Restaurants Lead to Kitchens and to Other Rooms

Abstract: BARBARA SMITH, better known as B. Smith, the founder and chief creative officer of B. Smith Enterprises, says that no matter where she is or what she is doing, she is on the lookout for the next trend. Her husband, Dan Gasby, the company’s chairman, says her sense of what will connect with a wide audience is pivotal to the success of their businesses . With her smile imprinted on all sorts of things from biscuits to shower curtains, Ms. Smith, 58, has a familiar face. She is banking on that familiarity as she expands from restaurants and media operations into new ventures, including a furniture line and jewelry. On a recent visit, she discussed her spring 2008 furniture collection that is making its debut this month, a new cookbook being published in the fall and the possibility of her company’s teaming up with Wal-Mart . Following are excerpts from the conversation: Q. You entered the furniture business last year. How is that going? A. We’ve already had three collections. And we have a new one coming out this month for spring ’08. It has totally different fabrics. New bodies. New lamps, floral arrangements and art that will be part of the B. Smith Collection . And mirrors, too. Q. Do you work with a particular furniture company? A. Yes. I’m with Clayton Marcus , which is owned by Rowe Fine Furniture. In my career, I’ve decorated three restaurants and a few apartments and our home. So this has been a natural progression from what I’ve been doing. For instance, you will see a lot of the plates and dessert things in the B. Smith Collection in my restaurants, so it’s a carry-over. It was a natural progression for me to take what I had learned in the restaurants — a restaurant is just a big dining room — and share it: the way we live, and the way we want to live, but elegantly. Q. Do you have any sales figures for the first year? A. We don’t have those numbers because the fiscal year hasn’t closed yet. But if it wasn’t doing well, we wouldn’t have gone into the new spring collection. Q. What is challenging about furniture? A. It’s more difficult than anything else that I do because it’s a big investment for people when they buy furniture. They have to love it, and they’re going to live with it for a long time. Q. You recently spoke at Wal-Mart in Bentonville, Ark. Are you teaming up with Wal-Mart? A. We are in discussions with Wal-Mart in a nonhousewares category. Q. What is nonhousewares? A. It could be food. It could be jewelry. There are lots of areas. It could be cosmetics. We are growing our brand. It is a natural progression for me to go into food, to go into health care, beauty, fashion. Q. You are already in food with your restaurants. How would this be different? A. We’re not yet in packaged foods or frozen foods. So there are opportunities there. Also, I write cookbooks, so I can tell people how to create recipes. They can buy B. Smith serve ware at Bed, Bath & Beyond to serve them in. And they can dress the table; we have some new placemats and napkins coming out this month. Q. But you haven’t written a cookbook in quite a while. Are you suffering from writer’s block? A. Well, I’m working on a new one right now, “Southern Cooking From A to Z.” It’s going to be published this fall. Q. Of your Bed, Bath & Beyond products, what is the biggest seller? A. A swivel serve-ware piece. The serve ware in general does well because they have a bridal registry that helps generate sales. It’s very affordable; it’s functional; it goes from microwave oven to table. We have 143 individual items at Bed, Bath alone. Q. Do you use the products in your home? A. Absolutely! Q. Your businesses are upscale. Your candles sell for $20 at Bed, Bath & Beyond, not for $5 at a discount chain. Do you worry about affordability? A. I think my consumer, she wants a brand name she can trust. I think people find that it’s not out of reach. Q. Many economists say we are teetering on recession if one isn’t already under way. Most of your businesses rely on consumers’ discretionary spending. Are you feeling pinched? A. What works for us is that we’re moderately priced across the line. The products at Bed, Bath & Beyond are affordable enough that $29.99 is not breaking the bank. But I would say we are feeling some effects of the slowdown in the restaurants. Q. When Martha Stewart left the scene for several months a few years ago, professionals with your expertise were in great demand. Has that receded? A. I think it has remained constant. People who follow me follow Martha. And people who follow Martha follow me. I think that says a lot about what we do. I have just continued on my path of growing my businesses.

Smith Barbara
Retail Stores and Trade
Stewart Martha
Wal-Mart Stores Inc


In Mistake-Filled Year, Giants Are Eliminated From Playoff Race in Fitting Fashion

Abstract: SAN DIEGO — The Giants, after losing their first six games, have long been in need of a miracle to rescue their season, and the way their day began Sunday, they needed all the divine intervention they could get when Eli Manning, on the last play before halftime, launched a long, arcing pass from midfield. Receiver Hakeem Nicks leapt high, soaring above several players, and landed with the ball. But his elation quickly gave way to pause. “I was thinking, why isn’t anyone celebrating?” Nicks said. Instead of landing in the end zone, Nicks was on the turf at the 6, the throw from Manning another in the long list of Giants efforts that have fallen short this season. The flickering playoff hopes the Giants harbored as the day began expired in a hail of mistakes and misfortune in a 37-14 trouncing by San Diego. The loss, in conjunction with victories by Philadelphia and Arizona, eliminated the Giants from playoff contention with three weeks to play. “We created our situation here,” Giants Coach Tom Coughlin said. “This is no fun for anybody.” The Giants had gamely given life to their season by winning five of their previous six games, but it was not so much a transformation as it was a case study in resiliency. They still were guilty of turnovers and mental errors, but they mostly overcame them. And rediscovering the sort of physical line play that had given birth to a pair of Super Bowl runs added to their rejuvenation. But on Sunday, the Giants put themselves in an early hole, and kept on digging. A tipped pass was intercepted — one of three turnovers — and three plays later, Chargers quarterback Philip Rivers threw a touchdown pass to the rookie Keenan Allen. Nick Novak missed a field goal for the Chargers, but the Giants were offside — one of four such penalties for them — and he did not miss the reprieve. By the time Nicks landed short of the goal line, the Giants trailed, 24-0. “We couldn’t get out of that funk,” linebacker Jon Beason said. “It was demoralizing.” Nobody had more reason to be demoralized than Manning. The two interceptions pushed his season total to 20, tying him with the Jets rookie Geno Smith for the most in the N.F.L. He was also sacked twice, hit on five other occasions and outplayed by Rivers, with whom he has been linked since their 2004 draft day trade. The image of Manning standing glumly on the stage at Radio City Music Hall, held hostage by a team he did not want to play for, has never been forgotten by Chargers fan, who booed him nearly as vociferously as they did in 2006 when a much-better Chargers team walloped the Giants. Manning also lost to San Diego in 2009, when Rivers led a last-minute scoring drive in a 21-20 win. Image Eli Manning, being hit by the Chargers’ Lawrence Guy, threw two interceptions, giving him 20, tied for the N.F.L. lead. Credit Denis Poroy/Associated Press Fans in the upper deck serenaded Manning with an off-color chant, and a poster of Manning with earrings, makeup and woman’s haircut was shown on the video board. Stay classy, San Diego, it wasn’t. But neither did it seem to bother Manning. He was more bothered by the loss of playoff hope. “To know that three games to go is disappointing,” Manning said. “It’s not an ideal situation, but we’ve got to be strong about it, be men about it and do our job.” Manning was not the only one with regrets. When the Giants caught a rare break — Justin Tuck’s poking the ball from Rivers’s hand on the first play of the second half — it was short-lived. The Giants closed the gap to 24-7 on Peyton Hillis’s 1-yard scoring plunge. But after sacking Rivers, they chose to rush only three, and Rivers picked out Antonio Gates for 15 yards to convert third-and-12. Then linebacker Spencer Paysinger, who was caught matched up with receiver Vincent Brown on Rivers’s long heave into the end zone, reached out and grabbed Brown when the pass was underthrown. It turned out to be a 47-yard penalty, giving the Chargers the ball at the 1, which was close enough for Ryan Mathews to score with an off-tackle run, boosting San Diego’s lead to 31-7 and ending any suspense. “It was frustrating today to have to be questioned where’s our enthusiasm,” Tuck said. “Obviously, if you give yourself a 24-point deficit on the road against a good football team, it’s wishful thinking you’re going to come back from that most of the time.” There was not much left for the Giants to do. They could not stop Mathews, who became the first opponent since September to rush for 100 yards. They could not get the Chargers’ offense off the field very often, allowing it to convert on 10 of 15 third downs. And they could not force more than a single turnover. All that was left was to play out the rest of the game, something they will be forced to do from the start over the final three weeks. And all that is very likely to come from that is a few more signature moments like the one that occurred Sunday on a play that was inconsequential. Though it did not determine the Giants’ fate, it epitomized it. Rivers, knowing that the Giants had jumped offside, chucked a pass downfield. In these situations in the past, he has had tall receivers like Gates, the injured Malcom Floyd or the departed Vincent Jackson. Now, he had the smallest player on the field, 5-foot-8 Danny Woodhead, streaking down the field. Giants cornerback Jayron Hosley, far down the depth chart at a depleted position, leapt twice to try to knock the ball away. Instead, it landed in the hands of Woodhead, just another moment that required the Giants to stand tall, and they could not.


Indian Movie Star Gets 6 Years in Gun Trial With Terrorist Link

Abstract: NEW DELHI, July 31 — One of Bollywood’s best-loved film stars was sentenced Tuesday in a Mumbai courtroom to six years in prison for illegally possessing weapons, a judgment hailed by critics and supporters of India ’s judiciary as a strong, if unusual, example of its willingness to stand up to the country’s rich and powerful. Sanjay Dutt, for decades a pillar of India’s movie industry both as a macho action hero and a buffoonish comedian, was convicted in November of illegally possessing an automatic rifle and a pistol, which were supplied to him by criminals who masterminded the 1993 terrorist bombings in Mumbai that left hundreds dead. Many Indian commentators had expected a more lenient punishment because of Mr. Dutt’s popularity. But in sentencing him, Judge Pramod Kode said, “In no sense can this be said to be a minor offense,” The Associated Press reported. It was not clear whether Mr. Dutt possessed the guns with the intention of committing a terrorist act, the judge said. But merely having these arms demonstrated “scant respect to the law,” he said. Mr. Dutt, 48, a slouch-shouldered, grizzled heartthrob, wept as the sentence was read in the courtroom, The A.P. said. “Don’t be sentimental; be calm and quiet,” the judge told him. At least two unfinished big-budget Bollywood projects starring Mr. Dutt will now probably have to be canceled. Mr. Dutt’s sentencing brought an end to the Mumbai bombings trial, which had dragged on for 12 years. The judge has sentenced more than 100 defendants in the past six months. The 1993 attacks, which killed 257 people, were orchestrated in response to the razing of a 16th-century mosque by Hindu extremists in 1992. Mr. Dutt told the judge that he had “made a mistake” and asked for time to go to visit his daughter in the United States, but he was escorted immediately to jail. The actor has already served 16 months in prison. His lawyer said he would appeal the sentence. Prashant Bhushan, a civil rights lawyer, said the sentence was unexpectedly severe. “It is unusual for the Indian judiciary to hand out such a harsh sentence to someone so influential,” he said. Ujjwal Nikam, special public prosecutor in the bombings case, added, “Today’s verdict has clearly given the message that, whosoever the criminal, whatsoever his status, it won’t affect the judiciary.”

