markets might react negatively to a breakdown in the federal budget negotiations, Congressional leaders clashed Saturday night as they tried to reach a new deficit-reduction agreement that Speaker John A. Boehner told colleagues could cut $3 trillion to $4 trillion in spending over 10 years. “We are working, and I’m confident there will be resolution,” Mr. Boehner told fellow House Republicans on an afternoon conference call, according to participants. “There has to be.” Yet an hourlong Saturday meeting in Mr. Boehner’s Capitol suite was followed by pessimistic assessments of the state of negotiations from the two top Congressional Democrats, Senator Harry Reid, the majority leader, and Representative Nancy Pelosi, the minority leader. They accused Republicans of refusing to give ground on how the federal debt limit would be raised. “Their unwillingness to compromise is pushing us to the brink of a default on the full faith and credit of the United States,” Mr. Reid said of Mr. Boehner and Senator Mitch McConnell, the Senate Republican leader who also attended the session. “We have run out of time for politics. Now is the time for cooperation.” The impasse over major elements of the agreement came even as lawmakers said they were determined to make a new compromise public on Sunday afternoon before the opening of financial markets in Asia to reassure investors there. President Obama began a morning meeting with Congressional leaders at the White House by noting that global markets could react adversely to Friday’s collapse of his and Mr. Boehner’s negotiations as early as Sunday, before trading begins in Asia. His Treasury secretary, Timothy F. Geithner, reinforced the point at the meeting’s end. The tense series of high-powered meetings on Saturday was reflective of the sense of urgency among lawmakers with little more than a week before the federal government risks defaulting on its debts, a fate that could be avoided if Congress agrees to increase the $14.3 trillion debt ceiling. Congressional Republicans, Democrats and Mr. Obama have seized on the debt fight as a way to win approval of a debt-reduction package but have disagreed sharply over what it should include. The speaker, who abruptly broke off budget talks with Mr. Obama on Friday evening, said that he hoped the plan could be finished within 24 hours and indicated on the conference call with House members that the savings would most likely be achieved in two stages. As described by knowledgeable Congressional aides, the agreement under discussion would enact a first round of cuts of just under $1 trillion, an amount they said was sufficient to clear the way for a debt limit increase through 2011. A second increase would follow after a newly created legislative commission considered a broader range of spending cuts, program overhauls and potential revenue increases. Democrats, who have dug in against anything they see as a short-term extension that would require multiple votes on the debt increase before the end of next year, said they accepted the two-stage plan but wanted the full increase in the debt limit now. “I will not support any short-term agreement, and neither will President Obama nor Leader Pelosi,” Mr. Reid said in a written statement earlier on Saturday. “We seek an extension of the debt ceiling through at least the end of 2012. We will not send a message of uncertainty to the world.” Following Mr. Reid’s criticism, Republican officials said they have for months stuck to a consistent position demanding that each dollar increase in the debt ceiling be offset with a dollar in savings. They did not appear ready to abandon that position, with a spokesman for Mr. Boehner saying a two-step process was “inevitable.” Still, the spokesman, Michael Steel, said that “we continue to believe that defaulting on the full faith and credit of the United States is not an option.” An aide to Mr. McConnell said the negotiations aimed at preventing a default would continue. Mr. Reid and the other leaders met at the White House on Saturday morning at the request of Mr. Obama. The meeting broke up without resolution just before noon, after about an hour of discussion. In a statement after the White House session, Mr. McConnell indicated that he and his leadership counterparts were intent on devising a fallback measure to assure the borrowing ceiling was raised in time. “The president wanted to know that there was a plan for preventing national default. The bipartisan leadership in Congress is committed to working on new legislation that will prevent default while substantially reducing Washington spending,” Mr. McConnell said. The White House, in its own statement, said that Mr. Obama reiterated his opposition to a short-term extension of the ceiling because it would hurt the economy, prompt rating agencies to downgrade the nation’s credit rating and drive up interest rates for all Americans. “As the current situation makes clear, it would be irresponsible to put our country and economy at risk again in just a few short months with another battle over raising the debt ceiling,” the White House statement said. The rancorous ending to the debt discussions on Friday means that leaders of the House and Senate now have only days to find a debt limit solution that has eluded them for months, gaming out ways to get a debt increase through a Republican-controlled House packed with conservatives demanding deep cuts and no new revenues. Republicans were taking pains to show that the new plan was different from an earlier proposal by Mr. McConnell that would allow Congress to clear a debt increase through a procedural maneuver. Under that approach, Congress could vote to disapprove the debt increase but allow Mr. Obama to veto the plan and get a rise in the ceiling if the House or Senate failed to override the veto, a very likely outcome. Aides said, however, that the developing proposal was likely to be modeled in some part on the McConnell approach, which had run into resistance in the House and from conservative activists. In weeks of negotiations, House and Senate members have identified more than $1 trillion in savings that they could agree on, including cuts in federal agency budgets, farm subsidies, federal pension benefits and Medicaid . If the new talks collapse, House Republicans could ultimately devise an extension based on cuts they identify and send it to the Senate, daring lawmakers to reject it or the president to veto it.

United States Politics and Government
National Debt (US)
Obama Barack
Senate
House of Representatives