Setting a Made-in-the-U.S.A. Table: Yes, Do Stick a Fork in It

Abstract: SHERRILL, N.Y. — There are many signs that the fortunes of the century-old plant now owned by Sherrill Manufacturing aren’t what they once were, but among the starkest are the dozens of discolored concrete patches that line a stretch of the cavernous factory floor. They mark the holes where drop hammers were ripped out and sold for scrap to keep the company in business. “Greg would tell me, ‘We need $10,000 to make payroll,’ and I’d come out here and find $10,000 worth of machinery to scrap,” Matthew A. Roberts, the company’s president, said cheerfully on a recent walk through the plant, referring to his business partner, Gregory L. Owens, Sherrill Manufacturing’s chief executive. The pair once owned 58 drop hammers; now, they’re down to six. Mr. Roberts doesn’t mourn the loss. Six is plenty to handle the current production needs at the plant, which is America’s last domestic flatware maker. Twenty years ago, the factory, then owned by Oneida Ltd., had more than 2,000 employees working round-the-clock, making knives, spoons and forks by the millions. Now, just 35 people work the floor. Having even that many is a victory to Sherrill Manufacturing . Its hometown, nicknamed “the Silver City,” was once dominated by Oneida, which had its headquarters here. Founded in 1880, the company grew to become the world’s largest flatware producer, with manufacturing plants in four countries and annual sales of more than $500 million. But in the early 2000s, Oneida fell into a steep, sharp decline, as the rise of low-cost Asian manufacturing eviscerated its sales. In 2004, it gave up on domestic manufacturing and announced plans to close the plant it had run in Sherrill for 125 years. Mr. Roberts, now 51, a Sherrill native and 14-year employee of Oneida, stepped in to buy the factory and find a way to retain at least a fraction of its work force. He recruited to his cause Mr. Owens, 52, a fellow manufacturing veteran he met in Toluca, Mexico, where both did management stints at Oneida’s facility there. The day after Oneida’s Sherrill plant closed in March 2005, it reopened — with a far smaller staff — as Sherrill Manufacturing. For 10 rocky years, the business has been groping its way toward a model that will let it operate profitably and keep at least a vestige of the town’s manufacturing heritage intact. Now, the company is starting to find some success with an approach it hopes will be sustainable: a direct-sales business aimed at customers willing to pay a bit more for American-made products. It’s a path being pursued by a handful of American manufacturers that have tried to adapt to global economic realities by recasting themselves as high-quality purveyors of goods that preserve local production heritages. The country now has just one remaining metal whistle maker , one barber pole manufacturer , one sparkler producer and one sneaker factory , among other vanishing industries. Domestic employment in the manufacturing industry has fallen by nearly 30 percent in the last two decades, according to government data. Around 12 million people now work in the field. “When you lose these skills, they don’t come back,” Mr. Owens said. He’s determined to hang on to the expertise of local craftsmen like Eric Lawrence, 41, an engraver who started his career 17 years ago with Oneida. He now designs Sherrill Manufacturing’s patterns. The company sells its flatware online as Liberty Tabletop , a name deliberately chosen to play up the brand’s “made in the U.S.A.” appeal. A single fork or teaspoon starts at $3.49; knives cost most than twice that, at $7.99 each. (“Knives are hard,” explained Mr. Roberts, who is happy to go into great detail about the challenges of forged blades and serrating.) A few big customers — most notably, the United States military — help sustain the company. The federal government orders around 500,000 utensils a year for its bases around the world. Enlisted soldiers use silverware from the utilitarian Annapolis line; officers get more expensive Sheffield sets, with an ornate Old English pattern. The company also does production work for Cutco , which manufactures some knives of its own in Olean, N.Y., but relies on Sherrill for the forks and spoons it resells as American-made flatware. Image Matthew A. Roberts, president of Sherrill Manufacturing, and Gregory L. Owens, the company's chief executive, at their factory in Sherrill, N.Y. Credit Nathaniel Brooks for The New York Times To run profitably, though, Sherrill Manufacturing needs to build its direct sales. The company’s owners believe that is the only model that will allow their business to go up against flatware giants like Lenox and Oneida, which can produce their goods overseas for a fraction of Sherrill’s costs. “Being a small manufacturer, we know we can’t compete head-to-head against Asia,” Mr. Owens said. “Labor, regulations, steel prices — everything gives them a cost advantage.” There have been several near-death experiences. The company started its independent life as an exclusive manufacturer for Oneida, handling a few specialized tasks. But Oneida went bankrupt in 2006, forcing Sherrill to broaden its customer base. (Oneida was purchased by a privaty equity firm in 2011 and merged with other brands to create a new company, EveryWare Global in Lancaster, Ohio. EveryWare went bankrupt this year but emerged two months later and remains in business.) It won enough new contracts to keep operating, until the recession hit. “The Lehman thing happened, and the world blew up,” Mr. Owens said. “We got no orders for six months, and when they started coming back, they were half the size they had been.” In 2010, the company declared bankruptcy. Production shut down for two years as the owners worked through the reorganization process — but first, they did one last manufacturing run, to generate Liberty’s initial inventory. “I took all of the steel we had left, and we made our own patterns,” Mr. Roberts recalled. “We thought, ‘If we can cross this chasm, this will give us something to survive on.’” They cobbled together a website and began marketing the Liberty Tabletop brand, relying on online ads and word-of-mouth recommendations. That first year, the online sales totaled $23,000. This year, they’re on track to top $1 million. Keeping the business running sometimes seems like tilting at windmills, the owners acknowledge, but if it disappears, they feel that something essential will be lost. America’s industrial infrastructure is a dwindling resource; to help preserve it, they source everything they can domestically. Their steel is melted in the United States and cut to size in Ohio, their polishing compounds come from Pittsburgh and Detroit, and their boxes are made by an 89-year-old, family-run paper company in Earlville, N.Y. Suppliers have a vested interest in cheering for their customers’ success, but those who work with Sherrill Manufacturing say that the company’s values-driven approach stands out. Mike Cartechine, a territory manager for H&D Steel Service , counts it as one of the few customers he does business with on handshake-deal terms. “It’s a lot of fun to be a part of,” he said. “When my mother retired, I sent her a set of the flatware as a gift. Every time she has a dinner party, she tells everyone, ‘My son supplied the metal for this.’” Flatware is Sherrill Manufacturing’s focus, but every so often it takes on custom projects for other small businesses. It produces Coffee Joulies , metal capsules designed to keep hot beverages at an ideal drinking temperature; and Kleynimals , stainless steel baby toys that mimic the tactile appeal of jangly keys. Kirsten Chapman, Kleynimals’ creator, sells about 5,000 sets a year, a production run too small for most manufacturers to bother with. For four years, she struggled with quality control and a piecemeal assembly process, until an industry contact steered her toward Sherrill. She moved her production there last year and raves about the results. The time she once spent on logistics is now devoted to developing new products. Mr. Owens and Mr. Roberts, whose grandfather worked at the plant he now co-owns, have some nostalgia about the factory’s past: Their office’s entryway is lined with old photographs and display cabinets showing off Oneida’s historical silverware, including oddities like the avocado fork — a three-pronged device that looks more like a Klingon weapon than an eating utensil. But they are also optimistic about the opportunities for the new era of manufacturing in Sherrill. Their plant floor is filled with machines that they are eager to turn back on if demand for their flatware grows. “We’re two guys who have just repeatedly failed to give up,” Mr. Roberts said.

