Western Businesses in Russia, Watchful and Wary

Abstract: PARIS — Shortly after pro-Russian troops infiltrated Crimea last weekend, the phone in Alexis Rodzianko’s Moscow office started ringing. He is president of the American Chamber of Commerce in Russia, and local managers for some of the world’s biggest brands were calling to discuss the safety of their operations and the risks that might arise if the West were to impose sanctions. A few miles away, at the Association of European Businesses, the main trade group for European multinationals, a similar scene unfolded. They all had an overarching concern: How hard might their Russian operations be hit if the turmoil kept escalating? “Foreign companies have seen many ups and downs in their relationship with Russia, and we hope this is just another one of them,” Mr. Rodzianko said. “But this situation is full of uncertainties.” Western multinationals with big investments in Russia have faced other crises over the years. But the standoff between Russia and the West is posing a range of new challenges that threaten to undermine Western companies’ business in Russia. American companies including PepsiCo, McDonald’s and John Deere are active in Russia, of course. But for many Western European businesses, that market is even more crucial. In Paris, officials at the French carmaker Renault have been in constant contact with their Russia-based executives to assess the rapidly shifting climate in the country, where Renault has a pivotal joint venture. Directors at Porsche in Stuttgart, Germany, are analyzing political frictions. At the giant beer brewer Carlsberg, managers in Copenhagen are providing additional security for assets and employees in Russia and Ukraine, the company’s biggest markets. “Russia is important for European and American companies,” said Chris Weafer, co-founder of Moscow-based Macro Advisory, a consulting firm. “With events escalating and bringing Russia into greater conflict with Western governments, there could be serious consequences.” Image A worker at a Pepsi plant near Moscow. Russia is Pepsi’s largest market outside the United States, contributing nearly $5 billion in annual revenue, about 7 percent of the company’s total. Credit Ivan Sekretarev/Associated Press One of the biggest concerns is that international sanctions may hit Russia’s large but increasingly sluggish economy and prod Moscow to retaliate against Western interests. “This is a situation in which those applying the sanctions will get hurt as much as the side being sanctioned,” Mr. Rodzianko said. The European Union’s economy is tightly intertwined with Russia’s. Europe does about $460 billion in business there, much of it in the energy sector, making it Moscow’s largest trading partner. And more than half of Russia’s foreign investment comes from European multinationals and financial institutions. The United States is not even among Russia’s top 10 trading partners, exchanging around $40 billion worth of exports and imports each year. And yet, Russia remains a crucial market for American retail, construction and energy companies, as well as some of the biggest United States banks. On Thursday, the United States and its allies imposed visa bans on individuals deemed responsible for undermining Ukrainian sovereignty, and threatened further sanctions if Russia did not de-escalate tensions. The Kremlin warned of countermeasures, including possibly seizing American property in Russia. On Friday night, the Russian government issued a statement saying that its foreign minister, Sergey V. Lavrov, had spoken by telephone with Secretary of State John Kerry and warned that “hasty and ill-considered steps” to impose sanctions on Russian officials would harm relations. The statement warned that sanctions “would inevitably backfire on the United States itself.” Earlier in the week Russian lawmakers also considered a proposed law allowing for the confiscation of property, assets and accounts of Western companies. Other Russian officials advocated dropping the dollar as a reserve currency and refusing to pay off Russian loans to American banks. Image The John Deere Company, one of the world’s biggest makers of farm equipment, has two factories and an operations office in Russia. Credit Andrey Rudakov/Bloomberg News, via Getty Images So far, the Russian threats have been only that. But the tenor of the statements has made Western multinationals jittery. European businesses “have no interests in any deterioration of the current international situation linked to Ukraine,” Frank Schauff, the chief executive of the Association of European Businesses in Russia, said on Friday. “We call upon all parties to engage in a constructive dialogue, which will secure stability, welfare and economic growth on the European Continent.” European Union leaders are not eager to pick an economics fight. A document photographed in the hands of a British official near 10 Downing Street this week and shown by the BBC read in part, “The U.K. should not support for now trade sanctions or close London’s financial center to Russians.” Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany, whose economy has deep ties to Russia, has also been reluctant to rush into sanctions. The visa bans announced so far will not hit Russia financially. But any trade curbs could be painful. After years of growth propelled by oil and natural gas, the Russian economy is already slumping toward a recession. The ruble has been increasingly volatile against the dollar and the euro, and dipped to record lows against those currencies after the Russians moved into Crimea. Jérôme Stoll, head of sales at Renault, said in a recent interview that the company’s top management was pondering what to do if a devalued ruble caused inflation to rise and undercut the buying power of Russian consumers. Renault executives are discussing “how we can cope with the situation in case we have to raise our prices,” Mr. Stoll said. Image An automobile production line of the French carmaker Renault, which has a plant near Moscow in a joint venture with Russia. Credit Alexander Nemenov/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images But the situation is still too fluid to gauge the impact, he said. “When you have such a big financial crisis,” he said, “you don’t know how the situation will move.” Asked whether Renault had expressed its concern to the Russian government, he replied, “It’s not our duty.” American companies are also nervously watching Russia. Those companies include Ford Motor, which operates three assembly plants in Russia and recently formed a joint venture there. The John Deere Company, one of the world’s biggest makers of farm equipment, has two factories and an operations office in Russia. “We have taken steps to ensure the safety of our employees and have restricted travel in the region,” said Ken Golden, director of global public relations for Deere. Mr. Golden would not specify what those steps were. While Russia represents less than 5 percent of Deere’s total equipment sales, the company recently cited Russia as being key to its future growth. “We urge political leaders to solve this issue without violence and in accord with international agreements,” Mr. Golden said. Russia is Pepsi’s largest market outside the United States, contributing nearly $5 billion in annual revenue, about 7 percent of the company’s total. McDonald’s also has a sizable presence. The fast-food giant, which was the official restaurant of the recent Olympic Games in Sochi, has 413 Russian restaurants generating $2.5 billion a year, or around 9 percent of the company’s total revenue, according to an analysis by Deutsche Bank Securities. “Russia is a high-growth market, and it’s important to them,” said Jason West, a research analyst for Deutsche Bank. “We don’t know how bad things are going to get yet, but it could really hurt growth prospects.” Nor are Russian companies immune to the turmoil. State-owned banks that could be the target of further Western sanctions were pounded this week on Russia’s stock exchange. Shares in Gazprom, the behemoth Russian gas producer that sends gas through Ukraine to European markets, have also slumped. Despite the uncertainty, American and European companies are hunkering down. None yet seem ready to heed Mr. Kerry’s admonition to “start thinking twice about whether they want to do business with a country that behaves like this.” It is not that simple, according to Mr. Rodzianko of the American Chamber. “Nobody is particularly happy with the fact that the business climate is suffering, but you don’t come in here, build a plant, and pull out tomorrow,” he said. “We have to stick to our knitting, and deal with the setbacks until the climate improves.”

Russia
Europe
Ukraine
International trade
Sanctions
Pepsi
John Deere
McDonald's


Seton Hall Trounces Maine

Abstract: Sterling Gibbs scored 18 points and Jaren Sina had 13 on Saturday as Seton Hall routed Maine, 72-43, in South Orange, N.J. ■ D’Vauntes Smith-Rivera scored 7 of his 29 points in overtime, leading Georgetown (8-3) over Indiana (10-3), 91-87, in the Indeed Invitational at Madison Square Garden. ■ Moriah Jefferson had a career-high 24 points as the No. 2 Connecticut women (9-1) routed Southern Methodist (4-8), 96-45, at Hartford in the American Athletic Conference opener for both teams.

College Sports
Basketball
Sterling Gibbs
Georgetown
Seton Hall
University of Connecticut
University of Maine