Sentences (Criminal)
Dutt Sanjay
India
Terrorism
Motion Pictures


Candidates Advance Final Arguments

Abstract: WASHINGTON — Republicans made their closing argument on Sunday for capturing control of Congress, assailing President Obama as a champion of wasteful and excessive government, as Democrats countered that returning power to Republicans would embolden corporations and the wealthy with disastrous results for middle-class Americans. Mr. Obama and Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. converged on Ohio in hopes of rekindling the passion Democrats displayed two years ago in sending the pair to the White House. “In two days, you have a chance to once again say, ‘Yes, we can,’ ” Mr. Obama said at a rally in Cleveland, reprising the theme of his 2008 campaign. “There is no doubt that this is a difficult election.” But Representative John A. Boehner, who is poised to become speaker if Republicans win the House, offered a rebuttal as he crisscrossed the state, warning voters not to be taken in by familiar promises of changing Washington. “Washington hasn’t been listening to the American people; I think it’s been disrespecting the American people,” Mr. Boehner said, firing up Republicans in Columbus. He flashed a sign of confidence, saying: “We’re going to have a big night on Tuesday night — a really big night.” Republicans are positioned to reach or surpass the number of House seats that they picked up in 1994, according to strategists and independent analysts, when the party gained 54 and ended four decades of Democratic dominance in the House. The ranks of vulnerable Democrats deepened, with House seats in Connecticut, Maine and Rhode Island becoming susceptible to a potential Republican wave that could exceed the 39 seats needed to win control. Democrats clung to hope that they could hold on to the Senate by at least a seat or two. As the White House prepared for widespread losses on Tuesday, it sought to minimize the political damage to the party and to Mr. Obama’s re-election chances in two years by urging its supporters to work even harder to help narrow the gap in tight races. Former President Bill Clinton began a nine-state sweep to help preserve the Democratic majority, rallying voters along the Eastern Seaboard from Maine to Florida. The focus on Democratic-leaning states, including Congressional races in New York and Connecticut and races for governor in Maine and New Hampshire, underscored the degree to which Democrats are almost entirely on defense against Republicans at a time when the unemployment rate remains stubbornly high and the nation is deeply divided over issues like health care. The most expensive Congressional contest in the country’s history, with spending of nearly $4 billion, drew to a close with a presidential-style deployment of campaign volunteers from Alaska to Florida intended to get out the vote, even though more than half of Americans participating in the election have already cast early ballots. Few states were spared a last barrage of television advertisements, many of which featured Republicans trying to capitalize on the suggestion of change. In California, the Republican candidate for the Senate, Carly Fiorina, said, “We can change Washington, but not unless we change the people we send there.” In Nevada, the Republican nominee for the Senate, Sharron Angle, said, “They promised change, now it’s our turn.” In New Jersey, John Runyan, a Republican candidate for the House, declared: “If you’re tired of the way this country is run, then let’s change the people who run it.” Democrats were bracing for substantial losses across the ballot, from state legislative races to governorships to Congress, with incumbents imploring voters to give them more time to create jobs, improve the economy and control state and federal spending. It remained an open question whether the party’s extensive get-out-the-vote operation could diminish what party leaders fear could be widespread defeats. “This is not a year to sit on your hands,” said Diane Denish, the lieutenant governor of New Mexico, a Democrat who is in an uphill fight to win the governor’s race. “It’s more important than ever to get off your behind and get out of the shade and get into the heat, as we say in the oil fields.” In the House, 29 Democratic-held seats are either leaning Republican or are all but lost to Republican candidates, according to the latest analysis of Congressional races by The New York Times, while 42 seats held by Democrats are seen as tossups. Even if Republicans win only half of the tossup seats, they will have passed the threshold of 39 they need to win control. Democrats were also fighting to preserve their majority in the Senate. The five Senate contests considered tossups will help determine if the party holds control, according to the analysis by The Times, with Republicans trying to capture Democratic-held seats in Colorado, Illinois, Nevada, Pennsylvania and Washington. Senator Harry Reid of Nevada, the Democratic leader, is in one of the closest races in the country against Ms. Angle. After a year of combative and piercing television ads, Mr. Reid’s closing message to voters was not an argument on issues, but rather a plea to voters to reject his opponent. “Harry Reid, fighting for us,” an announcer says, with images of Mr. Reid appearing with workers across Nevada. “Sharron Angle: pathological.” Republicans were looking for new patches of opportunity, scouring districts that only weeks ago would have been unthinkable. The First Congressional District of Rhode Island, which for 16 years has been represented by Patrick J. Kennedy, was suddenly seen as winnable terrain for Republicans. Mitt Romney, the former governor of Massachusetts and an aspiring Republican presidential candidate, was scheduled to visit the district on Monday. Republicans sent party leaders across the country on Sunday on behalf of their candidates. Rudolph W. Giuliani, the former mayor of New York, campaigned in northern Wisconsin for Sean Duffy, a former reality television star who is running for the seat held by David R. Obey, a Democrat who is retiring after 41 years in Congress. Gov. Tim Pawlenty of Minnesota traveled to Iowa to build support for legislative candidates. The most heavily-traveled state on Sunday, though, was Ohio, where Republicans are trying to win up to six Congressional districts, one Senate contest and the governor’s race. After the president and vice president appeared together in Cleveland, Mr. Biden stopped in Toledo for an evening rally for Gov. Ted Strickland, who is in a race that is too close to call with John Kasich, a former Republican congressman. For weeks, the White House has put more emphasis on Ohio than nearly any other state, but over the weekend, signs of a Republican revival were underscored by Mr. Boehner’s rare public appearances in his own state. He zipped from district to district as he worked to expand the Republican advantages in the House and deliver a counterargument to the president. “They have been coming here for months? Why? You might think it’s to help Ted Strickland. What he is really coming for is to help himself,” Mr. Boehner said on Sunday evening at his final stop, in Chillicothe. “He knows that in 2012 if he doesn’t have Ted Strickland in office, his re-election chances are seriously damaged. “So if you want to send President Obama a message about spending and about takeovers and bailouts and all the nonsense,” Mr. Boehner added, “go out there on Tuesday and vote for John Kasich.”

Elections
United States Politics and Government
Republican Party
Democratic Party
Obama Barack


Post-Collegiate Exploits in Brooklyn

Abstract: Those who find themselves attracted to the Brooklyn bohemia of Lena Dunham’s “Girls” but who can’t understand why its gritty depictions of post-collegiate reality have to be quite so gritty might want to distract themselves instead with “Brooklyn Girls” (St. Martin’s Griffin, $14.99), a sassy summer confection by the young novelist and screenwriter Gemma Burgess. The story stars Pia, an art history major fresh out of Brown with no money, no job and definitely no clue. After a semi-topless photo on Facebook costs her an entry-level gig in public relations, she faces a deadline from her parents: get it together in two months, or move out of the Carroll Gardens brownstone she shares with a quartet of friends, and back home to Switzerland. This being Brooklyn, Pia’s adventures include beekeeping, barhopping and a food truck business called Skinny Wheels. And this being 2013, the plot turns on casual sex and business sense as much as it does on its rather literal Prince Charming. If this sounds like fun, then you’re doubly in luck. The novel includes the first two chapters of a sequel, “Love and Chaos: A Brooklyn Girls Novel,” due out in winter 2014. Image ● Did you hear the one about the undercover rabbis and the 13 barrels of treyf brisket? How about the kosher chicken baron murdered by jealous rivals (after they bombed his summer cottage and poisoned his horse)? Or the Jewish gangsters Tootsie Herbert and his brother Charlie, enforcers for a crooked poultry syndicate? In “Kosher: Private Regulation in the Age of Industrial Food” (Harvard University Press, $39.95), Timothy D. Lytton tells the story of kosher food in America, which by necessity means New York. A professor at Albany Law School, Mr. Lytton is primarily concerned with offering present-day kosher certification as a model within the industrial food economy. But along the way, his short academic book recounts the dark days that led to today’s success. Amid an exploding Jewish population, the old European systems for ensuring that food was kosher collapsed in the free market of 19th-century New York. Fraud and corruption grew and persisted into the mid-20th century. It’s all delicious to read about, but New Yorkers of all creeds should be happy they no longer shop in a marketplace where, as Rabbi Moses Weinberger of the Lower East Side said in 1887, “absolute anarchy reigns” and the butchers “live in a world of lawlessness.” ● Anyone nursing a grudge that “Bring It On: The Musical” lost out to “Kinky Boots” in this year’s Tony Awards can find comfort in the theater critic Peter Filichia’s “Strippers, Showgirls and Sharks” (St. Martin’s Press, $26.99). The title alludes to “Gypsy,” “Follies” and “West Side Story” — three classics also passed over for the best-musical honor. And as promised by the subtitle, “A Very Opinionated History of the Broadway Musicals That Did Not Win the Tony Award,” Mr. Filichia’s long memory burns with barbs, gossip and production histories for the 150-odd other nominees that didn’t make the grade over the Tonys’ seven-decade history. Written in a breezy, conversational voice, with chapters organized by theme (“losers that suffered from following their creators’ smash hits,” etc.), this book is for Broadway completists. The introduction concludes with an honest advertisement that some readers might prefer to treat as a warning: “You may find more than you expect about ‘The Lieutenant’ and less than you envisioned on ‘Hair.’ That was intentional. I endeavored to describe shows in detail that have seldom, if ever, received intense scrutiny.”


