Mets Seem to Settle on Buyer Who Will Own Less Than Half of Team

Abstract: The Mets appear to have settled on a buyer who will give them at least $200 million for less than 49 percent of the team and will not receive a portion of SNY, the team’s profitable cable network, a person briefed on the matter said. Several bankers who heard Wednesday about a pending announcement by the Mets said they were still unsure who the prospective buyer or buyers were. One possible bidder whose name emerged Wednesday, according to two people familiar with the bidding process, was David Einhorn, a Manhattan hedge-fund manager; he grew up in New Jersey and Milwaukee and masqueraded one Halloween as the former Met Dave Kingman when he was a five or six-year-old, he told the Wall Street Journal . He was not available for comment. The team lost $51 million last season, expects to lose as much as $70 million this season and has hundreds of millions of dollars in debt. As such, a number of interested parties looked at the Mets’ books and went no further. The bankers said the Mets could simply be trying to continue to generate interest in the club by announcing a short list of potential buyers, or a buyer who was entering into exclusive negotiations with the team. “They have to do something,” said one banker who did not want to be named because he did business with the Mets. “Their attendance is way off, and they are going to run out of cash.” Even if the Mets announce a deal for a stake in the team, many hurdles remain. The buyer is likely to want indemnity from any legal settlements involving the court-appointed trustee representing the victims of the Bernard L. Madoff fraud. Given the Mets’ financial woes, the buyer may also want protection from future capital calls that owners are often requested to pay when there are shortfalls. Then there is the money. If the stake sold brings in $200 million, the buyer or buyers are going to need time to organize their finances. They are also going to have to clarify what control, if any, of the team they get for their money. “The problem is, it’s a big check to write,” said Rob Tilliss of Inner Circle Sports, a sports financial advisory firm. “The money and the governance, those are the two inhibitors.” The announcement could stanch a flow of recent bad news for the team, including injuries to David Wright and Ike Davis; critical remarks by Fred Wilpon , the principal owner, about Wright, Jose Reyes and Carlos Beltran; and the revelation that Major League Baseball loaned the team $25 million last November. The Mets have been formally searching for a buyer since late January, shortly before the unsealing of a $1 billion lawsuit against Wilpon and the co-owner, Saul Katz , by Irving H. Picard, the Madoff trustee. Apart from the lawsuit, the team needed money simply to finance its operations. Still, successfully finding a partner willing to pay $200 million will not end the Mets’ financial problems. Most seriously, they are still contending with Picard. On Wednesday, former Gov. Mario M. Cuomo, the court-appointed mediator in the case filed in United States Bankruptcy Court, said that the mediation was entering a critical phase in which discussions on the framework of a possible settlement could begin. Cuomo said that by the end of next week, both sides should have submitted their valuations on the assets of Sterling Equities, Wilpon and Katz’s holding company. Those assets include the Mets, real estate and private equity investments and 65 percent of SNY, the Mets’ cable network. “After that, we’ll have some serious sitdowns,” he said by telephone. “It won’t take long after that to see if a deal will be made.” Cuomo spoke one day after Wilpon was quoted as saying in an article in Sports Illustrated that Cuomo had been unable to persuade Picard “that the 700 is not going to be obtainable.” Picard is seeking the $1 billion in two major parts: $700 million in principal that Wilpon, Katz and their Sterling partners had in their Madoff accounts, and $300 million in fictitious profits from them. Cuomo said that Wilpon’s statement was premature. “It is a fact that I have not suggested any specific deal to either party,” he said. “We’ve not gone to the trustee and said, ‘Here’s a number we’re proposing to you.’ ” Wilpon appeared to be suggesting that $700 million was off the table because negotiating in that range would imply that he and Katz knew or should have known that Madoff might possibly be a fraud. Picard has accused them of turning a blind eye to warnings about Madoff in order to keep collecting consistent returns on their investments; they, in turn, accuse Picard of distorting or fabricating evidence. Karen Wagner, one of their lawyers, said in a statement: “Fred was referring to the fact that because he and Saul had no way of knowing anything about the fraud they’re unwilling to negotiate as though they’re not innocent victims.” Cuomo said that during meetings with the two sides, there have been discussions about the value of Sterling assets, and explorations of legal issues. When the property values are all in, he added, “we can start discussing the structures of possible settlements that will take into account all the differences in legal positions they have and the differences in factual positions they have.” He said that structuring a settlement “will be difficult given the disparity” between their positions. “One side says $100 million or whatever and the other side says $1 billion,” he said. “That certainly makes it challenging.”

Baseball
New York Mets
Wilpon Fred
Katz Saul B
Mergers Acquisitions and Divestitures
Suits and Litigation


Nonprofits, Aiming for Relevance, Try On New Names

Abstract: Something about the Council of Senior Centers and Services of New York City Inc. just did not sound right anymore. For one, the council, a nonprofit organization, does not operate senior centers. It advocates against the abuse of older adults, helps them apply for rental and food assistance and lobbies for affordable housing on their behalf. A year ago, the council began a search for a new name. Neither its existing name, all 10 words of it, nor its initials, C.S.C.S., could live up to everything the organization had done and is doing, said Igal Jellinik, who has led the group since 1987. By July, the organization was LiveOn NY . LiveOn NY is among dozens of nonprofit groups in the city and surrounding area that are shedding longstanding — and sometimes long-winded — names and embarking on efforts to rebrand themselves. Organizations such as a food bank and a prison-reform group are weighing the risks and potential rewards of discarding names that, in some cases, they have had for more than 100 years. A catchy name that succinctly captures a group’s mission can be a vital fund-raising tool at a time when even the smallest of organizations are just a Kickstarter campaign away from reaching millions of potential donors. And with the Giving Tuesday initiative, now in its fourth year, joining Black Friday and Cyber Monday in the after-Thanksgiving competition for cash, nonprofits are facing some of the same pressures that retailers have long shouldered around this time of year. “They feel the need to be relevant, emotionally relevant,” said David Kessler, a founder of Starfish, a brand consulting firm. Some groups have received donations specifically to help pay for image makeovers, which can cost up to $200,000. Many have names and identities that no longer reflect what they do, if they ever did, said Kevin Lane Keller, a professor at the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth College who teaches strategic brand management. “One of the hardest things with nonprofits is that they do a lot of different things,” he said. “It’s hard to put in a box and put a label on. It’s a paragraph, not a couple of words.” In October, Common Ground, a 25-year-old organization in Manhattan that builds housing for the chronically homeless, people who are mentally ill and people with H.I.V., became Breaking Ground . The group had received an in-kind donation on space on an electronic billboard at the Port Authority Bus Terminal and realized that its name was not ready for the bright lights of the Times Square area, said Dan Sheehan, group creative director at Siegelvision, the consulting firm that worked on the organization’s rebranding initiative. “Common” no longer seemed to suggest shared goals, he said; rather, it had begun to connote “ordinary.” The group needed a name that reflected its accomplishments (3,200 units built in Connecticut and New York over 25 years) and its plans (another 1,000 units to be built mostly in Bronx over the next five years), said Brenda Rosen, the organization’s president and chief executive. When a Google search can make or break a group’s reputation, the Common Ground name had become a liability, Mr. Sheehan said. In searches, the name often yielded results for sites belonging to coffee shops and even a divorce litigation firm, he said. (Google knows the value of a name. It was once known as BackRub.) A rebranding can take months. In the most involved efforts, consultants conduct one-on-one interviews with current and former employees, clients, contributors and staff members at government agencies that provide nonprofits with financing. Image The entrance of the headquarters of the group now known as FPWA in New York City. Leaders of the organization decided after a monthslong search for a new identity that using the initial would serve the desired purpose. Credit Caitlin Ochs for The New York Times For example, Starfish interviewed 45 people to begin a rebranding process that is not yet complete for the Carter Burden Center for Aging. The organization began 43 years ago with one social worker operating what amounted to a referral service from the office of Carter Burden, a City Council member who represented the Upper East Side of Manhattan at the time. It has expanded over four decades, said Bill Dionne, the executive director. “We’re not just a center; we’re at eight different locations.” The Correctional Association of New York has struggled throughout its 171 years to explain exactly what it is. It was originally called the Prison Association of New York, a name no less puzzling to many people. The group has for decades been a leader in advocating criminal justice reform, pushing for more humane conditions in prisons, libraries for prisoners and a separate system of incarceration for juvenile offenders. More recently, it has helped promote a ban on shackling female prisoners who are giving birth . But the group is frequently mistaken for a government agency or a labor union, said J. Soffiyah Elijah, its executive director. Corrections officers sometimes call, seeking help when one of their number is cited for wrongdoing, she said. Ms. Elijah, a longtime social activist and a former clinical instructor at Harvard Law School, said her friends were “mortified” when she took the job in 2011 because they mistakenly believed she was going work against prison reform. The group is hoping to announce a new name soon. For the Federation of Protestant Welfare Agencies, a monthslong search for a new identity proved difficult. Jennifer Jones Austin took the helm of the organization three years ago and quickly realized that she was spending much of her time explaining the name of the group, which has worked to reduce poverty for more than 90 years. The federation was founded in 1922 as the Federation of Institutions Caring for Protestant Children. Three years later, it dropped “children” from its name. By the Great Depression , it had put an emphasis on “welfare.” But that word, employees of the organization and consultants said, had become loaded over time, associated with fraud and abuse, real and imagined. “It has a very kind of status quo, safety net feel to it,” Ms. Jones Austin said. After months of study, Ms. Jones Austin said the organization realized that even if some of the words in the name, like welfare, left a less-than-positive impression, the public was familiar with the group’s initials. “It was these kinds of light-bulb moments where we appreciated what we had,” she said. “It would be foolhardy to walk completely away from it.” In October, the Federation of Protestant Welfare Agencies announced a transition to simply using its initials, a move similar to the shift Kentucky Fried Chicken made to become KFC. The F in the logo got a “swoosh” and the name got a tagline, “Fulfilling the Promise of Opportunity.” Sometimes a group thinks about making a change and then decides against it. Community FoodBank of New Jersey, which thought it had outgrown its name, was such an organization. Founded in 1975 by Kathleen DiChiara, who distributed food out of the trunk of her car, the group now serves 1,000 nonprofit groups, distributing 43 million pounds of food annually in 18 counties. It has also branched out into other social services, including providing low-income people with job training and helping them file tax returns. After considering a name change, the group’s leaders concluded that it was still a food bank and still mainly concerned with “community.” That, said Debra Vizzi, the president and chief executive, gave the organization more of a local appeal to potential contributors in different areas. Ms. Vizzi likened Community FoodBank to a household name, such as Johnson & Johnson. She said a change would not make sense for Johnson & Johnson and would make even less sense for her organization. “We are selling help and hope,” she said. “That’s much harder to put your hands on than baby powder.” The group did add a tagline: “Food, Help, Hope.”