Tableware
Manufacturing
Sherrill Manufacturing
Small business
Liberty Tabletop


Sri Lanka: Government to Impeach Chief Justice

Abstract: The government in Sri Lanka said Thursday that it had started the process to impeach the country’s chief justice, accusing her of overstepping her authority in the culmination of a drawn-out conflict between the judiciary and the government. A government spokesman said the papers to impeach the chief justice, Shirani Bandaranayake, had been handed to the speaker of the Parliament. He did not specify the charges. In Geneva, the International Commission of Jurists, a human rights body, said Thursday that the Sri Lankan government had made it all but impossible for victims of human rights abuses to get justice and that the judiciary’s independence was being threatened.

Human Rights and Human Rights Violations


Internet Start-Up to Take a Hybrid Media Approach

Abstract: Several cable television veterans are putting their band back together and taking their act to the Internet. Next New Networks, a New York-based Internet start-up run and backed by former executives of MTV and Nickelodeon, will announce plans today to begin a series of video-oriented Web sites — what the company calls micro-networks — on niche topics like do-it-yourself fashion, comic books, car racing and cartoons. The company’s founders include Herb Scannell, who as a top executive at Nickelodeon in the 1990s was responsible for introducing such enduring fare as SpongeBob SquarePants. Another founder, Fred Seibert, was the first creative director at MTV and was behind many of the channel’s early flourishes, like the “I Want My MTV” slogan. The company will also announce that it has received $8 million in seed capital, in part from the Pilot Group, a media investment firm run by Robert W. Pittman, who created MTV and later overhauled Nickelodeon. Jonathan F. Miller, the former chief executive of America Online, who was a Nickelodeon executive in the 1990s, has also invested and will join its board. Other investors are Spark Capital, a Boston venture capital firm, and the European division of Benchmark Capital, which backed eBay. Next New Networks plans to blend elements of old and new media into a type of hybrid entertainment that is different from traditional television and user-generated sites like YouTube. Its various Web properties will revolve around professionally produced videos of three to eight minutes, which it plans to pitch to sponsors as safe and predictable places to advertise online. Many of the programs will solicit contributions from their audiences, but the company will screen submissions before they approved as final product. The company plans to generate some programming itself while also identifying talented video contributors and bringing them into the Next New Networks fold. It is starting with six Web sites, including Fast Lane Daily ( fastlanedaily.com ), which features a daily news program for auto enthusiasts, and ThreadBanger ( threadbanger.com ), which offers a five-minute weekly show with MTV-style anchors who discuss the homemade-clothing culture. Mr. Seibert, the creative director, is bringing two existing video sites to the network: Channel Frederator ( channelfrederator.com ), a weekly program on animation, and VOD Cars ( VODCars.com ), a curated collection of video clips from the car culture. The founders believe the Internet offers a programming opportunity similar to the early days of cable, which traditional media firms are not exploiting. “The nature of big media companies is about incumbent brands and repurposing and refashioning their material for the Web,” said Mr. Scannell, the chief executive. “We have no incumbent brands. We’re a white sheet for creative people.” Mr. Miller, who left America Online last October under pressure from his bosses at Time Warner, cited the founders’ cable experience as the reason he is backing the company. “To me these guys are returning to their roots,” he said. “They are unshackled from large media environment where it is much more about what your quarterly goals are, and can go back to developing new networks and ways of communicating with audiences.” In part, Next New Networks is also challenging the idea that the chaotic terrain of sites like YouTube and MySpace can be a friendly place for advertisers. “Video sharing is awesome, but advertisers are knitting their brow,” Mr. Scannell said. “They want to know what they’re backing. There is a place for brands to deliver something that is consistent.” Some statistics may support those doubts. According to recent estimates by Bear Stearns, YouTube earned only $15 million in all of 2006. Google bought YouTube in October for $1.65 billion. MySpace, owned by the News Corporation, has also struggled to bring masses of advertisers onto the social network, where much of the content is unfiltered and therefore a concern to advertisers. Though it is beginning with just six Web sites, Next New Networks has aggressive plans. It says it has the capital to begin or acquire 30 new shows in the next two years, each serving a specific hobbyist community. Possible new topics include pets and the world of ideas, as well as additional shows about cars and fashion. If the business flourishes, the plan is to expand to 100 programs in five years. The company, with 13 employees, says it will experiment with various concepts but will not hesitate to cancel shows that are not attracting enough viewers. “It is built into our emotional palette from the beginning that we have to be ready to kill the things that don’t work,” said Mr. Seibert.

Computers and the Internet
MTV Networks
Recordings and Downloads (Video)
Television
Nickelodeon


Paragallo Loses Appeal of Animal Cruelty Conviction

Abstract: Ernie Paragallo, a thoroughbred breeder and owner, lost his appeal of his conviction for animal cruelty charges on Thursday. He was convicted on 33 counts of misdemeanor animal cruelty and sentenced to two years in prison last year for starving his horses at his Center Brook Farm in Greene County, N.Y. Paragallo, 52, of Long Island, maintained that a report issued before his sentencing last May was prejudicial and asked that his sentence be overturned. But the Appellate Division of the State Supreme Court said that Judge George J. Pulver Jr. of Greene County Court did not consider that information in handing down his two-year sentence. Paragallo was convicted after a nonjury trial in March after Pulver heard testimony from veterinarians and horse rescue workers about the condition of many of the 177 horses on Paragallo’s farm in Climax, N.Y., about 20 miles south of Albany. Also Thursday, the New York State Racing and Wagering Board permanently barred Paragallo from entering any New York racetracks and prohibited him from ever acquiring a racing license again in New York. “The actions today by my board send a strong signal that there is no place for anyone in the racing industry who mistreats horses and obfuscates his connection to horses that run on our tracks,” said John D. Sabini, chairman of the state Racing and Wagering Board.