With Key Try, Perpignan Leads 4 French Clubs Into Heineken Quarterfinals

Abstract: Perpignan was the big winner on Sunday as Europe’s leading rugby clubs completed the pool stage of the Heineken Cup, rugby union’s equivalent of soccer’s Champions League, over the weekend. For years, it has hankered after the possibility of taking a big match across the border to Barcelona, pulling in the extra income that can come with playing in a venue like the former Olympic stadium at Montjuïc and affirming a shared cross-border identity as Catalans. That dream came true as Perpignan secured a home draw in the quarterfinals, to be played on the second weekend in April, by beating Llanelli Scarlets, 37-5. The crucial moment came early in the second half when scrum-half Florian Cazenave crossed for Perpignan’s fourth try. This gave it the bonus point awarded to a team that scores four tries and confirmed that it would top its pool ahead of the English champion Leicester on the basis of performing better in their head-to-head meetings. It concluded an emotional week for Perpignan, which had begun with a public event in Barcelona to publicize its hopes of a home quarterfinal there, and took an unexpected twist when its coach, Jacques Brunel, announced that he will leave at the end of the season, his fourth with the club. Brunel has been appointed to succeed Nick Mallett as national coach of Italy following the World Cup. Brunel said Perpignan’s inability to make a serious impression on the Heineken Cup since reaching the final in 2003 had been “the great frustration” of a period with the club that saw it win its first French championship for more than half a century in 2009. Perpignan will entertain Toulon in the quarterfinal, a pairing that was not confirmed until the final minute of the last match of the six-round pool stage on Sunday. Seedings are based on performance at the pool stage, and were not settled until David Lemi of London Wasps crossed for the try that sealed a 23-16 victory over Toulouse, a four-time champion and the current titleholder. Coaches are wont to claim that they do not watch what other teams are doing, but concentrate on their own performance. This, though, is the weekend that gives them no option but to pay attention to what is happening elsewhere. While all eight qualifying places were filled before the Wasps-Toulouse kickoff, no match was finalized because, depending on its result, Toulouse could have been seeded anywhere between first and fifth. It was provisionally first when French center Yannick Jauzion opened the scoring, third with the scores level at 16-16 as the match entered its final minute; and fifth — so forced to travel for its quarterfinal rather than enjoying a home draw — when Lemi crossed. Home advantage certainly matters. All four quarterfinals were won by the home team last season, and only 13 teams have won on the road in 56 quarterfinals over 14 seasons. Toulouse was left to curse the indiscipline that first saw French international forward Louis Picamoles sent to the sin-bin for 10 minutes, during which Wasps scored 10 points, in the first half, then the sending-off of center Florian Fritz for a dangerous tackle with more than 30 minutes to go. Fritz compounded his offense by a derisive single-finger gesture toward the crowd. Biarritz, which would have had to travel had Toulouse secured its home draw, was the main beneficiary, moving up to fourth seed. It will now host Toulouse in a replay of the final last season. It secured its place on Saturday by beating English club Bath, 26-19, at the Parc des Sports Aguilera, which may host the quarterfinal since it now has the required 15,000 capacity. In the past Biarritz has also staged playoff matches in Spain, just across the border at the Estadio Anoeta in San Sebastian. Local paper Sud-Ouest reported Sunday that Biarritz might still play the Toulouse match at the Anoeta, but soccer club Real Socieded, the usual occupant, has a home Spanish Primera Liga match scheduled for quarterfinal weekend. Biarritz topped its pool ahead of Ulster by virtue of better head-to-head results, but the Irish province still secured its first playoff place since 1999 by winning its last pool match, 43-6, against Italian club Aironi. Ulster’s coach Brian McLaughlin said his team was “more than capable of going anywhere in the quarterfinals.” Where it will go as the No. 8 seed is to Northampton, which clinched top rating with a 23-12 victory at Castres and Toulouse’s defeat. The English club would like to play the match at Franklin’s Gardens, its uniquely atmospheric stadium, but seems likely to fall foul of the 15,000 rule, since its capacity falls around 1,500 short. If it is unable to persuade the competition authorities, who reaffirmed the 15,000 rule in a statement on Thursday, to make an exception the match will be played in Milton Keynes. The final quarterfinal is a rerun of the 2009 final in which Irish province Leinster, winner on that occasion, hosts a two-time champion, Leicester, which secured one of the two best runners-up places with a 62-15 hammering of Italy’s Treviso. While four French teams have reached the last eight for the second year running, they will struggle to replicate their dominance of the 2009-10 tournament, when they had three representatives in the final four and the final was an all-French contest between Toulouse and Biarritz. The quarterfinal draw, with two all-French and two-Anglo-Irish ties, ensured that at least two non-French teams will make the final four. On top of that the semifinal draw — made Sunday afternoon — means the two French winners will have to travel. The consolation prizes of places in quarterfinal of the Amlin Cup, the equivalent of soccer’s UEFA Cup, went to the heavyweight trio of a French champion, Clermont Auvergne, and two former Heineken Cup winners, Munster and Wasps. Wales, which will host both finals, was left without representation in either tournament.

Rugby (Game)
Barcelona (Spain)
Toulouse (France)


G.M. Payback Still a Long Way Ahead

Abstract: Taxpayers will have to wait a while to reclaim the money invested to keep General Motors out of the scrapyard. The carmaker is running far more smoothly after declaring bankruptcy last year: it earned as much as $2.1 billion in the three months to September, its third straight quarter of profits. But the terms of G.M.’s coming share sale show that, once public, the stock will have to as much as double before its biggest shareholder, the United States government, gets close to breaking even. Assume G.M.’s initial public offering starts at $26, the bottom of the projected price range. That would mean the Treasury, which owns 61 percent, would be taking a 42 percent loss on any stock it sells in the offering. It is planning to sell 263 million shares. If it does, G.M. shares would need to more than double to get back into the black on its investment, reaching more than $52 a share, according to a Reuters Breakingviews analysis. The hurdle for G.M.’s debut performance lowers if G.M.’s bankers can sell the shares at the top of the price range. But if the underwriters sell more of the Treasury’s stock in the I.P.O., the barrier to breaking even increases. The calculation is similar for the G.M. stakes held by the governments of Canada and Ontario. Over all, this sounds like a tall order. All things being equal, it implies that G.M. will have to essentially double its profits. But it could have been worse. Had the Treasury insisted on dumping more stock on the market, as appeared to be the case just a few months ago, the I.P.O. price might have been lower and the need for a huge increase in G.M.’s value afterward far greater. The Treasury, whose G.M. efforts are being led by Ron Bloom, changed its tune and focused less on getting out quickly and more on exiting with minimal damage to taxpayers. That is a sensible about-face, but it still leaves getting back in the black a ways off. Buffett’s Swiss Stake Warren E. Buffett may struggle to repeat his Swiss Re exit. The billionaire bailed out three big companies during the financial crisis : the Swiss insurer, General Electric and Goldman Sachs. On Thursday, he allowed Swiss Re to buy back its expensive convertible stock. He may have less leeway to be as generous with the other two. Of the three deals, Mr. Buffett’s $3.1 billion investment in Swiss Re convertible shares had the most stipulations. Negotiated at the depths of the market slump, the stock paid a 12 percent annual coupon until March 2012, when it would convert into ordinary shares at 25 Swiss francs, or $25.53. As Swiss Re’s share price is now twice that, the insurer was eager to buy back the convertibles. But it had also agreed to pay Mr. Buffett a 40 percent premium if it redeemed before March 2011, and a 20 percent premium after that. Mr. Buffett is allowing Swiss Re to pay only a 20 percent premium, as well as the interest he would have received next March. That means he collects $1 billion, rather than the $1.6 billion to which he was entitled. That may look generous. But Mr. Buffett also owns 3 percent of Swiss Re’s stock, which will benefit from the redemption of the expensive convertible securities. The shares jumped more than 6 percent At first glance, Mr. Buffett faces a similar situation with Goldman and G.E., where he holds preferred shares worth $5 billion and $3 billion, respectively. Both would like to buy back the stock, which pays an annual coupon of 10 percent. He also has warrants over shares of both companies, giving him an incentive to help raise the stock price. But there is less room for a Swiss Re-style agreement. Because Goldman can redeem its preferred stock at any time for a 10 percent premium, it does not need Mr. Buffett to give it an early discount. G.E.’s stock cannot be redeemed until October 2011, opening the door for a negotiation. But Berkshire Hathaway’s G.E. warrants are deeply out of the money. That means it is unlikely to benefit from any short-term boost to GE’s shares. Despite Mr. Buffett’s apparent generosity with Swiss Re, Goldman and G.E. should not assume he will take the same approach with them.

General Motors
Buffett Warren E
Initial Public Offerings


As Demographics in Cambodia Shift, Youth Seek Political Change

Abstract: PHNOM PENH, Cambodia — Thy Sovantha, Cambodia ’s youngest political star, is still seething. A charismatic student, she rocketed to fame during the 2013 elections when she backed the opposition’s effort to unseat Cambodia’s authoritarian ruler. Her Facebook page drew hundreds of thousands of followers, making her, at 18, perhaps the most powerful voice of her generation. The opposition nearly won the election , but protests over the vote led to a government crackdown . By November, the political battle had come down to a single standoff: The government threatened to arrest the opposition leader, Sam Rainsy, if he set foot in Cambodia again. Mr. Sam Rainsy, who was traveling abroad, vowed to return. Ms. Thy Sovantha put out a call on YouTube and rallied hundreds of her supporters to meet him at the airport. But at the last minute, he canceled his flight and fled to France. “I was very angry,” Ms. Thy Sovantha said. “The reason we supported him is that we want change. If he does not come back like this, we think, how can we change the leader? How can we win?” The question is a riddle in Cambodia, which has been stuck in roughly the same political cycle for decades. For 30 years, Prime Minister Hun Sen , a former Khmer Rouge fighter, has wielded power through a combination of threats, clever deal-making and sheer willpower. And for most of that time, Mr. Sam Rainsy, a French-educated former finance minister, has been his foil. Some commentators here compare the pair to Tom and Jerry. Mr. Hun Sen, who met with President Obama at a regional summit meeting in California this week, tolerates periods of relative freedom and political dissent to a point, but resorts to coups, crackdowns and court cases when serious challenges arise. Image Sam Rainsy, center, leader of the Cambodia National Rescue Party, being greeted by supporters and journalists at the airport in Phnom Penh, the capital, in August. Credit Heng Sinith/Associated Press Mr. Sam Rainsy is now as well known for fleeing the country in the face of legal threats as he is for his reform-minded agenda. His retreat to France was his third in a decade. For many Cambodians, the 2013 election was the biggest opportunity yet to break out of that rut. Youth like Ms. Thy Sovantha were a central part of that hope, as a demographic shift gave them a larger say than ever before. Two-thirds of the population is under 30, making Cambodia one of the youngest nations in Asia, according to United Nations estimates. The first generation to grow up after the horrors of the Khmer Rouge regime faded and the economy began to grow at a rapid clip, they are better educated and more skeptical than previous generations. Increasingly, they get their news online rather than from traditional television and print news media, which are dominated by the governing party. Politically, they are restless, having outgrown the authoritarian style and patronage system of Mr. Hun Sen. But having come so close to ousting him and failed, many are disillusioned. And now some are starting to give up on Mr. Sam Rainsy as well. “I feel disappointed and hopeless,” said Ms. Thy Sovantha, now 20. His decision not to return to Cambodia, analysts say, was a lost opportunity, if not a surprise. “The biggest threat to Hun Sen’s grip on power would be Sam Rainsy in jail,” said Ou Virak , the founder of Future Forum, a research institute. “The international condemnations and the potential closing of the American market in the garment industry, that would be nerve-racking for businesspeople.” The ruling Cambodian People’s Party gloated at the retreat. “In simple terms, he’s a coward,” a party spokesman told The Cambodia Daily . Image Thy Sovantha, 20, in her new video recording studio in Phnom Penh, the capital of Cambodia. Credit Luc Forsyth for The New York Times But even his supporters were disappointed. Ou Ritthy, 28, the founder of a youth political discussion group, said he and his peers were exasperated with the cat-and-mouse game of Cambodian politics. “Hun Sen, many things he has been doing are for power, for party interests, and Sam Rainsy also does the same,” he said. “It’s old-style politics in a new society.” Mr. Ou Ritthy credits the sharp rise in Internet penetration and smartphone use for changing the dynamic here. “Youth have two things,” he said. “Information — they got informed from social media — and smartphones. They are more independent in terms of information. They are not told what to do by their parents like in the past.” After two opposition lawmakers were dragged from their cars and severely beaten in October, Facebook sleuths managed to identify several attackers as members of government security forces. Both parties are keenly aware of the demographic shift and are trying to chase the changing electorate. In his absence, Mr. Sam Rainsy has led town halls via Skype and shared political commentary and vacation snapshots with his fans on his widely followed Facebook page . Shirtless photos of him piloting watercraft at a luxury resort in the Philippines inspired heated debates on his character. Mr. Hun Sen joined Facebook in September and has taken to it with a vengeance. He is particularly fond of posting candid snapshots of himself — sitting on the ground slurping up street noodles, swathed in a medical gown receiving a checkup, watering plants in a public garden and even taking selfies during a regional summit meeting. According to a study by the public relations firm Burson-Marsteller, he already ranks second among world leaders for engagement with Facebook followers. He is increasingly conducting government business on Facebook. He has made several policy changes based on complaints posted to his personal page, and last week, he announced the creation of dozens of “Facebook working groups” to gather information about citizens’ concerns. Sun Heng, a 22-year-old university student, said he and most of his friends followed both leaders on Facebook but were still skeptical about the sexagenarians’ embrace of social media. “For me, I find it very pretentious: Sometimes it is so obvious that they are acting,” he said. “But it can also be a good sign, showing that they care what people think now.” Mr. Sam Rainsy clearly believes he has demographics on his side because Cambodia’s young people want a change. He has vowed to return by the next election , in 2018. “This is for me the fourth time that I am forced into exile,” he said by Skype from his home in Paris. “But eventually, each time, the situation changes, and I always manage to be back in time.” The question for Cambodia is whether his followers will still be waiting. Ms. Thy Sovantha seems to have moved on. She has told her followers, who now number 1.2 million, of her disillusionment with Mr. Sam Rainsy. Her Facebook posts focus increasingly on education and environmental issues rather than party politics, and she is channeling her energy into starting a center for homeless youth. But she may not have entirely given up on the system. On her Facebook profile, she describes herself as “politician.”