Nonprofit
NYC
Organizational Names
Trademarks
Manhattan


Obama Urges Mideast Allies to Do More in Fight Against ISIS

Abstract: WASHINGTON — President Obama called on Middle East allies on Monday to do more in the fight against the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria , signaling a growing frustration within the administration that Saudi Arabia and other allies in the region have yet to help the United States build up a Syrian Arab coalition of ground forces to push back the militant group in Syria . Even though Mr. Obama said that Islamic State militants had lost around 40 percent of the populated areas they once controlled in Iraq , he also said that progress against the group by the American-led coalition “needs to keep coming faster,” in a tacit acknowledgment that the American public may not be up for the slow, painstaking approach the administration had initially envisioned. In remarks to reporters after his national security team met Monday morning at the Pentagon, Mr. Obama, flanked by Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. and Defense Secretary Ashton B. Carter, singled out allies in the region to do more. “Just as the United States is doing more in this fight, just as our allies France, Germany and the United Kingdom, Australia and Italy are doing more, so must others,” he said, pointedly leaving out America’s Sunni Arab allies who are part of the coalition against the Islamic State. “And that is why I have asked Secretary Carter to go to the Middle East — he’ll depart right after this press briefing — to work with our coalition partners on securing more military contributions to this fight.” Saudi Arabia on Monday announced the creation of a 34-nation Islamic military coalition to combat terrorism, which includes several countries that have been helping the Saudis fight rebels in Yemen. Mr. Carter will fly to Turkey, which is serving as a platform for many of the American-led strikes against the Islamic State, also known as ISIS or ISIL. It will be his first stop in a trip that is intended to take stock of recent moves to speed up the military campaign against the jihadist group and determine what additional steps might be needed. No one in the Obama administration is suggesting that Saudi Arabia or other Gulf allies send ground troops into Syria, but administration officials want the Arab allies to help the United States recruit and put together a Syrian Arab force of ground troops willing to take on the Islamic State. Mr. Carter’s trip comes amid an intensifying debate over whether the Obama administration is moving fast enough to dismantle the Islamic State’s self-declared caliphate. The president cited a short list of recent successes against the group, saying that besides losing its foothold in Iraq, the Islamic State “continues to lose territory in Syria.” “We continue to step up our air support and supplies to local forces — Syrian Kurds, Arabs, Christians and Turkmen — and they are having success,” he said. “After routing ISIL at Kobani and Tal Abyad, they have pushed ISIL back from almost across the entire border region with Turkey, and we are working with Turkey to seal the rest,” he said. But administration officials say privately that they want to see more contributions from the Saudis as well as the United Arab Emirates, Qatar and even Turkey. And some former officials and lawmakers say that the United States also needs to do more. The rare national security meeting at the Pentagon, which included almost every top administration, military, intelligence and counterterrorism official, was intended to portray an all-hands-on-deck message in hopes that as Americans head into the holiday season, they will feel reassured that the government is working to keep them safe. Iraqi Army Retakes Government Complex in Central Ramadi Efforts to stem the rise of the Islamic State. The meeting was also a quiet acknowledgment that Mr. Obama’s speech from the Oval Office last week was not well received, even by some Democrats. Still, “The president’s words today are not necessarily new,” Josh Earnest, the White House press secretary, told reporters after Mr. Obama’s meeting and remarks at the Pentagon. Acknowledging that the United States may need to do more, some officials said that the Pentagon may try to make tweaks. “Are there other changes? Are there other tweaks?” a senior Defense Department official asked reporters rhetorically on Friday. “We’re constantly thinking through what more we can do to tighten up the campaign.” Amid mounting worries that the Islamic State is using its sanctuaries in Syria and Iraq to plan new attacks in the Middle East, Europe and perhaps the United States, critics assert that more than tweaks are needed. “By any measure, our strategy in Iraq and Syria is not succeeding, or is not succeeding fast enough,” Michael G. Vickers, who managed intelligence programs at the Pentagon until his retirement in April, wrote recently in Politico. “We are playing a long game, when a more rapid and disruptive strategy is required.” Last summer, Mr. Obama went to the Pentagon and asked for proposals to speed up the United States’ military efforts. There was ample reason for concern: With the Islamic State in control of two major Iraqi cities, Ramadi and Mosul, the situation on the battlefield was generally stalemated. Pentagon officials provided the White House with a list of recommendations — calling them “accelerants” — to hasten the pace of the military campaign without overhauling the basic strategy. Some of the steps took a less ironclad interpretation of Mr. Obama’s repeated vow not to put combat “boots on the ground.” Fifty Special Operations troops, the White House decided, would be sent to northern Syria to organize Arab and Kurdish fighters so they could put pressure on the Islamic State stronghold in Raqqa. In October, an American Special Operations force for the first time carried out a joint raid with Kurdish commandos to free prisoners from an Islamic State prison in Hawija, Iraq. This month, Mr. Carter told Congress that the United States would build on that operation by sending a Special Operations task force to Iraq, one the defense secretary referred to euphemistically as a “specialized expeditionary targeting force.” Military officials later said that this unit would have fewer than 100 personnel. Last week, Mr. Carter said that the administration was willing to go further by using Apache attack helicopters to support Iraqi forces that are pushing to retake Ramadi. Mr. Carter also said for the first time that the United States was prepared to have American advisers accompany select Iraqi brigades. The Iraqi prime minister, Haider al-Abadi, has yet to agree to either measure, though some American and Iraqi officials believe it is likely he will go along in the face of criticism from hard-line Shiites if the United States’ moves are not too heavily advertised in Iraq. Last month’s terrorist attacks in Paris and bombing of a Russian plane over the Sinai Peninsula in Egypt have prompted criticism that the White House is not moving quickly enough to deprive the Islamic State of the territory it is using to attract supporters and plan its attacks. That debate has only intensified with the disclosure that Tashfeen Malik, who with her husband carried out the massacre in San Bernardino, Calif., had pledged allegiance to the Islamic State in a Facebook post.

Barack Obama
Ashton Carter
Middle East
ISIS,ISIL,Islamic State
Iraq
Syria
US Military
Terrorism


Study Finds Infantlike Understanding in Dogs

Abstract: Many dog owners regard their furry friends as their children, and talk to them accordingly. Now, a new study reports that dogs, like infants, are able to study minor details in human communication and correctly interpret intent. Researchers from Hungary published the study in the journal Current Biology. They presented dogs with two videos. In the first, a woman says, “Hi, dog,” while looking straight at the camera. The woman then turns her head toward a container. The dog follows her gaze. However, when the woman is looking down, rather than at the camera, as she says, “Hi, dog,” the dog does not follow her subsequent gaze. Dogs pick up on the subtle difference in the woman’s behavior in the two situations, said Adam Miklosi, a behavioral biologist at Eotvos Lorand University in Budapest and one of the study’s authors. The study shows that dogs can read human behavior, he said, and understand when they are being addressed. Other studies have shown that infants have the same ability to interpret an adult’s intent. “Dogs are functionally similar to a 6-month-old, to a 1-year-old,” Dr. Miklosi said, “though how the dog mind is dealing with the problem, we don’t really know, and it’s probably different from an infant.” Dogs presumably gained this ability over generations of domestication. “Being in a human family gives the dogs the ability to interact in a human way,” Dr. Miklosi said. “You can really treat your dog as a sort of infant, which you wouldn’t really do with a goat or another domesticated animal.”

Dogs
Babies and Infants
Science and Technology
Current Biology
Miklosi Adam


Washington Rallies for Wild-Card Berth

Abstract: PHILADELPHIA, Jan. 1 - In danger of missing the playoffs, the Washington Redskins used turnovers to turn momentum in their favor. Capitalizing on four fourth-quarter turnovers by the Philadelphia Eagles, the Redskins clinched their first postseason berth since the 1999 season with a 31-20 victory Sunday at Lincoln Financial Field. Riding a five-game winning streak, the Redskins (10-6) will visit Tampa Bay (11-5) on Saturday in a National Football Conference first-round playoff game. This was not a dominant performance by the Redskins, but they were opportunistic and aggressive, as they had been throughout their run to the playoffs. The Redskins looked like a mediocre team on Nov. 27, when an overtime loss to San Diego dropped them to 5-6. But Washington has not lost in more than a month, carried by the running of Clinton Portis, the receiving of Santana Moss and a hard-hitting defense that was the catalyst for Sunday's victory. Making the playoffs was another milestone for Washington's Hall of Fame coach, Joe Gibbs, in the second year of his second tenure with the Redskins. After Washington finished 6-10 last season, some believed the game had passed Gibbs by. But Gibbs raised his record in December and January to 57-18, and the Redskins played their best football when it mattered most. "I was starting all over when I first came back, and to be quite truthful, when I finished the season, there were a lot of other first-year coaches who did a lot better job than I did," Gibbs said Sunday, reflecting on last season. "You've got to understand, up here you're going to take criticism when things don't go well. We worked hard in the off-season. We tried to do smart things, and we added good players who helped us. Our backs have been against the wall for five weeks, and they seemed to respond and play better." With the Redskins trailing by 20-17 starting the fourth quarter, their defense went to work. The go-ahead touchdown was set up by an interception by linebacker Lemar Marshall that gave Washington a first down at Philadelphia's 22-yard line. Portis (112 yards, 27 carries) scored on the next play, making a 360-degree spin move at the line of scrimmage, breaking to the outside and outrunning Philadelphia's secondary to the end zone. Asked how that play was designed, Portis said, jokingly, "I think it was designed for a 2-yard loss." But Portis has been a serious part of Washington's resurgence, rushing for at least 100 yards in the past five games. He set a franchise record with 1,516 yards rushing for the season, but the Redskins were prouder of what they had achieved as a team. "It was either go out there and find a way to win, or clean out our lockers tomorrow morning," Portis said. "I wasn't ready to clean my locker out, and I don't think any of the other guys were either." After Portis's score, the Redskins sealed the victory with a defensive touchdown, when defensive end Phillip Daniels knocked the ball away from Eagles quarterback Koy Detmer with two and a half minutes left. The loose ball was scooped up by safety Sean Taylor, who raced 39 yards untouched into the end zone to put the Redskins up by two scores. At that point, players on Washington's sideline began to celebrate, able to exhale after a victory that had come harder than most expected. All that stood between the Redskins and the playoffs were the Eagles (6-10), a team decimated by injuries, with nothing to play for but pride. But for the first 25 minutes, the Eagles looked like the team vying for a playoff berth, jumping to a 17-7 lead, and still leading, 17-10, at halftime. The journeyman quarterback Mike McMahon threw two touchdown passes to the rookie wide receiver Reggie Brown, as the Eagles played with the carefree abandon of a team with no chance of qualifying for the postseason. "I knew all along this was going to be a tough game," said Moss, who caught 4 passes for 82 yards, including a 54-yarder that set up a third-quarter Washington touchdown. "I think a lot of guys were probably a little surprised, knowing how we've been rolling the last four or five weeks. But it ain't easy to win five straight." The Redskins have done it, however, and the victory earned them a rematch against the Buccaneers, who defeated Washington, 36-35, in a wild game in Tampa on Nov. 13. Moss could not think of a better way to continue the season. "Tampa gave us everything, and we gave them everything," said Moss, talking above the joyous din in the locker room. "But at the end, Tampa got the W, and we got the L. If that ain't motivation, I don't know what is."

PHILADELPHIA EAGLES
WASHINGTON REDSKINS
FOOTBALL


Chile: 3 Sue Over Sexual Abuse Cases

Abstract: Three men who say they were sexually abused as teenagers by a prominent Catholic priest filed a lawsuit on Tuesday against the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Santiago for failing to protect them or to investigate their accusations. Juan Carlos Cruz said that he and the others who have accused the Rev. Fernando Karadima of abusing them when he headed the El Bosque parish in Santiago in the 1980s “hope to establish the responsibility of the church, which always knew what was going on and looked the other way.” In 2011, the Vatican found Rev. Karadima guilty of the abuses and ordered him to retire “to a life of prayer and penitence.” A Chilean judge dismissed criminal charges later that year because a statute of limitations had expired, but he also described the accusations as “truthful and reliable.”

Fernando Karadima
Rape
Priest
Catholic Church
Santiago
Child Abuse
Chile


Manhattan Turnstile Jumper Charged in Bronx Rape

Abstract: An arrest in an East Harlem subway station on Friday led, through an unusual set of circumstances, to the suspect being charged a day later with the rape and beating last month of a 79-year-old woman in the elevator of her Bronx apartment building, the police said. By the time all the detectives’ reports were filled out and filed, the suspect, Shon Holland, who has a lengthy arrest record, had been charged with three crimes in two boroughs. The sequence of events began about 10 a.m. Friday when a captain and an officer on the Police Department’s Transit Anti-Terrorism Task Force noticed a man ducking under a turnstile at the No. 6 subway station at 116th Street and Lexington Avenue. The officers apprehended the man, Mr. Holland, 40, of West 126th Street in Manhattan. A check turned up an open warrant for Mr. Holland over an arrest in the Bronx’s 45th Precinct in June for violating an order of protection against a former companion. The transit officers charged Mr. Holland with theft of services and took him up to the 45th Precinct’s station house on Barkley Avenue to face additional criminal contempt charges. “As all this was going on, Bronx Special Victims gets a DNA match from the rape in July,” said a law enforcement official, who requested anonymity because the case remained unresolved. “They call the 45 to say, ‘We got a DNA hit,’ and the guys there say, ‘He’s right here.’ ” DNA recovered after the July 19 attack on the 79-year-old was linked with a biological profile of Mr. Holland that was on file in the state DNA database because of his previous legal troubles. Mr. Holland has been arrested 14 times since 1990 on a variety of charges, including robbery and weapons possession, the police say, but they could not immediately say how those cases were resolved. In the July rape case, the police said, a man dressed in dark clothing and a black cap followed the woman onto an elevator at 1:52 a.m., punched her in the face and knocked her to the floor before sexually assaulting her and fleeing, the police said. The police recovered surveillance video images of the attacker, and they said that when he left the building he was apparently wearing a different shirt than when he arrived. On Friday, the police took Mr. Holland to the Bronx Special Victims Squad on Simpson Street, where on Saturday he was charged with rape and assault.

Sex Crimes
Bronx (NYC)
Police
DNA (Deoxyribonucleic Acid)
Manhattan (NYC)
East Harlem (NYC)
Holland Shon
Police Department (NYC)


Morgan Stanley Completes Mitsubishi Deal

Abstract: Morgan Stanley announced Monday that it had completed a previously announced deal to raise capital from the Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group, a large commercial bank in Japan. Mitsubishi will pay $9 billion — or on average, $29 a share — for 21 percent ownership of Morgan Stanley. That is a premium over the investment bank’s share price at the end of last week, when it closed at $24.75. The two companies also announced a strategic alliance with a focus on corporate and investment banking. The arrangement remains subject to regulatory approvals. Mitsubishi rode to the rescue a week ago, after Morgan Stanley’s share price spiraled downward. The Japanese giant has $1.1 trillion in bank deposits, and the deal is meant to reassure Morgan’s investors that it is on firm financial footing. Last week, Morgan received permission from the Federal Reserve to convert itself into a bank holding company. The change in business model means that Morgan will have stricter capital and leverage rules as well as permanent oversight from the Federal Reserve. But it also gives the investment bank access to the Fed’s lending programs. Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs remain the only two former investment banks standing after months of turmoil in the markets, and they are now both becoming bank holding companies. Bear Stearns and Merrill Lynch were sold to commercial banks, and Lehman Brothers filed for bankruptcy. Last week, Morgan Stanley announced that it was working on a deal with Mitsubishi. Negotiations took a full week, and there was some investor concern that Mitsubishi might be backing out. John J. Mack, chairman and chief executive of Morgan Stanley, wrote to all of the bank’s employees on Friday to let them know the deal was moving forward. Now that the deal is completed, Morgan Stanley still faces large challenges to reinvent itself as a bank holding company. “This strategic alliance offers a powerful opportunity to accelerate Morgan Stanley’s transition as a bank holding company,” Mr. Mack said in a statement about the deal. Mitsubishi’s investment, he said, “is also a strong endorsement of Morgan Stanley’s world-class franchise and future potential.” The payment consists of $3 billion in common stock for $25.35 a share as well as $6 billion in perpetual noncumulative convertible preferred stock with a 10 percent dividend and a conversion price of $31.25 a share. After a year, half of the preferred stock will convert into common stock at a time when Morgan Stanley’s stock trades above $46.87, a figure that is 150 percent of the conversion price.

Morgan Stanley
Mitsubishi Corporation
Subprime Mortgage Crisis
Mergers Acquisitions and Divestitures


Jon Stewart Signs Production Deal With HBO

Abstract: Three months after retiring as host of “The Daily Show,” Jon Stewart has signed a production deal with the premium cable channel HBO , the channel announced on Tuesday. As part of the arrangement, Mr. Stewart will work on some digital short projects that are expected to appear on HBO’s apps like HBO Now and HBO Go. Mr. Stewart could also pursue movie or television projects with the network. The contract covers four years. HBO said that the first project from Mr. Stewart, done in conjunction with the graphics company Otoy, will be the digital shorts, which the cable channel said would be focused on current events and could be refreshed on its HBO Now app throughout the day. Jon Stewart and ‘The Daily Show’: 9 Essential Moments As Jon Stewart’s 16-year run on “The Daily Show” comes to a close, writers, producers and guests look back on key moments and reflect upon his legacy. The length of the shorts is still being discussed but they are expected to be between two and five minutes, an HBO spokeswoman said. Mr. Stewart will not appear on camera but viewers can expect to hear his voice on the shorts, the spokeswoman added. “Appearing on television 22 minutes a night clearly broke me,” Mr. Stewart said in a statement. “I’m pretty sure I can produce a few minutes of content every now and again.” Mr. Stewart is the latest big name HBO has landed as it ramps up efforts to generate more content and bring in more sales for HBO Now, its $15-a-month stand-alone app. In March, HBO announced that Vice would produce a daily newscast , the first of its kind for the cable channel. (The former Bloomberg Businessweek editor Josh Tyrangiel was hired to run the show last month.) In July, HBO hired Bill Simmons, formerly of ESPN, to host a talk show, and in August, HBO secured the rights to run new episodes of “Sesame Street.” HBO has not released sales numbers for HBO Now, which debuted in April. In a statement, the channel’s president for programming, Michael Lombardo, said of Mr. Stewart, “He graced our network nearly 20 years ago, so we’re thrilled to welcome back his immense talents in this next chapter of his career.”

HBO
Jon Stewart
Appointments and Executive Changes
TV
Web television


Bush and Obama: Side by Side at Ground Zero

Abstract: On Sunday, for the first time, President Obama and former President George W. Bush stood together at the site of the Sept. 11 attacks, listening as family members read the names of lost love ones and bowing their heads in silence to mark the moments the planes hit. In May, Mr. Bush declined Mr. Obama’s invitation to join him at ground zero after the raid that killed Osama bin Laden. But on this morning, they stood shoulder to shoulder — commanders in chief whose terms in office are bookends for exploring how the United States has changed since Sept. 11, 2001, particularly in its response to terrorism. The tableau was striking: the president who spent years hunting Bin Laden next to the one who finally got him. The president defined by his response to Sept. 11 standing alongside the one who has tried to take America beyond the lingering, complicated legacy of that day. Mr. Obama read from Psalm 46: “God is our refuge and strength,” which an aide said he chose because it spoke of perseverance. Mr. Bush, the wartime leader, read a letter from Abraham Lincoln to a widow who lost sons in the Civil War . Unlike Mr. Obama, Mr. Bush drew a cheer from those who remembered him shouting through a bullhorn atop the smoldering rubble. For Mr. Obama, Sept. 11 is perhaps a less wrenching experience, though it underpins what has become one of the great paradoxes of his presidency. He is a Democratic leader who opposed the Iraq war and is pulling troops out of Iraq and Afghanistan but has notched up a record as a lethal, relentless hunter of terrorists. He is a president who banned torture in the interrogation of suspected terrorists and pledged — unsuccessfully, so far — to close the military prison in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, but carried out more drone strikes in Pakistan in his first year in office than Mr. Bush did in his eight years. In the process, the White House said, it has killed more officials of Al Qaeda in the last two and a half years than were eliminated during the entire Bush administration. Among the big names: two top Qaeda managers, Sheik Saeed al-Masri and Atiyah Abd al-Rahman, and one of its most feared field commanders, Ilyas Kashmiri. “We have taken the fight to Al Qaeda like never before,” Mr. Obama said in his weekly address. On Sunday, Mr. Obama moved quietly through the rituals of remembrance, laying a wreath at a memorial in Shanksville, Pa., where a United Airlines plane crashed after passengers fought with the hijackers, and later another wreath at the 9/11 Memorial at the Pentagon. When the president finally spoke, at a concert in Washington on Sunday evening, he celebrated a nation that had not “succumbed to suspicion.” But he also signaled that the Sept. 11 decade — one of endless war in Afghanistan and Iraq — was drawing to a close. “Our strength is not measured in our ability to stay in these places,” Mr. Obama declared. “It comes from our commitment to leave those lands to free people and sovereign states, and our desire to move from a decade of war to a future of peace.” In counterterrorism, there is no question that in Mr. Obama’s intense use of drones and his laser focus on Al Qaeda and its affiliated groups was a departure from the Bush administration’s “global war on terrorism.” But there has been as much continuity as change in the Obama method, according to terrorism experts. Mr. Obama, for example, has continued the full government response to terrorism that the Bush administration eventually adopted. This approach — with the Central Intelligence Agency and Federal Bureau of Investigation working more collaboratively with agencies like the Treasury and State Departments, especially in the field — culminated in the raid that killed Bin Laden. “What you’ve seen from the Obama administration is fundamental continuity in the counterterrorism policies handed over in 2009, while sharpening the campaign to eliminate core Al Qaeda leadership and disrupt safe havens in western Pakistan and Yemen,” said Juan Zarate, a top counterterrorism adviser in the Bush administration who has nevertheless criticized the Obama White House for its muddled detention policies. To be sure, Mr. Obama made important refinements and changes. Most notably, he has significantly increased the use of covert and clandestine operations by C.I.A. paramilitary and Special Operations forces from the United States military. In Mr. Obama’s first year in office, the C.I.A. carried out 53 drone strikes in Pakistan. The next year, it more than doubled that figure, to 117, according to The Long War Journal , a Web site that follows the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. The pace is off a bit this year — 49 through late August — but the drone campaign is spreading to other countries. The C.I.A. plans to carry out armed drone missions against Qaeda operatives in Yemen, and the military has conducted drone strikes to kill insurgents in Somalia. “Stepping up the drone strikes has been a game changer,” said Bruce Hoffman, a terrorism expert at Georgetown University. “It is frustrating Al Qaeda’s movements enormously.” Still, while Mr. Hoffman said that Al Qaeda’s core network had been crippled, its offshoots in Yemen and North Africa continued to put down roots, posing a potentially greater threat to the United States than Bin Laden’s surviving lieutenants. “We can say we turned a corner with Al Qaeda,” he said, “but we can’t say we turned a corner in the war on terrorism.” For all its achievements, the administration has also been lucky. A Nigerian man, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, almost blew up a Northwest Airlines jet on Dec. 25, 2009, with explosives sewn into his underwear. Six months later, a Pakistani-American, Faisal Shahzad, parked an S.U.V. loaded with a bomb that failed to detonate in Times Square. “Obama is rightly proud of his counterterrorism record, but had Umar Abdulmutallab not lost his cool on that plane, he wouldn’t have had much of a record to point to,” said Bruce O. Riedel, a former intelligence officer who has advised the White House. “His presidency would have been transformed that Christmas.”

Obama Barack
Bush George W
September 11 (2001)


At the Strand, Ask Ben McFall; He Knows Fiction

Abstract: The oracle of the Strand Book Store can be found back in the fiction section wearing a name tag that reads: “Benjamin. Ask Me.” In the 35 years that Ben McFall, 64, has managed the vast section, many customers have: for that elusive first edition, for a good poetry recommendation, for relationship advice. “If you really need to know, you go to the Strand and ask for Ben,” said Llew Almeida, a book collector from Southport, Conn., who was part of a group of customers and staff members buzzing around Mr. McFall on Wednesday afternoon at the mammoth bookstore at Broadway and 12th Street that has a staff of more than 170 workers and an estimated two million books in its inventory. Mr. McFall is the dean of the clerks and the institutional memory of the fiction section, where he sorts, prices and shelves hundreds of books a day. And he is often the one pulling books off the shelves for customers. In recent years, the store has put in place a computerized inventory system, but Mr. McFall relies largely on his prodigious mental map of the tens of thousands of books in the section to keep track of the waxing and waning of various titles. A pristine copy of Gore Vidal’s “Washington, D.C.” had come in; so had a slightly rare copy of James Baldwin’s “Just Above My Head”; George Saunders’s new “Tenth of December” had sold out. “It seems like a feat, but if it were your house, you’d know where things are, too,” Mr. McFall said while pulling books off shelves, almost without looking at their titles, to fill a large order. Back at his stall, he resumed his incessant sorting and culling of books that are carted over nonstop from the buying counter in the rear of the store. There, the buyers — headed by the Strand’s owner, Fred Bass, 84, whose father, Benjamin Bass, opened the store in 1927 — acquire books all day long and pass all the fiction to Mr. McFall’s book-strewn nook a few shelves away. “I like this spot because I can hear Fred but he can’t hear me,” the soft-spoken and unflappable Mr. McFall said. “That’s how I like it, because I like to say what I think.” Mr. McFall, who lives with his boyfriend in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, regards Mr. Bass as a father figure and calls the Strand his family. “I don’t have to have children because these are my children,” he said, gesturing toward the group of younger staff members milling about. “So many have come through here and then started up bookstores or teach at universities,” he added. He paused to call a collector about several obscure books that had just come across his desk, and then a mystified young store clerk walked over and said he had a customer needing information on “Sam Jones, an 18th-century writer.” “Probably Samuel Johnson, Dr. Johnson,” Mr. McFall said. Another clerk brought over an old edition of “Moby-Dick,” and before she even drew close, Mr. McFall gasped and said, “Oh, is that a Rockwell Kent?” — referring to the illustrator of the edition — “Oh, you just have to own that.” Mr. McFall grew up in Detroit, the only child of two schoolteachers, and he studied literature and music in college. He worked at a bookstore in Connecticut after graduation and then moved to New York in the mid-1970s to flourish as an actor, singer, poet and openly gay man. He took a job at the Strand in 1978. “Back then, it was a cruel place; I was the first nice person to work here,” Mr. McFall said. Mr. Bass immediately assigned him to organize the store’s fiction section. Mr. McFall said he had spurned offers to manage other bookstores, and added, “I’m perfectly willing to sell low-end dresses here if it means keeping the Strand in business.” The writer Luc Sante once worked alongside him — “He did paperbacks all by himself,” Mr. McFall said — and Susan Sontag was a regular, as was the novelist David Markson , who always wanted his books displayed more prominently. Mr. McFall has helped Cicely Tyson buy books for Oprah Winfrey, and has helped Lena Horne find a copy of the play “Cattywampus.” Then there was the time someone intoned in a deep voice, “Who’s Ben?” He looked up and it was Tom Brokaw, who, upon Mr. McFall’s recommendation, picked up a copy of the historical novel “Giants in the Earth.” On Wednesday, the novelist Greg Dinallo sidled up to Mr. McFall and asked him to set aside any copies of his own novels that he could buy back. After Mr. Dinallo left, Mr. McFall sighed and surveyed his section. “I’m just a shop rat,” he said, “but I’m a good one.”

Books
Strand Bookstore Manhattan NY
Manhattan


No, Really: Just Ignore Day-to-Day Stock Market Fluctuations

Abstract: Early Friday morning, a friend texted me. Here’s what he said: “Will you come talk to my co-workers?! They are talking about stopping their 401(k) contributions because of what’s going on! Driving me nuts!” Still not quite awake, I replied, “What?” Within seconds, he replied, “Stock market fell 500 points this morning, Carl! It’s all the way down to 17,537!” My first thought: “Wow! The Dow is over 17,000.” And this is where things got a bit exciting for me as a financial professional. You see, about five years ago, I decided to totally ignore the stock market, especially breaking news about the stock market. I hadn’t stopped investing, but since investing is meant to be done over decades, I had this crazy idea that maybe I would really, truly act out that whole long-term thing. That meant thinking about five years, 10 years, even 20 years from now. But I most definitely wouldn’t be thinking about what happened in one week, let alone one day. So I made sure I had a diversified portfolio of investments. And then, I proceeded to do nothing. I also ignored the stock market news entirely, which has been surprisingly easy. But Friday morning, for really the first time in five years, it registered: The Dow had gone from just under 12,000 to over 17,000. That’s a gain of almost 50 percent over the last five years. Now that’s what I call amazing! Less amazing, however, is what the markets will do, or not do, over the next few days. So you choose: five days or five years.


To Settle Suit, Maker Agrees to Withdraw Growth Drug

Abstract: A drug to spur growth in extremely short children will be removed from the market to settle patent infringement charges, the companies involved in the dispute announced last night. The settlement will resolve all litigation between Tercica and Insmed, two small biotechnology companies that sell competing drugs to treat an extremely rare condition, a deficiency of a hormone called insulinlike growth factor-1. A jury found that Insmed, based near Richmond, Va., infringed patents held by Genentech and licensed to Tercica, which is based in Brisbane, Calif. Genentech and Tercica had been seeking a court order to halt Insmed’s sales. To protect its sales, Insmed had argued that its drug, Iplex, was superior to Tercica’s drug, Increlex, because it required only one injection a day instead of two. Some doctors had also urged the court to keep Iplex available, arguing that it was not only more convenient but possibly safer as well. Other doctors had written that Iplex held promise as a treatment for various other diseases. But in the settlement, Insmed agreed to stop selling Iplex in the United States as a treatment for growth deficiencies and to withdraw an application to have the drug approved for such use in Europe, according to a joint press release issued by Tercica and Insmed last night. In exchange, Insmed will have the right to develop Iplex as a treatment for certain other diseases that may be more lucrative to treat than the childhood growth deficiency, like severe insulin resistance, myotonic muscular dystrophy and the side effects of drugs to treat H.I.V. Genentech and Tercica will have the right to take part in those programs or to receive royalties from Insmed. Genentech and Tercica also agreed to waive the damages of at least $7.5 million they were awarded by the jury for Insmed’s infringement. The children in the United States now getting Iplex — more than 100 — will shift to Tercica’s drug Increlex or seek other options. “That’s really sad,” said Kelly Mullins of Palm Bay, Fla., whose 8-year-old son, Salem Khalfan, has been receiving Iplex. Ms. Mullins said she was not sure whether she would put Salem on Increlex. “It’s hard enough giving a kid one shot a day,” she said.

Drugs (Pharmaceuticals)
Tercica Incorporated
Insmed Incorporated


Republicans Must Walk Fine Line on Immigration

Abstract: Ross Ramsey, the managing editor at The Texas Tribune, writes a regular column. The growth of the state’s Hispanic population and the rise of immigration as a political issue puts Texas Republicans in a tight spot. It’s clear in the polls, on the political stump, on the news, at rallies and in the aisles of the Legislature that voters strongly support tougher enforcement of immigration laws and that conservative and white voters strongly support more restrictions and fewer benefits for illegal immigrants and their children. It’s also clear that Hispanic voters — part of the fastest-growing group in the state’s population — don’t agree with their fellow Texans on many of those issues. Can Republicans keep their current voters happy without alienating the Hispanics they hope will support them in statewide races in the future? This isn’t new. When George W. Bush was governor, he was careful with immigration issues. He had watched California Republicans run some tough-nosed campaigns on immigration that resulted in a backlash that helped the Democrats take over their state government. Mr. Bush also wanted to bring Hispanics into the Republican Party , to win their votes and to unravel the historical ties between those voters and Texas Democrats. Bill Hammond, a former Republican legislator who now heads the Texas Association of Business, thinks immigrant-bashing legislation could undermine the G.O.P., making Hispanics feel unwelcome and hurting businesses at the same time. “I think you suffer in the short term as well as the long term,” Mr. Hammond said. When Gov. Rick Perry talks about immigration, he doesn’t talk about immigration. He talks about border security and other law enforcement-related subjects like sanctuary cities. He’s not anti-immigration, just pro-law enforcement. Mexico’s drug gangs haven’t hurt the argument for border security, either: Mr. Perry’s ads on the subject in 2006 were so effective that he used them again in 2010. Now the climate has changed, visible in the makeup of the Legislature. Republicans have 101 seats in the 150-member House, and 19 in the 31-member Senate. The clarity of what G.O.P. voters want is reflected in the bills filed by their elected officials. They’re talking about taking in-state college tuition away from the children of illegal immigrants who live in Texas. They’ve proposed Arizona-style legislation to make local police the enforcers of federal laws. They’re calling on the federal government, meanwhile, to enforce those laws and to — this is Mr. Perry again — send more people to patrol the border in the interest of safety. They’ve renewed calls to crack down on businesses that hire illegal immigrants. Mr. Perry added sanctuary cities to his list of “emergency” legislation that can be considered by the Legislature during what is normally a law-passing blackout for the first 60 days of the session. But he has been careful with it, saying he doesn’t want to require local police to enforce federal immigration laws, as Arizona does. He wants to outlaw bans on that practice, and says simply that local police should be allowed to enforce those laws as they wish. No requirement, no ban, no bashing — just law enforcement. His sanctuary-cities ban is a product of the governor’s race in November and illustrates how he has walked the political line. In that contest, Mr. Perry accused his Democratic opponent, Bill White, of running a sanctuary city as mayor of Houston, preventing the police from enforcing immigration laws. And Mr. Perry closed his campaign with an ad featuring a Houston police officer whose husband, also an officer, was shot to death by an illegal immigrant during an arrest. With the Legislature in town, it’s harder to modulate the responses to public calls for tougher enforcement. If you’re a governor or a lawmaker who wants to be governor some day, all of that raises the political question above: Is it possible to keep lawmakers from doing something that will sink the party in the future? And is it possible to escape this legislative session with a package of bills moderate enough to keep Hispanic voters in the fold without forfeiting the 2012 primary elections to current Republicans, including the noisy Tea Partyers, who want a stronger hand? “I don’t think this is the kind of issue that defeats you in a Republican primary,” Mr. Hammond said. “You have to be atrocious to get defeated in a Republican primary. Taxes might fall into atrocious activity, but I don’t think this does.”

Republican Party
Perry Rick
Texas
Immigration and Emigration
Illegal Immigrants


Ben Enoch, Promising Amateur Golfer, Dies at 19

Abstract: LONDON (AP) — Ben Enoch, one of Britain’s most promising amateur golfers, was killed in a car crash Thursday while driving to a tournament. He was 19. Enoch, from Wales, was traveling to a tournament in England when his car crashed into a trailer, Richard Dixon, the chief executive of the Golf Union of Wales, said Friday. Enoch was one of 28 members of the preliminary Britain and Ireland Walker Cup squad, which will face a United States team in September. He was to attend East Tennessee University on a golf scholarship this fall. His older brother, Rhys, is a golfer at the college. Last summer, Ben Enoch was part of the Britain and Ireland boys team that beat the Continent of Europe. He was hoping to be among the 10 players picked for the Walker Cup team, which will be announced in August. “Ben was one of the most promising golfers in Wales, a bright and vibrant personality in our teams,” Dixon said. Enoch was runner-up in the 2008 Welsh Amateur Championship. In a statement on the East Tennessee team’s Web site, the coach, Fred Warren, called Enoch “an internationally ranked golfer with an unlimited future in the game.” The Walker Cup competition of amateurs pits Britain-Ireland against the United States every two years. It is named for the great-grandfather of former President George W. Bush. The event will be played at the Merion Golf Club in Pennsylvania on Sept. 12-13.

Golf
Accidents and Safety
Deaths (Obituaries)
Great Britain


Flooding in Missouri Raises Vexing Questions

Abstract: ARNOLD, Mo. — Linda Thorne peered out the back of her trailer near here on Monday night to find water sloshing up the wooden steps. She had thought she would be safe from the rising floodwaters. But at that point, she knew she had to go. By Thursday, most of the trailer and many of the valuables she had left behind were submerged. And Ms. Thorne, 60, who expected to be at a hospital welcoming the birth of her first great-grandchild, instead found herself stuck under the pale fluorescent lights of a gym at a Baptist church that had become a Red Cross shelter. “I was devastated,” she said Thursday, reflecting on the valuables and keepsakes she left behind: Mickey Mouse figurines and dolls she wanted to give to her grandchildren; a $400 set of cast iron pans; two Damascus blade knives with hand-carved bone handles that were gifts from a friend. Video Some of the highest flood stages ever recorded hit the Mississippi River basin this week, and states of emergency were declared in wide swaths of Missouri and Illinois. Credit Credit Michael Noble for The New York Times “I didn’t know I was going to lose everything,” she added, her face red and ragged. Like Ms. Thorne, many people in this part of the Mississippi River basin near St. Louis have come to accept that flooding is a part of life. But the damage this time has been so severe and the river levels so high that vexing questions have again been raised about whether anything can be done to truly ease the threat of the volatile and unpredictable rivers around here. Can greater defenses be erected? Should homes be vaulted on stilts? Or is it time for some communities to pack up and leave? Officials in Missouri and Illinois have blamed flooding for 21 deaths, many of them of motorists who tried to cross flooded roads. The worst conditions struck towns along the Meramec River, southwest of St. Louis, which shattered previous flood records, forced the evacuation of thousands of people, swallowed whole neighborhoods and turned others into islands, cut off from any road access. About 20 minutes up the road in Valley Park, the Meramec crested Thursday morning at more than 28 feet above flood stage, 4.4 feet above the record set there in 1982. By Thursday night, the crest had flowed into the Mississippi River, but the Meramec was expected to stay well above flood stage for several days. Image Ms. Thorne in a Red Cross shelter on Thursday with what she and family had salvaged. Credit Kile Brewer for The New York Times “We know the floods are coming,” said Michael D. Polizzi, the mayor of nearby Fenton, which has also had record flooding in recent days. “It’s a way of life for a lot of people. But when it infringes with this new high level into homes that have never been flooded, then that does have a concern for us. “I think Mother Nature knows its job,” he added. “You can hold it back for a while, but gradually, it wins. Most of what you do is temporary until Mother Nature says, ‘I’ve had enough.’ ” Maybe — just maybe — Ms. Thorne said, this misfortune was God’s way of telling her, Enough. Her children had long been asking her to move out of the trailer home, which is in an unincorporated part of Jefferson County near Arnold, she said. They wanted her to move into a more populated part of town. “It’s going to be a new year, and God wants me to open my horizons,” said Ms. Thorne, who was a housewife and now lives off the disability checks of her husband, who died four years ago. For now, the way forward remains far from Ms. Thorne’s mind. She is still shaking off the shock of what has happened. Image Floodwater covered a closed section of Dutch Bottom Road near Arnold, Mo., on Thursday. Credit Kile Brewer for The New York Times After three days of heavy, steady rain pounded the region, she watched the news on Monday and heard that floods were coming. She looked in the distance to see the Meramec creeping ever so slowly through the woods toward her mobile home. Yet she was confident that it would be safe. Her landlord had erected a five-foot levee along the trailer park, she said. And she remembered a few years back when her home remained dry even though the river climbed to 38.5 feet. She still took precautions, buying two tons of sand for $40 to fill 200 bags donated by the Fire Department to create a small barrier along the edge of the park of about 15 to 20 mobile homes. It was not until late Monday night, when she saw the water lapping at her steps, heard it gurgling beneath the trailer and saw it engulfing an adjacent shed, that she started to think this was serious. And even then, it took a neighbor’s encouragement before she decided to leave. So she disconnected her computers and packed whatever she could — boots, clothes — into four boxes and two suitcases. Her oldest son, who lives with her, stuffed all he could into two black rolling suitcases. They sent their Chinese pug, Jake, and their two cockatiels, Benny and Joon, off with friends. Whatever they could not remove, they stacked on beds and desks. Image One of Ms. Thorne's daughters went back to the trailer to fetch an angel ornament from the Christmas tree that she had bought for her mother when they went to see a production of “The Nutcracker” at a local high school. Credit Kile Brewer for The New York Times Then they prayed that the water would not rise too high. They did save some of their other valuables when two of Ms. Thorne’s sons — she has five children total — came over Tuesday and Wednesday to haul out some items that had been left. Before the water was too high, she made sure that one of her daughters went back to fetch an angel ornament from the Christmas tree. The daughter had bought her the ornament when they went to see a production of “The Nutcracker” at a local high school auditorium. On Thursday morning, Ms. Thorne returned to the park to assess the damage but could not get very close. About half of the trailer was consumed in what looked like a lake; her blue minivan next to it was covered by water almost to the roof. “My daughter had to grab me because I wanted to run into the water and grab what I could,” Ms. Thorne said. Mostly what Ms. Thorne has now is a pile of donated blankets on the cot she is sleeping on at the shelter. And her favorite drinking cup — a plastic Mason jar with a red straw — that she also made sure to tell her daughter to grab. And, yes, as the calendar changes to a new year, there is even still a little bit of optimism. “A bad ending,” Ms. Thorne said, swiping her left hand through the air, “and a new bright. ...” She paused, then continued: “Hopefully, beginning.”

Flood
Missouri
Midwestern United States
Levees and Dams
Mississippi River
Meramec River


European Commission Warns of Trade Case Against China

Abstract: BRUSSELS — The European Commission said on Wednesday it was ready to start an investigation into anticompetitive behavior by Chinese producers of mobile telecommunications equipment, opening a new front in Europe’s trade offensive against China. The European Union trade commissioner, Karel De Gucht, said in a statement that he and fellow commissioners had agreed in principle to open an antidumping and antisubsidy case, although they would first seek to negotiate a solution with Chinese authorities. ‘'The clock is ticking. We have had an open-door policy for negotiations with our Chinese partners for approximately one year now and we hope that the Chinese authorities step forward and engage with us in a serious manner,'’ Mr. De Gucht’s spokesman said during a news briefing. The European Union has 31 ongoing trade-related investigations, 18 of them involving China. The largest to date involves imports from China of solar panels, cells and wafers, worth 21 billion euros ($27.25 billion), for which the Union is proposing punitive duties. China exports more than 1 billion euros worth of telecommunications network equipment per year to the European Union. The equipment is used by telecom providers to transmit voice and data messages. The proposed investigation into telecommunications equipment would be a new twist in the European Union’s trade defense against China because it would be initiated by the European Commission itself and not in response to a complaint by industry. By initiating a case, known as an ex officio case, the commission said it would provide a degree of protection for companies. ‘'This possibility is particularly important as it offers a ‘shield’ when the risk of retaliation against European companies asking for trade defense instruments is high,'’ the commission said. The commission did not name any of the Chinese producers or the European manufacturers it believes are threatened. But European officials have indicated that while European manufacturers like Ericsson, Nokia Siemens Networks and Alcatel-Lucent have suffered as a result of cheap imports by Chinese companies like Huawei and ZTE, they are not prepared to make a formal complaint for fear of reprisals.

International trade
Wireless
European Commission
China
Europe


A Little-Known Reason for Disparities in New York’s Parks

Abstract: On a sun-splashed afternoon in late spring, Abigail Mastroserio, 2, scampered in the playground at Kelly Park, in the Sheepshead Bay section of Brooklyn. It was not long before she tripped on uneven cobblestones near the faded play equipment. Her mother, Melia, could not even comfort her daughter with a sip of water from the water fountain. It was broken. “This park used to look better when I was a kid,” said Ms. Mastroserio, 38, who grew up nearby. Barely five miles away, a different scene unfolded in Canarsie Park, where young families explored a newly renovated nature trail, complete with fitness equipment, and athletes practiced on a recently installed cricket field. In an elaborate new skate park, teenagers and others careered over stair sets and ledges, and swooped on a half-pipe. “We love this place,” said James Belly, a 26-year-old skateboarder. “We’d be pleased with anything since we had nothing before. But this is something of real quality.” This tale of two parks is echoed around New York City, and not for the reason usually given: that private money in wealthy neighborhoods is used to buff and polish already pristine parks. Rather, the disparities between the Sheepshead Bay and Canarsie sections of Brooklyn, which share the same blue-collar demographic, stem from a little-noticed budget reality: With many smaller capital projects, the parks department is often constrained by the preferences of City Council members and borough presidents. Canarsie Park, which is in the district of Councilman Lewis A. Fidler, has benefited from his largess, receiving $18 million in allocations over his 12 years in office. Mr. Fidler has directed nearly $13 million over the past three fiscal years, not just to Canarsie Park, but to others, including Marine Park, the Hendrick I. Lott House, Lindower Park and the McGuire Park Tot Lot. “Because I represent the hinterlands of Brooklyn, I know that our parks are not going to be the priority that some of the chichi parks are in Downtown Brooklyn and Manhattan,” said Mr. Fidler, a Democrat. “I made a commitment that just as the people of my district were not second-class citizens, they weren’t going to have second-class parks.” By contrast, Kelly Park, where the basketball courts are pocked with divots and the hoops are at varying heights, falls in the district of Councilman Michael Nelson, also a Democrat, who has allocated $1 million to parks in the last three fiscal years. “It’s a pittance compared to what Lew Fidler gave, and the parks in Michael Nelson’s district show it,” said Julius Spiegel, the former Brooklyn borough commissioner for the parks department. Mr. Nelson did not return calls for comment. The reliance on elected officials, whose priorities may not align with those of the parks department, is a focus of a new platform by New Yorkers for Parks , a nonprofit advocacy group. The platform, drawn up after conversations with advocates in the five boroughs, is being presented to community boards and mayoral candidates. It calls for more financing for park maintenance, greater transparency by park conservancies and stricter regulation on the use of parks for private purposes. While acknowledging that parks under Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg have experienced an extraordinary level of expansion and refurbishment, the group says that many smaller parks were left behind. “Scores of neighborhood parks have not benefited from the huge influx of capital dollars that has flowed into the handful of large parks targeted by the administration for upgrades,” the platform asserts. The dependence on elected officials to finance modest capital projects — a playground renovation, a new roof on a comfort station, new paving — “creates an inefficient, inequitable and potentially politicized process,” the platform said. Image In Kelly Park, basketball courts have divots, hoops have different heights, and water fountains do not work. Credit Jabin Botsford/The New York Times Holly M. Leicht, executive director of New Yorkers for Parks, said that the department should have greater control over its capital spending. “We think the parks department needs a separate discretionary budget for these smaller projects so that it can plan over the long term without being reliant on elected officials,” she said. But the mayor’s office defended the current financing process on Friday. “Our parks system was just rated second-best in the nation thanks to the unprecedented investments we’ve made to park improvements and development projects across the city,” said Lauren Passalacqua, a spokeswoman for Mr. Bloomberg. “Of course we have to prioritize projects based on needs and goals.” The Bloomberg administration has committed $6 billion to parks capital projects, she added, and has completed 2,200 construction projects on parkland. Of the 51 Council members, at least three — the Democrats Charles Barron of Brooklyn, Peter Koo of Queens and Annabel Palma of the Bronx — gave no money to parks in the past three fiscal years. Another three — the Democrats Gale A. Brewer of Manhattan, and Albert Vann and David G. Greenfield, both of Brooklyn — allocated $8 million to $9 million each over the same period. The amount of money they have to disburse is determined, in part, by the speaker of the City Council, Christine C. Quinn, who is now running for mayor (and who has been a major supporter of parks). Some members may perceive more pressing demands, like affordable housing or public safety. Ms. Palma, whose Bronx district includes Soundview, Castle Hill and Parkchester, pointed out that her area received a windfall from Mr. Bloomberg’s PlaNYC , which directed nearly $300 million into eight neglected or shuttered parks across the city, including Soundview Park. Her district also benefited from an agreement involving the construction of the Croton water filtration plant in Van Cortlandt Park, which allotted $200 million to Bronx parks. “Those enabled me to focus discretionary money on the schools, libraries and New York City Housing Authority,” Ms. Palma said. Some City Council members chafe at the requests to finance basic park infrastructure. “Why should we be paying for it?” said Mark Weprin, a Queens Democrat, who recently designated money for protective netting at a public golf course. “They come to us with a list of projects, and I always find that offensive. These are the basic needs of an area. It shouldn’t be up to the local councilman to fix up parks.” Adrian Benepe, the former parks commissioner who now works at the Trust for Public Land , which ranked the city’s parks second among the nation’s 50 largest cities, said that projects like Governors Island, the High Line, Brooklyn Bridge Park and the eight PlaNYC parks were so expensive that they could be financed only by the mayor’s office. He defended the city’s record of capital spending on parks under Mr. Bloomberg, which is similar to that of the state parks chief Robert Moses in the 1930s. “No park system has all the money it wants to fix up everything, but New York’s parks have had a level of investment that dwarfs that of some other cities put together,” Mr. Benepe said. Others insist that in a system with 1,700 parks, more capital financing is needed. “Compared to other boroughs, we did O.K.,” said Mr. Spiegel, the retired parks official in Brooklyn. “But there are dozens and dozens of projects that aren’t getting done. We’re O.K. at picking up the garbage. But when you scratch below the surface, there are serious infrastructure problems.”

NYC Parks and Recreation
New York City Council
NYC
New Yorkers for Parks
Parks
Canarsie Brooklyn
Lewis A Fidler
Sheepshead Bay Brooklyn
Michael Chaim Nelson


World Baseball Classic Opens Where It Matters More

Abstract: FUKUOKA, Japan — The iconic image of Japan’s victory over South Korea in the final of the 2009 World Baseball Classic was of Ichiro Suzuki, the team captain, grinning as he hoisted the silver trophy amid a circle of teammates and a sea of confetti on the field at Dodger Stadium. Japan’s quest to claim its third straight title, and its first without Suzuki, began Saturday with a 5-3 victory in Pool A over the tournament newcomer Brazil at Fukuoka Dome. The four-pool, three-round tournament Classic struggles for acceptance among fans and players in North America, where action begins next weekend, but it is a different matter in Asia. From the ceremonial first pitch, delivered by Sadaharu Oh , the Japanese home run champion, enthusiastic Japan supporters in a crowd announced at 28,181 wore white and blue (the team colors), beat noisemakers, pounded drums, played horns and waved flags. Brazil, managed by the Hall of Famer Barry Larkin, took a 3-2 lead in the fifth inning, but Japan rallied, thrilling its fans. At a boisterous Taichung Intercontinental Baseball Stadium in Taiwan, play began in Pool B, and the host team, led by Chien-Ming Wang, rolled to a 4-1 win over Australia. Later, the Netherlands upset South Korea, 5-0. Jim Small, Major League Baseball’s vice president for Asia and venue manager for the W.B.C. in Fukuoka and Taichung, said the Classic meant more in Asia, largely because of the importance of the Olympics and the Asian Baseball Championship. “The cultures here are much more used to their national teams than we are in the United States,” Small said Friday after arriving in Taipei. “A great example is here in Taiwan. The national team is by far the most important baseball team in Taiwan, not the professional leagues.” Joe Torre, the United States manager, has expressed concerns about motivating his squad of major league talent at this stage of spring training to play against teams, like Japan, that take the event more seriously. Japan’s manager, Koji Yamamoto, offered no hint of such a problem when his 28-man roster was announced in February. “I told them to get themselves into the best physical and mental condition as possible for the first game,” Yamamoto said, “and then fight with real spirit.” Notable stars like Suzuki, beginning his first full season with the Yankees, and Yu Darvish of the Texas Rangers are absent from Japan’s roster. Both players made large contributions to the 2009 title. Also missing is Daisuke Matsuzaka, the most valuable player of the two previous Classics. Japan topped Cuba in the 2006 final. As usual, Japan is not focusing on individuals, relying instead on a team approach that emphasizes strong pitching, solid defense and timely hitting. But the injured right knee of the team captain, catcher Shinnosuke Abe , has been a concern. Abe, the Central League’s most valuable player for the Yomiuri Giants in 2012, when his batting average was .340 and his on-base percentage was .429, compared himself to a “defeated soldier fleeing the enemy” if he could not perform like a samurai. It was a tongue-in-cheek acknowledgment that the fans were counting on him. He did not start on Saturday, but he pinch-hit and drove in the go-ahead run on a fielder’s choice in a three-run eighth inning. A dozen or so Brazil fans shook their country’s green, yellow and blue flag above their heads from seats near third base. For them and several others around the stadium, Brazil’s arrival in Fukuoka was monumental, earned with an upset over Panama in a qualifying game in November. “Just to get here was a miracle for us,” said Felipe Ferrari, 26, a Brazilian student at Nagoya University in Japan. “The dream has already come true. To open a magazine and see the faces of the players — that was once a big wish.” Two teams from each of Asia’s two pools will advance to the second round next weekend at Tokyo Dome. The championship round will be March 17 to 19 in San Francisco. A schedule that overlaps with major league camps will probably prevent the Classic from being embraced more broadly. Masayuki Tamaki, a Japanese sports commentator and author of books on baseball, described the tournament as merely an extended tryout for the majors. “The lack of big names is probably good for them,” Tamaki said, referring to major league teams. “In this way, they will be very happy to discover new star players.” But Japanese fans were looking forward to Sunday, when Japan faces China, the next step, they hoped, toward seeing a countryman raise the trophy as Suzuki did four years ago. “Our pitching was not the best tonight,” Oku Yoshioka, a 40-year-old sales engineer, said of Japan’s starter, Masahiro Tanaka, who lasted only two innings. “But our staff is strong enough to get us back to the finals again.”

World Baseball Classic
Baseball
Japan
Brazil


Bill Seeks to Expand Rights for New York’s Immigrants

Abstract: Three months after the defeat of the Dream Act , a Congressional bill that would have provided a path to legal residency for young illegal immigrants, a state senator from New York City has introduced his own version of the legislation in Albany. Unlike its federal counterpart, the bill would not offer those immigrants a path to legal residency. But it would give some of them certain rights now granted only to legal residents and citizens, including the ability to hold some state jobs — a provision that appears to challenge federal laws that prohibit the hiring of undocumented workers. The bill would allow illegal immigrants to get driver’s licenses, a proposal that will undoubtedly reprise the fiery debates that compelled Gov. Eliot Spitzer to drop a similar plan in 2007. State Senator Bill Perkins , a Manhattan Democrat who introduced the bill this week, acknowledged the challenges confronting it. “There’s politics and other types of obstacles that must be overcome,” Mr. Perkins said in an interview on Wednesday. The bill is one in a recent wave of state measures — some intended to empower immigrants, others meant to toughen the enforcement of immigration laws — that have been proposed in response to inaction in Washington. A number of state legislatures have considered versions of the Dream Act, most of them intended to allow students who are illegal immigrants to pay in-state tuition rates for public colleges and universities, and to receive state financial aid. This year, with Republicans newly in control of legislatures across the country, many state governments have vowed to pass bills to crack down on illegal immigrants; they include proposals resembling an Arizona law that expanded the powers of police officers to question the immigration status of people they stop. State Senator Daniel L. Squadron, a Democrat who represents parts of Brooklyn and Manhattan who is co-sponsoring the New York bill, said the legislation was prompted by the failure of the Dream Act, which passed the House but was blocked by the Senate in December. “This allows New York to take the lead in a place where the federal government hasn’t yet succeeded,” he said. New York allows illegal immigrants to pay in-state tuition, but the bill would give them access to state financial support, including grants, loans and scholarships. Its most ambitious proposals are those seeking to provide certain illegal immigrants with “state identification or driver’s licenses” and “work opportunities with the State of New York.” Mr. Squadron said the bill did not seek to undermine federal laws that prohibit employers from knowingly hiring illegal immigrants. But, he said, it “could potentially expand the state’s options within the federal limits.” He added that he was still studying the potential effects of the bill on employment. To qualify for the benefits of the legislation, an illegal immigrant would need to have entered the United States before age 16, be younger than 35 and have lived in New York for at least two years before the law’s effective date. Among other requirements, the immigrant would have to have completed at least two years of a four-year degree in a college or university in the state, served at least two years in the New York National Guard or completed 910 hours of community service. Convicted felons would not be eligible. Mr. Perkins said that he hoped the bill would attract support in the Legislature, but that he had not yet surveyed his peers or sounded out Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo. “Nobody has yet said this is ridiculous, or anything negative in that vein,” Mr. Perkins said. But several officials who loudly opposed Mr. Spitzer’s measure four years ago did not hesitate to criticize the new bill on Wednesday. Homing in on the driver’s license clause, Assemblyman James N. Tedisco, a Republican from Schenectady, said he anticipated opposition to that provision — and, by extension, the bill — would be strong. “It’s just as wrong now as it was under Eliot Spitzer,” he said. “I think it’s a bill to nowhere.”