Hold the Eulogies, Kennedy Says

Abstract: WASHINGTON — After the president of Harvard hailed him as a “national leader but a local servant,” after the pastor read the “Let us now praise famous men” passage from the Bible and after the cellist Yo-Yo Ma honored him by performing a Gershwin prelude, Senator Edward M. Kennedy lumbered across the antique stage. “I have lived a blessed time,” Mr. Kennedy told the audience at a special honorary degree convocation at Harvard in December. His voice started shaky, but gained strength. “Now, with you, I look forward to a new time of high aspiration for our nation and the world.” As the crowd rose, Mr. Kennedy waved buoyantly, as if trying to acknowledge everyone he saw: a special fist pump for his former staff member, Justice Stephen G. Breyer of the Supreme Court; a salute in the direction of Vice President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr.; a thumbs-up for his niece Caroline Kennedy. Mr. Kennedy’s wife, Vicki, tried to lead him off, but he broke away, grinning. For a few extra moments, he kept the stage. Since the diagnosis of his brain cancer last May, Mr. Kennedy has been given all manner of tributes and testimonials, lifetime achievement awards, medals of honor and standing ovations. But even as those accolades have provided sweet solace — and even some dark humor — as he endures grueling treatments, Mr. Kennedy, who turns 77 on Sunday, has been intent on racing time rather than looking back on it. He considers unnecessary what his son Representative Patrick J. Kennedy of Rhode Island calls “the premature eulogizing,” or what Mr. Biden terms “a bordering on an obituary,” that has accompanied his life in recent months. “Obviously I’ve been touched and grateful,” Mr. Kennedy said in a phone interview Friday from the rented home in Miami where he has spent most of the winter. “Beyond that, I don’t really plan to go away soon.” Friends who have seen Mr. Kennedy describe him as driven and focused on work. He sometimes gets angry watching C-Span, pores over memorandums and speed-dials staff members and colleagues (sometimes from his sailboat, the Mya). He speaks frequently — and often on his trademark issue, overhauling the nation’s health care system — to President Obama; Mr. Biden; the White House chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel; and checks up on the Senate “chatter” with lawmakers. Between chemotherapy treatments, physical therapy sessions and naps, Mr. Kennedy has been lobbying the White House on possible nominees for secretary of health and human services. (He has heard good things about the leading candidate, Gov. Kathleen Sebelius of Kansas, though he does not know her well and has been pressing for other candidates.) While his office said he planned to return to Washington in a few weeks, Mr. Kennedy has been orchestrating efforts from afar, setting the foundation for legislation on what he calls “the cause of my life.” “What has been essential to his recovery and motivation has been setting goals,” said Dr. Lawrence C. Horowitz, a former Kennedy staff member who has been overseeing his care. The first goal the senator set after cancer surgery in June was to speak at the Democratic National Convention (he did, despite kidney stones); then he resolved to attend Mr. Obama’s inauguration (he did, though he had a seizure afterward). “Now, his goal is to play a central role in health care reform,” Dr. Horowitz said. “That’s what keeps him going.” Wired for Optimism Still, as perception can be reality in politics, Mr. Kennedy and his allies have been battling an inescapable sense that his time is too short or he is too ailing to be effective — a notion reinforced last month when people close to Caroline Kennedy seemed to blame her uncle’s health problems for her sudden loss of interest in being appointed to a Senate seat from New York. Mr. Kennedy says he is wired to be optimistic. “That’s the way I was born and brought up,” he said. “That’s the way we’re dealing with the challenges we’re facing now.” Until the brief phone interview with The New York Times, Mr. Kennedy had given no interviews since the cancer diagnosis, aside from a few brief hallway remarks to reporters on his sporadic Senate forays and public events. He declined multiple requests over several weeks for a longer, in-person interview. Even so, people who have spent time with him say Mr. Kennedy is talking more about his past and that of his family than he typically has, in part because he is writing a memoir and it stirs memories. (“Remind me, Vicki, to put that in the book,” has become a familiar refrain.) He can be sentimental at times — wiping his eyes at the Harvard service during a slideshow of his career. And his illness has provoked something of a bipartisan crush of affection by people who have had personal and professional dealings with him. “The fact that he has cancer leads people suddenly to try to put into perspective what he has done over time,” Justice Breyer said in an interview in his chambers. “That makes them tend to appreciate him more, whatever their politics.” It is oddly typical of Mr. Kennedy’s life that, for instance, the president of Chile would travel to his house on Cape Cod to present the Order to the Merit of Chile (a spokesman said the award had been announced before he became ill). The Kennedy Center in Washington is holding a belated birthday gala for him on March 8. His friends have pointed out this accumulation of accolades, and not without some wryness. “It’s the goal of every Irishman to be able to be a witness to your own eulogy,” said Senator Christopher J. Dodd, Democrat of Connecticut. “This is sheer heaven for him.” Hearing Mr. Dodd’s words repeated on Friday, Mr. Kennedy let loose with a rollicking laugh. Praise and Vilification Over 46 years in the Senate, Ted Kennedy has been an all-too-human repository for larger-than-life emotions. Colleagues praise his lengthy legislative résumé and personal kindnesses, often in superlative terms: “the most remarkable senator I’ve ever worked with” (Mr. Biden), “the single most effective member of the Senate” (Senator John McCain of Arizona). Critics have vilified him as a run-amok liberal and an out-of-touch elitist, a longtime playboy involved in a car crash that killed a young woman. In certain political quadrants, his name is akin to profanity even now. Ann Coulter calls him a “drunken slob” in her new book, while various bloggers, radio hosts and other conservative commentators have said far worse. Mr. Kennedy said he planned to spend Sunday — his birthday — having a quiet celebration with members of his family. His answers were brief on matters pertaining to his illness and life generally, and he repeatedly steered the conversation back to health care and what he called “this unique and special time” to pass major legislation. Colleagues say no one has a better grasp of the variables involved in developing such legislation than Mr. Kennedy, who is chairman of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee. “He said to me one day, ‘Look, there are about 15 ways for this to happen,’ ” said Senator John Kerry, his fellow Massachusetts Democrat. “ ‘But you’ve got to find the one to make it happen.’ He just has a sense of these things.” Mr. Kennedy describes the Senate as a “chemical place,” meaning that reading the chemistry between members is critical to understanding how an issue or a vote will play out. Removed from it, he has been frustrated, fellow Democrats say. Mr. Kennedy’s office has twice pushed back his return date to Washington, raising questions about how well his recovery is proceeding. His staff and family have released limited information about his condition. He said he felt strong, and friends say he has recovered from the June surgery to remove part of the tumor. Dr. Horowitz said, “He is doing very well, considering that he has a serious disease.” He adds that the “unanimous consensus” of Mr. Kennedy’s team of doctors is that “his disease is totally under control.” Still, the prognosis for patients with malignant glioma, the type of brain tumor Mr. Kennedy has, is generally poor. (Survival is variable, experts said, but is generally measured in months from the time of diagnosis.) The senator has also had at least two seizure episodes that required hospitalization. He tires easily and needs frequent rest. “Obviously some days are better than others,” Mr. Kennedy said. Some colleagues privately acknowledge worrying that Mr. Kennedy may lack the physical stamina to meet the demands of forging a health care overhaul bill this year. To ease Mr. Kennedy’s comings and goings, Senator Harry Reid of Nevada, the majority leader, has given him a plum corner office, about 30 feet from the Senate floor, next to an elevator. When Mr. Kennedy came to Washington to vote on the economic stimulus bill this month, he flew on a government jet, arranged by the White House. “I’ll have to pace myself,” Mr. Kennedy acknowledged of meeting the demands of a fuller workload. “But I come from New England stock here.” “What is necessary, I’ll do,” he added. Mr. Kennedy, who campaigned hard for Mr. Obama before he became ill, is clearly eager to play a role in the first year of the new administration. By all accounts, he was exuberant at Mr. Obama’s inauguration. “It’s a great day, it’s a great day,” he told a stream of well-wishers, conspicuous in a black fedora and blue scarf and sitting in an oversize chair on the Capitol dais about 10 feet from where Mr. Obama was sworn in. Michelle Obama went over with her daughters, Sasha and Malia, for a visit. Mr. Kennedy, who like roughly 99 percent of the world’s population knows that the Obama girls have been promised a puppy, took the occasion to lobby for Portuguese water dogs (Mr. Kennedy has two, Sunny and Splash). At the airport the night before, Patrick Kennedy encountered Roger Wilkins, the civil rights leader, who hailed his father as a hero. Patrick passed this on to his father, who said, “You really need to start writing this stuff down.” The Personal Touch After the swearing-in, Mr. Kennedy repaired to a Congressional luncheon, where he mingled with colleagues and ate a meal of pheasant and seafood stew. Before dessert, he was rushed to a hospital after a seizure. The next day, Mr. Kennedy called Mr. Biden to check up on his 15-year-old granddaughter, who had witnessed the incident. “I’m sorry if I upset your granddaughter,” the vice president recalled him saying. Mr. Kennedy also sent Mr. Biden’s 91-year-old mother flowers (he told her she looked wonderful at the inauguration). Stories of such gestures from Mr. Kennedy have abounded. Few politicians rival him at the just-checking-in phone call, the scribbled note or the goofy buck-up gift. Mr. Biden recalled how Mr. Kennedy showed up at his home while he was recovering from a brain aneurysm years ago, armed with an inspirational photograph of a giant Irish stag. These are recent examples: ¶When Mr. Kennedy learned that former Senator Tom Daschle’s brother was fighting the same type of brain cancer, the senator put him in touch with his doctors and opened his Boston home to him while he received treatment. He also offered assistance to the conservative columnist Robert D. Novak, a fierce critic of his, when Mr. Novak learned last year that he had a similar cancer. ¶He was one of the few to call to congratulate Gov. Bill Richardson of New Mexico when he was nominated to be commerce secretary and later to console him when he withdrew over questions about his relationship with a donor. “He always starts it off with some personal thing, in my case singing the song ‘Jalisco’ in Spanish,” Mr. Richardson said. ¶Mr. Kennedy insisted on accompanying former Senator John Culver, a former Harvard classmate who was about to undergo back surgery, to the Harvard-Yale game in November despite protests that it was a bad idea. Harvard won 10-0. “It was a great day,” Mr. Culver said. Such efforts have won Mr. Kennedy bipartisan good will, which has been returned since he became ill. “I got elected to Congress in 1972 running against the Kennedys,” said former Senator Trent Lott, a onetime Republican leader. “Forget liberal, conservative, moderate, whatever,” he said of Mr. Kennedy. “He’s a damn nice guy.” Last November, shortly after the election, President George W. Bush invited Mr. Kennedy and three other lawmakers to the Oval Office to mark the passage of a bill requiring insurance companies to cover mental and physical health equally, an issue Mr. Kennedy had worked on for years. Mr. Bush had signed the measure in October, but Mr. Kennedy could not attend, so the president staged a mock signing. They posed for photographs behind Mr. Bush’s desk (once used by Mr. Kennedy’s brother John), along with Patrick Kennedy and the bill’s other co-sponsors. Mr. Kennedy was perhaps Mr. Bush’s most important Democratic partner in the Senate on education and immigration issues, and maybe his toughest critic on most everything else, especially the Iraq war. Mr. Bush, who had called and written to Mr. Kennedy several times after he became ill, told the senator that he always admired him as an opponent and appreciated that he knew where he stood with him. “I’ve had more trouble with my friends than with my opponents,” Mr. Bush told Mr. Kennedy in the Oval Office, according to his son. Patrick mentioned the burden of living up to his father’s example, prompting Mr. Bush to reply: “Believe me, I know that feeling all too well.” After a while, nearly everyone was escorted out, leaving Mr. Bush and Senator Kennedy alone. As aides watched, they walked out the back of the Oval Office, Mr. Kennedy maneuvering a cane. Weathered by years and battles, the dynastic heirs lingered outside, talking about sports, the election and the future. They shook hands for a final time before Mr. Bush walked Mr. Kennedy to his car and waved goodbye.