Cambodia
Social Media
Thy Sovantha
Hun Sen
Sam Rainsy
Cambodian People's Party
Millennials
Politics
Election


Jets Linebacker Aaron Maybin Looks to Add to His Game

Abstract: CORTLAND, N.Y. — Aaron Maybin finds inspiration in conventional sources, like his two favorite books, “The Alchemist” and “The Secret,” but also by gazing at the ceiling in his bedroom at his New Jersey apartment. Above his bed, there is a number. Maybin will not disclose this number, nor will he divulge what it signifies. But judging by his reaction when asked — a smile, a stifled laugh and a coy “maybe” — it probably represents how many sacks he wants to record this season, his second with the Jets . Maybin put the number where he did so it would be the first thing he saw when he woke up and the last before he went to sleep, a guiding force as he pursues a much loftier goal. “When you talk about Aaron Maybin, I want you to be talking about one of the most dominant players in the game,” Maybin said, sitting under a tent after a recent practice. “Not just a pass rusher. A dominant all-around player.” A year ago at this time, Maybin was languishing in the Buffalo Bills’ training camp, having failed to supply the production befitting a linebacker drafted 11th over all: 26 games, one start, no sacks. But like Santiago, the protagonist in “The Alchemist” who travels to the pyramids in Egypt in search of his destiny, Maybin dreams big. His legs churn as fast as his mouth, as his metabolism, as his ascent from first-round bust to sack artist, one whose desire for an expanded role has been reciprocated by a staff eager to maximize his potential. “Absolutely,” said Mike Pettine, the Jets’ defensive coordinator. “Rex and I have already talked about it. It’s going to happen.” It is easy to conceive Maybin’s receiving increased responsibility in passing situations: with the league trending toward a more pass-oriented style, Pettine estimated that the Jets would deploy five defensive backs in 95 percent of their play calls against their A.F.C. East rivals. A relentless rusher off the edge, Maybin, who last season forced four fumbles and registered six sacks, could line up inside, in the middle or, as he did in Saturday night’s scrimmage, as a down lineman, depending on how Pettine leverages matchups. But one of the more intriguing subplots of training camp is Maybin’s quest to shed his reputation as one-dimensional (according to ProFootballFocus.com , he rushed the quarterback on 94.9 percent, or 185, of his 195 passing plays last season, the most among regular 3-4 outside linebackers). The Jets’ coaches, especially Rex Ryan, would never try to discourage him, but there is a natural progression on the journey to dominance, and it starts with viability: can Maybin evolve into a true all-around linebacker — a pass-rushing dynamo, a run-stuffing fiend, an asset in coverage? In addressing that topic, Maybin compared himself to a power hitter in baseball. The best sluggers, he said, do not hit only fastballs. They hit curveballs and changeups and sliders, too. “When you’re a one-trick pony, as Aaron was with his speed rush a year ago, teams can eventually scheme around that,” Pettine said. So in the off-season, Maybin focused on two areas of improvement — self-study and bulking up, and one was more challenging than the other. Onto his iPad he loaded video cut-ups from last season, all of his plays (240 according to ProFootballFocus.com ), and categorized them: speed rushes, inside stunts, spins and so on. He evaluated his strengths and weaknesses and, at the urging of the new defensive line coach, Karl Dunbar, focused on broadening his repertory. Maybin credited Dunbar in particular with tutoring him in the long-arm technique, which is akin to a running back’s straight arm. The other component involved something he had never been good at: adding weight. “Look at me,” Maybin said, “I’m veiny. I’ve got 4 percent body fat. I can’t carry 260, 270. That’s not me.” But he can carry as much as 254 pounds, which he reached in June. Maybin grew stronger without sacrificing speed, ingesting about 5,000 calories daily to fuel his body. He still must eat like a grizzly about to hibernate to maintain his weight, which now is around 245 pounds. At lunch on Friday, Maybin piled onto his tray six chicken breasts, a heaping helping of pasta and some salad. “I said, ‘Aaron, I’d be 280 pounds if I ate that,’ ” said Mike Smith, the Jets’ outside linebackers coach. “He said, ‘Coach, if I don’t eat this, I’ll be 210.’ ” However, 210-pound linebackers are not incredibly useful defending the run. Pettine said Maybin, having improved his technique, was no longer as much of a liability as he was when he joined the Jets in Week 4 last year. “Is he a trained killer against the run right now? No,” Pettine said. “But that’s more physics than anything else, a 240-pound guy up against a 340-pound lineman. There’s no issue with contact courage with Aaron. He’ll stick his face in there against anybody.” And yap about it to anybody, too. His booming voice — no wonder his teammates call Maybin “Microphone” — tends to echo across the field where he practices his speed rush and his counters, the moves he will use to amass all the sacks he expects to amass. Just how many, that is a secret.


U.S. Conducts Deadly Drone Strike on Militants in Pakistan

Abstract: ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — An American drone attack killed 23 people in North Waziristan on Friday, Pakistani military officials said, in a strike against militants that appeared to signify unyielding pressure by the United States on Pakistan ’s military amid increasing opposition to such strikes. The strike came a day after the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Adm. Mike Mullen, met with the Pakistani military chief, Gen. Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, and asked that Pakistan do more to fight militants who use North Waziristan as a base from which to attack United States and NATO forces in Afghanistan. The assault was the second show of the United States’ determination to continue drone attacks since the head of Pakistan’s spy agency, Lt. Gen. Ahmed Shuja Pasha, met this month in Washington with Director Leon E. Panetta of the Central Intelligence Agency to request a halt to the strikes. Friday’s attack could further fuel anti-drone sentiment among the Pakistani public. A government official in North Waziristan told Pakistani reporters that five children and four women were among the 23 who were killed. The attack singled out forces of a militant commander, Hafiz Gul Bahadur, whose loyalists cross the border into Afghanistan to fight American and NATO soldiers, the government official said. Mr. Bahadur operates under a peace accord with the Pakistani Army that ensures that militants under his control do not attack Pakistani soldiers but concentrate only on allied soldiers. Those killed Friday were gathered in Spinwam, an area close to Mir Ali in North Waziristan that had become a hub for militants in the past several months, the official said. In the increasing public war of nerves between the American and Pakistani armies, Pakistan’s government is allowing a planned anti-NATO protest to go ahead in Peshawar this weekend. A political leader, Imran Khan, has called on protesters to stage a sit-in on Saturday to block trucks carrying NATO supplies for the war in Afghanistan. The trucks travel through Peshawar from the seaport of Karachi to Torkham, the gateway to Afghanistan. The drone strike on Friday came after Admiral Mullen delivered an unusually harsh message during his visit here, saying publicly that Pakistan’s spy agency, Inter-Services Intelligence, directly supported and abetted the Haqqani network of militants in North Waziristan. The network’s militants are responsible for many of the American casualties in Afghanistan, American commanders say. The United States has long held that the Haqqani network was supported by the Pakistani spy agency, but it rarely says so publicly. In a separate episode, between the Pakistani military and the Taliban, 16 soldiers from the Pakistani Frontier Corps were killed Thursday when their checkpoint was overrun by 150 militants near the Afghanistan border, a Pakistani security official said. The battle continued for close to 12 hours at Kharkai in the northern district of Dir in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa Province, formerly North-West Frontier Province. Two officers sent to reinforce the troops were killed in an ambush, the official said. The attack by the militants on Pakistani soldiers came as the army embarked on a renewed assault in Mohmand, part of the tribal areas that have proved difficult for the Pakistani Army to hold. In a report to Congress this month, the Obama administration complained that the Pakistani Army had “no clear path” toward defeating the insurgency inside Pakistan, and cited the failed efforts to eradicate the militants from Mohmand as an illustration. The army “was failing for the third time in two years” to clear militants from Mohmand, the report said. The 150 militants who carried out the attack on Thursday appeared to have fled the army assault to Afghanistan and then re-entered Pakistan to strike at the soldiers. General Kayani, the chief of the Pakistani military, visited Mohmand on Thursday for the second stage of a new assault focused on the Suran, a narrow valley on the border with Afghanistan. In the last few months, American and NATO forces on the other side of the border of Mohmand have helped Pakistan to attack militants as they escaped into Afghanistan, the Pakistani security official said. But the Pakistani militants who attacked in Dir on Thursday appeared to have escaped before the assault on the Suran began and were allowed to re-enter Pakistan by elements in the Afghan Army who were assisting them, the official said.