Development Relief and Education for Alien Minors Act


Iran Editor Is Charged With Defying Ban on Covering Ex-President

Abstract: Iran’s conservative judicial authorities indicted the managing editor of a prominent daily newspaper on Tuesday, saying that he had violated prohibitions on the coverage of Mohammad Khatami, a reformist-minded former president they now describe as a seditionist. Rights activists said the indictment was a sign not only of the escalating repression of the news media in Iran, but also of heightening tensions between hard-line factions and the administration of the current president, Hassan Rouhani, with parliamentary elections due in February. “It is absurd that Khatami, president for eight years, has been declared essentially nonexistent to such an extent that disseminating his picture and voice is considered a crime,” said Hadi Ghaemi , executive director of the International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran, an advocacy group based in New York. The indictment was also notable because the editor, Mahmoud Doaei, of the Ettelaat, one of Iran’s oldest newspapers, was an early figure in the 1979 Islamic Revolution. He was a member of the inner circle around Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the revolution’s founding father, and was considered somewhat protected in the factional feuding that has increasingly marked Iran’s opaque political hierarchy. Mr. Khatami was president from 1997 to 2005, and was an important supporter of the campaign to elect Mr. Rouhani in 2013, when Mr. Rouhani defeated a field of relatively conservative rivals. Iranian judicial officials decreed a news media blackout in February on photographs or quotations of Mr. Khatami, because of his support for opposition political leaders who have basically been under house arrest since shortly after the disputed election of 2009. In that race, Mr. Rouhani’s conservative predecessor, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, was re-elected in what critics called a suspiciously lopsided margin, spurring protests that were met with a harsh crackdown. While such news media restrictions have been imposed before, this one demonstrated the power of judicial hard-liners to frustrate Mr. Rouhani, who had promised to ease some of the social and political restrictions left over from Mr. Ahmadinejad’s tenure. The hard-liners’ attempt to erase Mr. Khatami from public view is part of what rights advocates call a broader effort to silence any resumption of political dissent and freer expression in the country. The elections in February are likely to be regarded as a test of that effort. In the indictment, reported by Iran’s judiciary news service, Mr. Doaei was accused of authorizing the publication of a photograph of Mr. Khatami on Saturday and quoting remarks Mr. Khatami had made in an interview with As-Safir, a Lebanese newspaper. There appeared to be nothing in the interview, however, that might be deemed offensive in Iran. Published in As-Safir on Nov. 20, it quoted Mr. Khatami as calling for regional cooperation to combat a common terrorist threat. It also quoted him as saying that Iran would “witness a major boom” from the lifting of economic sanctions under the nuclear agreement reached in July with world powers, which was negotiated by Mr. Rouhani’s administration. “This latest development, indicting the managing director of an establishment paper for publishing his picture, is a sign of intensifying repression ahead of the upcoming parliamentary elections,” Mr. Ghaemi said. Iran’s hard-liners, he said, “are attempting to put an early end to any attempts for Khatami to play a role in the elections.” Maziar Bahari, an expatriate Iranian-Canadian journalist who was imprisoned under Mr. Ahmadinejad, said that by indicting the Ettelaat editor, the hard-liners took a risk and might have overreached. “Doaei is among Khomeini’s original disciples, and kind of untouchable,” Mr. Bahari said. “He’s also very careful. I don’t think they’ll be able to do anything, but they’ll try.”

Iran
Mahmoud Doaei
Mohammad Khatami
Ettelaat
Freedom of the press
Newspaper
Hassan Rouhani


California: ‘Die Hard’ Director Is Sentenced to Year in Prison

Abstract: John McTiernan , director of the movie “Die Hard,” was sentenced to one year in prison on Monday for lying about his association with a private investigator to illegally wiretap a movie producer. Mr. McTiernan, 59, pleaded guilty in July to two counts of making false statements to the F.B.I. and one count of perjury for lying to a federal judge while trying to withdraw a guilty plea. He previously pleaded guilty to lying to an F.B.I. agent in 2006 about the investigation of the private investigator, Anthony Pellicano , but later withdrew that plea.

McTiernan John
Pellicano Anthony
Sentences (Criminal)


Parents Pulling the Plugs on Williamsburg Trust-Funders

Abstract: For the past five years, Ernie DiGiacomo has been able to count on parents to guarantee the $1,500 to $2,500 rents he charges for the 15 apartments he owns in Williamsburg, Brooklyn . When he called renters who had missed payments, he often heard, “My parents will send you a check.” But in the past six months, the parents are pulling back financial help, he said, and as a result, he has watched more renters move out. “Most of them are moving back with parents,” Mr. DiGiacomo said. Luis Illades, an owner of the Urban Rustic Market and Cafe on North 12th Street, said he had seen a steady number of applicants, in their late 20s, who had never held paid jobs: They were interns at a modeling agency, for example, or worked at a college radio station. In some cases, applicants have stormed out of the market after hearing the job requirements. “They say, ‘You want me to work eight hours?’ ” Mr. Illades said. “There is a bubble bursting.” Famed for its concentration of heavily subsidized 20-something residents — also nicknamed trust-funders or trustafarians — Williamsburg is showing signs of trouble. Parents whose money helped fuel one of the city’s most radical gentrifications in recent years have stopped buying their children new luxury condos, subsidizing rents and providing cash to spend at Bedford Avenue’s boutiques and coffee houses. For 18 months after graduating from Colby College , Jack Drury, 24, lived the way many Williamsburg residents do: He followed his passions, working in satellite radio and playing guitar. He earned money as a bicycle messenger and, on occasion, turned to his parents for money. But as the recession deepened last fall, his parents had to cut the staff at their event planning company to 30 workers from 50. Asked for his help, Mr. Drury cast aside his other pursuits and started work as a project manager for his parents. But he still plays the guitar in two bands, Haunted Castle and Rats in the Walls. “My future is in the family business,” he said. “ Music is just for fun.” The real estate market, too, is shifting as wealth evaporates. Ross Weinstein, a managing partner of the Union Square Mortgage Group, has worked with hundreds of Williamsburg apartment buyers in the past two years. “A lot of the money came from family,” he said. “That piece, it’s gone for a lot of people.” In the boom years, Mr. Weinstein said, 40 percent of the mortgage applications he reviewed for buyers in Williamsburg included down-payment money, from $50,000 to $300,000, from parents. About 20 percent of the applications listed investments that gave the young buyers $3,000 to $10,000 of monthly income. But in the past two months, Mr. Weinstein said, he has handled two to three deals a week in which the parents cut back their down-payment help. The number of sales in Williamsburg dropped nearly a quarter in the first three months of this year compared with the same period a year ago, according to HMS Associates , a Brooklyn appraisal firm. And in three recent cases, Mr. Weinstein said, owners sold their apartments in short sales — selling for less than the bank is owed, to avoid foreclosure — because they were no longer receiving parental help. Mr. Weinstein has been advising two brothers in their late 20s who wanted to buy a $700,000 apartment with $250,000 from their parents. But their parents’ investment portfolio has lost so much value that they now can give only $50,000. Since the brothers make about $45,000 a year each, they are now shopping for a $500,000 apartment. The parents still wish they could help, Mr. Weinstein said, but “right now, they’re in a situation in their life where they need to ensure their own security.” It is an adjustment that many have to deal with. Eric Gross, 26, a construction worker, was going to buy, with help from his father, a $600,000 one-bedroom condo with city views at Northside Piers, a luxury building, he said. But his father, who works in the auto industry, said he had to reduce his contribution. “He’s pulling back the lifeline,” Mr. Gross said. So Mr. Gross is scaling back, shopping for a $300,000 apartment, said his real estate agent, Binnie Robinson of AptsandLofts.com . It can be hard to see the signs of financial troubles in Williamsburg because residents are so loath to show that they had money in the first place. Robert Lanham, author of “The Hipster Handbook,” said in an interview that many newer residents tried to blend in with the area’s gritty history and dressed “half the time like they’re homeless people.” But parental help was obvious in the intersection of residents with low-paying jobs and $3,000-a-month apartments. “You can put two and two together, that they have money coming in from somewhere else,” Mr. Lanham said. The culture of the area often mocks residents who depend on their families. Misha Calvert, 26, a writer who relied on her parents during her first year in the city, now has three roommates, works in freelance jobs and organizes parties to help keep her afloat while she writes plays and acts in films. There is a “giant stigma,” she said, for Williamsburg residents who are not financially independent. “It takes the wind out of you if you’re not the independent, self-reliant artist you claim to be,” she said, “if you’re just daddy’s little girl.” The cutbacks for the more privileged residents are a welcome change for locals who have struggled to support themselves without parental help. Katie Deedy, 27, an artist, works two bartending jobs to shore up her designer wallpaper business. Gazing out from the bar at the patrons playing darts and sipping bloody marys during a Sunday shift at the Brooklyn Ale House, she described how refreshing it felt not being the only local resident trying to live on less. “If I’m going to be completely honest, it does make me feel a little bit better,” she said. “It’s bringing a lot of Williamsburg back to reality.”