A Century-Old Landmark of the Everglades Confronts the Possible End of the Road

Abstract: CHOKOLOSKEE ISLAND, Fla. — The Seminole medicine man climbed the steep wooden stairs to the Ted Smallwood Store and shuffled past the counter used to measure raccoon hides, past the Jeris Hair Tonic bottles, the Sloan’s Liniment for aches and Dr. Gunn’s mid-19th-century “Home Book of Health.” The shaman’s visit was unbidden, but he got straight to work. He climbed back down the stairs, took out a cluster of herbs and sprinkled them outside the historic dry goods store, which is now a museum. Once inside again, he asked the owners to keep the herbs safe; they were placed in an old fruit can, then tucked away on a shelf. “This is medicine to protect the store from bad things, and this is to drive the neighbors next door away,” the shaman told the owners, in a scene reminiscent of life here a century ago. Then, on that scorching day three months ago, he got in his vehicle and drove away from the Smallwood store, a place his ancestors had frequented by canoe to set up camp for a few days and start trading: hides for flour, egret plumes for sugar. In the rearview mirror, the shaman left behind a tangled, three-year-old legal brawl. On paper, the fight is prosaic: It centers on four acres of waterfront property owned by a developer, Florida Georgia Grove; the company’s push to refurbish and build on the land next to the museum; and a pivotal dispute over the ownership of the road leading to Smallwood’s, which slices inconveniently through the middle of the developer’s property. Without an ample road leading to Smallwood’s, the museum — the same general store, now suspended in time, that her grandfather opened in the early 1900s — will struggle to stay open, said the owner of the museum, Lynn Smallwood McMillin. But the feud runs deeper on this Gulf Coast island-speckled stretch of the Everglades known as the Last Frontier: It is about protecting the remnants of history, the kind steeped in the grit, the survival and the long-ago code of lawlessness forged by Florida crackers, the so-called early settlers in these parts. And while clashes over land in Florida are common — usually focused on how to profit from it or preserve it — it is not every day that a medicine man pays a friendly call to a plaintiff in a lawsuit. But then the Ted Smallwood Store and museum, standing sentinel over Florida’s past on the southwest coast, is no ordinary place. “This is not a museum where you reproduce history,” said Ms. Smallwood McMillin, who grew up on the island and turned the place into a family-owned nonprofit museum in 1989. “It’s where history happened.” Reaching back to the turn of the last century at the Ted Smallwood Store, which opened in 1906, does not require great imagination. The first property in Collier County to land on the National Register of Historic Places, it looks scarcely different from when the building rose on Chokoloskee Bay in 1917, after Mr. Smallwood moved the store out of his house. Image The Ted Smallwood Store displays dolls of Seminoles in the shop and museum. Seminoles conducted trade at the store. Credit Scott McIntyre for The New York Times Standing on stilts to avoid floodwaters, the shotgun shack that houses the store is pretty much as Mr. Smallwood left it when he died in 1950. It is lined with the goods Mr. Smallwood sold or traded, many dating to the early 1900s — bottles of obscure medicine, cheery Pepsi signs, faded Cuban sugar sacks and dental floss in tiny cans. Animal hides sit in a separate room. The island’s history is old, at least by southwest Florida standards. It is where the Calusa Indians, who were wiped out in the 1700s, lived, layering the land with mounds of shells and sand that remain today to help protect it from storms. Until 1956, the only way to get to Smallwood’s from outside the island was by boat; visitors pulled up to its dock. A small local road — the one at issue — was carved out in the early 1900s, but it did not connect the island to the mainland. The store was the hub of the community: Settlers, farmers, hermits, Native Americans, fugitives, bootleggers, drug smugglers and travelers all stopped there. It was the only post office for miles, and people picked up mail there until 1973. The Seminoles, who trusted Mr. Smallwood, conducted trade; fishermen repaired nets in the shade. Most famously, it was the spot where, on Oct. 24, 1910, Edgar Watson, an outlaw and fearsome sugar cane plantation owner with a reputation for killing instead of paying his workers, was gunned down by a group of fed-up residents. The shootout was richly told by the writer Peter Matthiessen in “Killing Mister Watson,” the first part of an award-winning trilogy about the man. Image Lynn Smallwood McMillin the granddaughter of the founder of the Ted Smallwood Store. Credit Scott McIntyre for The New York Times Mosquito-infested, overrun by gators, snakes and guns, stewed in humidity and lashed by storms, it was not a place for the fainthearted. But with the Everglades’ Ten Thousand Islands at its doorstep, the appeal to modern developers is obvious. Dolphins leap in bay waters teeming with snook and tarpon, manatees rest nearby, spoonbills and ospreys fly overhead. The people here may be mostly cash poor, but they are landscape rich. “This store is the point of convergence for everything that is cracker and the history of Florida,” said Woody Hanson, a real estate consultant and fifth-generation Florida cracker who is advising Ms. Smallwood McMillin during mediation. “It’s a story we have to guard and protect. And guess what? That story lies in this building.” Since 2011, visits to the museum by busloads of tourists and students have dipped as the legal battle over the road has flared up, the owner said. The crux of the fight is this: Florida Georgia Grove said — and the Collier County attorney agreed — that the road leading to Smallwood’s, Mamie Street, is a private one on Grove property. The developer wants to do away with the road because it bisects the land. Early on, in 2010, Ms. Smallwood McMillin worked harmoniously with the developer, applying to the Army Corps of Engineers for a permit to build another road to the store. But the permit, which was a necessity because mangroves would be affected, was denied because Mamie Street was already there. In 2011, the developer dug up a portion of Mamie Street, expecting that the Army Corps would then approve the permit. “Unfortunately, that did not happen,” W. James Kelly, a lawyer for Florida Georgia Grove, said in an email. Image Gary McMillin, the husband of Lynn Smallwood McMillin, gives boat tours of the islands surrounding the Ted Smallwood Store. Credit Scott McIntyre for The New York Times “We haven’t done anything that we are not permitted to do,” Mr. Kelly said in an interview. “We have just been vilified.” But the company’s move to fence in and dig up part of the road impeded access to the museum, Ms. Smallwood McMillin said, forcing her to close for six months in 2011. Ms. Smallwood McMillin and the county, seeking to have the road declared public, sued, and a judge ordered the Grove to fix the road. It did so, although fencing remains. Without a viable road, the museum cannot thrive, she added. Angry over the turn of events, she parted ways with the Grove. The street closing also infuriated a community that has long been suspicious of outsiders’ motives. Supporters rallied. “It was like dropping a stone in a lake and the rings start reverberating,” Mr. Hanson said. “They dropped a stone next to the Smallwood Store.” Given the area’s folklore, one supporter, Clyde Butcher, a prominent environmental photographer, said he was “surprised the people in Chokoloskee haven’t shot the guy who did it — that road has been there nearly 100 years.” In April, tempers flared again over whether the Grove had disturbed Indian mounds when it removed vegetation and dredge fill. An archaeologist hired by the company said no culturally significant materials had been upset or removed. The Army Corps of Engineers is investigating the matter. “Smallwood Store is the last of its kind; there should be a little more public respect for it,” said J. Robert Houghtaling, a Florida musician who wrote a song about the fight. “We don’t want to read about what it used to be like after it’s gone.”

Everglades
Historic preservation
Roads and Traffic
Lawsuits
Army Corps of Engineers
Florida Georgia Grove
Ted Smallwood Store


Chávez Threatens to End Oil Exports to U.S. in Exxon Feud

Abstract: CARACAS, Venezuela — President Hugo Chávez threatened Sunday to halt oil exports to the United States if the oil giant Exxon Mobil succeeds in freezing billions of dollars of foreign petroleum assets controlled by Venezuela. The warning ratchets up a fierce legal dispute between Venezuela and Exxon after Mr. Chávez’s move to exert greater state control over the nation’s oil industry last year. Rather than submitting to Venezuela’s terms, Exxon withdrew from a major production venture, intensifying the feud. “The bandits of Exxon Mobil will never rob us again,” Mr. Chávez said in comments broadcast Sunday on his weekly television program. He accused Exxon, one of the largest publicly traded oil companies, and the United States of mounting a conspiracy to destabilize Venezuela. “I speak to the American empire, because that’s the master,” Mr. Chávez said. “Continue, and you will see that we won’t send one drop of oil to the empire of the United States.” Referring to Exxon, he said, “They are imperialist bandits, white-collar criminals, corruptors of governments, overthrowers of governments.” Venezuela’s government has been seething since Exxon recently won orders in British, Dutch and American courts freezing as much as $12 billion in Venezuelan oil assets abroad — refineries and other oil-related infrastructure that Venezuela owns. Venezuela vowed to overturn the decisions before arbitration over Exxon’s attempts to win compensation for its nationalized oil project. “We have no comment,” said Margaret Ross, a spokeswoman for Exxon, based in Irving, Tex., after Mr. Chávez spoke. Mr. Chávez has repeatedly threatened to cut off oil supplies to the United States, but has never done so. In fact, despite a deterioration in political relations, the United States remains Venezuela’s top trading partner. Venezuela is the fourth-largest supplier of crude oil to the United States, sending 1.2 million barrels a day to American refineries, according to the Energy Information Administration in Washington. The dispute with Exxon is focusing attention on Petróleos de Venezuela, the national oil company, which Mr. Chávez has purged of his political opponents and reconfigured to finance social welfare projects. The company faces steeper borrowing costs after the price of its bonds plunged by 3 percent on Friday, to 66.75 cents on the dollar. Declining oil production at Petróleos de Venezuela has allowed other countries in the OPEC oil cartel, notably Saudi Arabia, to gain a greater share of the market in meeting the expanding global demand for oil. The problems at Petróleos de Venezuela, a major revenue source for Mr. Chávez, are occurring amid growing discontent over food shortages and galloping inflation. The tension with Exxon was just one of Mr. Chávez’s subjects on Sunday. He also accused the United States and neighboring Colombia of bringing paramilitary squads to Venezuela to traffic in weapons and cocaine. And he said his political opponents were plotting to “reconvert Venezuela into a North American colony.”

Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries


Letter Bomb Sent to German Bank Chief, Officials Say

Abstract: BERLIN — German authorities said Thursday that a suspicious envelope intercepted by Deutsche Bank employees was a letter bomb apparently sent by an Italian anarchist organization to the bank’s chief executive, Josef Ackermann , one of the most powerful and controversial figures in European banking. In a joint statement the state police in Hessen and the Frankfurt prosecutor’s office said that “initial investigations show that this was a functional letter bomb.” The letter was addressed personally to Mr. Ackermann. Though a native Swiss, Mr. Ackermann is the most prominent banker in Germany, his name synonymous with an industry whose reputation has plummeted since the financial crisis. A spokesman for the state police, Siegfried Wilhelm, said that a letter had been found in which responsibility was claimed by an Italian group called the Informal Anarchist Federation, which has a history of sending letter bombs. Unofficial suspicion had earlier fallen on the Frankfurt offshoot of the Occupy Wall Street movement, which condemned the attempted letter-bombing. Threats on the lives of Deutsche Bank executives are not taken lightly here after the 1989 killing of Alfred Herrhausen , the bank’s chief at the time, in a bomb attack. Suspicions fell on the Red Army Faction terrorist group. According to the statement by the police and prosecutors, employees in the Deutsche Bank mailroom discovered the envelope on Wednesday and, suspicious of its contents, had it X-rayed before contacting the police around midday. Klaus Thoma, a spokesman for the bank, said that employees had alerted the police to a suspicious package but that he would not comment further. The Frankfurt police and specialists from the state police defused the letter bomb. Details on the construction of the bomb were not available for “investigative tactical reasons,” the statement said. Late last year, a package bomb addressed to Chancellor Angela Merkel was intercepted in her office’s mailroom in the midst of a wave of letter bombs in Greece aimed at foreign embassies that was eventually traced to Greek anarchists. Mr. Ackermann is also chairman of the Institute of International Finance , an industry group that has lobbied against regulations that would require higher capital requirements to help prevent future crises. He was also involved in negotiations over write-downs of Greek debt, sometimes called haircuts, for private bond owners. Mrs. Merkel came under scrutiny in 2009 for hosting a dinner party the year before with Mr. Ackermann as a guest. The German news media described the event as a birthday party in Mr. Ackermann’s honor, raising questions about the cozy ties between finance and government. Prosecutors also recently searched the executive offices of Deutsche Bank on suspicion that Mr. Ackermann and other executives gave false testimony in a long-running civil suit related to the 2002 bankruptcy of a German media company. Deutsche Bank has denied any wrongdoing. Mr. Ackermann has announced that he will step down from his post in 2012.

Assassinations and Attempted Assassinations


2011 US Open, Day 3: Roddick Advances With Tough Four-Set Win

Abstract: Andy Roddick arrived at this United States Open without, really, any serious expectations. His hardcourt season was an odd mix of injury and combustion. His status as a Grand Slam contender was slipping, if not already gone. His first-round match, against his fellow American Michael Russell, took place Wednesday in familiar surroundings: Arthur Ashe Stadium, under the lights, with a partisan crowd. This is where, in 2003, Roddick captured the whole tournament. He remains the last American man to do so, and the last to threaten, too, as runner-up in 2006. And this is where Roddick beat Russell, 6-2, 6-4, 4-6, 7-5. Roddick needed nearly three hours to advance, his victory neither quick nor all that convincing. “It was O.K.,” he said. “I got through. I’m still trying to find myself. But I’m O.K. with having to defend another win.” Everything is different now. Roddick has slipped from the top 20 in the rankings for the first time since the summer of 2001. He entered this tournament seeded 21st, three years removed from his last quarterfinal Open run. He turned 29 on Tuesday, too. In an ESPN interview after the match, Roddick seemed, if not angry, then definitely peeved. Of the analysts who lobbed criticism his way this summer, he said their job “just doesn’t take much thought.” Roddick calmed considerably by the time he met reporters, perhaps as part of his Twitter promise to maintain his composure after an embarrassing meltdown in Mason, Ohio. There, he smashed his racket, smacked a ball into the stands and argued with the chair umpire. “Won’t go mental,” he wrote. “Book it.” The problem, though, was not so much that Roddick lost his cool, but why he lost it. In recent weeks, he spoke of the abdominal injury that sidelined him from even practice until two days before that tournament, of his mounting frustration. He said he last played his “best tennis” in April. Not April, earlier this year. The April before that. For a decade, Roddick was the best hope for American men here, and since 2003, he was always seeded ninth or higher. But that landscape is shifting. On Wednesday, the Americans John Isner (seeded 28th), Robby Ginepri, Alex Bogomolov Jr. and Jack Sock won first-round matches, and Mardy Fish, who has succeeded Roddick as the top American, is set for second-round play on Thursday. Roddick, meanwhile, must increasingly rely on guile, competitiveness and his always exceptional serve. He used all three at times against Russell, attacking the net, cutting off angles, even earning his first service break with a backhand winner down the line, a shot hit while skidding across the court. These were some of the subtle changes Patrick McEnroe, general manager of player development for the United States Tennis Association, suggested Roddick needed to implement, effective immediately. Roddick, McEnroe said, needs to position better, to hit the ball earlier and finish points more quickly. To continue to boom serves and play defensively from the baseline would only distance him from the elite, McEnroe reasoned. “There’s a difference between what he’s done and where he is,” McEnroe said. “I’ve been imploring him to change the way he’s playing. I don’t believe he’s done that.” Other Americans have moved in the opposite direction. One is Fish, who shed 30 pounds and entered this tournament seeded eighth. Another is Isner, who secured his 18th win in his last 22 matches Wednesday, outlasting Marcos Baghdatis of Cyprus in four sets. Isner seems primed for a deep run. Beyond the more obvious Americans, there was Sock, the two-time reigning U.S.T.A. Boys’ 18s national champion, who toppled the Frenchman Marc Gicquel, 6-4, 6-3, 1-6, 6-4, and said of the Open atmosphere, “it’s sweet.” His story sounds much like Roddick’s — Nebraska roots, success in juniors. Fittingly, the two will meet in the second round. There was Bogomolov, a 28-year-old who once washed out of professional tennis and landed in Long Island as a teaching pro. Between 2003 and 2008, he floated between No. 97 and No. 220 in the world. He injured his left wrist and needed surgery. He decided if he could no longer win, he would teach. But the game called him to return, the same way it calls Roddick to hold on. Bogomolov bested Steve Johnson, his sometimes doubles partner, to advance to the second round. “I got into the top 100 when I was younger, but I didn’t feel like I knew what I was doing at the time,” Bogomolov said. “I sort of got lucky.” Equally surprising, on the women’s side of the draw, was Christina McHale, another American and basically a local, from Englewood Cliffs, N.J. She did not consider herself lucky. She considers herself good. McHale knocked out Marion Bartoli, the eighth seed, in the second round, 7-6 (2), 6-2, then calmly lifted her arms in celebration. The 21-year-old Irina Falconi, who had not won a match in four Grand Slam appearances before her first-round win here, followed with a 2-6, 6-3, 7-5 upset victory over 14th-seeded Dominika Cibulkova. In the final night match, Maria Sharapova of Russia, the third seed, overpowered Anastasiya Yakimova of Belarus, 6-1, 6-1. After she nearly lost Monday, Sharapova moved easily into the third round. Against Russell, Roddick slowed, battered by mental errors and forehand winners, and lost the third set. He would rally, hold on, and advance, but is far removed from his form in Opens past. “I’m not going to sit here and pretend I’m in championship form right now,” he said. McEnroe said: “I believe he can still do it. But I believe time is running out. I want to see him go out with a bang.” This tournament, of course, would suffice, for McEnroe, for Roddick and for the fans here who have adopted him. All involved, even tennis analysts, hope his strange summer continues well into next week.

Tennis
United States Open (Tennis)
Keys Madison
Soderling Robin
McHale Christina
Zvonareva Vera
Craybas Jill