United States Defense and Military Forces


Strategic Move Exempts Health Law From Broader U.S. Statute

Abstract: WASHINGTON — The Affordable Care Act is the biggest new health care program in decades, but the Obama administration has ruled that neither the federal insurance exchange nor the federal subsidies paid to insurance companies on behalf of low-income people are “federal health care programs.” The surprise decision, disclosed last week, exempts subsidized health insurance from a law that bans rebates, kickbacks, bribes and certain other financial arrangements in federal health programs, stripping law enforcement of a powerful tool used to fight fraud in other health care programs, like Medicare. The main purpose of the anti-kickback law, as described by federal courts in scores of Medicare cases, is to protect patients and taxpayers against the undue influence of money on medical decisions. Kathleen Sebelius, the secretary of health and human services, disclosed her interpretation of the law in a letter to Representative Jim McDermott, Democrat of Washington, who had asked her views. She did not explain the legal rationale for her decision, which followed a spirited debate within the administration. Under the Affordable Care Act, millions of people will be able to buy insurance from “qualified health plans” offered on exchanges, or marketplaces, run by the federal government and by some states. Most of the buyers are expected to be eligible for subsidies to make insurance more affordable. The subsidies, paid directly to insurers from the United States Treasury, start in January and are expected to total more than $1 trillion over 10 years. Ms. Sebelius said the Health and Human Services Department “does not consider” the subsidies to be federal health care programs. She reached the same conclusion with respect to federal and state exchanges, built with federal money, and with respect to “federally funded consumer assistance programs,” including the counselors, known as navigators, who help people shop for insurance and enroll in coverage through the exchanges. The federal exchange has been plagued with problems since it opened on Oct. 1. The Obama administration said that the online enrollment system for the exchange was out of service again for 90 minutes on Monday afternoon in an “unscheduled outage.” That was in addition to the scheduled down time from 1 a.m. to 5 a.m. each day. President Obama, speaking at a political event on Monday night, said he was determined to fix the problems that have frustrated millions of people trying to use the website for the federal exchange. “When the unexpected happens, when the unanticipated happens, we’re just going to work on it,” Mr. Obama said. “We’re going to fix things that aren’t working the way they should be. We’re going to smooth this thing out, and we’re just going to keep on going.’ ” Lawyers and law enforcement officials said Ms. Sebelius’s decision was unexpected because the insurance exchanges and subsidy payments appeared to fit the definition of federal health care programs in the anti-kickback statute. Generally, the law makes it a crime to pay or receive anything of value in return for the referral of patients or as an inducement for people to buy goods and services reimbursed by federal health care programs. Such programs are defined broadly as “any plan or program that provides health benefits, whether directly, through insurance, or otherwise, which is funded directly, in whole or in part, by the United States government.” “The secretary’s decision will have some very significant consequences,” said D. McCarty Thornton, former chief counsel to the inspector general at the Health and Human Services Department. “The federal anti-kickback statute will, in most cases, not apply to subsidized health plans or the items and services furnished by those plans.” “Plans and providers are very happy to be relieved of that concern,” Mr. Thornton added. Kevin G. McAnaney, a lawyer who specializes in health care fraud and abuse cases, said Ms. Sebelius’s decision would allow drug companies to give coupons to people who buy insurance through the exchanges. Such coupons subsidize co-payments and reduce out-of-pocket costs for consumers, encouraging them to use certain brand-name prescription drugs when lower-cost alternatives are available, Mr. McAnaney said. The federal government has forbidden the use of drug coupons in Medicare and other federal health programs, saying they amount to a classic kickback scheme, with drug companies paying consumers to use their products. Mark Merritt, the president of the Pharmaceutical Care Management Association, which represents benefit managers like Express Scripts and CVS Caremark, expressed a similar concern. “The coupons steer consumers away from lower-cost alternatives to more expensive drugs, increasing costs to insurers and to the government,” he said. Coupons may drive down the co-payment for an expensive brand-name drug, but often, the insurer must pay much more than it would for a generic version of the medication. Some drug companies and their lawyers had assumed that federal insurance subsidies were part of a federal health care program. Drug coupons offered by Merck, for example, say that they are not valid for patients covered by Medicare, Medicaid or “any qualified health plan purchased through a health insurance exchange established by a state government or the federal government.” In a vivid demonstration of how the anti-kickback law can be applied, the Justice Department announced on Monday that Johnson & Johnson would pay more than $2.2 billion to resolve criminal and civil investigations. The government said the company had, among other things, paid kickbacks to doctors and nursing home pharmacies to promote the use of certain drugs. The company said the payments were “lawful rebates.” The National Health Council, which represents patients and drug companies, praised Ms. Sebelius’s decision. “People with chronic diseases and disabilities will be able to continue using co-payment assistance programs,” said Myrl Weinberg, the chief executive of the council. Ms. Sebelius may not have the last word, lawyers said. A whistle-blower could file suit under the False Claims Act, charging that health care providers, health plans or drug makers had defrauded the government, and a federal court might then decide whether the federal exchange or subsidy payments were federal health care programs. Addressing a rally of supporters on Monday, Mr. Obama responded to critics who say he has broken his promise that people could keep their health insurance if they liked it. Mr. Obama provided some additional explanation: “Now if you have or had one of these plans before the Affordable Care Act came into law and you really liked that plan, what we said was you could keep it if it hasn’t changed since the law was passed.” In recent weeks, hundreds of thousands of people have received notices discontinuing individual insurance policies because they did not meet minimum coverage standards under the health care law.

Obamacare,Affordable Care Act
Health Insurance
Fraud
Bribery and Kickbacks
Kathleen Sebelius
Health and Human Services
Jim McDermott
Barack Obama


Fire Devastates Morale in Bronx’s Resilient Norwood

Abstract: A tilted plywood wall wraps around the northwest corner of Bainbridge Avenue and East 204th Street, where the air smells of smoke and the sidewalk glistens from broken glass. The wall tries to hide the ghastly sight of 10 storefronts burned to sooty brick and skeletal girders. But it only reminds all who pass of a local tragedy. A five-alarm fire on Halloween morning tore through this once-bustling strip of stores in the Norwood section of the Bronx, stirring neighbors awake shortly after 3 a.m. Within hours, owners, employees and customers stood side by side in shock and grief, not knowing how or where to begin rebuilding their livelihoods. Gone were the immigrant-owned businesses that had formed the backdrop to daily street life: a fish store, a hairdresser, a Mexican restaurant, a doughnut shop. One of the oldest businesses, the Bainbridge Bakery, had been there 18 years and was about to reopen after recovering from a fire in April. Fire marshals are still investigating the October fire, though they have not labeled the blaze suspicious. “This is not a good thing, psychologically,” said Dart Westphal, president of the Mosholu Preservation Corporation , a local development group assisting the merchants. “This place has been through a lot of ups and downs in the last few decades. There was a recession, but you had the sense we might be coming out of something. And wow, now this fire. It’s like a kick in the stomach.” Change is not uncommon in Norwood, tucked between the New York Botanical Garden and Montefiore Medical Center . Decades ago it was a destination for thousands of Irish immigrants who patronized the shops, pubs and restaurants along this winding, sloping avenue. About 20 years ago, the Irish were replaced by newcomers from Albania, Mexico, the Dominican Republic and several dozen other countries. “Things changed,” Mr. Westphal said. “But the place sort of dealt with it. It’s been that kind of place as long as it’s been around. You roll with the punches and fix something. Folks have an amazing resilience here.” But the devastation has not ceased to shock passers-by. A few days after the fire, an elderly woman shook her head when she spied the bakery’s tattered awning. “This is just a pity,” said the woman, who would give only her first name, Pat. She moved from Ireland 40 years ago and raised her family here. “For years I used to buy my bread there every Sunday morning,” she said, striking a positive note: “Oh, they’ll rebuild. They say the city is going to help them.” Ana Mirbita, who opened the bakery with her husband, Tony, 18 years ago, hopes so. The Albanian couple are already out $300,000 from rebuilding after the April fire. The day before the second fire, Ms. Mirbita had gotten final approval to reopen from inspectors. Now she does not know for sure whether she is even covered by insurance. “We have worked so hard for so many years, and in the end it’s like I never worked in this country,” she said. “I’m left with nothing. It’s ugly. Some people tell me I have no chance. Some tell me the government should help me.” Elected officials have been meeting with the affected merchants, who include the owners of four stores adjacent to the fire that were shuttered because of structural concerns. The borough president, Rubén Díaz Jr., has directed his economic development staff to explore how to help the owners, while State Senator Pedro Espada Jr. has assigned a staff member to explore grants and low-interest loans. Mr. Espada said some good might come of the blaze, whether it was re-examining the fire codes that apply to older buildings, or bringing the merchants together to form an association to help bolster the commercial strip. “As immigrant retailers, they were not used to that concept,” Mr. Espada said. “But we’re talking about it, and I am certain we’ll be able to help restore the vitality to the neighborhood.” How long that will take is still not certain, and in the meantime, even nearby merchants are feeling the pain. Salvatore Mirra, the owner of Hillside Meat and Deli, has already noticed slower foot traffic in his store, which was untouched by the fire but endured a few days without water or electricity. “The sunny side is, at least people want the businesses to come back,” he said before sending an employee off to fetch some water in a bucket. “The bad part is, this makes it worse, and people are shaken at what’s happened to the neighborhood. They see this fire and instead of thinking things were getting better, they see it in decline.” When Mahmoud Zaghari first considered investing in a candy store on the strip, he looked carefully at the location. Near bus and train stops, the area looked promising. What clinched it for him was the Dunkin’ Donuts on the corner. “They just don’t put in a store anywhere,” said Mr. Zaghari, who is Palestinian . “They know where to put stores.” He and a partner opened in March, selling lottery tickets, beverages and cigarettes, and installing shelves and a counter for a planned deli, too. Now, he has lost his investment — and his laptop, where he had stored his work for his graduate courses in business. With no store, he has no income for rent or tuition. Sally Barker Dunford, the executive director of the West Bronx Housing and Neighborhood Resource Center , is trying to help him weather the ordeal. Ms. Barker Dunford has lived in Norwood most of her life, and can relate to the merchants: About 20 years ago her apartment was damaged in a fire. “First you cry, then you pick things up,” she said. “That’s when you get a good assessment and a plan to go forward.” When she was picking up the pieces, she had some help. “People came in to clean up, and they took the clothes that were left,” Ms. Barker Dunford said. “Somebody brought them back, and they didn’t smell of smoke anymore. To this day, I don’t know who did that. That’s how people are around here.” Even now, people are coming together, she said, in spite of all the laments by some old-timers about how their neighborhood has changed. A few days ago, she was wondering whether there was an Islamic group that might be able to help a Palestinian merchant. Looking for advice, she asked the Muslim men who worked at the deli across the street from her office. “They said it was hard for them, because they were Turkish, not Arab,” she said. “They said they’d ask around. Then, this lady next to me who looked as Irish as I am said, ‘No, this is who you have to call.’ I looked at her. She said her mother was Moroccan. She gave me a lead, and I’m going to follow it.”