Kennedy Edward M
Senate
United States Politics and Government
Cancer
Democratic Party


NATO Begins Investigation of Deadly Airstrike on Fuel Tanks in Afghanistan

Abstract: KUNDUZ, Afghanistan (AP) — Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, the top United States and NATO commander in Afghanistan, visited the site of an airstrike on fuel tankers hijacked by the Taliban, as the alliance began an investigation on Saturday into how many civilians were among the scores who died. General McChrystal waded through knee-high water to inspect the blackened tankers, which exploded when an American F-15E Strike Eagle jet, answering a call from German forces, dropped two 500-pound bombs. He also visited a hospital where the wounded were taken, stooping to talk with a severely burned 10-year-old boy. A 10-member NATO investigative team, led by Rear Adm. Gregory J. Smith of the United States, flew over the strike site, in the north. The tankers were hit after they became stuck trying to cross the Kunduz River before dawn on Friday. Local officials have said that 70 people or more died, but it was unclear how many were militants and how many villagers who had rushed to siphon fuel from the trucks. Many bodies were burned beyond recognition, and villagers buried some in a mass grave. General McChrystal recently tightened rules on airstrikes in the face of Afghan outrage over high civilian casualties in NATO military operations. Questions have been raised about whether the call for the strike complied with those rules. European leaders gathering in Stockholm on the eve of talks on increasing efforts in Afghanistan sharply criticized the strike, with some calling it a “tragedy” and “a big mistake.” The deputy United Nations representative to Afghanistan, Peter W. Galbraith, said Saturday that he was “very concerned” about the strike. “Steps must also be taken to examine what happened and why an airstrike was employed in circumstances where it was hard to determine with certainty that civilians were not present,” he said. General McChrystal discussed the strike with President Hamid Karzai and later told senior commanders that “we need to know what we are hitting,” an aide said, speaking on condition of anonymity under command policy. Meeting with local Afghan leaders here in the capital of Kunduz Province, the general expressed sympathy for any civilian losses and said the fight against the Taliban should not come at the cost of civilian lives. “I am here today to ensure that we are operating in a way that is truly protecting the Afghan people from all threats,” he said. German officials said the Taliban might have been planning a suicide attack on a nearby military base using the tankers, which were hijacked carrying NATO fuel supplies from neighboring Tajikistan. The German troops in Kunduz have come under increasing attacks in their area of responsibility in the north, which had largely escaped the scale of violence seen in the east and south of the country. On Friday, Germany’s defense minister, Franz Josef Jung, said the Taliban had threatened attacks on German troops in advance of Germany’s national elections, set for Sept. 27. Polls show that a majority of Germans want their 4,000 troops home. “It was a very concrete situation of danger for the Taliban to get hold of two tankers, which meant significant danger for our soldiers,” Mr. Jung said. The strike’s toll remained unclear on Saturday. Germany said that 57 fighters were killed and that no civilians were believed to have been in the area at the time, based on surveillance aircraft. But NATO’s secretary general, Anders Fogh Rasmussen, acknowledged that some civilians may have died. The local governor, Mohammad Omar, said 72 people were killed and 15 wounded. He said about 30 of the dead were insurgents. The rest were probably fighters or relatives, he said. NATO statements said two American service members died in Afghanistan on Saturday, one in the east and one in the west. Poland’s Defense Ministry reported that a Polish soldier had been killed and five were wounded by a roadside bomb in the east on Friday. On Sunday, an American service member was killed in an insurgent attack in the east, United States forces said. The military did not provide further details. Violence has soared across much of Afghanistan since President Obama ordered 21,000 more American troops here this year to curb the Taliban, which has regrouped since American-led forces drove them from power in November 2001. Meanwhile, there were further delays in the country’s disputed presidential election. Partial results from 60 percent of polling places show Mr. Karzai ahead but still shy of the more than 50 percent needed to avoid a runoff. More results had been scheduled for release on Saturday, but the electoral commission announced a delay. One of the main challengers, Abdullah Abdullah, said he had appealed directly to the commission to stop announcing preliminary results because of “highly suspicious numbers” in tallies released so far.

United States Defense and Military Forces


Jury Finds Merrill Lynch Bilked Couple

Abstract: TRENTON, Oct. 21 (AP) — A Florida jury has ordered Merrill Lynch to pay $6 million, finding that it took advantage of the New Jersey philanthropist George Rothman and his wife. Both Rothmans were declared incompetent in 1999, and George Rothman died in 2004 at 86. Merrill Lynch will seek to have the Oct. 1 verdict set aside, a company spokesman said, and will appeal if it stands. The jury, in Palm Beach, must still determine whether to award punitive damages. According to C. Wade Bowden, a lawyer representing the Rothmans’ two daughters, Merrill Lynch took advantage of the couple’s deteriorating mental condition to shift their money into investments that would pay higher commissions. A lawsuit also claims that a Merrill Lynch broker, Karen L. McKinley, falsely told Mr. Rothman in three letters that the investments carried no fees or sales commissions. Mr. Bowden said Merrill Lynch made at least $2.5 million in fees on the Rothmans’ $32 million investment in variable annuities, while Ms. McKinley made about $600,000. “There was a clear conflict of interest between the broker and Mr. Rothman,” Mr. Bowden was quoted as saying in The Record of Hackensack in Saturday’s issue. “She was recommending a product that maximized her profit, not his, and she didn’t tell him this.” A Merrill Lynch spokesman, Mark Herr, told the newspaper, “The verdict is astonishing in light of the undisputed fact that the Rothmans, who were wealthy, sophisticated investors, made $10 million on the annuities at issue, and did not lose money.” Mr. Rothman grew up in Englewood, N.J., and made a fortune in Bergen County’s post-World War II development boom. He donated $4 million to Fairleigh Dickinson University. The university’s gymnasium and its Institute for Entrepreneurial Studies bear his name.