Parsing Santorum’s Tax-Cut Proposals

Abstract: Election-year tax rhetoric has never been notable for its frankness. A promise to raise someone’s taxes does not seem particularly likely to win that person’s vote, and no one wants to follow in the footsteps of Walter Mondale, the last major-party nominee to propose a general tax increase . But this year has been worse than any campaign I can remember. The most amazing proposal came from Rick Santorum , who lost the Michigan and Arizona primaries to Mitt Romney this week but is ahead in the polls in several states that will vote on Tuesday. He would reduce almost everyone’s taxes. He would slash tax rates for all, his campaign Web site promises, while preserving “deductions for charitable giving, home mortgage interest, health care, retirement savings and children.” He would cut capital gains and dividend tax rates to 12 percent, from 15 percent, and triple the personal deduction for each child. He would repeal the alternative minimum tax . He would cut the corporate tax rate in half, increase the research and development tax credit and set the rate at zero for manufacturers. He would eliminate the estate tax , or the “death tax” in his lexicon. He would eliminate “marriage tax penalties throughout the federal tax code.” The Tax Policy Center in Washington estimated that in one year, 2015, that set of proposals would reduce federal tax revenue by 40 percent, or $1.3 trillion, from what it would be under current law, which assumes the expiration of the Bush tax cuts . But the center estimated that not everyone would pay lower taxes under that proposal. It estimated that 0.3 percent of taxpayers — most of them earning less than $30,000 — would face tax increases. And who would be the losers? Mostly single mothers, it appears. That conclusion is based on a guess by the Tax Policy Center, which says the Santorum campaign declined to comment on it. The campaign did not get back to me either. The “marriage penalty” that Mr. Santorum spoke of hurts two-income couples, which pay more than they would have paid if they were single and earning the same amount. That discourages marriage to some extent. (There is an offsetting marriage bonus, in which one-earner couples can save money by tying the knot, but politicians tend not to get worked up over it.) One group of single people now gets an advantage over other singles. A taxpayer without a spouse, but with dependents, can file as a head of household and save on taxes. The Tax Policy Center concluded that to completely eliminate the marriage tax penalty, the tax code would have to eliminate the special rates for heads of household, since otherwise they would still be worse off if they married. Heads of household can be men or women, of course. But most of them, said Roberton Williams, a senior fellow at the center, are single mothers. The center’s analysis is based solely on Mr. Santorum’s public statements; his campaign declined to discuss the proposals with the group. But since the Tax Policy Center’s estimate was published in January, the Santorum campaign seems to have decided it needed to do something to assuage those who care about deficits. Last week another group, the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, concluded that Mr. Santorum’s proposals would cost the government several hundred billion dollars less than the earlier estimate. The difference came from private assurances given by Santorum aides that he would eliminate other popular tax breaks. “The Santorum campaign identified to C.R.F.B. which tax expenditures they would like to maintain, and they told us they would eliminate all remaining tax expenditures on the individual and corporate side,” Jeffrey Vanke, a senior policy analyst for the committee, told me. If that is correct, Mr. Santorum wants to get rid of tax deductions for state and local property and income taxes. He would end the tax-exempt status of municipal bonds . He would tax the buildup of cash value in life insurance policies. He would tax soldiers on the value of benefits and allowances. At least that is what Mr. Vanke says he was promised. As a result, Mr. Vanke estimates that Mr. Santorum ranks second among the candidates in the amount of tax revenue that he would cut, behind Newt Gingrich, who would among other things eliminate capital gains taxes entirely. The Santorum campaign did not respond to requests for comment. But I would be very surprised if the candidate confirms he wants to raise taxes on soldiers or tax interest on munis. Mr. Santorum’s promises to slash taxes may have gotten under the skin of Mr. Romney, who last week escalated his tax-cut provisions. He called for reducing every tax bracket by 20 percent, so the top rate, now 35 percent, would fall to 28 percent, the same top rate that Mr. Santorum advocates. Mr. Romney claims that a combination of additional economic growth and eliminating unspecified deductions would mean no revenue would be lost. Mr. Santorum seized on the fact that some of Mr. Romney’s cuts would be available only to those earning less than $200,000 a year by accusing him of “just more Obama-style class warfare.” No matter how much talk there is about cutting spending — and the Republican candidates do a lot of it without getting very specific — the government needs to raise more revenue than it is getting now to finance needed operations while reducing deficits. A healthy economy would solve part of the problem, but not all of it. To some deficit hawks, like Maya MacGuineas, the president of the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, the campaign so far has been a disappointment. In tax policy circles, she said, there has been growing agreement that a reform similar to the 1986 Reagan tax reform is needed — cutting rates and eliminating loopholes and deductions. But while that reform was revenue-neutral, she said, this one would need to raise revenue. “We get a lot of details on the fun stuff, and not so much on the hard stuff,” she said of the candidates’ tax proposals. “If we don’t have a real discussion of trade-offs and the kinds of difficult choices we will have to make to address the debt, then we won’t come out of the election with the kind of mandate we need to enact necessary reforms.” Perhaps that is expecting too much of candidates, and it is worth noting that the details of the Reagan plan were disclosed after he won a second term by defeating Mr. Mondale in 1984, not before the election. But that bill was able to pass because legislators were able to work across the aisle and compromise. To say the least, Republicans have shown no desire to work with Democrats since Mr. Obama was elected, and it is hard to imagine that changing next year, no matter who wins the election.

Presidential Election of 2012
Santorum Rick
Federal Taxes (US)
Tax Credits Deductions and Exemptions
Taxation


Oxford-Cambridge Boat Race Protester Disrupts Competition

Abstract: LONDON — It is, in its way, one of Britain ’s great anachronisms: a university boat race steeped in pageantry and tradition with nothing but honor at stake, a moment when old buffers in satin-trimmed blazers can revel in upper-crust camaraderie and pretend that the important things in the world remain much as they were when the race was first run in 1829. But the annual Oxford-Cambridge race along a historic stretch of the Thames in London has become more than a highlight of the sporting calendar. In recent years it has been the occasion for another contest, between those who view it as a grand spectacle and those who condemn it as an emblem of a class- and tradition-bound Britain whose day has passed. Until this year, both contests were generally fought within what the British call the Marquess of Queensberry rules of fair play. To be sure, the boat race has seen sinkings, annulments, at least one dead heat and two crew mutinies, including one 25 years ago by American oarsmen that provided the plotline for the 1996 movie “True Blue.” And every year in recent times, noisy protesters have thrust their banners at the television cameras that broadcast the race and the festive scene on the riverbank to viewers around the world. But in the end, things had always come off peaceably enough. Then came Saturday, when the whole affair ended more in frustration and tears than in celebration. A bit more than halfway down the four-mile course, a bearded Australian in a wetsuit who had posted a 2,000-word essay on the Internet beforehand titled “ Elitism Leads to Tyranny ” jumped into the river and swam directly into the path of the two boats, which were racing neck and neck. The churning oars of the Oxford boat narrowly missed hitting him, but his presence caused sufficient alarm that the race umpire waved a red flag to halt the contest. After a half-hour delay, while the protester was hauled out of the river onto a police launch, the race was restarted where it left off, only to have the two boats’ oars tangle almost immediately afterward. The clash took the tip off one of the Oxford rowers’ oars, leaving the crew with just seven effective oarsman out of the starting eight and allowing Cambridge to post an easy four-and-a-half-length victory. The protester was handcuffed and charged with disturbing public order, and some on the Oxford side complained later that the umpire should have ordered a second restart. But that was not the end of the day’s drama. In the commotion at the finish line, where the Oxford cox — a 24-year-old British criminology student named Zoe de Toledo, the only woman in the race — shouted in furious protest at the race umpire’s ruling that she had caused the clash of oars by steering too close to the Cambridge boat, minutes went by before anybody realized that Oxford’s leading oarsman had collapsed in his seat in the boat’s bow. Medics worked to aid the oarsman — Alex Woods, a 27-year-old postgraduate medical student — for half an hour, giving him oxygen and then putting him in an ambulance to Charing Cross Hospital, where he was kept overnight. Doctors said he would recover. The usual postrace celebrations were abandoned, with no trophy presentation, no speeches and no Champagne. And the Sunday newspapers in Britain wrote with alarm about the risks of the “demonstration effect” of the Australian’s protest for the Olympic Games in London this summer. Olympic officials plan to deploy 25,000 guards, soldiers and police officers to protect the games, but their focus has been mainly on preventing terrorist attacks; security experts say that it may be a great deal harder to prevent, say, one ticketed spectator with a cause from running onto the track to disrupt a showcase event like the men’s 1,500 meters. Such concerns may play a role in how the British courts handle the boat race protester, legal experts say; he may get a much stiffer jail sentence than most demonstrators who cause no physical harm. For the moment, though, in the clubs and pubs of Britain, the talk about Saturday’s fiasco has turned largely to the old debate about the boat race. Should it be the subject of so much hoopla and media attention in a contemporary Britain where the old issues of elitism and class privilege have surged anew to the forefront of the political debate? Recession, unemployment and swollen public debt have been met with harsh austerity measures by the government of Prime Minister David Cameron, a wealthy Conservative educated at Eton College — a byword for class privilege — who went on to graduate from Oxford and marry the stepdaughter of a viscount. The Labour opposition has made impressive gains in recent opinion polls by casting the Cameron government’s spending cuts and tax increases as an assault on Britain’s have-nots by an out-of-touch, classbound millionaire elite. The boat race episode was not without its paradoxes. The quintessentially British character of the race does not deter the two sides — the “light blues” of Cambridge and the “dark blues” of Oxford — from recruiting foreign muscle; of the 18 competitors this year, 11 were non-Britons, including 5 Americans. Meanwhile, the anti-elitism protester in the wetsuit — Trenton Oldfield, 35 — is himself the product of an elite British university, though one with a long list of prominent leftists as alumni: the London School of Economics. In his blog posting, Mr. Oldfield compared himself to Emily Davison, a suffragette who died after throwing herself in front of a racehorse owned by King George V in 1913, and he said that in his plan to disrupt the boat race with “guerrilla tactics,” his only fear was “not swimming fast enough to get into the right position.” He complained in the posting that the banks of the Thames between the well-to-do London districts of Kew and Chiswick — roughly the stretch covered by the university boats before he ambushed them — had been entrenched as “a site where elitists and those with elitist sympathies have come together” since the 19th century to “reboot their shared culture in the public realm.” It was left to an American graduate of Yale who rowed in the Oxford boat on Saturday — William Zeng, a 22-year-old Rhodes scholar from Great Falls, Va., who is studying for a doctorate in computer science — to produce one of the most withering ripostes, in a string of Twitter messages that Mr. Zeng posted shortly after the race. Addressing himself to Mr. Oldfield, he wrote that he had considered what the Australian’s motive might be after having “missed your head with my blade,” and added, “No matter what you say your cause may be, your actions speak too loudly for me to hear you.” “You were protesting the right of 17 young men and one woman to compete fairly and honorably, to demonstrate their hard work and desire in a proud tradition,” Mr. Zeng wrote. “You, who would make a mockery of their dedication and their courage, are a mockery of a man.”

Rowing
Demonstrations Protests and Riots
Oldfield Trenton
London (England)
Cambridge University
Oxford University
Boats and Boating
Great Britain
Colleges and Universities