Fires and Firefighters
Bronx (NYC)
Shopping and Retail
Area Planning and Renewal
Norwood (NYC)


A Star Who Gave the Mets a Jolt, and Not Just at the Plate

Abstract: It was spring training 1998, a time when the Yankees were ascendant and the Mets were a dull portrait of mediocrity. Todd Hundley, the Mets’ biggest star, was out with an injury, and three little-known catchers — Todd Pratt, Vance Wilson and Tim Spehr — were competing to replace him. On a particularly quiet day in March (they all seemed quiet that spring), a Mets official mentioned that the team yearned to grab Mike Piazza from the Dodgers. Nelson Doubleday Jr., one of the team’s owners, was said to want “someone with pizazz.” Piazza would not join the Mets for another three months, finally coming in a trade with the Florida Marlins, but over the next seven years in New York, he burnished his legend as perhaps the best-hitting catcher ever. On Wednesday came the announcement that he had been elected to the Hall of Fame. Image Mike Piazza hitting a double in Game 3 of the 2000 World Series against the Yankees. Credit Ozier Muhammad/The New York Times During his years in New York, there were times when Piazza was the best player on the planet and the occasional weeks when he struggled to get the ball out of the infield. But in terms of the pizazz that Doubleday coveted, Piazza never disappointed. He was a baseball pinup, a dashing crosstown counterpoint to the Yankees’ corporatism. As careful and staid as they often seemed to be, Piazza was outgoing and unafraid to be different. Yes, he could be grouchy, aloof and selfish at times, but he was never dull. Piazza’s arrival at Shea Stadium was a boon for the Mets and their fans, and certainly for the reporters covering the team, who came to appreciate one of baseball’s more intelligent players. A casual encounter with Piazza at his locker before a game might include a discussion of politics, tax codes or heavy metal music. He always had opinions, and he was not afraid to share them with people he trusted, and he genuinely enjoyed conversing with many writers. He was guarded, to be sure, and there were the days he projected an aura so menacing that everyone — teammates, clubhouse attendants and writers — knew to steer clear. But Piazza’s ability to go deep into that zone and block out a cluttered world also helped him focus at the plate in critical moments of games. And if he sensed you were not out to sensationalize his private life and were interested in discussing unusual things — like how a folded-steel samurai sword worked — he would explain it. He might drop a quote from “Patton,” one of his favorite films, or do a spot-on imitation of an overexcited Formula One race announcer while walking to the team bus. I covered the Mets for all but the last of Piazza’s years with the team and still chuckle at some of his funnier lines. He hated clichés and loved to guess what the back-page headlines of the tabloids would be, even when they were at his expense. If he was in a slump, he would predict, “No Piazza Delivery.” Of course, he loved baseball, and marveled at its history. But what was the value of discussing batting techniques with people who could never relate to hitting a 93-mile-per-hour cut fastball in on the hands? If you knew about the Battle of the Bulge, however, he wanted to hear it. One day in spring training in 2002, Piazza saw me as he drove up in a cobalt blue Audi (a typical car for Piazza; elegant but not flashy). He invited me in and then, to show off his car stereo, blasted “Led Zeppelin II” as we circled the parking lot. There was no way to talk over the din, and I finally had to insist he let me off to go work. When I got out, my ears were ringing. He would often seize on a catchphrase and clamp onto it for months, if not years. Team payroll was a big one. He loved chiding the incessant discussion over team budgets. If you asked him how important the coming series with the Braves was, he would say, in mock seriousness, “Dude, it’s all about payroll.” When his brother attended law school, Piazza learned about tort reform. He never tried to explain it or why he was interested. He just loved to say, “Dude, we need tort reform,” and then he was off to the batting cage. Image Piazza during the 2000 World Series after the Yankees’ Roger Clemens picked up Piazza’s broken bat and threw it in his direction. Credit Barton Silverman/The New York Times He adored Michael Schumacher, the Formula One driver, and invited me to watch a race, showing his love for a sport that was all the things he admired: intense, cosmopolitan and glamorous. Baseball was his path to fame and greatness, but he yearned to be a rock star. During his time with the Mets, he would go to the WNEW-FM radio studio after games and spin records and chat with the disc jockey Eddie Trunk, who considered Piazza as knowledgeable about heavy metal as he was about baseball. In 1999, Piazza brought me to a back room at Shea Stadium to meet the guitarist Zakk Wylde, who shocked fans and team officials with his electrified rendition of “The Star-Spangled Banner.” Piazza loved that. During the 2015 World Series, I saw Piazza in the tunnel at Citi Field after he threw out the first pitch. He said, “Doooood,” in that exaggerated way of his, and made reference to an inside joke. I almost expected him to go out and hit a home run.