Brokers and Brokerage Firms
Decisions and Verdicts
Merrill Lynch & Company Inc


The Ghosts of Mayors Past

Abstract: David N. Dinkins and Rudolph W. Giuliani are not on the ballot in this year’s mayoral election. But they haunt it, nonetheless. Similar to the specters in Charles Dickens’s “Christmas Carol,” the two former mayors have been cast as the Ghosts of Mayors Past in this year’s contest, symbolizing how the city could be transformed should Bill de Blasio or Joseph J. Lhota take up residence in Gracie Mansion. Depending on your political point of view, that would mean a return to the bad old days of rampant crime, decrepitude and decay under Mr. de Blasio’s former boss, Mr. Dinkins, or those of tone-deaf authoritarianism and racial tension under Mr. Giuliani, who made Mr. Lhota his second in command. No surprise, then, that when each of the current candidates was asked in an interview to name the mayor he most admired, neither singled out the man who helped start his political career. “Fiorello La Guardia,” Mr. de Blasio, a Democrat, replied, not speaking Mr. Dinkins’s name and opting instead for a progressive Republican. “Unquestionably, I would model myself after La Guardia.” Mr. Lhota mentioned La Guardia, too. And while he did give a nod to Mr. Giuliani, another fellow Republican, he emphasized his great admiration for a different mayor, a Democrat: “There’s something about mayors who take off their jackets, roll up their sleeves and get to work,” he said. “That’s my vision of Ed Koch.” This year’s election is not a thematic rerun of 1989, when Mr. Dinkins barely defeated Mr. Giuliani, or of their return match in 1993, when Mr. Giuliani narrowly denied Mr. Dinkins a second term. A new generation of voters — and candidates — has come of age in a very different city. But history intrudes this year more fully than in any other New York mayoral campaign since at least the first Dinkins-Giuliani contest, when Mr. Dinkins became the city’s first black chief executive. Image Mayor David N. Dinkins Credit Vic DeLucia/The New York Times Mr. Dinkins and Mr. Giuliani were two of the most polarizing mayors in recent history, and their tenures are much debated. They each introduced a current candidate into public service, and in many ways inspired and shaped his views. There are personal ties as well: Mr. Lhota and his wife worked for Mr. Giuliani’s campaigns before Mr. Lhota joined the administration. Mr. de Blasio met his wife at City Hall, and when the couple married, under a tree in Prospect Park, Mr. Dinkins attended. Now the candidates are trying to grapple with those legacies, honoring the past while keeping it at arm’s length — and maybe slyly suggesting, either on their own or through proxies, that the other guy has some baggage he needs to account for. “The things that he stands for, that your candidate stands for, whether it’s with respect to taxes or crime or education, is going to take the city back to the Dinkins era, where he got started,” Edward F. Cox, the state Republican chairman, told a Democratic leader recently on NY1 News. “The Dinkins era of crime and grime and high welfare rolls, that’s what’s going to happen to the city.” Mr. de Blasio, meanwhile, said Mr. Lhota’s “long record” in the Giuliani administration is fair game for campaign criticism. Political etiquette intrudes this year, too, because the specters are not mere apparitions. Even if Mr. Dinkins and Mr. Giuliani are the mayors whom today’s two major candidates dare not name, they are still very much alive. Mr. Dinkins, after supporting William C. Thompson Jr. in the Democratic primary, has endorsed Mr. de Blasio. Mr. Giuliani vigorously campaigned for Mr. Lhota in the Republican primary. But after the shift toward the general election, the candidates are faced with a new challenge: How to capitalize on the former mayors’ support without tying themselves too closely to the past. Each must find his own path. “Bill was pretty young and not in a very high-level position, and his agenda basically says that government can do more, so it is dependent on the successes of the Bloomberg period,” said Ester R. Fuchs, a political science professor at Columbia, who was a special adviser to Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg during his first term. “Joe has a much more difficult time separating himself from Giuliani when his message has been we don’t want to go back to those bad old days. That’s a Giuliani message.” While Mr. de Blasio was philosophically aligned with the Dinkins agenda (and was even further left than his boss, as a recent article in The New York Times about his support for the Sandinistas in Nicaragua suggested), he was a tiny cog in carrying it out. He was a paid volunteer coordinator on the 1989 campaign and was recruited by Deputy Mayor Bill Lynch as a special assistant and political and community liaison. He was more a late-20s bystander to history than a policymaker. In the Giuliani administration, Mr. Lhota was more influential. Beginning with Mr. Giuliani’s first campaign in 1989, he was an adviser and his wife, Tamra, was a fund-raiser. After Mr. Giuliani’s 1993 victory, Mr. Lhota was hired as executive assistant and chief of staff to John S. Dyson, the deputy mayor for finance and economic development, and was promoted to finance commissioner in 1995, when he was 42. He later became budget director and, in 1998, deputy mayor for operations, the mayor’s second in command. Image Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani Credit Ron Frehm/Associated Press While he was a conscience of the administration, he was also its frontman on two ventures that Mr. Giuliani’s critics said reflected mayoral overreach. Mr. Lhota opposed city funds for the Brooklyn Museum after it exhibited a painting of the Virgin Mary that incorporated elephant dung, and that the mayor said was sacrilegious (Mr. Lhota now acknowledges that he overstepped and says he has a better understanding of the First Amendment). And he called securities firms that underwrote city bonds and urged them to stop giving money to the Citizens Budget Commission, a watchdog group, after the commission criticized the Giuliani administration’s fiscal agenda. “They are friends of mine, and I just gave them advice on how to save money,” Mr. Lhota said at the time, tongue insouciantly planted in cheek. “Joe strongly believes in the mayor’s political agenda.” Mr. Dyson said then. “But he has a bit more softness than some of the rest of us. That makes him a steadying influence around City Hall.” As first deputy, he succeeded two former close associates and prosecutorial colleagues of the mayor’s, Peter J. Powers — a friend of Mr. Giuliani’s since high school — and Randy M. Mastro. “I’m not an attorney, I’m not a prosecutor, I didn’t go to high school with the mayor,” Mr. Lhota said in 1999. “But the mayor has an ideal of what the city should be, and I share that ideal.” “I cannot be separated from Rudy Giuliani,” Mr. Lhota now says. “But I am also not Rudy Giuliani.” “Joe Lhota is not Rudy Giuliani,” Mr. Giuliani concurred during the primary campaign. Don’t expect to see either of the former mayors performing a prominent role in the coming weeks. After winning the primary with Mr. Giuliani’s support, Mr. Lhota is facing a different electorate, in which Mr. Giuliani’s name may conjure memories of racial tension exacerbated by police shootings and the mayor’s denunciation of relatively powerless targets, like the threatening “squeegee men” who congregated at intersections to clean drivers’ windshields. Asked whether his former boss was a political asset or liability, Mr. Lhota said: “I hate getting into those types of discussions; it’s like splitting the city apart.” Suffice to say, he added, “Rudy will be involved in my campaign.” Don’t look too hard for Mr. Dinkins either. Image Mr. Dinkins was criticized as ineffectual, turning city streets over to the likes of “squeegee men.” Credit Paul Hurschmann/Associated Press “He’s a friend, first of all, and someone I appreciate and admire and I think people respect him,” Mr. de Blasio said. As for his role in the campaign? “He’s been very gracious. We haven’t figured out the details.” Most of the invocations of the past have been oblique. Both candidates say they are focusing on the future. “It would be reductionist to suggest there’s a rerun going on,” Mr. de Blasio said. “We’re in a very, very different world. We’re in a different time that is much more about economics than demographics. It’s absolutely fair to talk about experience — including mine for the Clintons, for Andrew Cuomo. I wouldn’t say that Joe Lhota is summarized solely by his experience with Giuliani. They’ll look at the totality of our experience and whose side we’re on. This is about issues today, our vision for the city.” Whatever his supporters say, Mr. Lhota says, “I have never once mentioned my opponent and the former mayor in the same paragraph.” (Oops, there he did, but not by name.) “He worked for a former mayor; I worked for a former mayor.” “It’s not a rerun of ’93, it’s a discussion of what we do going forward, how his philosophy is different from my philosophy,” Mr. Lhota added. “There’s no one issue, but we differ on each and every one. “But 24 years ago? Why would I invoke something from the past when all I want to do is talk about the future? Forty percent of New Yorkers weren’t even here then.” Mr. Lhota is bedeviled by another live, hovering specter: Mr. Bloomberg. The mayor’s behind-the-scenes support for Christine C. Quinn, the City Council speaker, proved damaging in the Democratic primary, as Mr. de Blasio tarred Ms. Quinn as a Bloomberg clone and she finished third. Mr. Bloomberg made a point of announcing that he would endorse no one in the general election. (It probably didn’t help that after Hurricane Sandy, Mr. Lhota, then the chairman of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, referred to the mayor as an “idiot.” ) Mr. Lhota’s first challenge, then, has been overcoming an identity crisis. His mantra: “I am not Rudy Giuliani. I am not Michael Bloomberg. I’m Joe Lhota. This will be the first term of Joe Lhota.” For his part, Mr. Dinkins, in an interview, was plainly miffed about playing the fall guy and the suggestion that he presided over the bad old days in which, as Mr. Lhota put it, an “incompetent” mayor was “putting the city on the direction of ruin.” “The fact is that crime dropped greatly when we took office,” Mr. Dinkins recalled. “The crime that existed Dec. 31, 1989, was there for the first few weeks or months of 1990, of course. But we set our Safe Streets, Safe City agenda and we got the money.” The number of murders peaked in 1990, Mr. Dinkins’s first year as mayor, and by January 1993 the number of police officers had increased to 28,700 from 25,465, though other progress on his criminal justice agenda was hampered by budgetary shortfalls. Mr. Dinkins said that while Mr. de Blasio had not yet assigned him a specific mission in the campaign, “I’m sure that his advisers will weigh it and make a judgment that I can be helpful in a given instance or otherwise.” “I have enough ego to think I’m an asset,” he added. Image Mr. Giuliani was often criticized as overreaching and divisive. Credit Adam Nadel/Associated Press Mr. Giuliani declined to be interviewed for this article. But at a news conference this month, he responded to an ad by John A. Catsimatidis, Mr. Lhota’s primary rival, that proclaimed that Mr. Lhota was no Giuliani (that was meant as a negative for Mr. Lhota). “Thank goodness,” Mr. Giuliani laughed. “That would be really strange if there were two of me. Wow. The city could only handle one of me, just like they could only handle one of Ed Koch. Joe Lhota is Joe Lhota. Joe and I share a great deal in common, but we have differences. Joe is his own person. He has his own way of looking at things. We have pretty much the same political philosophy, but not exactly the same. The way to evaluate Joe is not do we have the same ideas, but is he going to bring the same kind of independent government to New York City that I brought and that Mayor Bloomberg brought.” Kenneth Sherrill, a professor emeritus of political science at Hunter College, discounted the resonance of the earlier campaigns with a very different electorate. “In 20 years, an entire generation of voters is replaced by the normal cycles of life and death,” Professor Sherrill said. “Additionally, many people move into the city and many move out. While it’s not fair to say that those who died remember anything, it’s a pretty good bet that they were more affected by the turmoil of that period than were the voters who have come of age since then. Similarly, those who moved out were probably closer to Giuliani’s views than those who moved in. Suburbanization and immigration have changed the makeup of the electorate dramatically. “The crack epidemic is over, and those who were most given to crime and violence have aged out of their violent years or have been institutionalized. So I think that appealing to the bad old days is something that is not going to resonate with as many people as some Giuliani loyalists seem to think.” After 12 years of Mayor Bloomberg, many New Yorkers today relish a more governable, civilized city. If tested, they might not even recognize a crack vial or a squeegee — symbols that evoke the years in which first Mr. Dinkins and then Mr. Giuliani ran the city. Still, for those who insist on looking backward, Mr. Dinkins offered his perspective. “Let’s assume that it’s a rerun,” he said. “If that be the case, I hope it’s ’89.”

Mayoral races
NYC
Bill de Blasio
Joseph J Lhota
David N Dinkins
Rudolph W Giuliani


NATO Hits Libyan Rebels’ Convoy, Rebel General Say

Abstract: ZUEITINA, Libya — The commander of the rebel army said it was “likely” that NATO warplanes conducted an airstrike against a convoy of rebel tanks early Thursday, killing at least four people in the second case of friendly fire in less than a week. The commander, Gen. Abdul Fattah Younes, said the tanks — deployed by the rebels on Thursday to the front lines for the first time — came under “a fierce attack” around 10:30 a.m. “It is likely it is NATO by mistake,” he said, adding that the rebels had notified NATO well in advance that the tanks were headed to the battlefield. General Younes said he was still waiting for an apology from NATO. “It is not possible to make a mistake with 20 tanks advancing on a large patch of desert land,” he said. “We hope that such a mistake will not be repeated.” He did not say how many tanks were destroyed, but a tank driver in the convoy said eight were damaged or destroyed. A NATO official in Brussels said that the organization was looking into the rebels’ account but did not have enough information to comment as yet. Later in the day, artillery or rocket fire near the strategic city of Ajdabiya sent hundreds of cars fleeing the city in a panic north toward the relative safety of Benghazi. Doctors in Ajdabiya and Benghazi said the dead included a doctor who was in an ambulance near the scene of the air attack. In the meantime, a second high-level Libyan official was reported to have defected. The government of Malta confirmed that a former Libyan energy minister, Omar Fathi bin Shatwan, had fled the embattled, rebel-held city of Misurata on a small fishing boat on Friday. He had been held incommunicado by the Maltese authorities until now. Mr. Shatwan said that many more high-level officials would like to leave, but that they were afraid for their safety and the safety of their families. “Those whose families are outside Libya will flee if they get a chance,” he told The Associated Press. “But many can’t leave, and all the families of ministers are under siege.” If the convoy was struck by a NATO aircraft, it would serve to underscore the lack of coordination between the Western alliance and the Libyan rebels during a war in which both sides drive similar vehicles as the front lines shift rapidly. The strike, against 17 rebel tanks making their debut on the battlefield, was a particularly untimely setback for a campaign that had lost momentum in the past week and has withered before the pro-Qaddafi forces’ overwhelming advantage in equipment and heavy weapons. On Thursday, General Younes said that trainers from Qatar were teaching rebel fighters how to use antitank weapons. The rebels have been hinting for several days that they would soon unveil a surprise at the front. Survivors of the attack said their convoy included equipment confiscated from Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi ’s military that in recent weeks had been refurbished and made road-worthy. They said it was being brought forward for a fresh attack against the oil town of Brega, which fell to the loyalists this week. The convoy included T-55 and T-72 tanks, according to General Younes, who said that the rebels gave NATO frequent updates throughout the day on Thursday about the position of the convoy, which included buses and armored vehicles. Shortly before the attack, about 30 miles southwest of Ajdabiya, the convoy stopped on the side of the road, said Alsounese Fazan, who was driving a jeep with the convoy. Mr. Fazan, who was being treated for minor injuries at Al Jalaa hospital in Benghazi, said the rebels heard the sound of what they thought were NATO aircraft in the morning. “We shouted ‘God is great!’ and after that we heard nothing,” he said. “And then they bombed us.” He said that he saw four separate explosions, one of which was about 100 yards away. Another wounded fighter, Amin Jaman, 32, said that all of the vehicles in the convoy were flying the bright, tricolor Libyan rebel flag. He said that he was standing on top of a stationary tank and never heard the sound of an airplane when the first ordnance exploded nearby. This would be the second time in less than a week that NATO warplanes struck a rebel target. On Saturday, Western warplanes killed 13 rebels in the same region of eastern Libya, where the rebels have been fighting a seesaw battle for weeks with the better equipped and trained forces of Colonel Qaddafi. That first mistake was brushed off by the rebels, but this one set off outrage among the troops, with some fighters shouting “Down With NATO” along the road from Brega to Ajdabiya, The Associated Press reported. NATO has also been criticized by rebel leaders for what they say is its failure to keep up the pace of attacks on the loyalist forces that was established in the first two weeks of the conflict. NATO officials have rejected the criticism, saying that the alliance was flying more missions every day. Ambulances near the scene rushed many of the wounded to the hospital in Ajdabiya, and then returned to the area of the front lines to retrieve more people. A doctor, Salah al-Awami, who drove in one of the ambulances, stopped to ask rebels where to find other wounded people, according to a colleague who was traveling with him, Dr. Ahmed Abdulrahman Zwei. At that moment, he said, an explosion in the desert nearby blew out the windows of the ambulance, and fatally wounded Dr. Awami. “The shrapnel came from the desert and passed right through the vehicle,” Dr. Zwei said. It was not immediately clear whether that blast was caused by an airstrike or an unrelated attack. At times during the past week, fire from the Qaddafi forces has reached the area where the ambulance was struck. Two witnesses said they suspected that the ambulance might have been hit by reckless rebel fire. A contingent of rebels, known as the Darnah Brigade, has for several days been firing 57-millimeter air-to-ground rockets from the back of pickup trucks. The rockets, carried in pods removed from confiscated government attack helicopters, fly wildly, and the brigade often fired them uselessly into the desert. Witnesses said the brigade was firing its rockets again in the vicinity of the convoy, at no apparent targets, and might have struck the ambulance with errant fire. General Younes said that after the airstrikes, Colonel Qaddafi’s forces attacked the rebels from three directions, forcing a retreat toward Ajdabiya. Rebel fighters said that later in the afternoon, a half-dozen rockets or other munitions exploded at the western edge of the city. The explosions caused a mass panic, as civilians and rebels, including some with heavy weapons, briefly packed the highway north to Benghazi. General Younes said that by Thursday night, the rebels had regained some of the ground they had lost, retaking “large sections” of the road toward Brega. In Tripoli, a government spokesman said NATO airstrikes hit at least three military academies in the vicinity of the capital. The spokesman, Musa Ibrahim, said NATO had stepped up its attacks around the country, apparently in response to the rebel leaders’ criticism. “It seems they felt sorry for these guys crying on TV and they had a wave of attacks,” Mr. Ibrahim said, adding that he thought NATO attacked during the day “to maximize the terror.”

Middle East and North Africa Unrest (2010- )


Filtering Out the Jargon of Politics

Abstract: A new computer tool lets you plug in the text of any politician’s speech and, with one click, it draws red lines through jargon. It is called Polifiller , as in “political filler,” and searches for phrases in what it calls the Hall of Shame. Here are a few: ■ Whole range of proposals ■ There are no easy answers ■ Hard-working families ■ Tough choices ■ At the end of the day ■ Let me say this ■ I believe in some simple things ■ Don’t take my word for it ■ Empty promises And so on. “The genesis was the onset of verbal jaundice,” said Hamish Thompson, the creator of Polifiller. “I hear the same phrases day in, day out on current affairs and news programs here.” Mr. Thompson runs a public relations firm in England, and many of the offending items on his list are specifically British. Speaking by phone on Tuesday, he noted that everyday political gas balloons are often punctured immediately in social media. “A very common political utterance here is, ‘I met a man in my constituency last week’ — and everybody immediately says, ‘Oh no you didn’t,’ ” Mr. Thompson said. He hopes to expand the Polifiller database, which was built after recent political party conferences in England. Much hackneyed thinking, if not specific language, is shared by our two nations. “We don’t have any submissions from your neck of the woods,” Mr. Thompson said. Oh, well, that’s easily fixed. For instance, Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo or his press office declared that he was making “history” roughly 80 times in his first 16 months in office. When that was reported by Thomas Kaplan in The New York Times, Mr. Cuomo toned it down. No longer is everything historic, just some things. Mr. Cuomo, who generally does not lean hard on the jargon keys, has done himself a favor by not crying history every week. Then there are “extraordinary” and “finest,” two words that New York politicians binge on. “I don’t know how many times I’ve said we have the finest police leader in the United States, and I believe that in my heart,” Mayor Bill de Blasio said on Aug. 13 of Commissioner William J. Bratton. He felt the same way a week later. “I’ve said it time and time again, I will never tire of saying it, we have the finest police leader in the United States of America in Bill Bratton,” Mr. de Blasio said on Aug. 21. Just for the record, he said Mr. Bratton was the finest on at least four occasions in August. Then the mayor gave that word a rest for a month. He was back blowing the trumpets in October, with two pronouncements of Commissioner Bratton’s finest-ness. Just this Sunday, he said it again. And again. And again. “I don’t know how many times I’ve said” it, Mr. de Blasio said, perhaps wondering why he was saying it so often. (Three times, by the way, in one news conference.) You’d think he was potty-training the commissioner with the constant encouragement and praise, but this is not a uniquely de Blasio tic; his predecessor, Michael R. Bloomberg, often referred to Mr. Bratton’s predecessor, Raymond W. Kelly, as the “finest” police boss in the country. And it has become practically mandatory that all New York City mayors must refer to the police force as the “finest department” in the country, an incantation so worn out that it has become like the singing of “God Bless America” during the seventh-inning stretch at Yankee Stadium. That particular ritual took hold during games played after the Sept. 11 attacks, when it was the right medicine; 13 years later, no one has figured out how to pull the plug. Not only is there no sign that the superlatives will stop any time soon, but they also appear to be spreading to other agencies. When a gas explosion in East Harlem killed eight people and knocked down two apartment buildings, Mayor de Blasio explained how the city was going to investigate the cause and urged the public to report leaks promptly. All solid, standard-issue crisis management stuff from the chief executive of the city. Then it was time to herald the extraordinariness of it all. “What people should have confidence in is they’re served by the finest fire department, the finest police department, on earth,” the mayor said. Everyone and everything is above average, including our gas-main explosions. The Polifiller machine is accepting online submissions to its jargon database. It holds great promise as we move forward, for the sake of our children, who are our future. If they can bear to listen.

New York
NYC
Politics
US Politics
Hamish Thompson


Kyrie Irving Is the Latest Casualty in a High-Stakes Game

Abstract: OAKLAND, Calif. — The kid had all the moves and a clever dribble. He was lightning quick to the seams of the defense. You could see his cockiness and conviction in the way he carried himself against older boys with more developed bodies. Yes, that kid, Kyrie Irving, was going places. But he was just a 15-year-old sophomore, not yet 6 feet tall, and skinny enough to hide behind a lamp post. Who could possibly have known that within four years he would be going to the N.B.A. to compete against grown men? This was in early 2008, Irving putting on a show in a high school gymnasium in Montclair, N.J. That night he was on the losing side, the local private school, which was playing against the crosstown public. He was also, by far, the best player. By his junior year, Irving was at one of those parochial high schools with a national ranking, prepping for his one-and-done season at Duke before the Cleveland Cavaliers anointed him the No. 1 pick of the 2011 N.B.A. draft. Irving was soon the best thing to see on a bad team while missing 65 games over his first three seasons. He had gained entry into a growing club and had also become part of a league conundrum and a vexing case study. Now more than ever, the basketball world wants to know: Is the N.B.A. breaking its young? “I’ve had that conversation with my friends, and I don’t have the answers,” Luke Walton, a Golden State Warriors assistant coach, said Saturday, less than 24 hours after Irving was declared out of the league finals with a fractured left kneecap that was operated on Saturday in Cleveland. Walton grew up in the household of his father, Bill, whose congenital foot problems more or less drained the promise and prime of a potential career great. He knows about misfortune, pain and how human frailty actually predates the Internet. “I mean, they used to play in Chuck Taylor sneakers and I couldn’t even walk in them,” he said after the Warriors, having won Game 1 in overtime, prepared for Game 2 on Sunday night. “But, yeah, now you have 260-pound guys running faster, cutting harder, and that probably puts more pressure on the joints.” LeBron James, who practically defines the basketball athleticism of a new era, seems to have the durability of a Marvel Comics Avenger while — similar to Miami with Dwyane Wade and Chris Bosh — teammates like Irving and Kevin Love have limped away from the fray, leaving James, like D.C.’s Superman, to carry the Cavs against the Warriors’ deep roster. As Walton said, basketball coaches, players and certainly journalists are not doctors or scientists. Nor, for that matter, are sports commissioners. Debilitating injuries in recent seasons to Derrick Rose, Russell Westbrook, Kevin Durant and Rajon Rondo and to a host of other young and, for basketball, middle-aged players have made the injury question a delicate one for the new commissioner, Adam Silver, to satisfactorily address. He tried on Thursday, saying: “Our data doesn’t go back that far at least to a point that it’s really reliable in terms of games missed. But at least over a short period of time we don’t see, even versus last year — games missed is not greater. In other words, the injury data isn’t showing that this was a worse year in terms of injuries than last year.” Like a zealous education reformer, Silver is enamored of that four-letter crutch word — data — and applied it to several questions at his prefinals news conference. And while it is true that data is preferable to guesswork, there is also common sense, beginning with the obvious need to study injuries as a generational phenomenon, not as a year-to-year or recent trend. Walton agreed that most tall players in his father’s day, even in their Chuck Taylors, lumbered into the post and were not consistently engaged in the athletic endeavors of the freakishly skilled big men who now prowl the perimeter. Players have become better conditioned. Defenses have adjusted with tactical aggression. Court dimensions remain unchanged. And into this cramped, virile mass of muscle comes a tide of 19-year-olds, their bodies already taxed by years of A.A.U. showcases and suddenly thrust into an 82-game schedule before they are fully developed. How much of a toll does that take at one point or another? Added to a physically taxing, more pressurized game are enhanced financial and commercial incentives to push through the pain. Hence, Irving’s 44 minutes of action in Game 1 on a knee that had been plagued by tendinitis all spring. David Blatt, the Cavaliers’ coach, said Irving was given a clean bill of health and did not have a restriction on his playing time. Who knows why the knee gave out as he drove against the Warriors’ Klay Thompson in overtime? There was even a question of how. After the game, Blatt said he believed there had been no contact. On Saturday, having seen the replay, he added there appeared to have been knee-to-knee contact. That’s just bad luck, which cannot be legislated out of a sport. But Blatt also said that injuries seemed to be more frequent in the N.B.A. than overseas, where he long coached and where teams generally play less. “Certainly, the heavy schedule that we play could be seen as a reason for the frequency of some of the injuries that we see, particularly the way that the game is going with the level of athleticism, speed and strength,” he said. He would not mind a schedule with about 10 fewer games. James is on record with a preference for 16 fewer, or 66, spread over the same amount of time. As vice president of the players’ union, and the most leveraged player of his time and perhaps all time, James might help effect change if he really believes long-term livelihoods are being increasingly endangered. If owners and network executives care about the players and their product, they should listen and be willing to sacrifice. In the meantime, James has Game 2 to worry about and at least two more after that. Given the supporting cast he has left, indestructibility may not be enough.

Basketball
Kyrie Irving
Sports injury
Cavaliers
NBA Championship


Search at Sea for Flight 370 Yields Optimism Amid Disappointment

Abstract: SYDNEY, Australia — Despite months of disappointment, toughing out seas lashed by cyclonic winds and thousands of hours of searching for debris thought to be on a seabed almost three miles deep, Paul Kennedy is determined. “We are really confident we are going to find it,” said Mr. Kennedy, search director for Fugro Survey, a division of a Dutch company hired by the Australian government to look for wreckage from Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 , which disappeared almost a year ago. “I am almost anticipating that phone call, from the guys on the boat, every day, literally,” Mr. Kennedy said in an interview from Perth, the Australian city where he is based. “I expect it anytime. I thoroughly believe we will run over it, and the guys will say, ‘Guess what we’ve found,’ and then we will move on to the next phase.” For those who have followed the enduring mystery of Flight 370, Mr. Kennedy’s faith that the plane will be found may be difficult to understand. The Boeing 777 was headed from Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, to Beijing with 239 people aboard on March 8 when it veered inexplicably off course and headed south. Despite numerous false sightings, no debris from the plane has been found. In January, the Malaysian government declared the loss of the flight an accident and said the passengers and crew were presumed dead . Fugro Survey has three ships searching off the coast of Western Australia for wreckage from the plane. So far, the vessels have relayed images of volcanoes, rift valleys, ridgelines, rocks, outcropping geological structures, sand, sediment and what could be sunken shipping containers, Mr. Kennedy said. Artificial shapes, when discovered, stand out plainly amid the organic matter, he said. “They reflect sound energy back very strongly.” The Australian Transport Safety Bureau said Thursday in a regularly scheduled briefing that the ships had relayed images of scattered objects on the seabed. “These objects may be man-made, but expert analysis of the imagery advises that none of them resemble an aircraft debris field,” the bureau said in a statement, adding that some of them appeared to have the dimensions of shipping containers. How Missing Jet’s Debris Could Have Floated to Réunion This animation shows where floating debris from Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 could have drifted if experts are correct about where the plane went down. Mr. Kennedy said he was confident that the vessels would not miss debris from the plane. Last August, he said, Fugro built targets about a yard in diameter and sank them about 2,300 feet deep in waters off an Australian island. “We always find those targets,” he said. “It makes me feel very confident, because our equipment in this search is much closer to the seafloor.” The arc of the search is a long, thin line that includes all of the most likely points of communication between the plane, as it flew south, and a satellite. The search began in the South China Sea but later moved to the southern Indian Ocean, where low clouds and poor weather have hindered visual scanning of the sea’s surface for debris. