Neighbors Say Ebola Patient Is Fast to Lend a Helping Hand

Abstract: Craig A. Spencer, the New York City doctor who tested positive for Ebola on Thursday, has dedicated himself to dealing with medical emergencies in faraway places. Just 33, Dr. Spencer has worked on projects in Rwanda, Burundi and the Democratic Republic of Congo. He returned this month from a trip to Guinea, where he worked with Doctors Without Borders, helping to treat Ebola patients. At home, he is an attending physician at NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital/Columbia University Medical Center, about 20 blocks from the apartment in Hamilton Heights in Upper Manhattan that he shares with his fiancée, Morgan Dixon. The couple are scheduled to marry next fall in Detroit, according to an announcement posted online. What the New York City Ebola Patient Was Doing Before He Was Hospitalized Locations visited by Craig Spencer, a Manhattan doctor who has tested positive for Ebola. Neighbors said that they did not see much of Dr. Spencer and that he seemed to be working most of the time. But when they had encountered him — often in his hospital scrubs — he had been friendly and quick to offer a hand carrying groceries into the building, a six-story, brick-faced structure just off Broadway. “He’s a nice guy, and kind of, wow,” a neighbor, John Reston, said upon hearing that Dr. Spencer had tested positive for the deadly disease. “He’s a nice guy, friendly, jovial. And I know he’s really dedicated to his work. That he’s with Doctors Without Borders says who he is.” Mr. Reston said he learned of Dr. Spencer’s affiliation with Doctors Without Borders, the humanitarian aid organization, through Ms. Dixon when he bumped into her in an elevator while Dr. Spencer was in Guinea. Mr. Reston said he had not seen the doctor since his return, but had seen him having a beer with friends at Harlem Public, a tavern a couple of blocks up Broadway. Another resident of Dr. Spencer’s building on West 147th Street, Ricardo Lawrence, said he was less worried about the disease’s spreading than for the doctor’s welfare. “I’m more concerned about him, especially because he went over there to help people,” Mr. Lawrence said, adding that he did not know him beyond exchanging greetings in the hallways. “I think he works all the time,” Mr. Lawrence said. “There’s a group of us in the building who are close, but everyone who lives here works such weird hours, we’re all like ships passing in the night.” Dr. Spencer grew up on a middle-class block of single-family homes in Grosse Pointe, Mich., where he attended Grosse Pointe North High School, recalled Lauren Smith, a former schoolmate. Ms. Smith, a 31-year-old financial analyst, said Dr. Spencer was “the typical guy next door.” She said he was “friendly to everyone he could be friendly to,” but “there was nothing standout about him.” Today Dr. Spencer’s résumé would indicate otherwise. After graduating from Wayne State University School of Medicine in Detroit, he earned a Master of Public Health degree at Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health, and he recently completed a fellowship in international emergency medicine at NewYork Presbyterian/Columbia. His profile on LinkedIn states that he is fluent in Chinese, French and Spanish. He studied Chinese at Henan University in China, which is where he met Ms. Dixon. But judging by the online announcement of their wedding, scheduled for Sept. 5, he is not all work and no play: “Craig’s friends say he’s a goofball, incredibly gifted in both art, music and science, and a go-getter.”

Ebola
Craig Spencer
NYC
Humanitarian aid
Doctor
Harlem


Morgenthau Heads for Door, Legacy Assured

Abstract: This article is by Michael Powell , William K. Rashbaum and Benjamin Weiser . Robert M. Morgenthau projected the image of the aristocratic prosecutor, an unflappable, even shy sort. But his ambition and reach had a boundless and very New York feel to them as he launched international investigations and pursued white-collar miscreants, stock manipulators and Mafia dons with equal fervor. Mr. Morgenthau’s power, accumulated over five decades as a federal and city prosecutor, was considerable, as was his political acumen. He could defend his territory fiercely, and he recognized the value of a political bloodline, hiring an Andrew M. Cuomo here, a John F. Kennedy Jr. there. A liberal Democratic lion, he never once sought the death penalty; and yet the city’s most confrontational mayors, Edward I. Koch and Rudolph W. Giuliani, hesitated to slash at him. His footing was not always sure. He seemed slow to respond to the plague of police corruption in the 1980s — although his fellow district attorneys were even slower off the mark — and his prosecutors sat on evidence in the 1980s that a rogue transit police unit was arresting black residents without cause. His office gained a few convictions, notably in the Central Park jogger case in 1989, that proved erroneous. And federal prosecutors complained, loudly, that he did not respect traditional boundaries — why, they asked, was he pursuing complex white-collar investigations as well as the red meat of local crime and punishment? Along the way, Mr. Morgenthau, who announced Friday that his ninth term as Manhattan district attorney would be his last, dragged the office into the 20th, and then the 21st century. He founded sex-crime and consumer-affairs units, instructed his prosecutors to chase after slumlords and added Spanish-speaking staff and interpreters at a time when such actions registered as at least mildly revolutionary. He revamped the legendary homicide bureau, shaking up sinecures that extended back to Thomas E. Dewey in the 1930s. Mr. Morgenthau’s announcement that at 89 he would not walk much further into the 21st century as district attorney brought tears to some eyes, as many prosecutors had served with him for decades. And it set off a turkey trot of possible successors. New York, then, was left to draw the measure of a man who for decades nearly personified the role of prosecutor, first as United States attorney in Manhattan and then for 34 years as the Manhattan district attorney. The figure of the original district attorney in “Law and Order” was modeled, in part, on Mr. Morgenthau. “Most of us don’t make that decision in a timely way,” Mr. Koch said of Mr. Morgenthau’s choice to not seek another term. “By virtue of what he has done, he is the standard for district attorneys. As La Guardia was for mayors, Morgenthau has been for district attorneys.” Mr. Morgenthau’s protégés and former prosecutors form much of the spine of New York’s judiciary and defense bar, a fact that gave him unusual power and influence. A Figure Out of History Mr. Morgenthau encompassed an unusual duality, as he was a working prosecutor and a figure out of history at the same time. The son of a treasury secretary for President Franklin D. Roosevelt, Mr. Morgenthau served drinks to Winston Churchill on the lawn of his parents’ estate. Years later, in 1961, President John F. Kennedy appointed him as federal prosecutor for the Southern District of New York. The list of Mr. Morgenthau’s legal targets extends into the mists of municipal history, as his office prosecuted (sometimes successfully and sometimes not) the Luchese family crime boss Anthony Corallo, the political boss Carmine De Sapio, the subway vigilante Bernhard H. Goetz, and L. Dennis Kozlowski, the former chief executive of Tyco International. A savvy man before a photographer or a reporter with a pen, he knew his way with a pungent quote. When Roy M. Cohn, former counsel to Senator Joseph R. McCarthy, complained that Mr. Morgenthau was pursuing a vendetta against him, the district attorney retorted, “A man is not immune from prosecution just because a United States attorney happens not to like him.” Mr. Morgenthau remains the longest-serving member of a long-in-the-tooth club, the city’s five elected district attorneys. As dean of this often-prickly fraternity, Mr. Morgenthau emerged each year with a larger budget and a bigger staff, and his cases often drew attention that eclipsed that of his borough brethren. And he did not hesitate over the years to gerrymander his political jurisdiction, reaching into other boroughs to indict wayward politicians and across the globe in pursuit of white-collar crimes. Seven years ago he obtained a bribery indictment and conviction against State Senator Guy J. Velella, a Bronx Republican whose district lay entirely outside Manhattan. (Mr. Morgenthau’s prosecutors were able to prove, using surveying equipment, that one of the crime scenes was within 500 yards of Manhattan, and so the case fell within their jurisdiction). In white-collar cases, Mr. Morgenthau’s prosecutors have followed money trails to Paraguay and Iran, the Cayman Islands and Belgium. He wields a sharp razor in turf battles, but has not been invariably successful. On one occasion in 1997, his office indicted a defendant in a securities case; Mary Jo White, then the United States attorney, followed by bringing federal charges against the same defendant, effectively ending his office’s ability to prosecute the matter. Mr. Morgenthau’s office was left to howl to a judge. Judge Shira A. Scheindlin suggested in court that the two prosecutors “should sit down for coffee some day and talk.” A decorated World War II veteran, Mr. Morgenthau spent hours treading water in the Mediterranean after German bombers sank his destroyer. And as a son of a wealthy German Jewish family long active in public life, Mr. Morgenthau was an early supporter of John F. Kennedy. In 1961 President Kennedy appointed him United States attorney for the Southern District, an office whose territory happened to include Wall Street. That summer, he created the office’s first securities unit, in response to what he saw as a growing problem of stock manipulation and other fraud. “I just thought there was a lot of corruption out there,” he recalled in an interview last fall, “and New York was the financial capital of the world, and we wanted people to feel safe investing in it.” Ambitious Agenda He beefed up the office, and worked to attract bright young lawyers and investigators capable of handling the painstaking documentary research involved in pursuing the complex securities matters. He assigned others to pursue tax evasion, offshore banking and bank secrecy. He anticipated new and rich regions for prosecution, often years ahead of other prosecutors. He rarely backed down, and he drove his staff hard. “He was all over everything,” said Pierre N. Leval, a federal appeals judge in Manhattan who worked for Mr. Morgenthau in both the United States attorney’s office and later in the district attorney’s office. In a speech in 1969, his last year as United States attorney, Mr. Morgenthau explained why he pursued white-collar crime with such passion. His words resonate today. “It is a deplorable fact,” he said, “that many businessmen tend to treat more sympathetically the banker guilty of tax fraud, the broker guilty of stock fraud or the accountant who certifies a false balance sheet than the poor man guilty of auto theft or hijacking of a truck.” In December 1969, Mr. Morgenthau said he would leave the United States attorney’s office after President Richard M. Nixon, a Republican, gave him an ultimatum: Step down, or be fired by the White House. Mr. Morgenthau had dabbled in electoral politics some years earlier, running a quixotic and spectacularly unsuccessful race against Gov. Nelson A. Rockefeller. He lost by 500,000 votes. But after District Attorney Frank S. Hogan — who had also had served nine terms — fell ill and resigned in 1974, Mr. Morgenthau ran successfully for his seat. He took office as the fiscal crisis of the 1970s descended on the city. Landlords were abandoning and burning buildings, the city had run out of cash, workers were threatening to strike near every month. Mr. Morgenthau had trouble finding money to hire secretaries or investigators or even carry out extraditions if people skipped town, recalled Judge John F. Keenan of Federal District Court, who was Mr. Morgenthau’s chief assistant at the time. The new prosecutor never lacked self-confidence. He strolled over to City Hall, often weekly, to get personal approval from Mayor Abraham D. Beame for some new expenditure. “We didn’t have appointments,” Judge Keenan added. “Bob knew how to deal with City Hall, and he was able to get the office what it needed.” In his first decade, Mr. Morgenthau also quadrupled the number of black prosecutors and increased Latino staff to 25 from 1 and women to 129 from 19. He created a “vertical prosecution” system, which let prosecutors handle cases from complaint to conviction. And in the early 1980s, Mr. Morgenthau created the Homicide Investigation Unit, a team of prosecutors and detectives to pursue the drug gangs — the Jheri Curls, the Wild Cowboys — that ruled so many streets in Upper Manhattan. A Dry Wit Along the way, he created a pitch-perfect persona: He was the lawman with a wit so martini-dry he sometimes had to remind his audience that he was joking. And he had a keen eye to his place in history. In the 1980s, he noted to a reporter that his conviction rate — then at 73 percent — exceeded that of Dewey, the famed mob-buster of the 1930s. And yet his tenure had fallow periods that sometimes lasted years. Critics raised recurring questions: Had he used his political clout to bring innovation and reform to the city’s fractious legal system, or to reinforce his own power? Had he been aggressive enough in recognizing the problem of abusive police power? And they wondered if he had overstayed his welcome — even in the mid-1980s some questioned if he was, perhaps, too old for the job. At that point, Mr. Morgenthau’s office had failed to persuade a grand jury to indict Mr. Goetz for attempted murder after he shot four black men on a subway car. And drug crimes and homicides were on the rise. There was another high-profile case that would come to haunt him. On April 19, 1989, a young investment banker was beaten and raped in Central Park. Detectives took videotaped confessions and five teenagers were eventually convicted of the crime. One of Mr. Morgenthau’s top assistants, Linda Fairstein, oversaw the case and the office gained long prison sentences. But in 2002, a new DNA test and a confession from a murderer who was not a suspect convinced Mr. Morgenthau to order one of his bureau chiefs to conduct a full re-investigation of the case. Mr. Morgenthau’s staff took these results to a judge, who vacated the convictions. There was much criticism and self-examination, and in time a formidable election challenge: a determined effort to unseat him from Leslie Crocker Snyder, a former assistant prosecutor and a former judge. She bluntly criticized the office’s recent work and wasn’t modest about pushing Mr. Morgenthau’s age as an issue. “A District Attorney for the 21st Century” was her theme. Mr. Morgenthau survived the challenge, and just a few weeks ago, there he was, posing with an outsize check that symbolized the $175 million haul for taxpayers from some of his financial cases. But on Friday he signaled that his long, often-glorious run was over. “It took me a while,” he told reporters, “to realize I was getting older.”