Megyn Kelly’s Cautionary Tale of Crossing Donald Trump

Abstract: The Fox News anchor Megyn Kelly has spent the better part of the last year living in the main gladiator pit of 2016, becoming as much a target for Donald J. Trump as any of his opponents and emerging as a pivotal figure in the forced resignation of the Fox News Channel chairman Roger Ailes, whom she accused of sexual harassment. On Tuesday, she was in her office at the Fox News headquarters in Midtown Manhattan, taking stock, preparing for the next phase — a Trump presidency — and warning fellow journalists to look at her experience during the campaign as a potential cautionary tale. “The relentless campaign that Trump unleashed on me and Fox News to try to get coverage the way he liked it was unprecedented and potentially very dangerous,” she said, casual but animated behind her translucent desk. If he were to repeat the same behavior from the White House, she said, “it would be quite chilling for many reporters.” Until this week, Ms. Kelly had generally avoided interviews about her experience with Mr. Trump. New details she shares in her book, “Settle for More,” about what she describes as Mr. Trump’s attempts to harass and intimidate her, have raised questions from some critics about why she didn’t step forward sooner. But Ms. Kelly said the general contours of Mr. Trump’s campaign against her — which she says included pressure on her bosses to rein her in and led to death threats from Trump supporters that forced her to take on a security contingent — were well known and she did not want to make herself an even bigger part of the story before the election by sharing the inside details. “Trump wanted to make me a story line in the race,” she said. “I was trying for nine months to get myself off of the playing field and onto the sidelines, where a reporter belongs.” She has emerged from it all as the most sought-after star in television news, entertaining annual salary offers that surpass $20 million as she contemplates whether to stay at Fox News or leap to a competitor when her contract expires in the summer. Her new book, and the publicity surrounding it, re-litigates her fight with Mr. Trump just as he begins to plan his inauguration. Mr. Trump’s spokeswoman, Hope Hicks, declined to comment on Ms. Kelly or her book. But speaking broadly about Mr. Trump’s expectations for his relationship with the press as president, Ms. Hicks said that he would abide by “standard press protocols that are in place now, the traditions,” and that he saw his presidency as “a fresh start” for his relationship with the news media. During the interview, Ms. Kelly said she feared the election sent a troubling message to women. “There were a few themes that came out of 2016, and one of them is, as women, we have a long way to go, a long way to go,” she told me. Emphasizing that she takes “no position on the election,” she said the campaign showed “there is a tolerance for some considerable level of sexism and in some corners — let me underscore I’m not referring to Trump specifically, just what we saw this year — even misogyny.” That morning her network colleague and rival Bill O’Reilly appeared to criticize her for sharing new details regarding her allegations that Mr. Ailes harassed her. Ms. Kelly wrote in the book that Mr. Ailes offered her “professional advancement in exchange for sexual favors,” and once implicitly threatened her job after she rejected a kiss. The book was “ making my network look bad ,” Mr. O’Reilly said on “CBS This Morning.” Later, on his own show, Mr. O’Reilly suggested Ms. Kelly should have shown “allegiance” to Fox by taking her allegations to “human resources,” apparently meaning she should not have gone public. Ms. Kelly declined to respond to the comments from Mr. O’Reilly, who faced sexual harassment allegations in 2004 , which he settled. But later, on her show, she said she had support from her bosses to air her allegations against Mr. Ailes, adding that “sunlight is the best disinfectant.” During our interview, she said of Mr. O’Reilly, “I never see him; we’re fine.” Ms. Kelly wrote in her book that she had complained about Mr. Ailes’s harassment to an unnamed supervisor, who told her, she said, to avoid Mr. Ailes. After the Fox host Gretchen Carlson filed a harassment suit against Mr. Ailes this year, multiple other women stepped forward to lodge their own complaints against him, all of which Mr. Ailes has denied through lawyers. In a statement on Tuesday, Mr. Ailes said, “I categorically deny the allegations Megyn Kelly makes about me,” noting he “worked tirelessly to promote and advance her career.” “Think of what would happen here at Fox if we had had a female C.E.O. and it was a C.O.O. who was harassing me when I got harassed by Roger Ailes,” Ms. Kelly said. “I think things would have wound up very differently, and perhaps 12 years of women wouldn’t have had to go through those experiences.” Ms. Kelly’s feud with Mr. Trump started in earnest with her question at the first Republican debate, where she mentioned Mr. Trump’s past comments about women as “fat pigs, dogs, slobs.” He followed up by repeatedly attacking her on Twitter and telling an interviewer that Ms. Kelly had “blood coming out of her eyes, blood coming out her, wherever.” Looking back, Ms. Kelly said, “It was a prescient question.” She added, “If somebody asks you if you’re an idiot and you know you’re a Rhodes scholar with a Mensa membership, you don’t get upset.” With Mr. Trump preparing for a fresh start, Ms. Kelly says she is, too. “I’m going to be open-minded to Trump turning over a new leaf and perhaps being more like a president.” The question she had was whether Mr. Trump really would change or want to change. “It’s tough to change a 70-year-old man,” she said. “However, past sometimes isn’t prologue when an extraordinary, intervening event happens in one’s life.” But, to be safe, she said, “journalists need to steel their spines.” Because, she said, if past is prologue, they should take heed of her story, which put her on the wrong side of a social media campaign that carried over into real life through curses at her on the street and strangers showing up at her apartment building. Many of Mr. Trump’s voters are also loyal Fox News viewers who “think their values have been diminished or ignored or dismissed or mocked for too long,” which is why, Ms. Kelly said, “I completely get why he was elected.” Ms. Kelly said she thought some journalists “did go overboard” against Mr. Trump. But she said, “The vast majority of the controversy he generated, and in many instances intentionally — with the goal of being covered.” She added, “It’s a bit like the boy who kills his parents and then begs for mercy on the grounds that he’s an orphan, right?” One thing about being president is you get covered without even trying. Even if past isn’t prologue, this is going to be interesting.

Megyn Kelly
Settle for More
2016 Presidential Election
Donald Trump
News media,journalism
Sexual harassment
Fox News Channel
Roger E Ailes
Books


Olympic Games’ Social Legacy Awaits Score

Abstract: LONDON — Amber Charles still remembers the wasteland behind Stratford station, the hooded youths lingering across the street by the McDonald’s and her mother’s instruction not to walk the dirt track leading to their housing development after dark. Today, a sparkling new Olympic stadium and state-of-the art shopping mall have replaced the once-bleak expanse and the hooded youths are nowhere to be seen. What was once a dirt track has become a paved street complete with a road sign. “This looks nothing like the place I grew up in,” said Ms. Charles, who is 23 and has ambitions to play basketball for Britain in the 2016 Olympics . Even before the 2012 Games formally open on Friday night, East London, an area with some of the highest unemployment and crime rates in the country, has been visibly transformed by holding the world’s biggest sporting event. More than £9 billion, or $14 billion, has been poured into the Games, including building Olympic facilities, upgrading public transportation and scrubbing up the high streets near game venues, the government says. The new shopping mall alone has brought about 8,000 jobs. Ms. Charles, who was brought up by a single mother of Caribbean descent and is now studying in the United States on a sports scholarship, played her part in that transformation: Along with 34 other teenagers from mainly working-class and ethnically mixed districts, she was flown to Singapore in 2005 to persuade the International Olympic Committee that her generation needed the Games to bring hope and opportunity to their neighborhoods. Rather than representing sponsors, they represented a real-life snapshot of London’s future: There were Humaira Patel in her Muslim head scarf, then 13, and Gurpreet Virdee, a 14-year-old Sikh. There was Danielle Latimer, 16, with thick blond hair and an equally thick East London accent, and Alexandros Loukos, the son of a Greek immigrant and, at 12, the youngest in the group. It was an impressive publicity strategy — and one that may well have secured London the decisive winning vote. But seven years later, despite the visible improvements, it is unclear how impressive the actual legacy for the area and its youths will turn out to be. During a recent stroll through Stratford’s gleaming new cityscape it was hard to judge what is lasting change and what facade: For all the celebrations of a multicultural and multifaith Olympics, some Muslim residents fasting for Ramadan complained that their local mosque had been shut down by an Olympic roadblock, forcing them to travel 45 minutes to another district. A man begging across the street from the new shopping center was quickly surrounded by half a dozen plainclothes police officers and urged to move on. The benefits office near the station with groups of unemployed people routinely lining up outside has been razed to make way for a new office building. But at almost 19 percent, unemployment in the area is more than twice the national average. Olympic construction has now largely been concluded and, while it provided a boost, it did no more than blunt the impact of the current recession. Colin Ellis, senior vice president for credit policy at Moody’s Investor Services, said construction activity had declined by 10 percent since 2008. “Clearly it was beneficial, but what happened was not enough to offset the wider falls in the sector,” he said. “Looking at the big picture, we think that corporate sponsors will benefit most. The Olympics are unlikely to provide a substantial economic boost.” Some go further, arguing that the legacy of the Olympics for residents could prove negative, rather than just minor: retailers worry that the new shopping mall will eat into their business. Tenants fear a permanent increase in rents. Glyn Robbins, a campaigner who works in the social housing sector, believes that only about 17 percent of the housing units generated by the Games will be affordable to those in most need — half the official target of 35 percent. “My prediction is that it will become an area that excludes people from East London who are on low incomes, and the working class people will not feel part of the Olympic legacy,” Mr. Robbins said. “What we are going to find, once the carnival has moved on, is that very few people who live in the area and need housing are going to be able to afford to live in the neighborhood.” But for now, particularly among teenagers and young adults, including the 35 who went to Singapore all those years ago, optimism largely prevails. Mr. Loukos, now 19, points to improvement in public transportation linking remote corners of East London to not just different parts of central London but also to mainland Europe. “Who would have thought 10 years ago that you could go from Stratford to Europe?” he said, referring to plans to make Stratford part of a larger European high-speed rail network. His commute to work at a cable company has gotten faster and less crowded as light-railway trains run more often and with more cars. Jelani Lewis, 23, who arrived in East London from the Caribbean with his family when he was 10, said he used to fear the gang violence near the McDonald’s in central Stratford. The recent redevelopment has changed that. “There used to be stabbings around here all the time,” he said, “but I haven’t heard about one in about four years.” Several members of the group have family or friends who were unemployed and found an Olympic-linked job. One of Ms. Charles’s childhood friends works as part of a security team. “It’s short-term,” Ms. Charles said, “but she got training and it could lead to other things.” Mr. Lewis’s mother, who had not worked in years, helps with the logistics at one of the Olympic venues. Ms. Patel, 20, says she is proud that the Games have put Stratford on the map — and for reasons other than poverty and deprivation. A student of criminal law, she does community service with young offenders in Stratford. “The Games have made them proud to be from East London,” she said. “For the first time, their community is associated with something positive.” To those who say that the billions pumped into Olympic preparation could have been spent to greater effect if explicitly focused on the regeneration of East London, Ms. Patel and others retort that funds on this scale would simply never have been made available had it not been for the Olympic Games. They made light of some of the grumbling among other residents. “Moaning is a British sport,” Ms. Latimer said. “If it was an Olympic discipline we’d definitely win.”