Baseball
Baseball Hall of Fame
Mike Piazza


News From the Advertising Industry

Abstract: Accounts ■ Red Lobster placed in review its creative account, which has been handled since 2010 by Grey New York. Spending was estimated at more than $150 million. The company said the review was prompted by the coming spinoff of Red Lobster from its parent, Darden Restaurants, Orlando, Fla. Grey New York — part of the Grey division of the Grey Group, owned by WPP — is not taking part in the review; the agency continues to create campaigns for the Olive Garden and LongHorn Steakhouse divisions of Darden. ■ Anheuser-Busch, St. Louis, part of Anheuser-Busch InBev, expanded its relationship with BBDO North America by awarding the agency the United States creative duties for Bud Light beer varieties like Bud Light Platinum, Bud Light Lime and Bud Light Lime-A-Rita. Spending was estimated at more than $50 million. The account was handled by Translation, New York, which lost its duties for the core Bud Light brand to BBDO in June. Translation will continue to have creative responsibilities for the annual Budweiser Made in America music festival. BBDO North America, part of the BBDO Worldwide division of the Omnicom Group, handles its Anheuser-Busch work from New York and Chicago, where the office is known as Energy BBDO. ■ Rémy Cointreau USA, New York, part of the Rémy Cointreau Group, named Walrus, New York, to introduce in the United States the Bruichladdich single malt whiskies and the Botanist gin. Billings were not disclosed. The agency will work on tasks like print advertising and point-of-sale materials. People ■ Michael McLaren, president at MRM/McCann, New York, part of the McCann Worldgroup division of the Interpublic Group of Companies, was promoted to chief executive, succeeding Bill Kolb, who became chairman and chief executive of the Commonwealth/McCann division of the McCann Worldgroup while remaining chairman of MRM/McCann. ■ Luis DeAnda, general manager at TBWA/Chiat/Day Los Angeles, was promoted to president of the office, succeeding Carisa Bianchi, who is leaving after 24 years at the agency. TBWA/Chiat/Day Los Angeles is part of the TBWA Worldwide division of the Omnicom Group. ■ Drew Panayiotou joined BBDO Atlanta as president and chief executive, succeeding Gill Duff, who is leaving, the agency said. Mr. Panayiotou most recently was senior vice president and chief marketing officer for United States operations at Best Buy. BBDO Atlanta is part of the BBDO North America division of BBDO Worldwide, owned by the Omnicom Group. ■ Ron Perine, senior vice president at Mintz & Hoke, Avon, Conn., was promoted to president, a vacant post, while continuing as chief operating officer. ■ Jay Benjamin joined Saatchi & Saatchi New York, part of the Saatchi & Saatchi unit of the Publicis Groupe, as chief creative officer, succeeding Con Williamson, who left in December to become chief creative officer of the New York office of Erwin Penland, part of the Hill Holliday division of the Interpublic Group of Companies. Mr. Benjamin had been chief creative officer at the New York office of Leo Burnett, also part of the Publicis Groupe. Miscellany ■ Internet advertising revenue in the United States reached a record $42.8 billion last year, up 17 percent from $36.6 billion in 2012, according to a report from the Interactive Advertising Bureau, New York, and PricewaterhouseCoopers U.S. The full-year total benefited from ad revenue in the fourth quarter of $12.1 billion, up 17 percent from the same period of 2012, the report said. The results for 2013 meant that Internet ad revenue surpassed for the first time the annual ad revenue for broadcast television, which according to PricewaterhouseCoopers U.S. data was $40.1 billion last year. Still, Internet ad revenue continued to trail the combined total ad revenue for all types of television, which was $74.5 billion in 2013, according to the data. The outstanding performer for Internet ad revenue last year was mobile, the report said, with a total of $7.1 billion, up 110 percent from $3.4 billion in 2012. Digital video also performed well, according to the report, with total ad revenue last year of $2.8 billion, up 19 percent from $2.3 billion in 2012. ■ Reckitt Benckiser last week suddenly withdrew a new American campaign for its Veet brand of female hair removal products — within about 48 hours of its introduction — after angry complaints from consumers. The campaign, on television and social media, carried the theme “Don’t risk dudeness” and was meant to be humorous, but many comments on Facebook and YouTube called the video clips and commercials unfunny, sexist and even homophobic. The campaign, by the Havas Worldwide division of Havas, suggested that women who do not regularly shave their legs and underarms risk being perceived as hairy men. On the Veet fan page on Facebook , a statement from the brand’s United States marketing team said the ads “made us laugh,” but “not everyone appreciated our sense of humor,” adding, “Our intention was never, ever, to offend anyone, so we decided to rethink our campaign.” The abrupt about-face is another example of how marketers are responding far more quickly than before to outcries about ads because of the immediacy and reach of social media. ■ Analysts and executives are beginning to offer their estimates for the outcome of the upfront market for commercial time being sold by television networks and channels before the start of the 2014-15 season. Brian Wieser, senior research analyst at the Pivotal Research Group, forecast that for the big broadcast networks in prime time, the cost per thousand viewers — known as CPMs and a common way that commercial time is sold — would increase 7 percent from the 2013-14 upfront market. David Bank, managing director for equity research at RBC Capital Markets, predicted increases in CPMs in the mid-to-high single-digit range for both broadcast networks and cable channels. Lou LaTorre, president for advertising sales at Fox Cable Networks, forecast increases in CPMs of 7 to 8 percent for the larger cable channels and 3 to 5 percent for the smaller cable channels. ■ PMK/BNC, New York, is forming a digital agency, Vowel, that will handle tasks related to online audiences like content development and distribution, social media strategy and platform development. Vowel will absorb Spokes, San Francisco, a social marketing agency that is being acquired by PMK/BNC; financial terms were not disclosed. The co-founders of Spokes are joining Vowel: Jeff Diamond becomes senior vice president and Matt Kennerson becomes senior developer. Vowel will be led by Joseph Assad, chief operating officer of the New York office of PMK/BNC, which is part of the Momentum Worldwide division of the McCann Worldgroup, owned by the Interpublic Group of Companies. ■ Facebook and AXA are forming a partnership to collaborate in the digital, social and mobile realms in France and around the world. AXA will receive resources from Facebook, like dedicated innovation and analytics teams, to help the company further develop its brand presence on Facebook, particularly on mobile. Facebook is to evaluate the results of the AXA campaigns on Facebook.com, and its employees will train AXA’s marketing and digital teams. The partnership will help Facebook develop its presence in France. ■ OwenKessel, Johannesburg, was acquired by the Publicis Groupe, Paris. Financial terms were not disclosed. OwenKessel, which has an office in Cape Town, will become part of the Publicis Groupe Africa network. ■ Burns Entertainment, Evanston, Ill., which specializes in matching brands with celebrities, sold a 50 percent stake to Azoff MSG Entertainment, a joint venture between Azoff Music Management and the Madison Square Garden Company. Financial terms were not disclosed. The partnership between Burns and Azoff MSG will be named Burns Entertainment and Sports Marketing. ■ BSUR, Amsterdam, opened an office in São Paulo, Brazil. The agency also has an office in Shanghai. ■ Fred & Company, Brooklyn and Dublin, Ireland, a division of Fred Schuster & Company, was opened by Fred Schuster.

Appointments and Executive Changes
Online advertising
Campaign advertising
advertising,marketing
TV


A Holiday in North Korea Amid Cross-Border Tensions

Abstract: SEOUL, South Korea — North Korea celebrated its biggest annual holiday on Friday — the 99th birthday of the late dictator Kim Il-sung — and despite a few recent signs of an easing of tensions between the Koreas, hopes for rapprochement remained dim. Pro-democracy activists released hydrogen balloons carrying $1 bills and tens of thousands of ant-regime leaflets from a tourist park at Imjingak, just a few miles upwind of North Korea. There was no gunfire although North Korea has threatened to shell Imjingak and other South Korean border towns if the balloon launches continue. “It’s bluffing, just bluffing and empty threats,” said Park Sang-hak, a North Korean defector, as he assembled the balloons and leaflets, helped by his wife, a former captain in the North Korean Army. “ Kim Jong-il is just bluffing.” The North was hardly bluffing when it shelled the South Korean island of Yeonpyeong in November, killing two marines and two civilians. That episode alarmed the South, hardened anti-North Korean sentiments and underscored a new resolve by the government of President Lee Myung-bak . Mr. Lee’s administration has renewed its demand that North Korea apologize for the sinking of the Cheonan , a South Korean frigate, in March 2010. Seoul said the sinking, which killed 46 sailors, was caused by a North Korean torpedo attack. The North has repeatedly denied any involvement and refuses to apologize. “North Korea should make some kind of formal apology over Cheonan,” a senior government official said this week, speaking anonymously because he was not cleared to speak with the media. “Without this apology, it’s almost impossible to make any significant advance in inter-Korean relations.” A warming of inter-Korean relations has nearly become a precondition for the resumption of the so-called six-party talks that focus on the dismantling of the North’s controversial nuclear programs. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is due to arrive in Seoul on Saturday to consult with Mr. Lee and senior diplomats here about the talks. The North, meanwhile, has shown no signs of restraining its nuclear ambition and .a North Korean Foreign Ministry official said recently that Libya was foolish to have surrendered its weapons programs in exchange for better relations with the West. The South Korean government began hardening its stance toward Pyongyang almost immediately after the Yeonpyeong attack. Aid shipments to the impoverished North were shut off, including all humanitarian food deliveries, even during one of the harshest Korean winters on record. The administration only recently approved a small private shipment of tuberculosis medicine and baby food. But a government official stressed this week that it did not represent a loosening of administration policy, noting that the medicine and formula could not benefit the North Korean military. Teams of scientists from both Koreas also met recently and were allowed to form a task force to study Mount Paekdu, a newly cranky volcano in the North that is considered sacred by many Koreans. (Kim Il-sung’s official biography says he was born on Mount Paekdu in 1912.) That agreement hardly suggested a seismic breakthrough. Red Cross teams on both sides of the border have stopped talking, effectively blocking any new reunions between family members separated by the Korean War. Earlier this week, North Korea abruptly threatened to cut a South Korean firm out of its managerial role at a jointly owned resort in the North, a favorite of South Koreans called Diamond Mountain. Despite demands from Pyongyang, Seoul has refused to allow tours to resume there. The tours were halted in 2008 after a South Korean tourist was shot and killed by a guard. A cross-border military hotline has been reactivated at Panmunjom, but low-level military talks broke down in February, with the North blaming the collapse on South Korean “scoundrels” and “traitors.” No meetings have been held since and none are planned. Both sides continue to hold large and showy military exercises; the South and publicized more muscular rules of engagement that would allow airstrikes against the North; and in an important New Year’s message, Pyongyang reiterated its guiding doctrine of songun, with its military having the lead role in state affairs. By all accounts, the national celebration of Kim Il-sung’s birthday — known in the North as the Day of the Sun — was a rather restrained affair this year, as if the regime is saving up for a spectacular bash for next year’s centenary. Mr. Kim’s son and the current leader Kim Jong-il, has promised that North Korea will have become “a strong and prosperous state” by 2012. Among the holiday highlights this year, as usual, were a day off of work, promotions for military officers and small gifts of food for the masses. The festivities also featured a flower show in Pyongyang: 20,000 potted orchids known as kimilsungia.

North Korea
South Korea
Kim Jong Il
Lee Myung-bak


Subtraction of Several Stars Changes the Early N.F.L. Title Math

Abstract: Tom Brady of the New England Patriots is suspended for the season’s first four games, and Le’Veon Bell of the Pittsburgh Steelers is suspended for the first three. Tony Romo of the Dallas Cowboys will have an extended absence because of a back injury, and Teddy Bridgewater of the Minnesota Vikings is expected to miss the entire season with a severe knee injury. Add that list of distinguished-yet-absent players to a season-opening Super Bowl rematch between the Carolina Panthers and Denver Broncos that failed to inspire, and the N.F.L. appears to be entering 2016 with things as wide open as they have been at any point in recent history. The power vacuum will undoubtedly give teams like the Green Bay Packers and the Seattle Seahawks motivation to get off to a hot start, but optimism abounds even in the dark corners of the league like Jacksonville and Oakland, where two franchises that have been laughingstocks for years believe that meticulous planning may finally pay off with fewer moral victories and more actual victories. The action on the field will have to work hard to compete with the drama off it, with concerns about player safety and ugly off-field episodes continuing to harm the league’s reputation. And for the time being, Colin Kaepernick, the backup quarterback of the San Francisco 49ers, has overshadowed all of that by choosing not to stand during the national anthem in order to raise awareness of the treatment of minorities. Broncos linebacker Brandon Marshall, a college teammate of Kaepernick’s, knelt during the anthem on Thursday night, and everyone will be watching in Week 1 to see which players follow suit. But once the anthems are finished, the jockeying for position will begin. The teams, all of which have to believe they are in the hunt, will go about trying to start their seasons 1-0. PRESEASON SUPER BOWL PICK Pittsburgh Steelers over Seattle Seahawks.

Football
Patriots
Tom Brady
Steelers
Le'Veon Bell


Vonn Says She Has Slim Shot of Catching Riesch

Abstract: In three days over the weekend, Lindsey Vonn successfully defended three of her four World Cup ski championships, clinching titles in the downhill, the super-G and the super combined. But on Monday, Vonn acknowledged that her retaining the World Cup overall title, which she has won the last three years, was unlikely. “It’s still possible and I have a chance but not a big one,” said Vonn, who trails Maria Riesch of Germany by 96 points with six races remaining. “I’m not giving up, but it is Maria’s to lose. Four of the races left are technical races, which are her strong suit.” Riesch has skied well in each of the five disciplines of the World Cup circuit but has been especially productive in slalom and giant slalom, races known as the technical events. Riesch is seeking her first overall title as the competition resumes Friday with a slalom race in the Czech Republic. “Maria is having an amazing season,” Vonn said in a conference call from Austria. “It’s hard to gain on someone who is skiing so well all the time.” Vonn has won eight times this season, increasing her career World Cup win total to 41 — fifth among women in World Cup history and the most by an American ski racer. She has won 12 World Cup season-long event championships. And yet, at one point Monday, Vonn referred to this winter as “definitely a tough season.” She added: “Don’t get me wrong, it’s been a really successful season, but there have been some bumps in the road for sure. The world championships were a very hard time for me. I struggled a lot. I’m happy to have gotten back to my normal self.” Several days before last month’s world championships, Vonn sustained a concussion in training. She raced in the super-G, finishing seventh, won a silver medal in the downhill and pulled out of three events. When Vonn described headaches and difficulty concentrating during the events, concern about her health and decision-making created worldwide headlines. With two weeks to reflect on the circumstances of the world championships, Vonn was asked if she would have done anything differently. “Hindsight is 20/20,” she said. “I still think we made decisions that were right at the time. It’s really easy for someone to be an armchair quarterback. I was there, my doctors were there and we made decisions based on the facts we had. Obviously, I know people were concerned, but you know, I have great doctors and great people looking out for me. I’m always very careful.” Vonn, who is 26, says she feels 100 percent. In January, she strained a knee ligament. “It certainly hasn’t been a perfect season or an injury-free one,” she said. “But that’s happened before.” Vonn’s next most challenging task may be getting three crystal globes — the awards for her most recent World Cup event titles — home to Colorado. “They weigh about 20 pounds, and you basically have to wrap them in towels, stick them in a backpack and try to carry them on the plane as hand baggage,” Vonn said. “It’s not easy, frankly. Last year, I had four, and the globe for the overall title is about 50 pounds, too.” Where the crystal globes end up is another conundrum. With a dozen now, there is no one trophy case. “Some globes are above my fireplace in Vail,” Vonn said. “Some are in my room. They don’t really fit in any one place. They’re kind of scattered around the house.”

World Cup (Skiing)
Vonn Lindsey
Riesch Maria
Alpine Skiing
Skiing


Mexico: Humberto Moreira, Party Official, Resigns

Abstract: The president of the party that ruled Mexico for seven decades resigned Friday in the face of a financial scandal that threatened to taint the party’s prospects for reclaiming the presidency next year. Humberto Moreira stepped down from his post at the Institutional Revolutionary Party, saying news media coverage connecting him to a large debt and loan irregularities in his home state, Coahuila, which he governed until January, were hurting the party. The party’s candidate, Enrique Peña Nieto, is the front-runner in most presidential polls, and it is striving to convince voters that it has moved past a history of corruption.

Moreira Humberto
Mexico
Institutional Revolutionary Party
Politics and Government


A Fight Over Fees Unplugs 'The Golden Girls' Network

Abstract: Who would think that reruns of tame sitcoms like "The Golden Girls" could spark a firestorm? But that happened when negotiations broke down between Lifetime Entertainment, which features programming aimed at women and families, and EchoStar, which runs the Dish Network satellite television service. When their contract expired on Dec. 31, EchoStar took Lifetime Television and Lifetime Movie Network off the air, leaving its 12 million subscribers to do without shows like the sitcom starring Betty White as one of four older, unmarried women living in Miami. The two sides have been slugging it out ever since. EchoStar claims that Lifetime wanted a 76 percent rate increase for a three-year contract, which Charles W. Ergen, EchoStar's chairman and chief executive, said was unacceptable and unreasonable. EchoStar has already replaced Lifetime's movie network on one of its tiers with Oxygen, a rival women's network. For its part, Lifetime, one of the more popular women's channels, said that it proposed a modest increase of only a few pennies a month per subscriber, and that EchoStar wanted fees to be cut by one-third. Betty Cohen, the chief executive of Lifetime Entertainment Services, said Mr. Ergen was "known for always trying to squeeze every penny out of people." After EchoStar unplugged Lifetime, the network, which is based in New York, took out full-page newspaper advertisements saying, "Dish doesn't value women," and encouraging Dish subscribers to switch to DirectTV, a rival satellite television company. Some women have held rallies to decry the loss of their favorite shows and to sling barbs at Mr. Ergen, who has a record of public scuffles with television programmers. As in most negotiations, the truth can be found somewhere in the middle. Neither side will provide many details of the offers, but it is likely that the proposed rate increases are not as draconian as portrayed. Neither side is free of blame, either. Like many big TV programmers, Lifetime wants more for its content. Increases in fees charged by programmers have slowed recently because cable and satellite distributors have become bigger and have more clout. But rates are still rising faster than inflation, and distributors like EchoStar, which pass along the increases to consumers, are the ones that take heat from the public and Congress. EchoStar, based in Englewood, Colo., is more willing than others to pick a fight with networks like Lifetime because -- unlike Time Warner Cable, DirecTV and others -- it is not part of a big media conglomerate that also owns programming. So EchoStar has the freedom and incentive to protect its reputation as a low-cost television provider. "In a world of increasingly vertical media companies, EchoStar has no ax to grind except for its own interests as a distributor," said Craig Moffett, who covers the cable industry for Sanford C. Bernstein & Company, an investment research company. "So it's been among the most aggressive at trying to hold down affiliate fees to networks." But EchoStar appears to pick its adversaries carefully. Two years ago, it waged a similar war with Viacom that it ultimately lost, Mr. Moffett said, because Viacom -- which owns CBS, MTV and Nickelodeon -- could push back with great force. By contrast, Lifetime, which is jointly owned by the Walt Disney Company and the Hearst Corporation, controls only two big channels itself. Lifetime's parents, however, could use their leverage to try to break the deadlock; Hearst owns 28 local broadcast stations and Disney owns the ABC and ESPN networks. Despite their positions, neither EchoStar nor Lifetime wants the standoff to continue too long. Lifetime remains immensely popular, as Mr. Ergen has discovered. He admitted that Dish had already "lost a few customers without Lifetime and will continue to lose some," but that "the defections have been minor and not material." And Lifetime does not want to permanently lose Dish's 12 million potential viewers, because that could dilute its advertising rates. Financial reality, in the end, may trump all the corporate posturing.

ECHOSTAR COMMUNICATIONS CORP
LIFETIME TELEVISION
TELEVISION


Chinese Court Sentences 3 Uighurs to Death

Abstract: BEIJING — A Chinese court in the northwest region of Xinjiang has sentenced to death three men who were convicted of trying to blow up a commercial airliner in June in what the state media described as an act of religious-inspired extremism. The three men, and a fourth who was given a life sentence on Tuesday for cooperating with authorities, are ethnic Uighurs , a Turkic-speaking minority that practices Islam and has long bridled at Chinese rule. The men, from the oasis city of Hotan, reportedly attempted to hijack a Tianjin Airlines flight and ignite explosives but were subdued by the passengers and crew, the official Xinhua news agency reported. Two other participants injured during the in-flight scuffle died in custody “despite receiving medical treatment,” it said. The report said the defendants did not dispute the allegations in court. Uighur exile groups condemned the convictions, saying they were the product of an unfair trial that turned on confessions extracted through torture. The World Uighur Congress, based in Germany, said the men were not able to choose their own lawyers and the trial was closed to the public. “These types of incidents and the convictions foment further discontent among the Uighur people,” Rebiya Kadeer, the group’s president, said in a statement. According to the accounts published in the state media, the six men stood up midflight, shouted “religious extremist slogans,” and then attacked the cockpit door with a pair of crutches that had been sharpened at the ends. Their effort to light the explosives failed. The reports did not include a description of the explosives or how the men smuggled them through China ’s rigorous passenger-screening process. The three men sentenced to death on Tuesday were Musa Yusuf, Arsdikali Yimin and Omar Yimin; a fourth, Alimu Musa, received a life sentence after he showed “a good attitude in admitting his crimes,” Xinhua said. Beijing, alarmed by a spate of Uighur attacks on the police and Chinese migrants from the east, has bolstered economic development in Xinjiang, but it has also employed heavy-handed tactics in an effort to pacify the region. Since 2009, Chinese courts have issued numerous death sentences to Uighur defendants , including more than two dozen implicated in rioting that year in Urumqi, the regional capital, that claimed nearly 200 lives, most of them Han Chinese. In the aftermath, overseas groups say, an unknown number of Uighurs died at the hands of the police while in custody.

China
Uighurs (Chinese Ethnic Group)
Hijacking
Airlines and Airplanes
Sentences (Criminal)
Xinjiang (China)


Low-Wage Workers Are Finding Poverty Harder to Escape

Abstract: CHATTANOOGA, Tenn. — At 7 in the morning, they are already lined up — poultry plant workers, housekeepers, discount store clerks — to ask for help paying their heating bills or feeding their families. And once Metropolitan Ministries opens at 8 a.m., these workers fill the charity’s 40 chairs, with a bawling infant adding to the commotion. From pockets and handbags they pull out utility bills or rent statements and hand them over to caseworkers, who often write checks — $80, $110, $150 — to patch over gaps in meeting this month’s expenses or filling the gas tank to get to work. Just off her 10 p.m. to 6 a.m. shift, Erika McCurdy needed help last month with her electricity and heating bill, which jumped to $280 in January from the usual $120 — a result of one of the coldest winters in memory. A nurse’s aide at an assisted living facility, Ms. McCurdy said there were many weeks when she couldn’t make ends meet raising her 19-year-old son and 7-year-old daughter. “There’s just no way, making $9 an hour as a single parent with two children, that I can live without assistance,” said Ms. McCurdy, 40, a strong-voiced, solidly built Chattanooga native. She was so financially stretched, she said, that she and her daughter often sneaked into her son’s high school football games free during halftime because she couldn’t afford the $6 tickets. (She proudly noted that her son, Charles, had made the All State football team.) As for her daughter Jer’Maya, who mimics Beyoncé’s every move on her mother’s iPhone, Ms. McCurdy said, “She’d love to take ballet and piano lessons, but there’s no way I can afford that.” Having worked as a nurse’s aide for 15 years, Ms. McCurdy has been among the nearly 25 million workers in the United States who make less than $10.10 an hour — the amount to which President Obama supports increasing the minimum wage. Of those workers, 3.5 million make the $7.25 federal minimum wage or less. And like many of them, Ms. McCurdy hasn’t been able to rely on steady full-time hours — she has often been assigned just 20 hours a week. Even if she worked full time year-round, her $9 hourly wage would put her below the poverty threshold of $19,530 for a family of three. Climbing above the poverty line has become more daunting in recent years, as the composition of the nation’s low-wage work force has been transformed by the Great Recession, shifting demographics and other factors. More than half of those who make $9 or less an hour are 25 or older, while the proportion who are teenagers has declined to just 17 percent from 28 percent in 2000, after adjusting for inflation, according to Janelle Jones and John Schmitt of the Center for Economic Policy Research. Today’s low-wage workers are also more educated, with 41 percent having at least some college, up from 29 percent in 2000. “Minimum-wage and low-wage workers are older and more educated than 10 or 20 years ago, yet they’re making wages below where they were 10 or 20 years ago after inflation,” said Mr. Schmitt, senior economist at the research center. “If you look back several decades, workers near the minimum wage were more likely to be teenagers — that’s the stereotype people had. It’s definitely not accurate anymore.” In Chattanooga, the prevalence of low-wage jobs has contributed to the high poverty rate: 27 percent of the city’s residents live below the poverty line, compared with 15 percent nationwide. Women head about two-thirds of the city’s poor households, and 42 percent of its children are poor, nearly double the rate statewide. “The face of poverty in this community is women, especially women of color,” said Valerie L. Radu, a professor of social work at the University of Tennessee, Chattanooga. This city was not always a magnet for low-wage jobs. For much of the last century, the city, which hugs the Tennessee River, was a manufacturing hub with dozens of apparel factories, textile mills and metal foundries. During the last quarter of the 20th century, almost all the factories and foundries were shuttered, and with them disappeared thousands of manufacturing jobs that had once lifted workers, even ones without high school degrees, into the middle class or to the cusp of it. In their place have come thousands of service-sector jobs: at the aquarium and Imax theater built to lure tourists and at hotels, nursing homes, big-box stores, brew pubs, fast-food restaurants, beauty salons and hospitals. Discount stores dot the landscape, including a Family Dollar downtown near the upscale Bluewater Grille, reflecting how much American cities have experienced a hollowing-out of the middle class. “Chattanooga has a twofold problem: the low level of educational attainment and the traditional jobs that these people move into have largely disappeared,” said Matthew N. Murray, an economist at the University of Tennessee. Just 23 percent of Tennessee adults have a bachelor’s degree. JeraLee Kincaid, 23, is an $8.50-an-hour cashier who works at the checkout booth at a parking garage next to the Marriott Courtyard hotel downtown. A solid student in high school, Ms. Kincaid, who lives with her mother, planned to study computer programming in college, but instead her family decided that she needed to help pay the medical bills of a 5-year-old niece who has leukemia. “She can’t eat, talk or walk by herself,” said Ms. Kincaid. She says she feels stuck, but also grateful that her boss is trying to help find her a scholarship to attend college. When Volkswagen opened a $1 billion assembly plant in 2011, 80,000 people applied for 2,000 jobs paying an average of $19.50 an hour. Many low-wage workers, like Ms. McCurdy — a high school dropout who later obtained her high school equivalency diploma — would have loved to work there, but they faced difficulty mastering the math tests given for jobs that involve advanced machinery. “We understand that more individuals have to get some kind of higher education degree or certificate to have a chance in this world,” said Chattanooga’s mayor, Andy Berke. “We don’t want the South to be a place where businesses go to find low-wage, low-education jobs. That’s a long-term problem that midsized cities in the South face.” Here as well as elsewhere, a college degree cannot guarantee a good job. Landon Howard graduated from the University of Tennessee campus here four years ago with a bachelor’s degree in social work, but has been unable to find a job in that field. Instead he is a prep cook at the trendy Tupelo Honey Cafe. Often scheduled for just 15 to 20 hours a week at $9.50 an hour, he usually takes home less than $200 a week. “I’ve had to move back in with my parents,” Mr. Howard said. His most urgent concern is his lack of dental insurance. “One of my teeth is cracked,” he said. “There’s a big gaping hole. I don’t know if I’m going to lose it.” Ms. McCurdy, as a parent in a modest income bracket, would not usually be eligible for the state’s Medicaid program, although her children would, but she was accepted because of a heart condition requiring costly medications. Her family has had to make many sacrifices since she was laid off in 2012 from her job as a full-time nurse’s assistant in the emergency room of Memorial Hospital. Her fall to $9 an hour at the assisted living facility from $13.75 at the hospital forced her to give up a 2,000-square-foot home in Harrison, a local suburb, “which is beautiful, and you have better schools,” she said. “It was a good life,” she added. “You didn’t have to worry about violence or anyone breaking in.” After being laid off, “I realized I couldn’t afford to stay in a house where the rent was $625 a month,” she said. So she found a $400-a-month, 1,100-square foot house in Brainerd, known for its gangs and violence. “I stay in at night,” she said. “I put bars on the windows.” Image Nick Mason, 34, and his two children live with his parents in Hixson, Tenn. Divorce pulled him from school for a $9-an-hour job. Credit Billy Weeks for The New York Times The new house has two modest bedrooms, a largely unfurnished living room, a bathroom and a small shotgun kitchen “where I got to move the table when my son gets up from dinner,” she said. “Imagine being in a two-bedroom place with a 6-2, 280-pound boy and a little girl. Me and my little girl share a room.” They also share a bed, but Jer’Maya keeps her dolls, books and clothes in Charles’s room, among his footballs and athletic gear. Ms. McCurdy receives $400 a month in food stamps. Without it, she said, “we wouldn’t be eating.” Still, Ms. McCurdy worries about her children’s future. “I have a son that’s graduating in May,” she said. “He’s looking at college. My heart is pounding 99 miles per hour. If he goes on full scholarship, I’ll still need to support him — how to pay his cellphone bill, how to pay for transportation and food during vacations.” Her February utility bill just arrived and it stunned her: $320. She may again turn to Metropolitan Ministries for help, although she says she hopes the $3,000 or so she expects to receive from the earned-income tax credit will help her pay that bill — and also buy a new living room couch. Rebecca Whelchel says she has seen big changes in the clientele since she became the executive director of Metropolitan Ministries eight years ago. “It used to be that folks came in with a single issue — it was like, ‘I have to buy a new tire because my tire blew out,’ or, ‘I’m short on my electrical bill,’ ” Ms. Whelchel said. “Now they come in with a rubber band around a bunch of bills and problems. Everything is wrong. Everything is tangled with everything else.” At age 34, Nick Mason earns $9 an hour as an assistant manager for a Domino’s, overseeing a crew of six. “I don’t think $9 is fair — I’ve been working in the pizza business for 19 years, since I was 15,” he said. He attended the University of Tennessee, Chattanooga, studying to become a registered nurse, but he dropped out as a sophomore when his marriage fell apart. He returned to work full time, and he and his children moved in with his parents in the suburb of Hixson. “I just wish we could have our home, but I can’t afford to,” said Mr. Mason, father of 7-year-old Halle and 5-year-old Eli. “That’s what the kids keep asking for.” “We’ve had to sacrifice a lot of things,” he continued. “I’d love nothing more than to give them what they deserve. As a single father, it’s impossible. I put my kids in karate about a year ago. They loved it, but I got to the point where it was a choice between paying for a cellphone or karate, and as a manager, I need a cellphone for people to keep in touch with me.” Mr. Mason has heard the criticisms: Stop complaining about your pay; just go back to school and that way you’ll find a better-paying job. “I would love to go back to school,” he said. “It’s easy for people to say that because they haven’t been in my shoes. I’m already busy every minute of the day. I already don’t get to see my kids enough. I doubt I’ll be able to afford school, and I don’t know where I would find the time.” His big hope is to be promoted to run a Domino’s, which might mean earning $15 an hour. Ms. McCurdy, who applied for two dozen jobs this winter, delivered good news with a big smile. She was offered a job as a full-time nurse’s aide on the transition medical floor at Erlanger Health System, a hospital. “They’re paying me $10.64,” she said, an improvement over the $9 an hour she had been earning. “That gives me a little room to breathe.”

Jobs
Wages and salaries
Poverty
Chattanooga Tennessee
Minimum wage