Morgenthau Robert M
District Attorneys
Manhattan (NYC)


Hiring Hurdle: Finding Workers Who Can Pass a Drug Test

Abstract: SAVANNAH, Ga. — A few years back, the heavy-equipment manufacturer JCB held a job fair in the glass foyer of its sprawling headquarters near here, but when a throng of prospective employees learned the next step would be drug testing, an alarming thing happened: About half of them left. That story still circulates within the business community of this historic port city. But the problem has gotten worse. All over the country, employers say they see a disturbing downside of tighter labor markets as they try to rebuild from the worst recession since the Depression: They are struggling to find workers who can pass a pre-employment drug test. That hurdle partly stems from the growing ubiquity of drug testing, at corporations with big human resources departments, in industries like trucking where testing is mandated by federal law for safety reasons, and increasingly at smaller companies. But data suggest employers’ difficulties also reflect an increase in the use of drugs, especially marijuana — employers’ main gripe — and also heroin and other opioid drugs much in the news. Image Ray Gaster, who owns Gaster Lumber and Hardware, says it is always short of drivers “and drug testing is part of it.” But the company’s drug-free certification saves it more in workers’ compensation payments than it costs to administer. Credit Kevin D. Liles for The New York Times Ray Gaster, the owner of lumberyards on both sides of the Georgia-South Carolina border, recently joined friends at a retreat in Alabama to swap business talk. The big topic? Drug tests. “They were complaining about trying to find drivers, or finding people, who are drug-free and can do some of the jobs that they have,” Mr. Gaster said. He shared their concern. Drug use in the work force “is not a new problem. Back in the ’80s, it was pretty bad, and we brought it down,” said Calvina L. Fay, executive director of the Drug Free America Foundation . But, she added, “we’ve seen it edging back up some,” and increasingly, both employers and industry associations “have expressed exasperation.” Data on the scope of the problem is sketchy because figures on job applicants who test positive for drugs miss the many people who simply skip tests they cannot pass. Nonetheless, in its most recent report, Quest Diagnostics, which has compiled employer-testing data since 1988, documented an increase for a second consecutive year in the percentage of American workers who tested positive for illicit drugs — to 4.7 percent in 2014 from 4.3 percent in 2013. And 2013 was the first year in a decade to show an increase. John Sambdman, who employs about 100 people in Atlanta at Samson Trailways , which provides transportation for schools, events, tour groups and the military, must test job applicants and, randomly, employees. Many job seekers “just don’t bother to show up at the drug-testing place,” he complained. Just on Thursday, Mr. Sambdman said, an applicant failed a drug test. How the Epidemic of Drug Overdose Deaths Rippled Across America Drug deaths have surged in nearly every U.S. county. In August, Gov. Nathan Deal of Georgia promised to develop a program to help because so many business owners tell him “the No. 1 reason they can’t hire enough workers is they can’t find enough people to pass a drug test.” That program is still under discussion. When job seekers contact Georgia’s Department of Labor, which provides some recruitment services to employers, the state would like to begin testing them for drugs; individuals who test positive could receive drug counseling and ultimately job placement assistance, Mark Butler, the state labor commissioner, said in an interview. “Obviously, it’s not an easy process, and it would be costly,” Mr. Butler said. “But you’ve got to think: What is the reverse of that?” People needed to fill jobs are turned away, and, he added, “it’s pretty much a national issue.” In Indiana, Mark Dobson, president of the Economic Development Corporation of Elkhart County, said that when he went to national conferences, the topic was “such a common thread of conversation — whether it’s in an area like ours that’s really enjoying very low unemployment levels or even areas with more moderate employment bases.” In Colorado, “to find a roofer or a painter that can pass a drug test is unheard-of,” said Jesse Russow, owner of Avalanche Roofing & Exteriors , in Colorado Springs. That was true even before Colorado, like a few other states, legalized recreational use of marijuana. In a sector where employers like himself tend to rely on Latino workers, Mr. Russow tried to diversify three years ago by recruiting white workers, vetting about 80 people. But, he said, “As soon as I say ‘criminal background check,’ ‘drug test,’ they’re out the door.” Image Notices at Gaster Lumber & Hardware attest to its certification as a drug-free workplace. Credit Kevin D. Liles for The New York Times While the employers’ predicament is worsened by a smaller hiring pool, the drug problem for those that require testing is not as bad as it once was. “If we go back to 1988, the combined U.S. work force positivity was 13.6 percent when drug testing was new,” said Dr. Barry Sample, Quest’s director of science and technology. But two consecutive years of increases are worrisome, he said. A much broader data trove, the federal government’s annual National Survey on Drug Use and Health, reported in September that one in 10 Americans ages 12 and older reported in 2014 that they had used illicit drugs within the last month — the largest share since 2001. Taken together, Dr. Sample said, his data and the government’s indicate higher drug use among those who work for employers without a drug-testing program than workers who are tested, though use by the latter increased as well in 2013 and 2014. Testing dates to the Reagan administration. The 1988 Drug-Free Workplace Act required most employers with federal contracts or grants to test workers. In 1991, Congress responded to a deadly 1987 train crash in which two operators tested positive for marijuana by requiring testing for all “safety sensitive” jobs regulated by the Transportation Department. Those laws became the model for other employers. Some states give businesses a break on workers’ compensation insurance if they are certified as drug-free. Here at the main yard of Gaster Lumber and Hardware , faded certificates and signs (“Drugs Don’t Work Here”) attest to its certification as a drug-free workplace since 1994. Mr. Gaster’s human resources director, Chuck Keller, said that status reduced workers’ compensation payments for its nearly 50 employees by 7.5 percent in Georgia and 5 percent in South Carolina. The savings, about $4,000 this year, offset costs of about $2,500 for laboratory and on-site testing and related requirements. Image Kevin Canty, a worker in the lumberyard of Gaster Lumber and Hardware in Savannah, Ga. Credit Kevin D. Liles for The New York Times “We’re always short of drivers,” Mr. Gaster said, “and drug testing is part of it.” Terry Donaldson, 53, who was tested when he started 20 years ago, supports the policy: “If they want to have a good job, the drugs got to go.” So it was for some of his new co-workers. Britt Sikes, 38 and a single father to three young girls, lost his teeth to methamphetamine and used marijuana since he was 8 — until three weeks before taking the test for his $13-an-hour job as a Gaster door installer. “I’m a recovering drug addict myself, and to raise my girls, I had to learn to leave it alone,” Mr. Sikes said. Kevin Canty, 55, said that in his experience, “most people can’t pass the drug test because they don’t want to pass a drug test.” “They want the job,” he added, but “they still want to be in that lifestyle. And they have to choose.” One of the newest hires, Frederick Brown, 34, said, “I come from a society where drugs is common — marijuana, weed, it’s common,” and people who cannot pass a drug test seek work at McDonald’s. Most restaurants do not test. “I asked for this job,” Mr. Brown said, calling it a blessing. “I already knew what I had to do — you know what I’m saying?”