The Lives of Alexander Grothendieck, a Mathematical Visionary

Abstract: Alexander Grothendieck, who died on Nov. 13 at the age of 86, was a visionary who captivated the collective psyche of his peers like no one else. To say he was the No. 1 mathematician of the second half of the 20th century cannot begin to do justice to him or his body of work. Let’s resist the temptation to assign a number to a man of numbers. There are deeper lessons to be learned from this extraordinary human being and his extraordinary life. In mathematics, he revolutionized the field known as algebraic geometry. Ever since Descartes, we have known that geometric shapes can be described by equations. When we write “x 2 + y 2 = 1,” we wish into existence a perfect circle. Indeed, each solution of this equation is nothing but a pair of coordinates, x and y, of a point of the unit circle on a plane. This is an example of an algebraic equation, one that involves only products of powers of coordinates, such as x 2 or x 3 y 5 . Since the number of coordinates can be arbitrarily large, such equations may be quite daunting. But they are fundamental, and many can be found in nature. Algebraic geometry is about them and the geometric shapes, or spaces, they describe. Right away, one encounters a problem. The above equation gives rise to a circle only if we consider the solutions in the domain of real numbers. But there are many other domains, such as the complex numbers (which involve an imaginary number, the square root of minus 1). One can show that the solutions of the same equation in complex numbers are points of an entirely different space; namely, a plane with one point removed. For another domain, the space of solutions could be a family of circles of different sizes: Visualize a living and breathing circle evolving in time. Thus, for a given equation we get a whole zoo of spaces. How are they related to one another and to the equation itself? Which came first, the equation or the space? These questions had perplexed mathematicians for centuries. Grothendieck’s genius was to recognize that there is a “being” hiding behind a given algebraic equation (or a system of equations) called a scheme. The spaces of solutions are mere projections, or shadows of this scheme. Moreover, he realized that these schemes inhabit a rich world. They “interact” with one another, can be “glued” together and so on. Image Alexander Grothendieck revolutionized the field known as algebraic geometry. Credit Erika Ifang The concept of a scheme was one of the cornerstones in the gargantuan effort led by Grothendieck to rebuild this vast subject. The thousands of pages meticulously composed over a decade starting in the late 1950s became commonly known as EGA and SGA , the abbreviations of their French titles. Monumental like Euclid’s “Elements,” they have not been surpassed to this day in clarity, generality, technical mastery and conceptual perfection. They are the fruits of endless discussions, 12-hour seminars, solitary thinking — of work, in a word, for that’s what it takes: the obsessive, sustained search for truth in its most universal and abstract form. With no compromises, ever. As Pierre Deligne, a former student of Grothendieck’s and himself a mathematical maestro, put it in Le Monde, Grothendieck “had to understand things from the most general possible point of view,” and once he achieved that, everything “became so clear that proofs seemed almost trivial.” Perhaps that’s why Grothendieck’s ideas “penetrated the unconscious of mathematicians.” Though one might ask if there are any real-world applications of his work, the more important question is whether having found applications, we also find the wisdom to protect the world from the monsters we create using these applications. Alas, the recent misuse of mathematics does not give us much comfort. For example, according to published reports , the National Security Agency inserted a back door in a widely used encryption algorithm based on “elliptic curves” — mathematical objects illuminated by Grothendieck’s research. Though that specific algorithm was developed much later, Grothendieck recognized the potential dangers of such misuse of math and sounded the alarm. He was incensed when he learned that IHES, the mathematics institute near Paris where he worked, received funding from the French Ministry of Defense. In protest, he resigned from the institute in 1970 at the height of his power. He had hoped that his colleagues would follow him, but none did. So began his estrangement from the academic community, which he lambasted as lacking ethics and integrity. He refused to go to Moscow in 1966 to collect his Fields Medal, the highest award in mathematics, to protest prosecution of dissidents in the Soviet Union. He declined the prestigious Crawford Prize in 1988, calling the scientific world “fundamentally unhealthy.” He devoted himself to ecological issues long before it became fashionable, helping to found the group Survivre et Vivre, “an international movement for the survival of humanity,” in 1970. Reading the group’s newsletter , one can see Grothendieck confronting the world’s ills with his signature rigor and passion. He fought against the injustice he saw, accepting no compromises. A party of one, he was unafraid to be himself and to speak his truth. The man who had advanced mathematics in the most profound ways did not believe that math was the answer to everything. He taught us that life is more valuable than any equation.


Israeli Strike Reportedly Hits United Nations School in Gaza

Abstract: GAZA — Israeli mortar shells killed as many as 40 Palestinians , among them women and children, outside a United Nations school in Gaza on Tuesday where they were taking refuge in the 11th day of the conflict. The Israeli military contended that Hamas fighters had fired mortars from the school compound, and United Nations officials called for an independent inquiry into the episode. The rising civilian death toll in crowded Gaza heightened international urgency to end the combat. American and European diplomats said it was highly likely that Prime Minister Ehud Olmert of Israel would travel to Egypt on Wednesday to discuss a cease-fire. Israel has said it will not end the operation until it has crushed Hamas’s ability to fire rockets into its civilian areas. Meanwhile, Hamas continued to fire rockets, despite the large numbers of Israeli troops on the fourth day of the ground operation in Gaza. One rocket reached farther than ever into Israeli territory, only 20 miles from Tel Aviv, and wounded an infant. With another day of gory news reports inflaming the Arab world, Israel contended that the deaths at the school, at the Jabaliya refugee camp north of Gaza City, demonstrated Hamas’s callousness toward the lives of Palestinian civilians. The Israeli Defense Forces said that their troops had fired several mortar shells near the school in response to mortar fire from the school compound. “They shot back to save their own lives,” said Ilan Tal, an Israeli military spokesman and a brigadier general in the reserves. Among the dead, the military said in a statement, were “Hamas terrorist operatives and a mortar battery cell.” The military identified two Hamas operatives, Imad Abu Asker and Hassan Abu Asker, as having been killed. A young witness from Jabaliya, Ibrahim Amen, 16, said that he had seen one of the militants, whom he identified as Abu Khaled Abu Asker, in the area of the school right before the attack. Ibrahim said he saw the militant after he answered calls for volunteers to pile sand around the camp “to help protect the resistance fighters.” Ibrahim went to pile sand near the school with his brother, Iyad, 20, who was then injured by the Israeli mortar fire. United Nations officials were unable to immediately determine the accuracy of the Israeli military’s statements. Christopher Gunness, a spokesman for the United Nations Relief and Works Agency, which offers assistance to registered Palestinian refugees and runs the school, said his organization was calling for an independent inquiry. “Anyone on either side of the confrontation lines found to have violated international humanitarian law must be brought to justice,” Mr. Gunness said. The night before, the United Nations said, three Palestinian men were killed in an Israeli attack on another United Nations school for refugees in Gaza. “These attacks by Israeli military forces which endanger U.N. facilities acting as places of refuge are totally unacceptable and must not be repeated,” the United Nations secretary general, Ban Ki-moon, said in a statement. “Equally unacceptable are any actions by militants which endanger the Palestinian civilian population.” Speaking to reporters at Shifa Hospital in Gaza City on Tuesday, hours before the strike at the Jabaliya school compound, John Ging, the chief of operations for the United Nations Relief and Works Agency, called the Gaza violence a “horrific tragedy” and a result of “political failure.” “There is no safe haven,” he said. United Nations officials initially put the Jabaliya death toll at 30 and said 55 were wounded, with several in critical condition. Palestinian hospital officials said 40 people had been killed, among them 10 children and 5 women. The death toll in Gaza reached around 640 on Tuesday, according to Palestinian health officials. The United Nations has estimated that about one-fourth of those killed were civilians, though there have been no reliable and current figures in recent days. International efforts to halt the violence appeared to be moving into a higher gear. At the United Nations, the Security Council held a high-level meeting attended by the Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, and many foreign ministers to discuss the situation in Gaza. Mr. Abbas and other senior Arab officials supported a resolution calling for an immediate cease-fire, which was introduced by Libya. But some members of the Security Council, including the United States, withheld support for any resolution because of efforts in the Middle East to achieve a cease-fire. President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt said at a news conference in Sharm el Sheik, Egypt, with President Nicolas Sarkozy of France that the Israelis and the Palestinians should accept a cease-fire to give Cairo time to continue its efforts toward a durable long-term solution. Israeli and American officials insist that a cease-fire would have to await guarantees that no more weapons would be smuggled into Gaza through tunnels from Egypt; a possible mechanism for that is the stationing of international observers along the border with Egypt. “We must find a way to prevent arms and explosives from entering Gaza,” the American secretary of state, Condoleezza Rice, told the Security Council. “When this ends, there must be new arrangements in place, not a return to the status quo ante.” President-elect Barack Obama broke his silence about the Gaza fighting on Tuesday, telling reporters, “The loss of civilian life in Gaza and Israel is a source of deep concern for me.” Israeli losses have also risen since the ground invasion began on Saturday. The military said that three of its soldiers were killed late Monday night when an Israeli tank shell was mistakenly fired at a building they occupied. A fourth soldier was also killed Monday night, very possibly also by an Israeli tank shell, the military said. Two soldiers, including one on Tuesday, have been killed in clashes with Hamas. Before the Israeli ground campaign began, three Israeli civilians and a soldier were killed by rockets fired from Gaza at southern Israel. Hamas’s deepest rocket fire into Israel was a Katyusha-type rocket that on Tuesday slammed into the Israeli town of Gadera, more than 25 miles north of the Gaza border. The rocket landed between houses, and a baby was injured slightly, the Israeli authorities said. The location was significant for Israelis, since Gadera is considered part of central Israel. The thousands of rockets fired out of Gaza in recent years have all landed in the south. Israeli ground forces continued to fight Hamas operatives in northern Gaza. The Israeli forces were surrounding Gaza City and, residents said, were east of Khan Yunis in the south. In Al-Nasir, a district of Gaza City, families fleeing the fighting in the north poured into a United Nations boys’ school. Thirty members of the extended al-Sultan family from Beit Lahiya, including more than 20 children, huddled in one small classroom. Ayisha al-Sultan, 36, who is married to a heart surgeon, said she had left behind a comfortable villa where each of her five children has a separate room. “Now look at us,” she said. “At night we covered the floor tiles with paper for the kids to sleep on. We took off our jackets and covered them.” International relief agencies warned that the humanitarian situation in Gaza was becoming increasingly dire. Three-quarters of the 1.5 million residents are currently without power, and hundreds of thousands are without running water, international agencies have said. Venezuela Expels Envoy CARACAS, Venezuela — President Hugo Chávez expelled the Israeli ambassador on Wednesday to protest Israel’s military offensive in Gaza, bringing relations between Venezuela and Israel to their lowest point since 2006, when both nations withdrew their envoys in a dispute over Israel’s military campaign in Lebanon against Hezbollah. Mr. Chávez stopped short of breaking off diplomatic ties but described Israel’s actions in Gaza as “genocide.”