Olympic Games (2012)
London (England)
Social Conditions and Trends
Poverty
International Olympic Committee
Great Britain
Charles Amber
Loukos Alexandros
Area Planning and Renewal


Russian Curator Subpoenaed Over Censored Art

Abstract: MOSCOW — A museum director who helped organize an exhibition of censored Soviet and post-Soviet art in defense of Russian artistic freedom now faces censure himself. Prosecutors have summoned the director, Yuri V. Samodurov, to a hearing on Tuesday during which he will be charged for his role in organizing “Forbidden Art — 2006,” a March 2007 exhibition at the Andrei Sakharov Museum in Moscow, according to a subpoena delivered to Mr. Samodurov last week. The subpoena was then faxed to The New York Times. The charges stem from an investigation that began shortly after the exhibition opened into whether Mr. Samodurov had incited religious hatred by displaying pornography-infused artworks, some of which mocked the Russian Orthodox Church . Yevgeni E. Korobkov, who signed the subpoena, confirmed that he had sent it but said he was not authorized to give further comment. A spokesman at the Moscow prosecutor’s office also declined to comment. The Soviet government repressed both the Orthodox Church and nonconformist artists. In recent years, however, the church, which the Kremlin now honors, has often sought to punish what it sees as opponents and critics. The police frequently act at church officials’ behest. In January 2003, a group of men raided Mr. Samodurov’s museum, defacing many of the 45 works in another exhibition critical of the Orthodox Church called “Caution, Religion!” While charges against most of the men were dropped for a lack of evidence, Mr. Samodurov was convicted of inciting religious hatred. The “Forbidden Art” exhibition was intended as a protest against artistic censorship that Mr. Samodurov and others said museums and galleries had been subject to since 2000, when Vladimir V. Putin, recently chosen as Russia ’s prime minister, became president. Last fall, Russia’s culture minister prevented several works he deemed “a disgrace” to Russia from appearing at a major exhibition of Russian Sots Art in Paris. Several of the works, which were also banned from a similar exhibition as part of the Second Moscow Biennale of Contemporary Art, were displayed at Mr. Samodurov’s “Forbidden Art” show. That exhibition featured several controversial works, including one depicting Christian worshipers praying to Mickey Mouse instead of Jesus Christ and another with a Russian general raping a male soldier next to the words “Glory to Russia!” Church leaders denounced the show. Shortly after, prosecutors opened the investigation of the exhibition’s organizers. Mr. Samodurov accused the government of using “the threat of criminal investigation” to restrict religious symbolism in art. “Our government has the traits of a theocratic government,” he said. “This is a very deep problem.”

Samodurov Yuri V
Russia
Sakharov Museum
Art
Censorship


In Real Life, ‘Rambo’ Ends Up as a Soldier of Misfortune, Behind Bars

Abstract: Late last year, a strike force of elite Thai police officers descended on the Baan Suan estates, a palm-treed housing complex next to a golf course on the tourist island of Phuket . The officers’ mission was to capture the American expatriate in Villa 34: Joseph Hunter, a retired soldier wanted by his government for having taken up what law enforcement officials called a new career — as a hired killer. Within three days, Mr. Hunter, a former Army sniper with Special Forces training, was in shackles on an airplane bound for New York, where he was formally accused of managing a team of contract hit men overseas. Law enforcement officials said the group had conspired to murder a federal drug agent and a drug-world informant in exchange for an $800,000 bounty from men they believed were members of a Colombian cartel. The case against Mr. Hunter, nicknamed Rambo, seemed to have been lifted from the latest action thriller. The hit was set for Liberia and, the Drug Enforcement Administration said, the plans were elaborate; the hired killers asked their employers for sophisticated latex masks to make them look as if they were of a different race and plotted to escape aboard a privately chartered jet. In a more shocking twist, at least for the gunmen, the supposed cartel members employing them were, in reality, D.E.A. agents setting up a sting. The narrative of the assassination plot may be hard to dispute; Mr. Hunter and his team were caught on audio and video tapes plotting the murders. But there may be more to the story than the court filings convey. According to Mr. Hunter’s family and his lawyer — and to two federal agents, one current and one retired — the person who set the authorities on Mr. Hunter’s trail was his former boss, Paul Le Roux, a shadowy South African operator who, until recently, was one of the world’s least known but most successful outlaws. According to the federal agents, Mr. Le Roux was an enterprising criminal who had overseen an empire in illegal guns and drugs that spanned four continents before he turned on Mr. Hunter in an attempt to get a lighter sentence after his own arrest. One of the agents compared Mr. Le Roux, who he said was still in custody, to Viktor Bout , the infamous Russian arms dealer said to be the real-life inspiration for the movie “Lord of War.” “Le Roux is a bad guy, a very bad guy,” the agent said, speaking on the condition of anonymity because, he said, Mr. Le Roux’s cooperation has been a secret. “He’s Viktor Bout on steroids.” Mr. Le Roux’s alleged involvement may well complicate what the D.E.A. hoped would be an open-and-shut case against Mr. Hunter, 49, because of the video and audio evidence. Mr. Hunter’s lawyer, Marlon Kirton, contends that his client was entrapped and would never have recruited his team of former military men if the government had not launched a sting against him, after the tip from Mr. Le Roux. Prosecutors contend, however, that Mr. Hunter was caught on tape boasting of having killed two people in the Philippines before the latest plot was hatched, which could complicate an entrapment defense. Attempts to find a lawyer representing Mr. Le Roux were unsuccessful. There are no public federal documents related to his arrest or alleged cooperation, nor are there references to him in Mr. Hunter’s public court file, which notes that many files are sealed. Even before Mr. Le Roux reportedly became a government informant, Mr. Hunter’s story was an elaborate tale of international intrigue — of soldiers and soldiers of fortune — that began somewhat improbably in Owensboro, Ky., a tobacco manufacturing hub two hours outside Louisville. Mr. Hunter grew up there and returned in mid-2004 after retiring from the Army. Not unlike many veterans, Mr. Hunter made a difficult discovery when he got home: It was hard to find civilian work he liked and that made use of the skills he had developed over two decades in uniform. “He was miserable, frustrated beyond belief,” said his sister, Karen Adams, who lives in Owensboro. Her brother, she recounted, tried to find work as a police officer and as a United States marshal, but she said he was rejected because he was considered too old at 38 even though he was in great shape from weight lifting and martial-arts training. In 2005, she said, Mr. Hunter reluctantly accepted a position as an inmate counselor at the Green River Correctional Complex , a county prison more than an hour’s drive from Owensboro. He hated it, she said — the drudgery, the physical confinement — and lasted only 15 months. Looking for a paycheck, and the adrenaline rush of a war zone, he went back, she said, to the type of work he knew best, signing up with DynCorp International , a private security firm. According to Ms. Adams, DynCorp sent him to Iraq, where he worked taking fingerprints and DNA swabs from company employees. Two years later, he joined another firm in Iraq called Triple Canopy , protecting American embassy workers, she said. It was in 2009, as he became enmeshed in the chummy, macho world of contract security work, that another soldier for hire introduced him to a charismatic businessman named Paul Le Roux, according to Mr. Hunter’s sister. She said that Mr. Le Roux promptly offered her brother a job. Thus began a three-year stint of travel during which she said Mr. Hunter accompanied Mr. Le Roux on business trips to Brazil, the Republic of Congo, Mali and the Philippines. He was making good money, his sister said, and those who knew him seemed impressed, though perhaps a bit confused, by his glamorous new job. “All he told me was that he was guarding some millionaire on a yacht, cruising around in Africa,” said Bill Boyd, a fellow Army veteran from Owensboro and one of Mr. Hunter’s oldest friends. “The guy supposedly traded in commodities, and Joe was acting as his bodyguard.” But according to the federal agents, Mr. Le Roux traded in far more than commodities. The agents confirmed that Mr. Le Roux had been the architect of a prescription pill scheme, with roots in Minnesota and Brazil, in which physicians employed by him provided painkillers to be sold on the Internet. Mr. Le Roux was never named or charged in the case, but both agents acknowledged that he was an unindicted co-conspirator and that he had provided information that led to the indictment of 11 people. Other authorities also had their eyes on Mr. Le Roux, who is believed to be in his 40s. In July 2011, the United Nations accused him of spending $3 million, including almost $1 million in militia salaries, in violation of an arms embargo in Somalia, adding that one of his partners was also involved in a plot to cultivate hallucinogenic plants at a secret compound near the Ethiopian border. “Le Roux’s businesses were huge,” said Lachlan McConnell, a security contractor, now based in the Philippines, who is facing charges of helping Mr. Le Roux with the painkiller scheme. “He had operations in Manila, Hong Kong, Colombia, Africa, Brazil. It was guns, gold, drugs, you name it. It was big, really big.” It remains unclear how much Mr. Hunter knew about his boss’s portfolio, but according to his own account furnished to a court-approved psychologist, he believed that Paul Le Roux was no legitimate businessman. In the summer of 2009, Mr. Hunter said, Mr. Le Roux dispatched him to guard a merchant vessel, the M/V Captain Ufuk, that was supposedly hauling commercial cargo to the Philippines. But when Mr. Hunter boarded the ship, “he learned that weapons were to be picked up, and he began suspecting that he was involved in an illegal operation,” the psychological evaluation said. The evaluation added that he left the vessel just before it was seized by the Filipino coast guard. A cache of assault rifles was found on board , and officials in Manila filed charges against several people — among them employees of a company in Manila that the United Nations said was run by Mr. Le Roux. Last week, the captain of the vessel, Lawrence John Burne, was sentenced in absentia — he had jumped bail and fled — for tax evasion related to the gun shipments, according to an online news release from the Philippines Department of Justice. Tax charges in the case are still pending against several of the defendants, including a South African national identified in court documents as John Paul Le Raux. “Joe was freaked out,” his friend, Mr. Boyd, recalled, but feared for his life if he were to quit, his lawyer said. The evaluation said that Mr. Hunter “began to suspect that, since he was the one renting houses and getting business licenses for Mr. Le Roux’s companies, he was being set up to potentially ‘take the fall’ if the illegal arms activities were discovered.” In September 2012, Mr. Le Roux was captured in a secret operation in Liberia, the federal agents said, and was taken into custody by the D.E.A. Four months later, Mr. Hunter’s own troubles started when the D.E.A. sent two undercover agents to meet him in Thailand, posing as members of a Colombian drug cartel. According to the indictment Mr. Hunter faces, the supposed cartel members offered him a job as their “head of security,” a position that required him to put together a team of able men. By early March, the indictment said, Mr. Hunter had used the Internet to assemble a team: Dennis Gogel, 28, and Michael Filter, 30, both of whom had served with the German armed forces; Slawomir Soborski, a 41-year-old Polish veteran; and Timothy Vamvakias, 43, who had served in the United States Army. All of the men, including Mr. Hunter, have pleaded not guilty. After giving their recruits surveillance and security work, the undercover agents in May 2013 offered them what they described as “a bonus job” — a paid assignment to kill a D.E.A. agent and a troublesome informant. “They will handle both jobs,” Mr. Hunter wrote in an email, the indictment says. “They just need good tools.” And so began a brainstorming session for the hit; Mr. Gogel and Mr. Vamvakias proposed using “machine guns, cyanide or a grenade,” according to the indictment. By midsummer, Mr. Hunter had also emailed the agents a wish list of military hardware: two submachine guns with silencers (he asked for “something small”), two .22-caliber pistols (“these are a must”) and a .308-caliber rifle with a scope. By the end of August, it was settled that Mr. Gogel and Mr. Vamvakias would carry out the hit. Two Liberian visas were obtained, and Mr. Hunter emailed his employers, saying that his men would arrive in Africa on Sept. 25. By the time they landed, he had already been arrested. This summer, Mr. Hunter, who faces life in prison, appeared for a status conference at Federal District Court in Manhattan. His cheeks looked hollow, and his wrists were shackled to his ankles by a chain. His lawyer, Mr. Kirton, had recently returned from trips to the Philippines and Africa, where he had gone in search of information about Mr. Le Roux. He says he did not learn much and has relatively little time left to do so. Mr. Hunter’s trial has been scheduled for March 9. One person unlikely to be in attendance: Paul Le Roux.