Job Recruiting and Hiring
Drug test
Drug Abuse
Marijuana,Pot,Weed
Jobs
Workplace


Zhou Shifeng, Chinese Lawyer, Is Sentenced to 7 Years for Subversion

Abstract: BEIJING — A lawyer who took on China’s political system with uncustomary grit, giving voice to dissidents and seeking justice for poisoned children, was sentenced to seven years in prison on Thursday, the authorities announced. The lawyer, Zhou Shifeng, was found guilty of subverting state power, a charge the government has used repeatedly over the past several years as it seeks to dismantle and discredit a network of human rights advocates who have tested the limits of the state. Mr. Zhou, 52, was the focus of the government’s ire as the leader of a law firm that employed nearly 100 people, many of whom specialized in cases officials deemed sensitive. His firm, Fengrui, represented dissidents like the artist Ai Weiwei and victims of a contaminated baby formula scandal in 2008, which sickened tens of thousands of children and resulted in a number of deaths. The ruling Communist Party, under President Xi Jinping, has apparently identified rights lawyers and their associates as a threat to its survival, and last year the government began a sweeping crackdown, detaining or questioning several hundred people. In a show of its resolve to punish critics, the party this week brought several of the activists before a court in Tianjin, a port city to the southeast of Beijing, accusing them of plotting to overthrow the government. At Mr. Zhou’s trial on Thursday, prosecutors portrayed him as a radical who conspired with foreign governments and advocacy groups to hold protests and take on cases aimed at undermining the Communist Party. “They were actively pulling me to their side and using me to continue attacking China’s judicial system,” Mr. Zhou was quoted as saying in a confession released by the Tianjin court. Mr. Zhou’s supporters dismissed the ruling on Thursday, saying he was denied due process and should not have been detained in the first place. “This wave of trials against lawyers and activists are a political charade,” Roseann Rife, East Asia research director at Amnesty International, said in a statement. “The Chinese authorities appear intent on silencing anyone who raises legitimate questions about human rights and uses the legal system to seek redress.” In total, the authorities questioned or detained nearly 250 people last year. At least 14 of them are still awaiting trial, according to Amnesty International. Mr. Zhou’s law firm, Fengrui, employed some of the most prominent rights advocates in the country and quickly became a focus of the government’s investigations. Wang Yu, a Fengrui attorney known for her work defending dissidents and feminists, was detained last year but recently released on bail after renouncing her work and her colleagues, the authorities said on Monday. Hu Shigen and Zhai Yanmin, both activists with ties to Fengrui, were prosecuted and sentenced this week. Mr. Hu received a prison sentence of seven and a half years, and Mr. Zhai was given a three-year suspended sentence. Mr. Zhou’s clients included writers and advocates for democracy, as well as the families taking on a powerful state-owned dairy company that was accused of selling tainted milk powder, even as he faced pressure from officials not to file a lawsuit. The trial on Thursday, the third in three days of a rights activist in the Tianjin court, followed a familiar routine. Mr. Zhou’s friends and family members, as well as news outlets not approved by the government, were barred from observing. A guilty verdict was reached within hours. Advocates said the punishments issued by the court would have a chilling effect. “Authorities have sent a strong warning to all Chinese lawyers with this sentence,” Frances Eve, a researcher for Chinese Human Rights Defenders, an advocacy group, wrote in an email. “Carrying out the legitimate duties of a lawyer to provide a robust defense for your client and to defend the rule of law is intolerable to the Chinese Communist Party.” The government used to permit some level of activism by rights lawyers, allowing them to move forward with protests and petitions. But since Mr. Xi, the most influential Chinese leader in decades, rose to power in 2012, the party’s grip on civil society has tightened. Activists worry that tolerance for dissent in Chinese society will erode even further. Yang Jianli, a well-known Chinese dissident who lives in the United States, said the risks were growing for those seeking to expand civil rights in China. Prosecutors in Tianjin brought up the fact that several activists had attended a meeting sponsored by Mr. Yang in Taiwan two years ago as evidence that they wanted to overthrow the government. Still, Mr. Yang said he hoped the government’s crackdown on the rights movement would inspire a new generation of activists. “People will become quieter for the moment,” he said. “But we will come back. We are resilient.”

Zhou Shifeng
Political prisoner
Human Rights
Lawyers
China
Decisions and Verdicts
Poison
Communist Party of China
Xi Jinping
Beijing Feng Rui Law Firm


Borders Considers Putting Itself Up for Sale

Abstract: Struggling against both online and big-box retailers, the Borders Group, the bookseller, said Thursday that it had hired two investment banks to advise it on a potential sale and had turned to its largest shareholder for additional money. Borders said that it would take other measures to shore up its capital, including suspending its quarterly dividend. The announcement, made at 1:31 a.m. Thursday and accompanying a report on a slight drop in first-quarter earnings, reflected the chain’s continued troubles. Buffeted by a tougher environment and a tighter credit market that has made borrowing more expensive, Borders has been left with few options. “This will be a challenging year for retailers due to continued uncertainty in the economic environment,” Borders’s chief executive, George L. Jones, said in a statement. To ease its financing squeeze, Borders has turned to Pershing Square Capital Management, the hedge fund that in January reported an 18 percent stake in the company. As part of the deal, Pershing Square will provide a $42.5 million loan that matures Jan. 15 and carries an interest rate of 12.5 percent. The hedge fund also received the right to buy Paperchase, the British stationery chain of Borders, as well as parts of the company’s international operations, for $125 million less debt. In return, Pershing Square will receive 14.5 million warrants that carry the right to buy Borders stock at $7 a share. That would give Pershing an additional 19.99 percent stake in Borders. After a brief rise, the company’s shares plunged 28.6 percent Thursday, closing at $5.07. Shares are down 76 percent in the last 12 months. Borders has faced stiffer competition from behemoths like Wal-Mart, which sell books for far less. And Amazon.com, where book sales jumped by double digits last quarter, has also been taking market share. Borders said it earned $84.7 million for its fourth quarter, down slightly from $87.7 million in the period a year ago. It is also pursuing “strategic alternatives,” a phrase that often includes a potential sale of parts or all of a company. Borders has hired JPMorgan Chase and Merrill Lynch as its advisers. Wall Street has speculated for more than a year that Borders might sell itself to its larger rival, Barnes & Noble. A combination of the biggest and second-biggest booksellers has long been believed to be an invitation for regulatory scrutiny. But some analysts point to the clearance given other mergers, like that of Whole Foods Market and Wild Oats Markets, the two largest sellers of organic foods, as a possible sign that a Borders-Barnes & Noble tie-up would pass muster. On a conference call Thursday, Barnes & Noble’s chief operating officer, Mitchell S. Klipper, said his company had not been approached by Borders. But he added: “We’d certainly take a good look at the company and put it under review.”

Borders Group Incorporated (MI)
Company Reports
Mergers Acquisitions and Divestitures
Sales
Hedge Funds
Books and Literature


In Security Test, M.T.A. to Install Cameras on a Subway Train

Abstract: Ever get that feeling on the subway that you’re being watched? You may soon be right: Security cameras will be trained on every inch of a single subway train under an experimental surveillance program set to start at the end of this year. The Metropolitan Transportation Authority is not saying which train will include the cameras, or what line it will be on. But the agency wants to see whether the cameras can help deter crime and aid officials in emergencies. The authority has no money in its capital plan to pay for a broader installation of the cameras, and officials said it was unclear whether money could be allocated in the next capital program. “It’s not an inexpensive endeavor,” said Paul J. Fleuranges, a spokesman for New York City Transit. For now, however, the pilot program is very inexpensive — free, in fact. The equipment was provided by an unidentified vendor, which will also cover installation costs. The cameras will not be monitored in real time, however, because of financial constraints. Instead, the footage will be stored in a central database. (The New York Post reported on the project on Tuesday.) The cameras could also assist the transportation authority in the legal arena, where it has recently had to pay millions in damages to injured passengers. According to Mr. Fleuranges, the footage could be used to better determine the facts in incidents that lead to such lawsuits. Currently, about 2,500 cameras are installed throughout the subway system, including passenger identification cameras, which snap photographs of riders as they pass in and out of turnstiles at more than 100 stations. But there are no cameras on the trains. Still, this will not be the first time that the agency has experimented with filming the interiors of trains. In the 1990s, cameras were installed on the so-called Redbird trains, the old-fashioned, maroon-tinted subway cars (and perennial victims of graffiti artists) that were retired in 2003. A spokesman said that the Redbird test “worked out well,” but that it did not make sense to retrofit a fleet of trains destined for the Atlantic Ocean. (Retired Redbirds were sent to a watery grave off the coast of New Jersey.) The plan was abandoned. Andrew Albert, a riders’ advocate on the authority’s board, said he would prefer if the footage were watched in real time. “If you watch it a week later, great, you’ll know what happened,” he said. “Wouldn’t it be nice to prevent something from happening?”

Cameras
Subways
Metropolitan Transportation Authority
New York City


Man Charged With Stealing Rare Books Worth $20,000 From Manhattan Dealer

Abstract: A man has been arrested and charged with stealing two valuable books last spring from a rare-book dealer on the Upper East Side of Manhattan, the police said. After his arrest on Wednesday, the man, Gabriel Hundiashvili, 35, admitted to detectives that he had stolen the books, the police said. Mr. Hundiashvili is a former fashion photographer who had claimed to be a prospective customer, according to employees of the bookstore, PRPH Books. He was captured on video putting the books into a bag, according to the police. He was charged on Wednesday with grand larceny in the third degree and criminal possession of stolen property. In an article published on Tuesday in The New York Times, Mr. Hundiashvili confirmed that he was the man in the images recorded by a security camera and made public by the police, but said he had not taken the books. “Obviously there is video footage of me all over that store, all over that building and whatnot,” Mr. Hundiashvili said in an interview before his arrest. “Why would I do that?” In September, the stolen books, worth about $20,000 total, were mailed anonymously to the 19th Precinct station house, which covers the Upper East Side. The police said Mr. Hundiashvili admitted that he had mailed the books. The status of his case and whether he was still in custody or had a lawyer could not be determined. The theft brought to light the systems that rare-book sellers have in place to thwart thieves, including international databases of stolen items that make reselling them difficult. “I am happy that the books were recovered,” Fabrizio Govi, a consultant for PRPH, said after Mr. Hundiashvili’s arrest. “Once again, this was the proof that stealing antiquarian books doesn’t bring you anywhere.”