Civilian Casualties
Gaza Strip
Israel
Hamas
Palestinians
Armament Defense and Military Forces


Growing Coral to Keep a Sea Claim Above Water

Abstract: TOKYO — Amid warnings that rising sea levels caused by global warming could lead to the disappearance of some entire island states, two tiny uninhabited islets in the Pacific are at the forefront of Japanese research into the preservation and regeneration of coral reefs. About 1,100 miles south of Tokyo, the Okinotori Islands poke out of a submerged coral reef measuring about seven miles around. But as Japan’s most southerly territory they bring with them a claim to a 160,000-square-mile exclusive economic zone, an area larger than the Japanese archipelago itself. As long as they stay above water. Under the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, a claim to an exclusive economic zone depends on the existence of a habitable island landmass. If the islands disappear so does the zone, which in Okinotori’s case is rich in fish and mineral resources and potentially in oil and methane hydrates, a form of solidified methane gas. China already disputes the Japanese claim, arguing that Okinotori is merely a cluster of uninhabitable rocks. To bolster, literally, its position, the Japanese government has encased the two islets in walls of cement, steel blocks and titanium mesh. It also erected, in 1988, a third, artificial islet with platform supporting a weather monitoring station and a building to house researchers. Still, over the years, the reef has eroded. Japan’s Fisheries Agency says it is not making a link between rising sea levels and coral depletion. The agency is, however, worried that warmer waters in the area have been preventing the corals from thriving. Wataru Ando, an expert on coral regeneration, says the health of the Okinotori reef has worsened over the eight years since he started working there. Mr. Ando blames increasingly violent typhoons and a measurable rise in ocean temperature for the deterioration. Politics aside, if the corals around the islands thrive, so should the islands, Mr. Ando and other researchers say. Both the Japanese Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism and the country’s Fisheries Agency have separately made it a priority to revitalize the corals to protect the economic zone and its resources. That can be challenging: “The currents around Okinotori Island are strong,” said Norihito Watanabe, a section head at the Fisheries Agency. “It’s a harsh environment.” So harsh that when the land and infrastructure ministry tried to set a new pier on the reef in March, part of a plan to build a port there, the effort ended in disaster. The concrete structure, 100 feet by 66 feet, capsized, throwing 16 workers into the sea. Seven died. Research efforts to regenerate the coral have been more successful. The Fisheries Agency has been applying a method of sexual reproduction developed over the past 20 years by Makoto Omori, member of a Fisheries Agency coral restoration committee and former director of the Akajima Marine Science Laboratory, a private research institute specializing in tropical marine environments. “Cultivating corals may sound easy, but it’s actually quite difficult,” Mr. Omori said in an interview. The method, which can produce corals in large numbers, has been used by the Philippines, Palau and Thailand to restore damaged reefs, he said, but its use on the Okinotori reef is the biggest practical application to date. Implementation has been entrusted to the Fisheries Infrastructure Development Center, a nonprofit research institute based in Tokyo, using Fisheries Agency funds earmarked for Okinotori’s regeneration since 2006. Researchers from the center transported adult corals by boat from Okinotori to a facility in Okinawa, 680 miles away. Eggs from the corals were obtained by captive spawning and fertilized by sexual exchange on the surface of the water. The resulting larvae and juvenile corals were cultured under laboratory conditions before being returned to repopulate the Okinotori reef. Mr. Ando, a senior researcher at Fisheries Infrastructure, said the trickiest part of the process was to create the conditions under which the coral larvae would attach themselves to the seaweed-like coralline algae with which coral polyps have a symbiotic relationship. “You can’t have too much coralline,” Mr. Ando said: “It has to be the right amount. It is a difficult process because factors like water temperature and light need to be exact.” According to the Fisheries Agency, about 2.15 billion yen, or $19 million, in taxpayer’s money has been spent to breed about 100,000 coral plants using Mr. Omori’s method. Mr. Ando said that about 20 percent of these had survived after their return to Okinotori. Mr. Ando’s team of researchers has been taking once-a-year trips to transplant the Okinotori Island corals and to monitor the development of previous years’ transplants. “It takes four years for corals to be mature enough to produce eggs,” Mr. Omori said. Two years ago, researchers reached a milestone in the project when they observed the first generation of laboratory-bred corals reproducing on the reef. Meanwhile, they have also been trying to identify additional areas of the reef that could provide suitable anchorage for future transplants. Back in the laboratory they are trying to develop a lower-cost and simpler way to produce coral seedlings and to increase their genetic diversity, to bolster the overall health of the reef ecosystem. For that purpose, sexual reproduction is far more effective than asexual cloning as a method of reef regeneration, Mr. Omori said. In asexual cloning a fragment of coral, broken off from its parent, develops as a separate replica of the original organism. “By increasing the number of corals, the number of fish increases, too — so it helps the whole ecosystem,” he said. Though results have been encouraging, Mr. Omori worries that the scale of the project remains too small to save the Okinotori reef. Since 2009, he said, sensors have shown water temperatures there rising by up to two degrees Celsius, or 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit. “There may be no Okinotori island 30 years from now due to effects from global warming,” he said. “We need to step up efforts to protect the reef more if we want to keep the area as Japan’s.”

Coral
Reef
Japan
China
Law of the Sea
Climate Change
Global Warming


Seahawks Pull a Win From Their Long Sleeves

Abstract: MINNEAPOLIS — The snapped football flew high and hard at the quarterback, like a chin-high inside fastball. As it was approximately 148 degrees below zero at that time, it would have been like trying to catch a block of ice. Seahawks quarterback Russell Wilson, who had been having a pretty mediocre day to that point, saw the football roll behind him. He scampered, picked up the ball and peered downfield. His line of sight was consumed by three or four Vikings defenders, steam rising from their mouths as if they were draft horses, rumbling at him. “Uh-oh,” he thought to himself. “It looked like a whole bunch of bears.” He felt his evolutionary flight response kick in and then did what he does best, which is to scramble. He rolled right, deking, shoulder-faking, a kid improvising. The rookie wide receiver Tyler Lockett floated downfield with his hands up. Whop. Wilson tossed him the ball, and Lockett ran as if his hair was on fire. A couple of plays later, the Seahawks scored an improbable touchdown, their first of the day. The score then was Vikings 9, Seahawks 7. Team Houdini was up to its old tricks, crawling out of another trap of its own devising. The Seahawks began the season playing so poorly, going 2-4, that they appeared almost out of the postseason race by mid-October. Then, as this team is prone to do, it crawled out of its crypt. In truth, Wilson’s improvisation in Minneapolis would register as just a warm-up by day’s end. The pièce de résistance had nothing to do with skill and everything to do with luck: The Vikings’ place-kicker had a chance for a point-blank, playoff-game-winning field goal with just seconds on the clock. Somehow he missed. Afterward, Vikings Coach Mike Zimmer, his face an unsightly blotch of frostbite-like pink and red, stood at the lectern and peered out through watery eyes. “We missed a chip-shot field goal,” he said softly. “That’s life. But it was a chip shot.” Yes it was. A hardy perennial of postgame news conferences is listening as players attribute their team’s pure dumb luck to Him and His Son. So Seahawks safety Kam Chancellor claims that he knew the kicker would miss and attributes his assurance to God. Cornerback Richard Sherman speculated that Jesus would have approved of the Seahawks’ team effort. God, perhaps preoccupied with a tricky black hole, has so far declined to offer a comment. Jesus’ telephone number is unlisted. In truth, the Vikings played a fierce game Sunday. Their defenders at times called to mind the team’s Purple People Eater past, as they chased down the always-elusive Wilson as if trying to trap a firefly in a jar. At halftime, the Vikings led, 3-0, prompting more than a few to speculate that it was simply too cold to think, much less to score. The Seahawks accumulated just 39 yards passing and 47 rushing in the first half, and as a team they looked as if they missed the Northwestern dampness. And yet, with the game on the line, there was that scampering Wilson. Vikings linebacker Anthony Barr shook his head when asked how Wilson had turned a blown snap into a game-breaking play. “To have the whereabouts to look upfield and get the ball off ...” he said, shrugging, clearly frustrated. “Kudos to him,” he added. This game, even with its silly God talk, came as a bit of a relief after Saturday night’s A.F.C. playoff game between the Pittsburgh Steelers and the Cincinnati Bengals, which served, with its impressive stupidity and violent gratuitous hits, to demonstrate why football is so often indefensible. As player after player was laid out, as a quarterback returned to the field presumably in enough pain to keep the maker of Percocet in business for months, you are reminded once more that there is to football a recklessness about men’s lives. I would be dishonest to suggest I walk out of step with this march. I wasn’t covering that game, and yet I watched, including the 22 replays of particularly brutal brain-jarring hits. And then the ratings come in, with CBS chortling about its audience share, and, well, better for now to concentrate on the players who ran about the stadium in Minneapolis on Sunday and, at least to my eye, did not deliver too many concussions. Let me pause, also, to note that along with a few players recklessly running about the field in short sleeves, we got to watch the Vikings’ cheerleaders dance in the subzero temperatures and shake in their mukluks for slightly more than the cost of gas for their cars. This gilded league could of course take care of this problem of cheerleader poverty by rooting about in its loose change drawer and by forcing teams to pay a proper wage. Commissioner Roger Goodell would rather pretend that these women are independent contractors. For now, let’s return to the game, which through halftime appeared to make a star of cold that was borderline insane. The Seahawks’ Sherman noted that the ball did not fly right in temperatures like those more often found on the plains of Mars. Asked how he had managed, Sherman smiled. He was born in Southern California; this not his natural habitat. “It was all good until my eyelashes froze,” he noted. Wilson said his jaw had been so stiff with cold that he had trouble calling out to his teammates. “Your mouth kept freezing,” he said. In the end, though, a win — however frozen — is a win, even if this one required a degree of luck that was improbable even for Team Houdini.