Mercenaries Private Military Contractors


Alabama Inmate Sues to Read Southern History Book

Abstract: The past is never dead, though at the Kilby Correctional Facility outside of Montgomery, Ala., it seems it is not particularly welcome. Last Friday, Mark Melvin, who is serving a life sentence at Kilby, filed suit in federal court against the prison’s officials and the state commissioner of corrections, claiming they have unjustly kept a book out of his hands. The book, which was sent to him by his lawyer, is a work of history. More specifically, it is a Pulitzer Prize -winning work of Southern history, an investigation of the systematically heinous treatment of black prisoners in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Mr. Melvin, 33, alleges in his suit that prison officials deemed it “a security threat.” The dispute began a year ago. Mr. Melvin was entering his 18th year in the state’s custody, having been charged at 14 with helping his older brother commit two murders. He was well-behaved enough to be granted parole in 2008, but after committing what his lawyer called “a technical violation” at a transition house, he was sent back. So he has been reading novels and biographies, studies of World War II and Irish history, his lawyer, Bryan Stevenson, said. After his return to prison, Mr. Melvin was assigned by the warden to work in the prison’s law library. Last September, Mr. Stevenson sent Mr. Melvin a couple of books, including “Slavery by Another Name: The Re-Enslavement of Black Americans from the Civil War to World War II,” by Douglas A. Blackmon , the senior national correspondent at The Wall Street Journal. It won the Pulitzer Prize for general nonfiction in 2009. The book chronicles the vast and brutal convict leasing system, which became nearly indistinguishable from antebellum slavery as it grew. In this system, people, in almost all cases black, were arrested by local law enforcement, often on the flimsiest of charges, and forced to labor on the cotton farms of wealthy planters or in the coal mines of corporations to pay off their criminal penalties. Though convict leasing occurred across the South, the book focuses on Alabama. Mr. Melvin never received the book. According to his lawsuit, he was told by an official at Kilby that the book was “too incendiary” and “too provocative,” and was ordered to have it sent back at his own expense. He appealed, but in his lawsuit he says that prison officials upheld the decision, citing a regulation banning any mail that incites “violence based on race, religion, sex, creed, or nationality, or disobedience toward law enforcement officials or correctional staff.” (Mr. Melvin is white.) So he sued. A spokesman for the Alabama Department of Corrections said officials had not seen the suit on Monday and could not comment. Mr. Stevenson, who is also the director of the Equal Justice Initiative in Montgomery, said he considered the lawsuit to be less about the rights of people in prison but primarily about the country’s refusal to own up to its racial history Stanley Washington, a former inmate who is now a caseworker for the equal justice group, said that at the Alabama prison where he was serving a sentence in 2001, inmates were forbidden to watch the mini-series “Roots.” “They didn’t give a reason,” Mr. Washington said. “We figured they thought it would rile up the blacks against the whites.” Mr. Blackmon, in a phone interview, said he had not heard about any other instance of his book’s being banned, though makers of a documentary based on it were prevented from filming in one Alabama town by the mayor and city attorney. “The idea that a book like mine is somehow incendiary or a call to violence is so absurd,” he said. While doing research on the book in small county courthouses around the state, he said, he was met sometimes with wariness but never with outright resistance. “To be honest, these events had slipped deep enough into the past that there weren’t very many people who even knew to be cautious about them,” he said. Indeed, the last of the thousands of convicts who had been toiling in the deadly Birmingham coal mines were moved out in 1928. They were sent to Kilby.

Suits and Litigation
Prisons and Prisoners
Race and Ethnicity
Books and Literature
Blackmon Douglas A


Bannon Is Given Security Role Usually Held for Generals

Abstract: WASHINGTON — The whirlwind first week of Donald J. Trump’s presidency had all the bravura hallmarks of a Stephen K. Bannon production. It started with the doom-hued inauguration homily to “American carnage” in United States cities co-written by Mr. Bannon, followed a few days later by his “shut up” message to the news media. The week culminated with a blizzard of executive orders, mostly hatched by Mr. Bannon’s team and the White House policy adviser, Stephen Miller, aimed at disorienting the “enemy,” fulfilling campaign promises and distracting attention from Mr. Trump’s less than flawless debut. But the defining moment for Mr. Bannon came Saturday night in the form of an executive order giving the rumpled right-wing agitator a full seat on the “principals committee” of the National Security Council — while downgrading the roles of the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the director of national intelligence, who will now attend only when the council is considering issues in their direct areas of responsibilities. It is a startling elevation of a political adviser, to a status alongside the secretaries of state and defense, and over the president’s top military and intelligence advisers. In theory, the move put Mr. Bannon, a former Navy surface warfare officer, admiral’s aide, investment banker, Hollywood producer and Breitbart News firebrand, on the same level as his friend, Michael T. Flynn, the national security adviser, a former Pentagon intelligence chief who was Mr. Trump’s top adviser on national security issues before a series of missteps reduced his influence. But in terms of real influence, Mr. Bannon looms above almost everyone except the president’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, in the Trumpian pecking order, according to interviews with two dozen Trump insiders and current and former national security officials. The move involving Mr. Bannon, as well as the boost in status to the White House homeland security adviser, Thomas P. Bossert, and Mr. Trump’s relationships with cabinet appointees like Defense Secretary Jim Mattis, have essentially layered over Mr. Flynn. Sean Spicer, the White House press secretary, said Mr. Bannon — whose Breitbart website was a magnet for white nationalists, antiglobalists and conspiracy theorists — always planned to participate in national security. Mr. Flynn welcomed his participation, Mr. Spicer said, but the general “led the reorganization of the N.S.C.” in order to streamline an antiquated and bloated bureaucracy. Former White House officials in both parties were shocked by the move. “The last place you want to put somebody who worries about politics is in a room where they’re talking about national security,” said Leon E. Panetta, a former White House chief of staff, defense secretary and C.I.A. director in two Democratic administrations. “I’ve never seen that happen, and it shouldn’t happen. It’s not like he has broad experience in foreign policy and national security issues. He doesn’t. His primary role is to control or guide the president’s conscience based on his campaign promises. That’s not what the National Security Council is supposed to be about.” That opinion was shared by President George W. Bush’s last chief of staff, Josh Bolten, who barred Karl Rove, Mr. Bush’s political adviser, from N.S.C. meetings. A president’s decisions made with those advisers, he told a conference audience in September, “involve life and death for the people in uniform” and should “not be tainted by any political decisions.” Susan E. Rice, President Barack Obama’s last national security adviser, called the arrangement “stone cold crazy” in a tweet posted Sunday . Mr. Spicer said the language the Trump White House used in its N.S.C. executive order is, with the exception of Mr. Bannon’s position — which was created during the transition — almost identical in content to one the Bush administration drafted in 2001. And Mr. Obama’s top political operative, David Axelrod, sat in on some N.S.C. meetings, he added. There were key differences. Mr. Axelrod never served as a permanent member as Mr. Bannon will now, though he sat in on some critical meetings, especially as Mr. Obama debated strategy in Afghanistan and Pakistan. “It’s a profound shift,” Mr. Axelrod said. “I don’t know what his bona fides are to be the principal foreign policy adviser to the president.” But Mr. Bannon’s elevation does not merely reflect his growing influence on national security. It is emblematic of Mr. Trump’s trust on a range of political and ideological issues. During the campaign, the sly and provocative Mr. Bannon played a paradoxical role — calming the easily agitated candidate during his frequent rough patches and egging him on when he felt Mr. Trump needed to fire up the white working-class base. The president respects Mr. Bannon because he is independently wealthy and therefore does not need the job, and both men ascribe to a shoot-the-prisoners credo when put on the defensive, according to the former Trump campaign manager Corey Lewandowski. Mr. Bannon is a deft operator within the White House, and he has been praised by Republicans who view him skeptically as the most knowledgeable on policy around the president. But his stated preference for blowing things up — as opposed to putting them back together — may not translate to his new role. The hasty drafting of the immigration order, and its scattershot execution, brought a measure of Mr. Bannon’s chaotic and hyperaggressive political style to the more predictable administration of the federal government. Within hours of the edict, airport customs and border agents were detaining or blocking dozens of migrant families, some of whom had permanent resident status, until John F. Kelly, the new homeland security secretary, intervened. Mr. Kelly’s department had suggested green card holders be exempted from the order, but Mr. Bannon and Mr. Miller, a hard-liner on immigration, overruled him, according to two American officials. Mr. Priebus, speaking on NBC’s “Meet the Press” on Sunday, indicated a softening of the stance, saying the order would not block “green card holders moving forward” — but said anyone seeking to enter the country from the listed countries would be subjected to tighter scrutiny. People close to Mr. Bannon said he is not accumulating power for power’s sake, but is instead helping to fill a staff leadership vacuum created, in part, by Mr. Flynn’s stumbling performance as national security adviser. Mr. Flynn still communicates with Mr. Trump frequently, and his staff has been assembling a version of the Presidential Daily Briefing for Mr. Trump, truncated but comprehensive, to be the president’s main source of national security information. During the campaign, he often had unfettered access to the candidate, who appreciated his brash style and contempt for Hillary Clinton, but during the transition, Mr. Flynn privately complained about having to share face time with others. Mr. Flynn “has the full confidence of the president and his team,” Hope Hicks, a spokeswoman for Mr. Trump, said in an email. Emails and phone calls to Mr. Flynn and his top aide were not returned. A president who likes generals and abhors political correctness, Mr. Trump found in Mr. Flynn — who joined Trump backers in an anti-Clinton “lock her up!” chant during the campaign — perhaps the most politically incorrect general this side of his hero, Gen. George S. Patton. But Mr. Flynn, a lifelong Democrat sacked as head of the Pentagon’s intelligence arm after clashing with Obama administration officials in 2014, has gotten on the nerves of Mr. Trump and other administration officials because of his sometimes overbearing demeanor, and has further diminished his internal standing by presiding over a chaotic and opaque N.S.C. transition process that prioritized the hiring of military officials over civilian experts recommended to him by his own team. Mr. Flynn’s penchant for talking too much was on display on Friday in a meeting with Theresa May, the British prime minister, according to two people with direct knowledge of the events. When Mrs. May said that she understood wanting a dialogue with Mr. Putin but stressed the need to be careful, Mr. Trump asked Mr. Flynn when the two were scheduled to speak. Mr. Flynn replied it was Saturday — he had delayed it to fit in Mrs. May’s meeting for “protocol” as a United States ally, adding at length that Mr. Putin was impatient to chat. Mr. Trump, the person said, appeared irritated by the response. Still, the episode that did the most damage to the Trump-Flynn relationship occurred in early December when Mr. Flynn’s son, also named Michael, unleashed a series of tweets pushing a discredited conspiracy theory that Clinton associates had run a child sex-slave ring out of a Washington pizza restaurant. Mr. Trump told his staff to get rid of the younger Mr. Flynn, who had been hired by his father to help during the transition. But Mr. Trump did so reluctantly because of his loyalty during the campaign, when dozens of former military officials were dismissing Mr. Trump as too unstable to command. “I want him fired immediately,” Mr. Trump said in a muted rendition of his “You’re fired!” line in “The Apprentice,” according to two people with knowledge of the interaction. That has not stopped the general’s son from spouting off: On Saturday, at a time when Trump surrogates were pushing back on the idea that the executive order did not discriminate against any religion, the younger Mr. Flynn tweeted his approval of the policy, adding “#MuslimBan.” The tweet was subsequently deleted; his entire account disappeared later in the day. Still, the national security adviser has also continued to dabble in the kind of bomb-throwing behavior that concerns Mr. Trump’s allies, such as planning to attend an anti-Clinton “Deploraball” event at the time of the inauguration. He was urged to skip it by Trump allies, and ultimately agreed. Both Mr. Trump and Mr. Bannon still regard Mr. Flynn as an asset. “In the room and out of the room, Steve Bannon is General Flynn’s biggest defender,” said Kellyanne Conway, another top adviser to the president. But it is unclear when the maneuvers to reduce Mr. Flynn’s role began. Two Obama administration officials said Trump transition officials inquired about expanded national security roles for Mr. Bannon and Mr. Kushner at the earliest stages of the transition in November — before the younger Mr. Flynn became a liability — but after Mr. Flynn had begun to chafe on the nerves of his colleagues on the team. Mr. Flynn’s reputation has raised questions among some in the cabinet. Two weeks ago, both men held a meeting with Rex W. Tillerson, Mr. Trump’s pick to run the State Department, Mr. Mattis and Mike Pompeo, now the C.I.A. director, to discuss coordination — Mr. Flynn was invited but did not attend. Part of the meeting was devoted to discussing concerns about Mr. Flynn, according to an official with knowledge of it.

US Politics
Steve Bannon
Donald Trump
Appointments and Executive Changes
US Military
US National Security Council
Michael Flynn


Turkey: Life Terms for 7 in an ’09 Attack That Killed 44

Abstract: A court in Turkey sentenced seven people to life in prison on Monday for an attack on an engagement ceremony last year that killed 44 people, according to the state-run news agency Anatolia. The court also sentenced another defendant to a 15-year prison term for his involvement in the attack, Anatolia said. In the attack on May 4, masked gunmen stormed the ceremony in the village of Bilge, killing the betrothed couple, the imam presiding over the ceremony and many of the guests. The authorities had attributed the attack to a family feud, but court officials have said the motive could not be established.

Turkey
Sentences (Criminal)
Murders and Attempted Murders


UEFA Takes Action Over Crimea

Abstract: UEFA banned soccer clubs in the disputed Crimea region from playing in competitions organized by Russia. Three Crimean clubs have played this season in the Russian third-tier league. Russia’s annexation of the Crimea region in March has not been recognized by the United Nations. ■ Everton goalkeeper Tim Howard won the United States player of the year award for the first time. Jermaine Jones was the runner-up. (AP)

Soccer
Union of European Football Assns UEFA
Crimea
Russia


Giuliani on Taxes, Democrats and Record as Mayor

Abstract: The campaign of Rudolph W. Giuliani began running its fourth advertisement yesterday in New Hampshire. PRODUCER 08 Media THE SCRIPT Mr. Giuliani says: “When I became mayor of New York City, things were out of control. I lowered taxes, I reduced the growth of government, made government more accountable, and New York City boomed. I would do these things for America because I know they work. I know that reducing taxes produces more revenues. Democrats don’t know that. They don’t believe that. Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, John Edwards — here’s a promise I assure you they’ll keep. They are making the promise to raise taxes. The only thing I can tell you in addition to that is, they’ll raise taxes even more than they promised. I’m Rudy Giuliani, and I approve this message.” ON THE SCREEN The spot replays many of the clips from a previous advertisement praising Mr. Giuliani’s record as mayor, highlighting images of a squeaky-clean city: a jogger in a park on a sunny day, a couple gazing at the city from a rooftop, cars zipping down an avenue. For the rest of the commercial, it pictures Mr. Giuliani, seated and smiling cheerfully as he criticizes the leading Democrats by name. The spot closes with a close-up shot of Mr. Giuliani, bearing a toothy grin and dimples. ACCURACY It is true that Mr. Giuliani lowered taxes as mayor, though in the past he has taken credit for some tax cuts that were initiated by others. As for his claim that the three leading Democratic candidates are “making the promise to raise taxes,” Mrs. Clinton, Mr. Obama and Mr. Edwards have all said they would roll back the tax cuts benefiting the rich that President Bush instituted. Mr. Edwards has said he would offer three new tax breaks benefiting the middle class. But all three have proposed ambitious programs, like universal health care, that would result in increases in federal spending. Mr. Giuliani’s additional claim that they will “raise taxes even more than they promised” does not appear to be based on any evidence. SCORECARD Mr. Giuliani has leaned heavily on his record as New York’s mayor when promoting himself as a problem solver capable of taking on seemingly insurmountable challenges. But he picks and chooses carefully when referring to his mayoral tenure — he talks about how he lowered taxes but not, say, his strict gun control stance. And Mr. Giuliani exhibits bluster in the advertisement as he portrays the Democrats as perpetually tax-raising and, on top of that, deceitful about their plans to do so. JULIE BOSMAN

Presidential Election of 2008
Political Advertising
Giuliani Rudolph W


M.T.A. Is Raising Fares and Tolls; One Subway or Bus Ride Will Cost $2.75

Abstract: The board of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority voted on Thursday to raise the base fare on subways and buses by a quarter, to $2.75, and the cost of a 30-day MetroCard by $4.50, to $116.50. The new fares, which will take effect on March 22, were part of a package of increases approved for the system’s trains, buses, tunnels and bridges. Fare increases have become routine and are scheduled to occur every two years as part of the authority’s long-term revenue plans. The previous increase, in 2013, raised the base fare to $2.50, from $2.25. The subway system has recently seen record use, with more than six million riders on some days, but the authority is facing questions over how to pay for long-term improvements to its infrastructure. The agency’s proposal for a $32 billion, five-year capital plan has a $15 billion funding shortfall, and the board is seeking contributions from the state and the city. Officials have cautioned that if the authority relies on borrowing to close the capital gap, it could increase pressure to raise fares and tolls faster than scheduled. On Tuesday, Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo outlined his priorities for the state’s infrastructure, and said the state would invest $750 million toward the authority’s capital plan. But he did not address the larger funding gap. Under the increases approved on Thursday, the bonus for pay-per-ride MetroCards will rise to 11 percent, from 5 percent, for anyone who puts at least $5.50 on a card. The cost of a weekly pass will increase to $31, from $30. The authority’s board had considered two proposals for pay-per-ride MetroCards and decided against an option that kept the base fare at $2.50 while eliminating the bonus. Transportation advocates had argued that the bonus served an important function as a discount for low-income riders who cannot afford weekly or monthly passes. The authority’s chairman, Thomas F. Prendergast, has called the fare increases modest, and said they were needed to balance the budget against the rising costs of providing services. “I’ve recommended the fare and toll change options that are most favorable to our customers who use the services the most, our core constituency,” Mr. Prendergast said at the board meeting on Thursday. One board member, Carl V. Wortendyke, who represents Rockland County, voted against the fare increase. Another board member, Allen P. Cappelli, of Staten Island, voted against the toll increase. Because of an improved financial outlook, the adopted 4 percent increase for fares and tolls was lower than the 7.5 percent increase in the original plans. Altogether, the changes are expected to generate $210 million for the authority this year. After the board meeting, Mr. Prendergast said the $750 million proposed by Mr. Cuomo, a Democrat, for the capital budget was the start of a dialogue. “I’m very confident that at the end of the day, we will get what we need to be able to run the system and maintain it,” Mr. Prendergast said. Gene Russianoff , the staff lawyer for the Straphangers Campaign, a rider advocacy group, said the fare increase was a “fair ask for riders to contribute to the system.” The group was more concerned with increased funding for the capital plan, he said. “Our eyes are on the prize,” he said. “We’re really focused on the $15 billion to fix the system.” Another challenge facing the authority is the need to replace the MetroCard with a system that would allow riders to tap a credit card or smartphone on an electronic reader. This week, officials said they hoped to unveil the system in 2020 and phase out MetroCards by the end of 2022. Fares for the Long Island Rail Road and the Metro-North Railroad will also go up by about 4 percent, depending on the time of day and distance traveled. E-ZPass tolls will increase by 21 cents, to $5.54, at major crossings like the Robert F. Kennedy Bridge, among other toll increases . Several board members acknowledged that higher fares would be difficult for many riders, but that the revenue was needed. One member, Polly Trottenberg, New York City’s transportation commissioner, said the increases were as fair as possible. “I think you all came up with a plan which, frankly, does the least damage to the largest number of folks,” she said.


For Bread and Other Sundries

Abstract: Harvey Edwards has been a fixture on the culinary scene in Old Greenwich for nearly three decades, first as the chef and owner of the Café du Bec Fin restaurant, and in recent years as the maître boulanger of Beyond Bread. Seventeen years after it opened, Beyond Bread remains a hole-in-the-wall, with a narrow retail space and a mere nine chairs. “We intended to just wholesale at the beginning,” said Michèle Edwards, Mr. Edwards’s ex-wife and partner in the bakery, “but people begged us to make the breads available” retail. As its name implies, great bread — from crusty baguettes to Tuscan loaves to semolina to multigrain to sourdough ($1.85 to $5.85) — is just a part of the business. With the exception of bagels, which are brought in, “Harvey does everything,” Ms. Edwards said. That includes vegetarian lasagna ($6 for a large rectangle), fresh daily quiches ($17 for a whole), fruit tarts ($4.75), various cookies, honey-infused granola bars and a fresh fruit yogurt parfait. Brick oven pizza ($8 to $16.50), offered for lunch and dinner on Friday and Saturday, is another house specialty. Toppings range from the ubiquitous mushroom and pepperoni, to caramelized onion, artichoke hearts and prosciutto. Among a half-dozen salads prepared daily ($7 to $7.75), the Mediterranean, a medley of mixed greens, tomato, black olives, red onion, pine nuts, peppers and Gorgonzola, is particularly memorable. Coffee comes in nearly a dozen varieties ($1.65 to $4.25), from caffé mocha to the ever-popular cappuccino. Beyond Bread, 216 Sound Beach Avenue, Old Greenwich, (203) 637-2543. Open Tuesday to Saturday, 6 a.m. to 3 p.m.; Friday and Saturday, 5 to 9 p.m.; Sunday, 6 a.m. to 1 p.m. CHRISTOPHER BROOKS

Bread
Bakeries and Baked Products
Greenwich (Conn)


Multiple Sclerosis Recurs, but Doesn’t Dim a Desire to Inspire

Abstract: Wonder Pearson knew something was wrong when her typing speed began to drop. She had averaged 95 words a minute while working as an administrative assistant at the Internal Revenue Service in Atlanta. But in fall 1995, not only did she get drastically slower, but she also found it hard to remember what others said in meetings while she took notes, and she struggled to keep her balance. Ms. Pearson was eventually told by a neurologist that she had lesions on her brain, and she was given a diagnosis of multiple sclerosis. “I remember asking the doctor, ‘Am I going to die?’ ” Ms. Pearson, 50, said recently. “He said, ‘No, but your life will change tremendously.’ ” At first, the disease seemed manageable to Ms. Pearson, a single mother who had a second job cleaning offices to support herself and her teenage daughter. For six months, she went on with her life as if everything were normal. Then, one evening, Ms. Pearson lay down and noticed that the right side of her body was very weak. Within hours, she was paralyzed. “My muscles just gave way, and I couldn’t even talk,” she recalled. For four months she was bedridden, unable to move or speak. “It really scared me,” she said. “I just lay there, and I became very depressed.” Slowly, with physical therapy and other treatment, Ms. Pearson regained her mobility and speech. She tried going back to work, but soon suffered a relapse. A Brooklyn native, she decided to return to New York and to her mother, Roberta Young, a church pastor who adopted Ms. Pearson when she was 10. She took a job as a secretary, but on a lunch break, she became disoriented and could not remember where her office was. Since then, she has not been able to hold a job. “I want to go to work, but because of the ups and downs of my disease, I’m afraid,” said Ms. Pearson, who has had numerous relapses over the years and is regularly struck by fatigue, blurry vision, numbness, slurred speech, memory loss and a loss of balance. She has tried to find a job she can do from home, but so far she has been unsuccessful. She keeps herself busy by working to help others. Every second Saturday of the month, inspired by the memory of her mother, who died of lung cancer in 2004, she hosts a women’s Christian group in her apartment in Canarsie, Brooklyn. “Everyone brings a pot of food and we fellowship,” said Ms. Pearson, who speaks softly but confidently. Based in part on her experiences as a single mother, she said, “what I try to do in my program is teach women they are valuable in God’s eyes.” “They don’t have to compromise,” she continued. “They can be courageous, independent women.” Ms. Pearson’s daughter, Monique Pearson, now 31 and a high school English teacher, said she was impressed by her mother’s drive to give others guidance and advice. “Whoever my mother sees who needs a helping hand, she tries to help, despite her illness,” Monique Pearson said. She has watched her mother persuade a recovering drug addict to go back to school, help another woman establish a business and teach others how to write résumés and look for jobs. While Wonder Pearson feels she is fulfilling a calling by helping others, her own lack of employment has been a burden to her. Although Medicaid covers 80 percent of her health care costs, she owes about $7,000 in medical bills. Ms. Pearson, who lives in public housing and pays $304 a month in rent, receives $1,019 a month in Social Security disability benefits and $111 in food stamps. “It’s very difficult for me to save,” said Ms. Pearson, who has a shopping bag filled with unpaid bills. “Sometimes it’s hard to even make my check stretch for the whole month.” Her daughter helps as much as she can, but she is a single mother with education debt. When doctors recommended that Ms. Pearson get a firmer mattress to help with muscle pain, she turned to Catholic Charities Brooklyn and Queens, one of the seven agencies supported by The New York Times Neediest Cases Fund. She received $470 from the fund to buy a mattress and $232 for a new pair of glasses. Ms. Pearson cares for her 8-year-old grandson while her daughter teaches and attends classes for a second master’s degree. From home, she continues to look for work and is applying to the State Office of Vocational and Educational Services for Individuals With Disabilities to take classes in the hope that she will increase her chances of finding a job. Her dream is to expand her woman’s group into a bigger space and offer cooking and computer workshops. Her neurologist recently invited her to speak to a group of patients who had just received diagnoses of multiple sclerosis. Her message to them: Do not let the disease stop you from leading an active life. And she follows that advice. “I will try before I give up,” Ms. Pearson said. “I won’t baby this condition.”

Multiple Sclerosis
New York Times Neediest Cases Fund
Philanthropy
Brooklyn (NYC)
Catholic Charities


Law Graduate Gets Her Day in Court, Suing Law School

Abstract: Nearly a decade has passed since an aspiring young lawyer in California, Anna Alaburda, graduated in the top tier of her class, passed the state bar exam and set out to use the law degree she had spent about $150,000 to acquire. But on Monday, in a San Diego courtroom, she will tell a story that has become all too familiar among law students in the United States: Since graduating from the Thomas Jefferson School of Law in 2008, she has yet to find a full-time salaried job as a lawyer. From there, though, her story has taken an unusual twist: Ms. Alaburda, 37, is the first former law student whose case against a law school, charging that it inflated the employment data for its graduates as a way to lure students to enroll, will go to trial. [ Update: Ms. Alaburda lost her case on March 24 . A jury voted nine to three to reject her claims. ] Other disgruntled students have tried to do the same. In the last several years, 15 lawsuits have sought to hold various law schools accountable for publicly listing information critics say was used to pump up alumni job numbers by counting part-time waitress and other similar, full-time jobs as employment. Only one suit besides Ms. Alaburda’s remains active. None of the other cases reached trial because judges in Illinois, Michigan and New York, where several cases were filed, generally concluded that law students had opted for legal education at their own peril, and were sophisticated enough to have known that employment as a lawyer was not guaranteed. But a California judge let Ms. Alaburda’s suit proceed, brushing aside efforts by the law school to derail her claims. “It has taken five years,” said her lawyer, Brian A. Procel of Los Angeles. “But this will be the first time a law school will be on trial to defend its public employment figures.” Ms. Alaburda’s day in court will take on added meaning: These will be her first public words after years of silence while she pursued a remedy for a legal education gone wrong. She now has student debt of $170,000, with loan interest around 8 percent. Her law degree was not a ticket to a stable, well-paying career, but an expensive detour before she went on to work in a series of part-time positions, mostly temporary jobs reviewing documents for law firms. As her debt mounted and her job prospects faltered, she filed a lawsuit in 2011, arguing that she would not have enrolled at Thomas Jefferson if she had known the law school’s statistics were misleading. Thomas Jefferson’s average student indebtedness, then about $137,000 — higher than that at Stanford Law School the same year — was among the highest in the nation. She also pointed to her school’s bar passage rate as consistently lower than 50 percent, which was below the average in California. Thomas Jefferson, like other accused law schools, maintained that it filed only the data that the American Bar Association’s accrediting body required. And judges largely agreed. Students would have to be “wearing blinders” not to see that a “goodly number of law school graduates toil (perhaps part time) in drudgery or have less than hugely successful careers,” Justice Melvin L. Schweitzer of New York Supreme Court wrote in 2012, dismissing a lawsuit by nine former students against New York Law School. The nine had asked for $225 million in damages, on grounds that they had been misled by the school’s stated employment figures to believe they had rosier employment prospects than the job market actually offered. The one lawsuit still pending, other than Ms. Alaburda’s, accuses Widener University School of Law, in Delaware, of posting employment data that included “any kind of job, no matter how unrelated to law.” A Federal District Court judge denied the case class-action status, and that decision is on appeal. Judges in California, which has strong consumer protection laws, have offered more solace to the generation of lawyers who lost out in the legal market, allowing Ms. Alaburda and other plaintiffs there to go forward with claims. However, in two cases — one against Golden Gate University School of Law and the other against the University of San Francisco School of Law — judges did not grant law graduates suing the schools class-action certification, which could have led to higher damages awards. The students later dropped their lawsuits. In San Diego, Judge Joel M. Pressman restricted Ms. Alaburda’s claims to her own situation. But he ruled against the law school’s efforts to get her suit tossed out, on grounds that denying transparent and accurate information to students making decisions about their education can be harmful. Thomas Jefferson, which was fully accredited by the A.B.A. in 2001, says its employment data is accurate and Ms. Alaburda’s claims are “meritless.” The school has 434 full-time students at its eight-story building in downtown San Diego. Thomas F. Guernsey, the dean, said he could not comment on continuing litigation but noted in a statement that the school had “a strong track record of producing successful graduates, with 7,000 alumni working nationally and internationally.” In recent years, the A.B.A., prodded by widespread attention to questionable school data, sagging numbers of law school applicants and skyrocketing law school debt, has revamped its reporting requirements so that law schools must reveal more precise information about their graduates. “Transparency has substantially increased in the last few years. Students can now easily compare law school outcomes,” said Brian Z. Tamanaha, a law professor at Washington University in St. Louis and the author of “Failing Law Schools.” Even so, he noted that “it’s still a little harder for them to determine that the size of the law firm where graduates are employed also reflects the level of income that they can expect.” Law schools labor to keep their employment data at the highest percentage level because it is a major factor in national law school rankings, which in turn give schools the credibility to charge six figures for a three-year legal education. Fudging the numbers, as Mr. Procel plans to argue in the case against Thomas Jefferson, entices students to choose an education that can result in lifelong debt that cannot be easily discharged even in bankruptcy. Even as legal hiring dropped in 2011, according to Mr. Procel, Thomas Jefferson stated that 92.1 percent of its graduates were working at full-time jobs. That was a major increase from the 83 percent graduate employment the school claimed during the prosperous years of 2006 and 2007. But even in 2006, according to testimony expected at trial, a former school employee says she was pressured into inflating graduate employment data. Thomas Jefferson’s lawyers will argue that Ms. Alaburda never incurred any actual injury, because she was offered — and turned down — a law firm job with a $60,000 salary shortly after she graduated. Ms. Alaburda said, in legal papers, that she received “only one job offer — one which was less favorable than non-law-related jobs that were available” — after she sent her résumé to more than 150 law firms and practicing lawyers. She is asking $125,000 in damages.

College
Law school
Lawsuits
Thomas Jefferson School of Law
Lawyers
Consumer protection
American Bar Association


T.C.U. to Join Big East in 2012-13

Abstract: After losing three of its headline members within the past decade and appearing vulnerable during the tumult of conference expansion last summer, the Big East Conference made a proactive move Monday when it added Texas Christian University . At a news conference in Fort Worth, John Marinatto, the commissioner of the Big East, announced the league would add T.C.U. in all sports for the 2012-13 season. The move provides a jolt to the Big East in football, which has made the conference a news media piñata this season for its mediocrity. Connecticut (7-4), which lost to Temple by two touchdowns, is in line to take the league’s Bowl Championship Series bid if it wins at South Florida on Saturday. T.C.U., ranked third in the B.C.S. standings, is 12-0 after just completing its second consecutive undefeated regular season. “It brings value to the current 16 schools because it brings stability and security,” Marinatto said in a telephone interview. “We have also strengthened the value and prestige to the football membership.” The move helps fortify the Big East by giving it nine football teams, with a 10th expected to join in the near future. Villanova, a conference member in basketball, is mulling its football future and has the option to join the league. “We’re encouraging but not pressuring,” Marinatto said of Villanova, which could make an announcement at a board meeting in February or April. Villanova won the Football Championship Subdivision in 2009. “I don’t think that’s been any great secret,” Tom Jurich, the athletic director at Louisville, said. “It’s more in Villanova’s court, and they’re doing their due diligence. It’s a big step, as UConn can attest to.” The Big Ten considered expanding to 16 teams over the summer. The Big East could have been on life support if the Big Ten had offered spots to universities like Rutgers, Syracuse and Connecticut. Ultimately, the Big Ten chose only Nebraska. As the vultures circled, the Big East appeared vulnerable. “That was the perception,” Jurich said. “I think John Marinatto did a great job.” Jurich added: “He’s been working at this for a long time. I think there’s going to be a lot of people now that see the Big East is on the offensive. It’s a different story.” Nick Carparelli Jr., the Big East associate commissioner for football, said that he spoke with all the league’s coaches on Monday and they were happy about the addition, including the recruiting toehold in Dallas. “It certainly opens the door for Texas,” he said. What is not certain is how the move will affect Big East men’s basketball and its successful tournament at Madison Square Garden. T.C.U. has a weak program and will give the league an odd 17-member alignment. Syracuse Coach Jim Boeheim said that adding a university with little basketball tradition did not bother him. T.C.U. has not reached the N.C.A.A. tournament since 1998. “We’ve got enough basketball programs,” Boeheim said. “I don’t think that’s an issue. It really doesn’t matter if they’re strong or not.” He added: “I think that it’s obvious that the football side has to get better, either with the addition of someone or our teams have to get better. That’s pretty obvious. They have to do what they have to do to keep the B.C.S. thing going. That’s the bottom line.” Boeheim said he would not oppose breaking the Big East into divisions in basketball, a possibility that would become more realistic if the conference were to expand to 18 teams. (The Big East currently plays as one 16-team league in basketball, and could do the same with 17 teams, with the only difference being that teams would play two teams twice each season instead of three.) “If you go to 18, you have to have divisions and figure out how you do it,” Boeheim said, referring to the format the Big East used from 2001 to 2003 and 1995 to 1998. “It took us three 12-hour days to get the divisions the last time, and at the end of it, no one was happy with the divisions you have. “No one is ever going to be happy. They all want certain teams in their divisions.” In the confusing world of B.C.S. politics, T.C.U.’s recent performances will help both the Mountain West and the Big East for future automatic qualification bids for B.C.S. bowls. T.C.U.’s scintillating season, which has it just on the outside of the national title race, will count for the Big East toward automatic qualification in the next cycle. The Big East is locked into the B.C.S. through the 2013 season, as it is included in the television and bowl contracts. The automatic qualification criteria for the B.C.S. after 2014 have not been determined. If the Big East were subject to a review of its past performance, T.C.U.’s 2010 season would count for the Big East in that review. That would help offset a poor 2010 for the Big East. Here is where things get bizarre. T.C.U.’s regular season will also count toward the Mountain West’s bid toward gaining automatic qualification status for the 2012 and 2013 seasons, which will be evaluated in December 2011. The Mountain West has a chance to receive an automatic spot in a B.C.S. bowl for those two seasons. Boise State, which the league recently added, will also count in the review of the Mountain West for its performances back to 2008. The cycles overlap because the conferences created a new evaluation period to coincide with the television contract. To do that, they overlap for two years, according to the B.C.S. executive director, Bill Hancock. That is why T.C.U.’s seasons will count for both leagues. As for the future of the Big East in this tumultuous climate for college sports, no one is sure how much more conference expansion will be on the horizon. “Certainly less is not more when it comes to college football these days and conferences,” said West Virginia Athletic Director Oliver Luck, who is in his first year there. “I’m still relatively new to this business, but I think there’s going to be continued movement, not to point a finger at any particular league. But there’s going to be more movement of the deck chairs.” As for the Big Ten’s potential for expansion, Commissioner Jim Delany said Monday that the league had not spent much time recently on the matter. “We’ve been so busy with various aspects of getting Nebraska in and getting our championship game and divisions, there’s been no activity in this area,” he said. Delany said the next potential movement with the Big Ten and expansion would be in December when he met with the league’s presidents. “I’ll ask the question and they’ll give me some direction,” he said, “and we’ll make public where we are.”

College Athletics
Football
Big East Conference
Texas Christian University
Luck Oliver
Jurich Tom
Boeheim Jim