Robbery
PRPH Books
Gabriel Hundiashvili
Publishing
Upper East Side Manhattan
Manhattan
Books


Countdown to 2014 World Cup in Brazil: Day 64

Abstract: The 2014 World Cup begins on June 12, when Brazil plays Croatia in the opening match. Reporters and editors for The Times will count down to the start of the tournament each day with a short capsule of news and interesting tidbits. Japan, the team tagged with the unenviable nickname — the Brazil of Asia — will have another opportunity to show the world if it can live up to the label in of all places ... Brazil ... again. “We are definitely challengers,” said Keisuke Honda, 27, one of the team’s best players, who also plays for A.C. Milan. “Other teams underestimate us and take us lightly, but we won’t be intimidated.” Less than a year ago, Japan, the Asian champion, went to Brazil and fell flat under Alberto Zaccheroni, the man brought in to take the team to the next level. At the 2013 FIFA Confederations Cup, Japan lost all three of its matches, then put in lackluster performances against Belarus and Serbia. All that came after Japan became the first country to qualify for the 32-team tournament when Honda’s late goal tied a regional qualifier against Australia. Zaccheroni, 61, an Italian who attained success in Serie A, most notably when Milan won the league crown in 1998-99, replaced Takeshi Okada after the 2010 tournament in South Africa. Japan, in a surprise, advanced out of the group stage with victories against Cameroon and Denmark, but was eliminated in the second round, in a penalty kick shootout, by Paraguay. Image The Japanese star Keisuke Honda play in Italy for Milan. Credit Shuji Kajiyama/Associated Press In Brazil, Japan (No. 48) is in a first-round group with Colombia (No. 5), Greece (No. 13) and Ivory Coast (No. 24) — all of which are ranked higher in the latest FIFA world rankings . “I’ve been doing this for 30 years,” Zaccheroni told reporters in Tokyo. “I was a coach in the Italian league, which is the hardest league in the world. This has helped me.” He added: “I have enough experience to know that we have to deal with other factors, such as the strength of the other teams, the heat and humidity and the traveling. There will be a lot of strong teams at the World Cup, but this is our chance to show how strong we are.” Japan has long been a net importer of coaches from abroad as it has tried to build a soccer powerhouse, for its men’s and women’s teams at all levels — senior and youth international. At the senior men’s levels, the Frenchman Philippe Troussier took co-host Japan to the knockout stage in 2002 and the Brazilian Zico was on the bench as Japan failed to get out of the first round in Germany in 2006. At the grass roots, an American, Tom Byer, has been a longtime coach in Japan and advocate of the skills-based Coerver system of teaching the game to young Japanese players — a course that has helped the senior women’s national team win the World Cup in 2011, the silver medal at the London Olympics in 2012 and the under-17 national team win the recent world championship in Costa Rica. Along with Honda, Zaccheroni hopes to count on the play of midfielder Shinji Kagawa, who has been relegated to spot duty at Manchester United in England. A trip to Brazil would be Kagawa’s first to a World Cup. Another player in Europe, Shinji Okazaki, has consistently hit the back of the net this season for Mainz in Germany’s Bundesliga. Japan’s fifth straight trip to the World Cup could be hurt by questions hanging over two injured players — the captain Makoto Hasebe, who has been dealing with knee problems; and Atsuto Uchida, who recently sustained a thigh injury playing for Schalke in Germany and could miss the tournament. Zaccheroni was in Japan this week conducting a training camp for domestically based players. He said he faces a difficult task in winnowing his selection to a 23-man squad to take to Brazil. “The big problem I have when it comes to selecting the final squad is not that I don’t have enough players, but it is that I have them in abundance,” he told reporters Wednesday. “Some coaches have a lack of players but for me that is not the case. It will be a good thing if I am stressing out right until the last minute about who to select. I have already told the players here that after I come back from taking a look at players in Europe, I will be casting my eye over the domestic group again and the national team staff will also be checking on them.”

2014 World Cup
Japan
Soccer
Alberto Zaccheroni


The Whiff of Conflict Grows in a Divided Mali

Abstract: BAMAKO, Mali — A military strike to recapture Mali’s Islamist-held north is growing more likely, according to Western powers, regional bodies and the United Nations — a pronounced shift after months of hesitation and hopes that negotiations might end what is now seen as a far-reaching jihadist threat. In recent weeks, for the first time, a broad-based international consensus has formed that war could soon be waged in the vast desert and savanna of northern Mali, an area roughly the size of France . Planning for such an operation remains embryonic. Who would take part? When would it occur? Who would command it? These basic details have yet to be worked out, officials conceded. Yet they emphasized that previously reluctant partners, including Mali itself, were convinced of the military imperative after months of inconclusive meetings and discussions. On Oct. 12, the United Nations Security Council, led by France, passed a resolution declaring its “readiness” to respond to Malian demands for an international force and asked that a detailed plan be submitted in 45 days. That resolve was reiterated at an international summit here last week. “There is no alternative,” said Jack Christofides, a top official in the United Nations Department of Peacekeeping Operations, which is playing a leading role in planning a possible operation. “For some of these more radical groups” occupying northern Mali, he added, “it’s going to take military force.” As many as 7,000 to 10,000 soldiers may be needed to take back and hold the north, United Nations officials have said, and the barriers to compiling such a force are evident. Nigeria, with the largest army in West Africa, is tied up with a fight against its own Islamist radicals. Algeria, often considered to have easily the most efficient force in the region, has been reluctant to get involved, though it may be coming around, officials said. France, plagued by kidnappings of its citizens (about half a dozen are being held) and fearful of a radical enclave so close to the Mediterranean, has been the most vocal about kicking out the Islamists. On Monday, its special representative to the region, Jean Felix-Paganon, said that France had resumed its military aid to Mali, and a defense expert briefed by the French government said it would send intelligence drones to West Africa by the end of the year to help intervention efforts. But France, like the United States, has ruled out sending its own troops into the fray. Harsh geography and weather, and the Islamists’ guerrilla tactics, are also complicating factors. “We shouldn’t be optimistic that this is going to be a one- or two-week surgical strike, and then we go home,” Mr. Christofides said. “The biggest issue is money because this is not going be cheap,” he added. Yet the objective is clear: to eradicate the repressive regime in the north — made up of a loose triumvirate of radical Islamist groups, including Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb , the Qaeda regional affiliate — that for the last six months has imposed a nightmare of public whippings, beatings, amputations and stonings on a helpless local population. The Islamists have drawn up ominous lists of unmarried pregnant women to be punished, the United Nations said; enforced marriages are being carried out; and children are being recruited to plant improvised explosive devices . More than 300,000 people have fled the region, and the menace is being portrayed as one that spreads well beyond Mali’s borders, with Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton calling northern Mali “a larger safe haven” that could allow terrorists “to extend their reach and their networks in multiple directions.” The Islamists controlling Gao and Timbuktu, the principal towns in northern Mali, appear to be preparing for war, according to residents there. “They’re camouflaging their vehicles,” said Issa Maïga, a journalist in Gao. “They are in a bit of a panic,” he said. “They are afraid.” Small detachments of new fighters, perhaps from outside Mali, have been observed in both towns. In Timbuktu, Cissé Agaly, a former hotel manager, said 37 new fighters had arrived over the weekend. “We saw them walking in the market,” he said, adding that they appeared to be from Western Sahara. Similarly, a municipal councilor in Gao, Abderahmane Oumarou Maïga, said about 60 new fighters had arrived in the town, also from Western Sahara and the border regions of Algeria. In addition, witnesses in both towns spoke of incessant aircraft overhead — apparently surveillance planes, though the witnesses said they were flying too high to be identified. “Every day, days and nights,” said Mr. Maïga, the journalist in Gao. The United States has periodically flown Global Hawk surveillance drones and some reconnaissance planes over northern Mali and the wider Sahel region, but has so far limited Predator surveillance drones to missions in nearby Libya. State Department officials have expressed strong reservations about introducing armed drones in any missions in Mali. Johnnie Carson, the assistant secretary of state for African affairs, is meeting French officials in Paris this week. He has said that military action to drive out the Islamic extremists was inevitable, but that any operations had to have Malian soldiers leading forces from West Africa, all following a carefully organized plan. “There will have to be, at some point, military action,” Mr. Carson said this month. The Islamists seized control of the long-unstable north in the wake of a coup d’état here in the capital in March. The Malian Army collapsed after the coup, fleeing the principal cities of the north in the wake of the rebel advance, and power in Bamako has since been uneasily shared by weak civilian leaders and the military, which has been accused of serious human rights abuses. For months this shotgun marriage, each side jockeying for power in the capital, distracted the nation from either taking back the lost north itself or inviting outside help to do so. As alarm beyond Mali has grown, though, the divided authorities here have come under pressure to accept assistance, initially regarded as humiliating. Finally, in mid-September Mali’s interim president sent a letter to the United Nations asking for help. The idea was still being contested by thousands of anti-intervention, nationalist demonstrators on the streets of the capital this week. But in the last two weeks, the tide elsewhere has turned decisively in favor of an international military expedition, incorporating what remains of the shattered Malian army, to end the Islamist takeover in the north. Adding urgency, the Islamists have established training camps in northern Mali towns, adding to existing Islamist bases in the desert, and children have been observed engaging in rifle training at these establishments, according to Human Rights Watch. “We must act to end this,” the United Nations deputy secretary general, Jan Eliasson, said at the summit meeting here last week. Still, nothing like a road map for the deployment of troops came out of the meeting. American officials said they would consider a request for support once a plan was in place. Many military difficulties are associated with the group of West African states, known as Ecowas, which has been among the most consistent in advocating a military resolution. The group’s representative at the summit, the foreign minister of Ivory Coast, Daniel Kablan Duncan, suggested that it would need help in mustering troops from two neighboring, nonmember countries, Algeria and Mauritania. “Mauritania and Algeria must involve themselves more fully,” he told the delegates. “And why not our brothers from Chad?” he added, citing another non-Ecowas country. Even more fundamentally, the Malian army, which would be assigned a central role in any intervention, has serious problems, officials said. It has been “depleted quite substantially,” said Mr. Christofides, adding, “They might have lost as much as half of their matériel.” A Western military attaché here said Malian officers had even sold equipment that they were issued and claimed more men under their command than they actually had in order to pocket extra salaries. Moreover, the same army abandoned the northern towns to the Islamists in early April with barely a fight. “What’s happened to them?” the Western defense attaché asked. “They left a country divided in half. In some countries that would be high treason.”