Football
Russell Wilson
Richard Sherman
Mike Zimmer
Minnesota Vikings
Seahawks


Fed Will Inject $1 Trillion More Into the Economy

Abstract: WASHINGTON — The Federal Reserve sharply stepped up its efforts to bolster the economy on Wednesday, announcing that it would pump an extra $1 trillion into the financial system by purchasing Treasury bonds and mortgage securities. Having already reduced the key interest rate it controls nearly to zero, the central bank has increasingly turned to alternatives like buying securities as a way of getting more dollars into the economy, a tactic that amounts to creating vast new sums of money out of thin air. But the moves on Wednesday were its biggest yet, almost doubling all of the Fed’s measures in the last year. The action makes the Fed a buyer of long-term government bonds rather than the short-term debt that it typically buys and sells to help control the money supply. The idea was to encourage more economic activity by lowering interest rates, including those on home loans , and to help the financial system as it struggles under the crushing weight of bad loans and poor investments . Investors responded with surprise and enthusiasm. The Dow Jones industrial average, which had been down about 50 points just before the announcement, jumped immediately and ended the day up almost 91 points at 7,486.58. Yields on long-term Treasury bonds dropped markedly, and analysts predicted that interest rates on fixed-rate mortgages would soon drop below 5 percent. But there were also clear indications that the Fed was taking risks that could dilute the value of the dollar and set the stage for future inflation. Gold prices rose $26.60 an ounce, hitting $942, a sign of declining confidence in the dollar. The dollar, which had been losing value in recent weeks to the euro and the yen , dropped sharply again on Wednesday. In its announcement, the central bank said that the United States remained in a severe recession and listed its continuing woes, from job losses and lost housing wealth to falling exports as a result of the worldwide economic slowdown. “In these circumstances, the Federal Reserve will employ all available tools to promote economic recovery and to preserve price stability,” the central bank said. As expected, policy makers decided to keep the Fed’s benchmark interest rate on overnight loans in a range between zero and 0.25 percent. But to the surprise of investors and analysts, the committee said it had decided to purchase an additional $750 billion worth of government-guaranteed mortgage-backed securities on top of the $500 billion that the Fed is already in the process of buying. In addition, the Fed said it would buy up to $300 billion worth of longer-term Treasury securities over the next six months. That would tend to push down longer-term interest rates on all types of loans. All these measures would come in addition to what has already been an unprecedented expansion of lending by the Fed. The central bank also said it would probably expand the scope of a new program to finance consumer and business lending, which gets under way this week. In effect, the central bank has been lending money to a wider and wider array of borrowers, and it has financed that lending by using its authority to create new money at will. Since last September, the Fed’s lending programs have roughly doubled the size of its balance sheet, to about $1.8 trillion, from $900 billion. The actions announced on Wednesday are likely to expand that to well over $3 trillion over the next year. Despite a trickle of encouraging data in the last few weeks, Fed officials were clearly still worried and in no mood to cut back on their emergency efforts. Fed policy makers sharply reduced their economic forecasts in January, predicting that the economy would continue to experience steep contractions for the first half of 2009, that unemployment could approach 9 percent by the end of the year and that there was at least a small risk of a drop in consumer prices like those that Japan experienced for nearly a decade. The Fed rarely buys long-term government bonds. The last occasion was nearly 50 years ago under different economic circumstances when it tried to reduce long-term interest rates while allowing short term rates to rise. Ben S. Bernanke , the Fed chairman, has been extremely cautious in recent weeks about predicting an end to the recession, saying that he hoped to see the start of a recovery later this year but warning that unemployment, a lagging indicator, would probably keep climbing until some time in 2010. In contrast to several recent Fed decisions, with the presidents of some regional Fed banks dissenting, the decision at Wednesday’s meeting of the 10 members of the Federal Open Market Committee, the central bank’s policy making group, was unanimous. Jan Hatzius, chief economist at Goldman Sachs , said the Fed had adopted a “kitchen sink” strategy of throwing everything it had to jolt the economy out of its downward spiral. But while Mr. Hatzius applauded the decision, he cautioned that the central bank could not solve the economy’s problems by expanding cheap money. “Even if the Fed could make interest rates negative, that wouldn’t necessarily help,” Mr. Hatzius said. “We’re in a deep recession mainly because the private sector, for a variety of reasons, has decided to save a lot more. You can have a zero interest rate, but if you just offer more money on top of the money that is already available, it doesn’t do that much.” Fed officials have been wrestling for months with the fact that lenders remain unwilling to lend and borrowers are unwilling or unable to borrow. Even though the Fed has been creating money at the fastest rate in its history, much of that money has remained dormant. The Fed’s action is an expansion of its effort to bypass the private banking system and act as a lender in its own right. The Fed and the Treasury are starting a joint venture this week called the Consumer and Business Lending Initiative in their latest effort to thaw the still-frozen credit markets. The program will start out with $200 billion in financing for consumer loans, small-business loans and some corporate purposes. Fed officials have said they hope to expand the program next month, possibly to include the huge market for commercial mortgages, and both the Fed and Treasury hope the program will eventually provide up to $1 trillion in total financing.

Subprime Mortgage Crisis,2008 Financial Crisis


Government to Require Verification of Workers

Abstract: The Obama administration will require businesses that win federal contracts to use a government electronic database system to verify that their employees have legal immigration status to work in the United States, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano said on Wednesday. After a six-month review, Homeland Security officials decided to go ahead with a worker-verification plan based on the electronic system, called E-Verify. The system, which the Bush administration sought to put into effect in its final months, is meant to prevent federal contractors from hiring illegal immigrants. At the same time, Homeland Security officials said they would drop another Bush administration proposal that would have forced employers to fire any workers whose Social Security information did not match the records of the Social Security Administration. That measure, called the no-match rule, had been challenged in federal court by immigrant advocates and businesses, who said the Social Security database contained errors that could have cost thousands of legal workers their jobs. Administration officials said the court battle over the no-match rule, which never went into effect, would now end. The move to expand the use of E-Verify reflects the Obama administration’s strategy of keeping up the pace of immigration enforcement while weighing whether to push for an overhaul this year that would give legal status to millions of illegal workers, officials said. But the E-Verify system has also been criticized by immigrant advocacy groups and is facing a challenge in federal court by the United States Chamber of Commerce and other business groups, who say the databases it relies on are also full of errors. “It’s the wrong move at the wrong time” said Marielena Hincapié, executive director of the National Immigration Law Center in Los Angeles, one of the groups that challenged the no-match rule. While welcoming the cancellation of that rule, Ms. Hincapié said errors in the E-Verify system could lead to legal workers, including citizens, being fired in the midst of the recession . Unlike the no-match rule, E-Verify does not rely only on Social Security records, but also searches Homeland Security immigration records. Last year, the system expanded to include information about immigrants who became citizens. Homeland Security officials said that as a result of recent improvements to the E-Verify system, 96.9 percent of workers who submitted identity information from October to December last year were immediately verified as eligible to work. Until now, E-Verify has been voluntary, used mainly by employers to check the legal status of workers at hiring. Officials said that under the new regulation, to take effect on Sept. 8, contractors would have to verify all workers, including current employees, when they were awarded work by the federal government. Illegal immigrants have often presented false Social Security numbers when seeking jobs. Angelo I. Amador, executive director for immigration policy at the United States Chamber of Commerce, said that while businesses would like to have a reliable national system to confirm workers’ status, they objected to being required to use E-Verify, which was set up to be voluntary. Mr. Amador said that Intel, the computer chip maker, had reported finding errors in 13 percent of E-Verify responses to queries it made for current employees. Support for a mandatory federal worker verification system is growing in Congress. Senator Charles E. Schumer, the New York Democrat who heads the judiciary subcommittee on immigration, has called for a biometric system to check every worker, including Americans, and on Wednesday the Senate approved an amendment by Senator Jeff Sessions, Republican of Alabama, to extend E-Verify permanently.

Migrant and Foreign Workers
Identification Devices
Illegal Immigrants
Homeland Security Department
Immigration and Emigration
United States Politics and Government
Hiring and Promotion
Obama Barack
Bush George W


To Create Its Hits, a Company Takes Its Toys on Tour

Abstract: The science of toy marketing has come a long way since Wham-O started giving away Hula-Hoops to children on playgrounds in the 1950s. Yet one of the hottest toys in stores this year owes its success to a marketing campaign straight from the Eisenhower era. Last summer, teams of college interns roamed the Canadian countryside in large, colorful vans introducing children at summer camps and local fairs to Bakugan Battle Brawlers, a game played with small plastic balls that snap open into monsters when rolled across magnetic trading cards. The trip took place months before the toys were available in stores or advertised on television, but it generated plenty of under-age word of mouth. When the toys hit stores in September, they sold out almost immediately, and even today retailers struggle to keep them in stock. Bakugan Battle Brawlers are “one of the genuine hits of the spring toy season, for sure,” said Kathleen Waugh, a spokeswoman for Toys “R” Us. “They sell out the minute they hit the store shelves.” Genuine hits in the toy industry are rare these days, particularly for products like Bakugan that need some explaining and lack familiar characters. But the company behind the product is Spin Master, a 14-year-old toy seller known for a grass-roots approach to marketing and a nimble strategy that has brought it a string of successes. In 2007, Spin Master’s sales grew by more than 60 percent, while the $22 billion toy industry experienced a 2 percent dip in sales, according to the NPD Group, a research company. Some Spin Master toys that are not new, like Moon Sand, Tech Deck and Air Hogs, were among the top sellers, according to NPD. (They are, respectively, a type of sculpting material, a line of miniature skateboards, and a fleet of remote-controlled aircraft.) The current big seller is riding a wave of popularity for toys like Pokémon that have a Japanese anime theme. The name Bakugan comes from the Japanese words “baku,” meaning “to explode,” and “gan,” meaning “sphere.” Last month, as a line formed in front of the Toys “R” Us in Times Square to buy the latest hot video game — Nintendo’s Wii Fit — store employees wearing Bakugan T-shirts helped shepherd the crowd. That morning, the actual Bakugan Battle Brawler capsules were sold out in the store, though ancillary products, like the arena for battling, were available. “We continue to get replenishment, but the demand is extremely great,” Ms. Waugh said, adding that all Toys “R” Us outlets are featuring Battle Brawlers in “end caps,” which are prominent displays at the end of an aisle. “We are working diligently with Spin Master to get as much product as we can,” she said. Founded in 1994 in Toronto by three college friends, Spin Master received early attention in Canada for hiring homeless people to help build the company’s first toy (a Chia Pet-like product called Earth Buddy). The company has since made a name for itself through a combination of marketing innovation and selective product acquisitions. “We approach every product as though we’re starting a new business,” said Anton Rabie, chief executive of Spin Master. “We look at each product and figure out, how we are going to create demand? Who is the target consumer, and what is the most cost effective way to reach them?” To introduce Battle Brawlers, Spin Master chose the touring-van approach after deciding that the game was not easily explained in a 30-second TV commercial — and that the marbles-turned-robots simply look cooler in person than on the screen. Spin Master has used van tours before, during the 1998 rollout of Air Hogs, a line of tiny remote-controlled helicopters. Back then, the vans visited air shows to find young flight enthusiasts. For the 2006 release of Moon Sand, a clay-like molding product intended to compete with Hasbro’s Play-Doh, Spin Master introduced a series of direct-response TV ads, the long-form “call now” commercials generally associated with exercise equipment and Ginsu knives. Direct-response television “hasn’t generally worked with toys,” Mr. Rabie said, “because kids don’t have credit cards and they aren’t watching TV at 12 o’clock at night.” But for Moon Sand, which appeals to children under 4, the approach found success by selling parents on the idea of easy cleanup and portability. Gerrick Johnson, a toy industry analyst with BMO Capital Markets, called Spin Master’s infomercial approach “one of the greatest innovations in toy marketing.” The company has replicated the approach for other items, like the Aqua Doodle Wall Mat, a mess-free board for scribbling. One new marketing element for Bakugan has been a half-hour TV show on Cartoon Network that was introduced in February. This time, Mr. Rabie said, Spin Master was just taking a page from Hasbro, which turned Transformers into a global toy franchise by making them the centerpiece of a cartoon show, comic books and a Hollywood movie. “Regular TV advertising is becoming less effective,” Mr. Rabie said. “Content is king.” Not that Spin Master doesn’t advertise on TV. Commercials on Saturday morning cartoons are part of its marketing mix, but they tend to play a supporting role. Another way Spin Master tries to drive up demand is by limiting the inventory it delivers to stores. “Spin Master is managing it very well by not flooding the market,” said Mr. Johnson, the toy industry analyst. This fosters a “treasure hunt” atmosphere that gets children trading the toys as well as shopping for them. Mr. Johnson said that Spin Master’s relatively small size — it has 600 employees — helped make it nimbler than larger competitors. “They’re not bound by the pre-existing culture of the toy industry,” he said. “They don’t have to develop the toys themselves. If someone brings them the right idea, they’ll develop it.” That approach has earned them the ire of some in the industry, who criticize Spin Master for a mercenary approach to innovation. Bakugan was acquired from an independent New York inventor, and Spin Master then developed it in conjunction with Sega, the Japanese electronics company. Mr. Rabie defends his headlong approach, calling it the key to success at a time when kids are outgrowing toys at a younger age. “We have no ego about where the idea comes from,” he said. “Lots of ideas come from in-house, but even more come from outside.” That mantra does not apply to marketing, however. Spin Master spends more than $30 million a year on it and almost never uses outside advertising agencies, instead relying on its own department of about 30 people. “That’s been a competitive advantage for us,” Mr. Rabie said. “We understand the product better than anyone else, and we don’t want to delegate that.” The company experienced a setback last year when 4.2 million units of one Spin Master toy, Aqua Dots, were recalled because they contained a glue that turned toxic when ingested. Two children became ill and briefly fell into comas after eating the product, though both fully recovered. Analysts gave the company high marks for dealing with the situation effectively and quickly moving beyond it. Spin Master’s next marketing frontier is the Web, where it has already found success with YouTube channels that gather communities of children around their products. This summer, the company plans to introduce a virtual world Web site for its Tech Deck toys, a line of finger-operated skateboards. As for future product introductions, Mr. Rabie is tight-lipped. “We have a great pipeline of potential properties to work on,” he said. In selecting which ones to pursue, he said, “Being able to think like a 5-year-old helps.”

Toys
Advertising and Marketing
Retail Stores and Trade
Spin Master
Bakugan Battle Brawlers


Mexico: Cartel Leader Is Arrested

Abstract: The head of the once-mighty Arellano Felix drug cartel, based in Tijuana, was arrested while watching Mexico’s soccer team play in the World Cup, Monte Alejandro Rubido, the federal police chief, said Tuesday. Fernando Sánchez Arellano, who inherited leadership of the cartel when his uncle was arrested in 2006, had $100,000 in cash with him on Monday when he was arrested in Tijuana, Chief Rubido said.

Drug cartel
Mexico
Fernando Sánchez Arellano
Drug Abuse
2014 World Cup


New Inquiry Is Sought in 1961 Death of the U.N. Leader Dag Hammarskjold

Abstract: LONDON — It has been one of Africa’s enduring mysteries, redolent of days when mercenaries roamed the bushlands and outsiders scrambled to exploit a continent’s riches as it struggled for independence: How and why did Dag Hammarskjold, the United Nations secretary general, die? The DC-6 airplane carrying Mr. Hammarskjold (pronounced HAH-mahr-shuhld), a Swedish diplomat, crashed in September 1961 as it approached Ndola, a mining town in Zambia , which at the time was called Northern Rhodesia. Official inquiries failed to explain what happened. But last year, a United Nations panel concluded that there was “persuasive evidence that the aircraft was subjected to some form of attack or threat as it circled to land at Ndola.” On Monday, Sweden formally asked the United Nations General Assembly to reopen the investigation. Significantly, the request included an appeal for all member states to release any hitherto unpublished records — a reference aimed largely at securing the declassification of American and British files, particularly intercepts thought to have been made at the time by the National Security Agency of the United States. The issue is not simply a matter of historical loose ends. “This has been an open wound in Sweden for more than 50 years,” the Swedish envoy to the United Nations, Per Thoresson, told Agence France-Presse. “We are anxious to try to make closure.” A definitive explanation of the crash would throw light on a critical moment in Africa’s history during the Cold War. It coincided with a time of secession in the neighboring Congolese province of Katanga, where Belgian and other Western mining concerns held lucrative concessions producing uranium and cobalt. Mr. Hammarskjold was on his way to meet a Katangese separatist leader, Moise Tshombe, in Ndola when his plane came down in wooded terrain a few miles from the airport. Delays in locating the wreckage magnified the question of whether pilot error was to blame, as one early inquiry suggested, or whether there had been foul play. Conspiracy theories flourished: Had the United Nations official died in the crash, or was he killed afterward by mercenaries? Had South Africa sabotaged the plane? Was it deliberately shot down to thwart Mr. Hammarskjold’s mission? In a report issued in September 2013 , a United Nations panel, led by Stephen Sedley, a retired British judge, referred to evidence of a second airplane flying close to or alongside the DC-6 carrying Mr. Hammarskjold, named the Albertina. A Belgian former pilot was quoted as saying that he had been under orders to force the plane to divert to Kolwezi, a mining center in Katanga, and had fired warning shots that accidentally clipped the DC-6 and brought it down. “The aerial attack claim,” the report said, “is in our judgment capable of proof or disproof.” It concluded, moreover, that the United States had access to crucial evidence that could prove to be a so-called golden thread in a maze of uncertainty. “It is highly likely that the entirety of the local and regional Ndola radio traffic on the night of 17-18 September 1961 was tracked and recorded by the N.S.A., and possibly also by the C.I.A.,” the report said. Indeed, the report continued, a Freedom of Information Act request to the N.S.A. drew a response that two of three documents it sought “appeared to be exempt from disclosure by reason of ‘top secret’ classification on national security grounds.” In his request for a new inquiry at the United Nations on Monday, Mr. Thoresson, the Swedish diplomat, repeated the call for secret documents to be released. The aim, he said, is “to help shed new light on the circumstances surrounding the death of Dag Hammarskjold and those on board his flight, not only by bringing existing documents forward, but also by providing the conditions necessary to finally hear witnesses whose testimony has so far not been given due attention.”

Dag Hammarskjold
Plane Crash
Sweden
UN
UN General Assembly
Zambia


Climate Model Suggests Everest Glaciers Could Nearly Disappear

Abstract: By the end of this century, the landscape around Mount Everest may drastically change. As the planet continues to warm, the Everest region of Nepal could lose most of its glaciers , according to a study published in the journal The Cryosphere. “We did not expect to see glaciers reduced at such a large scale,” said Joseph Shea, a glacier hydrologist at the International Center for Integrated Mountain Development in Nepal and lead author of the new report. “The numbers are quite frightening.” Dr. Shea and his colleagues found that moderate reductions in greenhouse gas emissions could result in a 70 percent loss of glaciers around Mount Everest, while a business-as-usual scenario in which emissions remain at the same levels could result in a 99 percent loss. To arrive at these findings, Dr. Shea and his colleagues used a computer model for glacier melt, accumulation and redistribution. They customized the model with data on temperature and precipitation, measurements from the field and remote-sensing observations collected over 50 years from the Dudh Koshi basin, which includes Mount Everest and several of the world’s other highest peaks. The model took into account how much mass glaciers gain from snowfall, as well as the way that mass is redistributed by continual downward movement. The researchers applied the model to eight future climate scenarios, from moderate emissions reductions to none at all. The results do not bode well for the glaciers around Everest. Even if emissions are reduced by midcentury and rain in the region increases, the model predicts that the majority of the glaciers will probably disappear by 2100. What this would mean for the region is unclear. The mountains are culturally and economically important for the Nepalese, but clearing them of glaciers could make them safer for mountaineers. The Khumbu icefall, an unstable glacier field, for example, is considered one of the deadliest sections of the route up Mount Everest. While the model’s simulations corroborate field observations, Dr. Shea said that computer models could be plagued by uncertainties and their predictions were never exact. “This is a first step, not a final answer on what will happen,” Dr. Shea said. “But it does show that even a modest step to curb emissions now might help reduce the amount of glacier loss we’ll likely see in the future.”

Glacier
Climate Change
Global Warming
Mount Everest
Nepal
The Cryosphere
Greenhouse gas
Himalayas


Ben Ali of Tunisia Guilty of Embezzling State Funds

Abstract: TRIPOLI, Libya — A Tunisian court sentenced the country’s ousted president, Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali , and his wife, Leila Trabelsi, to 35 years in prison and a fine of roughly $66 million after a trial in absentia for embezzlement and misuse of public funds, state news media said Monday night. He still faces charges for the possession of illegal drugs, firearms and archaeological relics found in his palaces, as well as for ordering the killing of civilians in his bid to cling to power. The verdict Monday, after the one-day trial, focused on $27 million in jewels and public money reportedly found at one of his mansions. Mr. Ben Ali’s ouster in January started the Arab Spring and inspired the Egyptian uprising that toppled President Hosni Mubarak a month later. Egyptians are watching the court proceedings closely as they prepare for Mr. Mubarak’s trial this summer. Both have stirred debate over how to balance public demands for swift justice with a more deliberative demonstration of the rule of law. Mr. Ben Ali and his wife are in exile in Saudi Arabia, which refused Tunisian extradition requests. They are reviled in Tunisia for presiding over a corrupt administration that enabled Ms. Trabelsi, a former hairdresser from a humble family, to help her relatives quickly achieve vast fortunes and opulent lifestyles. The most notorious of her kin, Sakher el Materi — known derisively as “Mr. Son-in-Law” — kept a caged tiger that ate four chickens a day and he boasted of the Roman columns, frescoes and lion’s head fountain at his villa . Evidently unrepentant, Mr. Ben Ali issued a statement through lawyers calling the proceedings “a false and shameful image of victor’s justice,” according to news reports. Defending his 23 years in power, Mr. Ben Ali referred to street protests and strikes that have persisted in Tunisia since the revolution, asking if the purpose was “to divert the attention of Tunisians from the turmoil that nobody can accuse him of or hold him responsible for.” He did not flee Tunisia, the statement said, but rather left “to avoid a bloody confrontation among the Tunisian people who are always in his thoughts and heart.” His former prime minister has reportedly said that Mr. Ben Ali left the country for Saudi Arabia planning only a short absence that has turned into a permanent exile. His trial in absentia has stirred a furious debate in Tunisia over whether the interim government should have held out for his physical presence on the witness stand or pushed ahead without him. “His trial before an ‘empty chair’ has raised many questions about the point of these trials, which some have considered to be purely for show, like a farcical play,” the Tunisian newspaper As Sabah wrote, referring to Mr. Ben Ali by his new popular title, “the deposed.” The trial’s sentences, no matter how harsh, “will not be able to quell the fire of the Tunisian people, who had hoped ‘the deposed’ would be brought in and tried in an actual trial, to return faith and confidence to all Tunisians.” Many Tunisians, however, say they are also eager to see a legal verdict rendered on their former dictator as soon as possible, with or without his physical presence. His trial on the drug, firearms and archaeological charges is expected to take place at the end of this month.

Middle East and North Africa Unrest (2010- )


Pakistan Will Reopen Route to Supplies for NATO

Abstract: KABUL, Afghanistan — Pakistan announced Saturday that it was immediately reopening its main border crossing with Afghanistan and that it would allow NATO to resume shipping supplies through it after a 10-day blockade left hundreds of fuel tankers and other trucks open to attacks from militants. The border is normally closed on Sundays, so it seemed as if Monday would be when the flow of supplies over the northwest crossing at the Khyber Pass, near the Pakistani city of Peshawar, would resume, a United States Embassy spokesman, Richard Snelsire, told The Associated Press. The border dispute began after NATO helicopters hit a Pakistani border post, killing two Pakistani soldiers on Sept. 30. In protest, Pakistan closed the crossing. The border closing followed strong ripostes by the Pakistani military to border actions by NATO and American forces that the Pakistani government perceives as violating its sovereignty. But the duration of the blockade and the tensions that arose between the United States and Pakistan as more than 100 trucks were torched and supplies delayed made this the worst dispute so far. As the blockade worsened, the United States, which moves about 40 percent of military supplies for its 100,000 troops through the Khyber Pass, apologized for the raid in several messages on Wednesday. The American ambassador in Pakistan, Anne W. Patterson, called it a “terrible accident;” the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Adm. Mike Mullen, offered Pakistan’s military chief, Gen. Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, a private, but official, apology; and Gen. David H. Petraeus, commander of NATO forces in Afghanistan, expressed regret for the “tragic loss of life.” After the apologies, arsonists set fire to tankers lined up in Sibi, a town in Baluchistan, on Wednesday night. A secondary crossing at Chaman, near Quetta, remained open throughout the dispute, but heavy traffic there delayed trucks for days, and they also came under attack. Pakistani police and security forces appear to have done little to prevent the attacks, and Afghan officials suggested that the Pakistani military had even encouraged the violence to deter future NATO border strikes. The reopening was announced on Saturday in a statement by Pakistan’s Foreign Ministry. “After assessing the security situation in all its aspects, the government has decided to reopen the NATO/ISAF supply from the Pakistan-Afghanistan border at Torkham with immediate effect,” the statement said. “Our relevant authorities are now in the process of coordinating with authorities on the other side of the border to ensure smooth resumption of the supply traffic.”

United States Defense and Military Forces


Howard Johnson’s Restaurant, One of Three Left, Will Close

Abstract: One of the three Howard Johnson’s restaurants still in business has been sold and will close after a nearly 60-year run in Lake Placid, N.Y. Mike Butler said his family-run restaurant was bought by local restaurant owners who plan to move their own business to the property after the Howard Johnson’s closes on Tuesday. Mr. Butler’s father, Ron, opened the restaurant with the chain’s signature orange roof 58 years ago. Two other HoJos still operate. One is attached to a hotel in Bangor, Me., and the other is in Lake George, a tourist destination 60 miles south of Lake Placid.

Restaurant
Lake Placid
Relocation
Howard Johnson's


Alcoa’s Profit Rises on Gain From Chinese Investment

Abstract: Alcoa reported a 3 percent rise in third-quarter earnings yesterday, as a gain on the sale of its stake in a Chinese aluminum company offset weaker aluminum prices. It also increased its stock buyback program, to 25 percent of outstanding shares, or about 217 million, from 10 percent of the shares now. At the current stock price, that is worth more than $6.7 billion. Alcoa’s net profit rose to $555 million, or 63 cents a share, compared with $537 million, or 61 cents a share, a year earlier. Earnings from continuing operations were 64 cents a share, up 2 cents from a year earlier, the company said. Wall Street analysts lowered their profit expectations for Alcoa in recent weeks as the price of aluminum slipped. The falling prices, along with the exclusion of the company’s soft-alloy extrusion business, which is now a joint venture with Sapa of Sweden, helped drag revenue in the period 2.6 percent lower, to $7.4 billion. Alcoa shares have dropped from a closing high of $47.35 in July, ending regular trading yesterday at $39.72. Last week, the company said it was close to selling its packaging and consumer business and its automotive castings business. Alcoa sold its stake in the Aluminum Corporation of China, or Chalco, last month for about $2 billion, a $1.8 billion gain.

Alcoa Incorporated
Company Reports
Aluminum
Aluminum Corporation of China Limited


Preserving Bread Stuy, a Place to Enjoy ‘Solitude in Company’

Abstract: On Wednesday afternoon, as the snowstorm rested between squalls, all seemed as it should at Bread Stuy, a coffeehouse on Lewis Avenue in Brooklyn. The small wooden tables were occupied by patrons in earphones tapping away at laptops, as a line formed for lattes, panini and fresh-baked pastries. Beneath the warm orange glow of the walls and a heat lamp, one of the owners, Hillary Porter, quietly directed workers from a banquette while her 16-month-old daughter, Maclemore, slept on her lap. Just one week earlier, the place was less welcoming, with its gates drawn and a bright red “Seized” sticker slapped on the front door, courtesy of federal marshals. In business since 2004, Ms. Porter and her husband, Lloyd, both 39, ran into tax trouble starting in 2008 as they lost customers to the recession, they said, and the government would not let them reopen until they had paid $10,000 in penalties. But their neighbors rallied, giving money and throwing three fund-raisers that yielded enough for the shop to reopen. That urgent, emotional response, from customers and fellow business owners along the strip in Stuyvesant Heights, surprised even the Porters. There are several nearby spots offering specialty coffees and baked goods, and though the couple is active in the neighborhood, playing Mr. and Mrs. Claus at Christmas each year, other merchants lead community efforts, too. Somehow, after less than six years in operation, Bread Stuy — like other coffeehouses in other places — has come to embody the aspirations of a gentrifying neighborhood now threatened by the downturn. Locals see it as a linchpin in their fragile economy. Jonathan Landau, who lives near the shop and held one of the fund-raisers, said he moved to Bedford-Stuyvesant two years ago from the Upper West Side because he was looking for the sense of community he found here, with the “ Sesame Street ”-like brownstone stoop culture and ethos of neighbors helping neighbors. “A coffee shop like Bread-Stuy offers a space where that can quote-unquote brew,” Mr. Landau said with a chuckle. He added that he also liked the respite it offered from the “bodegas and Chinese joints selling junk food.” Like the town tavern of old or the soda fountain of the 1950s, a coffeehouse helps build a sense of community, serving as a rare public space where people can bump into each other, share affinities or enjoy their “solitude in company,” as Mark Pendergrast, who wrote a history of coffee, “Uncommon Grounds,” put it in an interview. “Human beings are social creatures, and we’ve become less and less social,” he said. “We spend more and more time in front of our computers or our televisions, and we go to our work and we come home.” So the coffeehouse — a so-called third place, beyond home and work, that the sociologist Ray Oldenburg has posited is crucial to developing a sense of place, civic engagement and democracy — offers an ever-dwindling opportunity “to share an experience in public,” Mr. Pendergrast said. Coffee shops have become driving forces in gentrifying areas, with merchant groups and development advocates looking to establish cafes to seed other types of mom-and-pop activity. In Ditmas Park, Brooklyn, a politically engaged coffeehouse called Vox Pop caused a minor sensation when it opened on Cortelyou Road in 2004, quickly becoming a symbol for what some saw as the neighborhood’s new cachet. It, too, has struggled financially in recent years, and it has managed to survive in part by selling shares to customers. Jan Rosenberg, a sociologist and real estate agent who has been active in spurring commercial development in the neighborhood, helped lure an outlet of the small chain Connecticut Muffin nearby. Now she is looking for a cafe for Newkirk Avenue a few blocks away. “It brings a flock of people to a street — everyone likes a good cup of coffee — and it gives them a chance to sit down and bump into each other,” Ms. Rosenberg said. “It’s simple, really, but if you don’t have that and you’re always getting the train to go to work and getting your coffee there, you don’t have those bump-into-someone experiences, and that’s important in a city neighborhood.” It is a role that Bread Stuy, which took over and expanded a coffee shop run by another owner, has clearly come to play on Lewis Avenue. “It’s no longer just a place for people to go in and drink their coffee — it’s part of the fabric of the community,” said Crystal Bobb-Semple, whose Brownstone Books, opened in 2000, sits a few doors away. “It’s all about creating a better neighborhood.” While they are not yet on secure footing, the Porters say they are grateful that they are able to continue playing a role in that process. Having run through their savings and being unable to leverage their home, they thought they would simply have to move back to Oakland, Calif., where they lived before coming to New York in 2000. But the generosity of the neighborhood — one woman gave Mr. Porter $25 on the street “for milk and Pampers,” he said, reducing him to tears — has given the couple new resolve. “Every day, I am making coffee with a purpose,” he said. “Like, ‘I am going to make the best cup of coffee in America.’ We’re going to make this happen.”

Bedford-Stuyvesant (NYC)
Coffee
Bakeries and Baked Products
Gentrification