Mali
Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb
France
Defense and Military Forces
United Nations


Reed Takes the Lead in Hawaii

Abstract: Patrick Reed had three eagle attempts and made the last one for an eight-under-par 65 and a one-shot lead over Jordan Spieth in the Hyundai Tournament of Champions in Kapalua, Hawaii. Brandt Snedeker, J. B. Holmes and Danny Lee were at 67.


Cavs Stun Thunder as Irving Takes Over

Abstract: One night after describing himself as “disinterested” during a loss in Detroit, Kyrie Irving scored 35 points, including 13 in the final 2 minutes 52 seconds, as the Cleveland Cavaliers stunned the Oklahoma City Thunder, 115-110, at home on Saturday night. Irving, an All-Star at 20, hit a 3-pointer with 42 seconds left to make it 113-108. Kevin Durant scored 32 points and Russell Westbrook 28 for the Thunder, who had the league’s best road record. Durant left briefly in the third quarter with an apparent back injury. Afterward, he said he was fine. Irving was so frustrated with the Cavs’ lackluster effort on Friday night against the Pistons that he admitted he was not as involved as he should have been. On Saturday, he promised it would never happen again. "I figured he’d be a lot more focused, and he was," Cavs Coach Byron Scott said. "He’s a closer.” BULLS 93, HAWKS 76 Luol Deng had 25 points and 14 rebounds, and short-handed Chicago used its defense to win in Atlanta. Playing without the injured starters Kirk Hinrich, Joakim Noah and Carlos Boozer, Chicago dominated near the basket and got a lift from the frenetic play of Nate Robinson. The Bulls used only eight players for the second straight night. Taj Gibson had 19 points and matched his career high with 18 rebounds. Jimmy Butler added a double-double with 16 points and 10 rebounds. Robinson went 4 for 6 from 3-point range and finished with 20 points. Josh Smith led Atlanta with 19 points and 13 rebounds, but had only 3 points in the second half. Hinrich, with a right elbow infection, was expected to miss about a week. Noah was held out with plantar fasciitis in his right foot. Boozer was out because of a right hamstring injury. SPURS 96, WIZARDS 86 Tim Duncan sprained his left knee and right ankle in the first half of San Antonio’s home victory. The severity of the injuries was not immediately known. Image The Cavs’ Kyrie Irving scored 13 of his 35 points in the last 2:52 against the Thunder. Credit Aaron Josefczyk/Reuters Tony Parker scored 19 points and Danny Green 15 and Tiago Splitter for the Spurs (38-11), who have won 18 straight at home. Washington’s Martell Webster rolled into the back of Duncan’s legs while fighting for a rebound with 3:54 left in the second quarter, and the All-Star was on the floor holding his left knee for several minutes before being helped off the court by two teammates. He did not return. ROCKETS 109, BOBCATS 95 James Harden had 21 points, 11 rebounds and 11 assists for his first career triple-double as Houston beat visiting Charlotte. The Bobcats rookie Michael Kidd-Gilchrist was taken off the court on a stretcher in the fourth quarter after colliding with his teammate Jeff Taylor. Kidd-Gilchrist was fitted with a neck brace and taken to a hospital. Charlotte Coach Mike Dunlap said later that Kidd-Gilchrist was moving his extremities and talking as he was wheeled off the floor. Dunlap did not know if Kidd-Gilchrist would remained hospitalized overnight. T’WOLVES 115, HORNETS 86 Dante Cunningham scored a season-high 18 points, and Nikola Pekovic added 14 as host Minnesota stopped a six-game losing streak. Cunningham hit all nine of his shots to set a franchise record for most consecutive field goals without a miss. BUCKS 107, MAGIC 98 Monta Ellis scored 21 points and Brandon Jennings had 20 as host Milwaukee handed Orlando its ninth straight loss. Larry Sanders had 17 points, 13 rebounds and 6 blocks for Milwaukee. BLAZERS 105, JAZZ 99 Lionel Aldridge had 18 points, and Nicolas Batum just missed a triple-double, with 12 points, 10 rebounds and 9 assists, as Portland won at home.

Basketball
Cavaliers
Oklahoma City Thunder


Drafting of Publicly Gay Player Thrills and Empowers Some Fans

Abstract: Years before Michael Sam was born, the gay-rights activists Kate Kendell and Paul Guequierre were already die-hard N.F.L. fans. Kendell, the executive director of the National Center for Lesbian Rights, grew up in Ogden, Utah, far from an N.F.L. city, and became a fan of the Los Angeles Rams because she was an Aries and liked their uniforms. For Guequierre, who grew up in Whitewater, Wis., and is now a spokesman for the Human Rights Campaign, it was a family affair. His grandfather had season tickets for the Green Bay Packers and passed them on to his father. Now they are his. The cover photograph of his Facebook page shows the towering statue of a Packers wide receiver. For Kendell, Guequierre and other gay fans of the N.F.L., their passion for professional football was rewarded May 10 with a moment they describe as thrilling: the decision by the Rams, now of St. Louis, to make Sam the first publicly gay player drafted by an N.F.L. team. “I feel like my support for the N.F.L. now doesn’t have an asterisk come with it,” Kendell said. “It’s now truly America’s game.” The N.F.L. said it has not done any marketing research to gauge the size of its gay and lesbian fan base. Gay sports fans surveyed by Outsports said pro football was their favorite sport by far. An Outsports founder, Cyd Zeigler, said that Sam — if he makes the Rams’ roster — would further boost the N.F.L.’s popularity among gays. “People who have never liked football are buying Michael Sam jerseys,” he said. “People who have never watched a game watched the draft.” As of midweek, Sam’s Rams jersey was the No. 2 seller among rookies at NFLShop.com, trailing only Johnny Manziel, the Heisman Trophy-winning quarterback drafted by the Cleveland Browns. Howard Bragman, a public-relations expert who has been working with Sam, said he expected the N.F.L. and advertisers to capitalize on fans’ excitement over Sam’s debut. “The first time he plays, you’re going to have huge numbers watching,” said Bragman, the vice chairman of Reputation.com. “The N.F.L. is a business,” Bragman added. “It understands very well that L.G.B.T. fans are passionate, they have good incomes, they’re concentrated in N.F.L. cities.” Now based in Washington, Guequierre, 36, tries to attend at least one Packers home game a year, and makes his tickets for the other games available to relatives and friends, including a lesbian couple who are devoted fans. He said gay fans, like gay athletes, feel increasingly less pressure to conceal their sexual orientation while at games. He recalled an incident at a Packers game a few years ago when he stood up and scolded a fan behind him who had used an antigay slur against a Chicago Bears player. “No one else gave me a hard time,” Guequierre said. “The guy looked embarrassed..” Kate Kendell has settled into San Francisco, and is a 49ers fan — though her childhood love of the Rams is now rekindled. She has raised her 17-year-old son to share her football passions. “On Monday nights, we break with tradition of sitting around the table as family,” Kendell said. “We all watch the game.” Kendell expressed delight that gay children would now be able to grow up with openly gay sports stars as role models.

MIchael Sam
Football
Gay and Lesbian LGBT
Rams


How to Say Thanks? Return a Club to Glory

Abstract: LONDON — Hull City and Cardiff City are the new members of the Premier League after a weekend typical of the frenzy surrounding promotion and relegation in English soccer. The last thing, though, that either club should be called is typically English. Cardiff is the capital of Wales, which has a separate national assembly from Westminster. Kingston upon Hull is a trading and industrial port looking out to the North Sea. The people of both cities like to celebrate their local identity, with one way being through the tribalism of their sports clubs. Hull drew, 2-2, with Cardiff on Saturday, the last day of a 46-game season in what is called The Championship, but is really the second division of English soccer. That draw meant little to Cardiff, which already had secured promotion two weeks ago. But it meant everything to Hull, though for a quarter of an hour after the final whistle Saturday, the players, the owner and the 23,812 fans had to wait in suspense inside the stadium, unsure of their fate. Their draw — which included a missed penalty kick by Hull and a converted penalty by Cardiff during the final moments — ended on time. But Watford could have overtaken Hull for second place in the final standings if it had beaten Leeds United. Watford’s game was running 16 minutes late after a series of injuries. So up in the north, the folks of Hull, both the ashen-faced players and the anxious fans, had waited and waited, some biting their nails, others hiding in the toilets, and many just standing side by side. Finally, the place erupted. Leeds, with nothing but professional pride at stake, had scored in the last minute to defeat the home side at Watford, about 200 miles, or 325 kilometers, away. But this one result will have resonated way beyond British shores. Watford is Italian-owned. Leeds is owned by a firm in Bahrain, which recently sold a small stake to another firm in that country. Cardiff is run from Malaysia, where the owner of Queens Park Rangers, Tony Fernandes, hails from. Fernandes has accepted a £50 million, or $78 million, loss because the team will be relegated. And Hull City? “Today was the most fantastic and one of the proudest moments of my life,” said Assem Allam, the chairman of the club. Indeed, under Allam, the ownership of English soccer teams turns a full circle. It was in 1997 that Mohamed al-Fayed, who was born in Egypt, lived in London and was the owner of Harrods department store, paid £6.25 million to acquire Fulham F.C. He remains the first, and longest-serving, foreign buyer of a team in the English Premier League. The overseas investors now outnumber the English on their home turf. And while that trend continues because it takes very rich gentlemen, indeed, to buy a slice of England’s soccer heritage, Hull’s story has a similarity to Fulham’s. Allam arrived in England more than four decades ago after fleeing Egypt, which was then ruled by Gamal Abdel Nasser. He studied economics at Hull University, became an accountant at Tempest Diesel, and used a bank loan to secure a buyout of the company, which he renamed Allam Marine. The Egyptian said he owed his wealth to Hull, and he could not stand by and watch the region’s top soccer club go under, as was threatened just three years ago. Hull was headed the way that others, including Leeds United and Cardiff, were going when they indebted themselves chasing the dream of Premiership soccer. It was less a case of keeping up with the Joneses than trying to compete with the oligarchs and sheiks who were changing the face of soccer and its high finances. The Tigers of Hull, so named because of their amber and black colors, had a short, sharp and costly taste of top-flight soccer. It ended three years ago with relegation and with the tax authorities and other creditors threatening to bankrupt the club. “Hull City was four days from being wound up and going bankrupt in December 2010,” Allam said Sunday. “I could have saved £27 million if I waited those four days and bought it when it was in administration. “But the team would have been penalized 10 points or something like that, and that would have meant going down another division. We know what happens when that downward spiral happens, and I didn’t think it was right for the community to lose football on this level.” Indebted, he said, by what the community did for him and his family, Allam then paid a nominal £1 to the outgoing owner and agreed to take on debts of around £30 million. In June last year, he hired Steve Bruce, once a central defender for Manchester United, but at that point an unemployed team manager after Sunderland had fired him. Bruce has turned a bunch of journeyman players — none of them costing more than £5 million — into a hard-running side that has probably overachieved. “It took guts out there,” said Bruce, after he rushed up to the stands to embrace the 73-year-old owner, Allam. “The chairman gave me the chance when I was sacked. The players rolled up their sleeves and put in a real shift. They might not be as naturally talented as some in the Premiership, but they’re a great bunch and they’ve got a huge desire, which has taken us where we wanted to be.” There lies the conundrum. Nobody has considered the cost of ambition. “We’ve all been concentrating on achieving this season,” said Allam. “We didn’t have the luxury of thinking of next season.” The owner and his manager now have a short time to try to raise the quality of the team. The joy of this weekend means that, inevitably, some players have run themselves out of a place. A huge desire is not enough in the league where overseas money is spent increasingly on foreign talents.

Soccer
Great Britain
Premier League
Mohamed al- Fayed
Cardiff City Soccer Team


Effort at Wall Street Journal to Attract More New Yorkers

Abstract: Maybe newspapers really are dying, as some media analysts have been predicting for decades, but apparently that does not apply to newspaper wars. A doozy is shaping up at the moment between The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times. In an attempt to eat into The Times’s mass-market audience and lure away some of its luxury advertisers, The Journal has already edged away from its traditional role as a national business paper, adding a daily sports page and a bimonthly magazine, strengthening foreign and Washington coverage and shifting the mix of articles on its front page. Now The Journal, part of Rupert Murdoch ’s News Corporation, is making its biggest and most audacious move yet away from its roots, starting up a local news section for New York to compete directly with The Times for affluent, general interest metropolitan readers and the high-end advertisers who covet them. The new daily section, to start on April 12, will average 12 pages and be included only in those copies distributed in the New York market. According to journalists at the paper, there will be a daily real estate page, and separate daily segments devoted to culture, business and particularly sports. Reporters will also cover traditional metro news, including government, but insiders say the section will be selective in its approach to such topics. The initiative is intended less to raise circulation numbers than to steal away a large portion of the consumer advertisers — like high-end retailers, luxury goods makers and residential real estate companies — that have traditionally preferred The Times. What is puzzling to analysts and industry executives — including some within the News Corporation — is that none of this makes much sense as a business proposition to aid The Journal, especially at a time when newspapers are struggling through a long-term financial decline. But for Mr. Murdoch, the chairman and chief executive of the company, these people say, profit is not necessarily what all this is about. For him, newspapering is a blood sport. Mr. Murdoch has a long history of going after rivals in an aggressive and public way to win over readers and advertisers, figuring that if he gains market share — even if it means suffering heavy losses for a while — he can hobble the competition. The results have been mixed; he has spent a fortune, for instance, to keep afloat The New York Post, which loses an estimated $70 million a year, in a campaign to squash its tabloid rival, The Daily News. Sure enough, in the News Corporation’s planning discussions about the local New York section, the talk has been less about what The Journal would gain than about “killing The New York Times,” according to several people with direct knowledge of the preparations, who asked for anonymity to discuss what are supposed to be secret matters. “It’s not an economic decision,” one of them said. “These guys could conceivably siphon off 10, 20 percent of the local retail ads The Times gets,” said a former executive of Dow Jones, the News Corporation unit that includes The Journal. “It’s not enough to kill The Times, but in this environment, every little bit hurts.” Scott Heekin-Canedy, president and general manager of The Times, said that The Journal’s plan “presents a little bit of short-term pressure” on Times ad sales, but not a long-term threat. Audrey Siegel, president of TargetCast tcm, a Manhattan media agency, said that The Times was unlikely to lose a significant part of its advertising, but it might be forced to offer discounts and other incentives. “For advertisers who want to experiment with this, the money’s got to come from some place else, and the fair game is The Times, local radio and cable,” she said. Several major retailers declined to comment on The Journal’s New York section, but Mary Ellen Keating, a spokeswoman for Barnes & Noble, said: “We would wait to see how this or any other new media vehicle performs, then see how and if it fits our needs.” The News Corporation has not disputed reports that it is investing $15 million a year in the New York section, with an editorial staff of about 35 people to start, out of a newsroom of more than 750 people. Some of those staff members will be new hires, but others are being transferred from other Journal departments. Several of the hires, including the editor of the section, John Seeley, worked at The New York Sun, a broadsheet Mr. Murdoch admired, which closed in 2008. The Times, with a newsroom staff of more than 1,100, always takes competition seriously, said Bill Keller, the executive editor, but “when you count our powerful Metro staff along with the reporters assigned to New York culture, sports, real estate, dining and business, we have an overwhelming advantage in talent, experience and space.” He said The Times would “be adding new weekend-oriented features to the Thursday and Friday papers.” But the News Corporation executives say The Journal’s new section is only the first salvo, part of a larger expansion plan with a price tag close to $30 million, all aimed at competing with The Times. Those executives would not be specific about the still-unannounced initiatives, but they are aimed at giving advertisers what they prefer: more women readers and more home-delivery subscribers. Men far outnumber women among Journal readers, and many of them see it as a business tool to be read at work rather than at home. Efforts were under way since long before Mr. Murdoch bought the paper in 2007 to attract more women and home subscribers with additions like the Personal Journal and Weekend Journal sections, and a Saturday issue. Mr. Murdoch made no secret when buying the paper of his intention to accelerate those efforts and to aim at The Times in particular. The New York section is another step in that direction. Punching back, The Times last week began an advertising campaign in trade publications and their Web sites, reminding ad buyers that it reaches a far larger audience in the New York market than the Journal — even among business people and affluent readers. About 1.7 million people read a print copy of the weekday Times in the New York market, compared with fewer than 800,000 for The Journal, and that does not include The Times’s big leads in online readers and weekend print readers. The Journal has published ads of its own, comparing its ongoing expansion efforts with recent downsizing at The Times. Neither paper’s financial performance is reported publicly, but in a coming book, Sarah Ellison, a Journal reporter, writes that the paper lost $80 million in the fiscal year ended last June 30 — a figure confirmed by people briefed on the matter. The New York Times Media Group, of which The Times newspaper is the largest share, had an operating profit of $21.2 million in 2009. On an average weekday, The Journal sells more than twice as many copies nationwide as The Times, at just over two million to more than 900,000. The Times’s circulation on Sunday, when The Journal does not publish, is 1.4 million. In addition to the ad battle between the papers, Mr. Murdoch’s two New York-based papers, the serious broadsheet Journal and the scrappy tabloid Post, are making a major push for joint ad sales, despite their different readerships — in fact, advertisers say they have been offered deep discounts on Post ads if they buy ads in The Journal. An important player in The Journal’s plans is Paul V. Carlucci, publisher of The Post and chief of another News Corporation unit, News America Marketing. Mr. Carlucci, a longtime Murdoch loyalist, keeps a low profile but is well known as a skilled, bare-knuckled operator in the world of ad sales. Though he has no formal role in Dow Jones, officials there often consult with him and even report to him. In several lawsuits, other companies have accused News America Marketing of unfair business practices. The News Corporation ended one case last year by buying the competitor who had filed suit, and this year it paid $500 million to settle a group of other cases. Within the News Corporation, said one executive who has worked with Mr. Carlucci, “there are no points lost for making mistakes if you are being aggressive.” But there is widespread skepticism about the wisdom of trying to make The Journal a full-service, general interest paper for New York readers. Alan D. Mutter, a media analyst and consultant, recently wrote on his Reflections of a Newsosaur blog that “no meaningful business advantage can be gained” from the venture, making it “nothing more than an expensive ego trip aimed at kicking the N.Y.T. while it’s down.” Lauren Rich Fine, a media analyst who writes for paidcontent.org , said the new section could make sense in the long run, but only if ad sales held up and The Times withered away — a gamble on both counts. Many readers around the country have historically bought both The Journal and a local paper, but experts predict that as readers migrate to the Web and print sales decline, fewer readers will pay for two papers. By adding more nonbusiness news, Mr. Murdoch hopes The Journal will become the sole daily newspaper purchase for many more New Yorkers. But that may well come, those experts say, at the expense of Mr. Murdoch’s own Post. The News Corporation executives say their own projections show the New York section giving The Journal only a small lift in circulation. “A great deal would have to change for The Journal to appeal to the average Times reader as a substitute,” said Tunku Varadarajan, a business professor at New York University who writes for The Daily Beast blog and is a former assistant managing editor of The Journal. “The justification isn’t obvious to me.”

Wall Street Journal
New York Times
Newspapers
Advertising and Marketing
Murdoch Rupert


Julius Blank, Who Built First Chip Maker, Dies at 86

Abstract: Julius Blank, a mechanical engineer who helped start a computer chip company in the 1950s that became a prototype for high-tech start-ups and a training ground for a generation of Silicon Valley entrepreneurs, died on Saturday in Palo Alto, Calif.. He was 86. His death was confirmed by Cynthia Small Blank, his daughter-in-law. Mr. Blank was one of eight computer scientists who in 1957 founded the seminal Palo Alto company Fairchild Semiconductor Corporation . He was one of only two in the group who had experience in manufacturing. So after the scientists’ initial research to find an inexpensive way to make silicon computer chips — a breakthrough that persuaded an investor to stake them $1.5 million — the task of building the machinery to mass-produce them fell to Mr. Blank and another engineer in the group, Eugene Kleiner . The two scrounged parts, improvised equipment and tooled a set of machines that essentially became the first assembly line for the basic building blocks of the electronic world: electronic circuits made from wafers of silicon, or silicon chips. “In those days you couldn’t go out and buy these things off the shelf,” said David C. Brock, who, with Christophe Lécuyer, wrote “Makers of the Microchip,” a 2010 history of Fairchild Semiconductor. “They had to build everything, starting with the equipment for growing silicon crystals.” Mr. Blank and his partners — who included Robert N. Noyce and Gordon E. Moore , the future founders of the Intel Corporation — began their venture as scientist-entrepreneurs in the wake of a mutiny of sorts against their common previous employer, the Nobel Prize -winning physicist William B. Shockley . Dr. Shockley, who became a lightning rod for racial tensions years later when he advocated a form of race-based genetic engineering known as eugenics, had recruited the eight scientists from around the country in 1956 to work in his own semiconductor lab in nearby Mountain View, Calif. The group left en masse the next year because of what its members described as Dr. Shockley’s authoritarian management style and their differences with him over his scientific approach. Dr. Shockley called it a betrayal. Fairchild’s founders came to be branded in the lore of Silicon Valley as the “Traitorous Eight.” How that happened remains something of a mystery. “We never could track it down,” said Mr. Brock, the author of the company’s history. But the epithet, wherever it came from, was attached to their names in almost every news account of the company’s success for years afterward. Mr. Blank, in an interview with The San Jose Mercury News this year, said they had never betrayed Dr. Shockley. But, with an engineer’s bent for the realistic, he added, “Once it got into print, it’s hard to erase.”  Julius Blank was born in Manhattan on June 2, 1925, the youngest of three children of Charles and Gussie Blank, Jewish immigrants from Russia and Austria, respectively. They lived on the Lower East Side. His father made luggage and musical instrument cases, and worked on the side as a Russian translator. Mr. Blank graduated from Erasmus Hall High School, and served in the Army in World War II. He graduated from City College with a bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering in 1950. In 1952 he joined the engineering group at AT&T’s Western Electric plant in Kearney, N.J., where he helped develop machinery for making the first circuitry used by callers to dial long distance without an operator. He met Mr. Kleiner at the Kearney plant. The two left together in 1956 for Dr. Shockley’s lab. Mr. Blank is survived by two sons, Jeffrey and David, and two grandsons. His wife, Ethel, died in 2008. When he left Fairchild in 1969 — he was the last of the eight founding partners to depart — Mr. Blank became an investor and consultant to start-up companies and helped found the technology firm Xicor, which was sold in 2004 for $529 million to Intersil. His former partners, in addition to founding Intel, had started Advanced Micro Devices and National Semiconductor. Mr. Kleiner had founded a venture capital firm that became an early investor in hundreds of technology companies, including Amazon.com, Google and AOL. Still, the greatest pleasure of his working life, Mr. Blank said in a 2008 interview for the archives of the Computer History Museum, a project in Silicon Valley, came with the uncertainty and camaraderie of “the early years, building something from nothing.” Mr. Blank described a moment in the first days of Fairchild, just before production began in its factory built from nothing, when the ducts and plumbing and air-conditioning were set, and the new crystal growers and one-of-a-kind chip making machines were ready to be installed. “I remember the day we finally got the floor tile laid,” he said. “And that night, Noyce and the rest of the guys came out and got barefoot and rolled their pants up and were swabbing the floors. I wish I had a picture of that.”

Fairchild Semiconductor International Inc


As Russian Tanks Roll, Europe Reassesses

Abstract: BERLIN — The Russian tanks rumbling across parts of Georgia are forcing a fundamental reassessment of strategic interests across Europe in a way not considered since the fall of the Berlin Wall in November 1989 and the subsequent collapse of Communism. For nearly two decades, European capitals in concert with Washington have encouraged liberalization in lands once firmly under the Soviet aegis. Now, they find themselves asking a question barely posed in all those years: How far will or can Russia go, and what should the response be? The answer will play out not just in the European Union , but also along its new eastern frontier, in once obscure places like Moldova and Azerbaijan. Already, French leaders, acting on behalf of Europe, have firmly told the Russians they cannot insist on the ouster of Georgia’s president, Mikheil Saakashvili , as a precondition for a cease-fire. Farther west, in Poland, a long-stalled negotiation on stationing parts of a United States missile defense system was quickly wrapped up, as American negotiators on Thursday dropped resistance to giving the Poles advanced Patriot missiles. The Poles, of course, had their own security in mind. “Poland wants to be in alliances where assistance comes in the very first hours of — knock on wood — any possible conflict,” Prime Minister Donald Tusk said. “The reality is that international relations are changing,” said Pawel Swieboda, director of demosEUROPA, an independent research organization based in Warsaw. “For the first time since 1991, Russia has used military force against a sovereign state in the post-Soviet area. The world will not be the same. A new phenomenon is unfolding in front or our eyes: a re-emerging power that is willing to use force to guarantee its interests. The West does not know how to respond.” At stake 20 years ago was whether the Kremlin, then under Mikhail Gorbachev, would intervene militarily to stop the collapse of Communism. But Mr. Gorbachev chose to cut Eastern Europe free as he focused — in vain — on preventing the collapse of the Soviet Union itself. Communist bloc lands from the Baltic States in the north to Bulgaria in the south have since joined the European Union and NATO — a feat, despite flaws, that in the Western view has made the continent more secure and democratic. But Russia never liked the expansion of NATO. In the 1990s, it was too weak to resist; today, in the Caucasus, Russia is showing off its power and sending an unmistakable message: Georgia, or a much larger Ukraine, will never be allowed to join NATO. The implications of Russia’s action reverberate well beyond that, from the European Union’s muddled relations with a crucial energy supplier, Russia, through Armenia and Azerbaijan in the south and east, to Ukraine and Moldova in the west. This region has everything that the West and Russia covet and abhor: immense reserves of oil and gas, innumerable ethnic splits and tensions, corrupt and authoritarian governments, pockets of territory that have become breeding grounds or havens for Islamic fundamentalists. As a result, the region has become the arena for competition between the Americans and Europeans on one hand, and Russia on the other, over how to bring these countries into their respective spheres of influence. The European Union — as ever, slow and divided — has offered few concrete proposals to bring the countries of what Russia calls its “near abroad” — Belarus, Ukraine, the Caucasus and the Caspian — closer to Europe. Analysts say the 27 member states have not been able to separate their view of Russia from adopting a clear strategy toward the former Soviet republics on the union’s new eastern borders. “The Georgia crisis shows that Russia is in the process of testing how far it can go,” said Niklas Nilsson of the Central Asia-Caucasus Institute in Stockholm. “This is part of a much bigger geopolitical game. It is time for the Europeans to decide what kind of influence it wants in the former Soviet states. That is the biggest strategic challenge the E.U. now faces.” NATO, led by the United States and several Eastern European countries, has reached out more actively. At a summit meeting in Bucharest, Romania, in April, Georgia and Ukraine failed to get on a concrete path to membership as they had sought, but did secure a promise of being admitted eventually. Georgia and its supporters say that NATO membership would have protected Georgians from Russian tanks. Western European diplomats by contrast note with relief that Georgia is not in NATO, and thus they were not required to come to its defense. The newly resurgent Russians, buoyed by oil and gas wealth and the firm leadership of Prime Minister Vladimir V. Putin , have played their hand with less hesitation. Tomas Valasek, the Slovak-born director of foreign policy and defense at the Center for European Reform in London, says Russia has used the ethnic and territorial card to persuade some NATO countries that admitting Ukraine or Georgia would prove more dangerous and unstable than keeping them out. Georgia’s incursion Aug. 7 into South Ossetia serves both these Russian arguments, as well as Moscow’s passionate objections to the West’s support for an independent Kosovo. Recognize Kosovo’s break with Serbia, Mr. Putin warned last spring, and Russia will feel entitled to do the same with South Ossetia and Georgia’s other breakaway enclave, Abkhazia — where Mr. Putin needs stability to realize his cherished project of the 2014 Winter Olympics in nearby Sochi. Ukraine, bigger than France and traditionally seen by Russians as integral to their heritage and dominion, has been conspicuously quiet over the past week. Senior Ukrainian officials say that the weak European Union response on Georgia will only embolden Russia to focus even more on Ukraine, where many inhabitants speak Russian and, particularly in the eastern half, look to Moscow, not Kiev, for leadership. “The crisis in Georgia has clear implications for regional security, and of course Ukraine,” said Hryhoriy Nemyria, deputy prime minister of Ukraine, who is responsible for European integration. “This crisis makes crystal clear that the security vacuums that have existed in the post-Soviet space remain dangerous.”

Europe
Russia
Georgia (Georgian Republic)
International Relations
European Union
North Atlantic Treaty Organization
Saakashvili Mikheil
Putin Vladimir V


Traveling to Volunteer, but It Wasn’t What They Expected

Abstract: A few weeks before Christmas, someone passed Malachy F. Cleary Jr. a flier as he rushed from the subway station to class at Hunter College on the East Side of Manhattan . It was a call for volunteers to teach at an “English Camp” in Mexico during the winter break, no experience needed; $300 would cover transportation, room and board. Later that day, a friend of Mr. Cleary’s from high school, Nick Scherer, called from State University at Stony Brook , where he was a student. He, too, had picked up the flier on his campus. “We thought, why not?” Mr. Cleary, 18, said. “It’s really cheap.” That, say Mr. Cleary, Mr. Scherer and others, is how they found themselves this month confined to a hotel outside Dallas , sleeping five and six to a room, and being awoken at 5:30 a.m. for a full day of what ostensibly was teacher training in preparation for the camp in Monterrey, Mexico. In fact, they said, the volunteer teaching was tucked into a much different and larger agenda centered on the religious theories of Ock Soo Park, a Korean preacher and founder of Good News Corps , the sponsor of the “ English Camp .” Mr. Park also founded the Good News Mission , which its Web site says consists of 300 churches in Korea and 120 churches in 43 other countries, and Mahanaim , a theology and music school in Huntington, N.Y. Speaking in Korean, Mr. Park delivered talks that often ran two hours or more, to a group of 1,600 people, about 400 of whom were connected with the camp and had traveled from as far as Alaska to volunteer. Associates gave supplementary “Mind Lectures” on biblical passages as interpreted by Mr. Park, who asserts that the human heart is lodged with “filth and evil.” Security guards at the doors to the ballroom of the hotel, the Intercontinental in Dallas, discouraged anyone tempted to skip out, Mr. Scherer, 18, said. Volunteers who turned up late for 6 a.m. sessions of calisthenics and group massage were ordered to perform squat thrust exercises, said Seda Oral, a junior at Hunter. Those who skipped sessions were tracked down by teachers and ordered to explain their absences. “The whole concept of their theology was that your heart is evil and that you need to have an ‘open heart,’ ” Mr. Cleary said. Many of the rooms had five or six people sleeping in them, and often only one trusted person, a captain, was given a key, Mr. Cleary said. Ms. Oral, 20, said that she had been issued her own key but that it was confiscated after her room captain discovered that Ms. Oral was skipping the religious sessions. All three dropped out and flew home to New York before the four days of training sessions ended. “I was the victim of a scam,” Mr. Cleary said. Not so, said Joseph Park, the coordinator of the English Camp and theology director at Mahanaim, who says he is not related to the founder. The religious nature of the program was made clear to the volunteers when they signed up. “We notified them by e-mail of this,” Mr. Park said, though he was later unable to provide copies of the e-mails. He noted that the Web site for the camp contains a description of the distinctly religious nature of the “Mind Lectures.” It says the talks “are a series of insightful lectures that focus on exploring the depths of the heart and mind through the Bible.” Other than that single sentence, on the second of six Web pages, nothing else on the site explicitly discusses any religious matters. In describing the camp, the Web site says: “The English Camp Mission Trip is a short-term volunteering initiative sponsored by the Good News Corps, that is centered around teaching English in foreign countries. Through a unique and diverse blend of language learning programs, volunteers have an opportunity to expose nonnative speakers to English, American culture, and a greater world of hope.” Mr. Park said that before going to Texas for training, the volunteers could have attended local workshops and learned about the religious dimension. Most people knew what would be involved, he said, and of those who went to Texas, only about 20 dropped out before going on to Mexico for the camp, which lasted for three days. The 400 volunteers who remained taught about 2,000 Mexican students over three days, he said, adding, “Almost everyone had a very wonderful experience.” He provided testimonial e-mails from five participants. The squat-thrust penalty imposed on those who were tardy, he said, “was in no way mean-spirited, and most of the volunteers laughed it off.” The shortage of room keys, he said, was a logistical wrinkle. And no one was required to stay for the religious lectures, he said. That was not exactly Mr. Scherer’s experience. One evening, he said, listening to a long sermon about “how we’re all evil, lying people, and our hearts are deceitful, I was getting uncomfortable and got up to leave,” he said. “My teacher called me out, and said, ‘You don’t have an open heart.’ She basically guilted me into staying.” Mr. Park said, “Students who did not feel comfortable could leave, but of course, we encouraged them to participate.”

Religion and Belief
Volunteering
Ock Soo Park
Fraud
College


Jim Letten, New Orleans U.S. Attorney, Resigns

Abstract: NEW ORLEANS — Once again, as he has for over a decade, Jim Letten, the chief federal prosecutor here, appeared before reporters, just as he regularly has to announce that some suspiciously well-connected city contractor was facing a lengthy spell behind bars. But this time was different. In a brief but passionate statement, Mr. Letten, the longest-serving United States attorney in the nation and a popular crusader against the crooked traditions of Louisiana public servants, announced that he would be resigning effective next Tuesday. He said it was his decision and gave few other details, but everyone knew why this was happening. Beginning last spring, a series of legal motions had revealed that Mr. Letten’s senior prosecutors had been making provocative, even pugnacious comments about active criminal matters and other subjects under aliases at nola.com , the Web site of The Times-Picayune newspaper. For a team of prosecutors once referred to in the news media as the Untouchables, with a chief who had drawn broad enough popularity that he had survived a party change in the White House, the exposures were stunning. Last month, the revelations of online misconduct reached Mr. Letten’s top assistant, Jan Mann. A federal judge, in a scathing 50-page order, broached the possibility of criminal conduct in regard to her online activities, as well as those of another senior prosecutor, Sal Perricone, who resigned in March. The judge also revealed that another federal prosecutor had expressed suspicions about the comments to his supervisors in 2010. The exposure of Ms. Mann, months after Mr. Letten’s avowals that Mr. Perricone had acted alone, raised doubts about the effectiveness of an internal investigation by the Justice Department. The revelations could also jeopardize hard-fought convictions — including those last year of police officers involved in post-Katrina killings on the Danziger Bridge — as well as continuing inquiries like a bribery investigation that appears to be steadily encircling C. Ray Nagin, the former mayor. Mr. Letten has maintained that he knew nothing about his subordinates’ online activities, and there has so far been no evidence to contradict that. But the problems were beginning to stack up, as he acknowledged on Thursday. “It is essential that the challenges which we take on, and especially our current challenges, which we’re going through right now, never, ever, ever, under any circumstances threaten to divert or distract us from our sacred mission of protecting the freedom, the property, the lives and the quality of lives of all of our people,” he said. In a statement, Senator Mary L. Landrieu commended Mr. Letten’s “record of rooting out public corruption” but called the decision “a necessary step.” Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. called Mr. Letten a “valued partner, dedicated public servant and a good friend.” The Department of Justice announced an interim replacement on Thursday and also named a federal prosecutor from Georgia who will be restarting the investigation into the office’s internal problems. Mr. Letten, who has worked in federal law enforcement for nearly three decades, began in his current office as an interim appointment in 2001. He was already well known, having led the successful prosecution of former Gov. Edwin Edwards on bribery and racketeering charges (Mr. Letten named his dog Rico, after the federal racketeering statute). The front-runner for the office at the time, a politically connected businessman named Fred Heebe, had been accused of abuse by a former wife, and while Mr. Letten had little in the way of political influence, he was chosen to step in. He focused on public corruption, a fat target in Louisiana’s Eastern District; the F.B.I. office here was one of only two in the country to have three public corruption squads. “Public corruption was the most significant local problem that we had, and the only resource that we had available to us was prosecution in the U.S. attorney’s office,” said Louis Reigel, who was the F.B.I. special agent in charge here between 2003 and 2005. Mr. Letten’s office successfully prosecuted parish presidents for bribery, sheriffs for mail fraud, mayors for tax evasion, housing agency officials for embezzlement and contractors for all kinds of things. Before his reappointment under the Obama administration, Mr. Letten had been criticized by some as not aggressively pursuing civil rights violations. But once the Justice Department made civil rights investigations a priority, Mr. Letten became the local public face of the raft of federal inquiries into the New Orleans Police Department. Local support was crucial for investigations driven largely out of Washington, and the image of a clean and effective law enforcement agency was also crucial in a city where trust in institutions is less than optimal. “There was sort of that constant feed of information to the public: here’s a guy 24-7 ferreting out crime,” said Harry Rosenberg, who was the United States attorney in the early 1990s. Mr. Letten could often be seen standing outside the courthouse after a conviction, flanked by his staff, applauding the public for no longer putting up with Louisiana’s reputation for corruption. If Mr. Letten was seen by many as the good cop, Mr. Perricone and Ms. Mann were seen as the other cops. Both were known and at times criticized for their aggressiveness (Mr. Perricone once shoved a defense lawyer after a losing an argument in a judge’s chambers). The now-exposed online commentary of the two — which ripped judges, defendants, fellow prosecutors and politicians, including Mr. Obama — seems to corroborate those reputations. In the end, it was Mr. Heebe, the one-time candidate for Mr. Letten’s office, who brought about his downfall. Mr. Heebe had become a target of an investigation surrounding a landfill he owned. But last March, he filed a suit naming Mr. Perricone as the author of covert nola.com comments. Mr. Perricone admitted to the allegations and resigned. The landfill inquiry was handed over to lawyers from the Justice Department, which also began an internal investigation. Many in town thought Mr. Letten had weathered the problems and would be appointed yet again, regardless of who won the White House. But on Nov. 2, Mr. Heebe filed another defamation suit, this time naming Ms. Mann. She was demoted, but given her importance to Mr. Letten, and her silence over the past months as the commenting scandal unfolded, the damage was substantial. “It really is a shame; he was undermined by his own assistants,” said Shaun Clarke, a former federal prosecutor now in private practice. “I really think that he’s done extraordinary service for the New Orleans region. But Jim is the head man. And I guess the buck stops with him.”

United States Attorneys
Letten Jim
New Orleans (La)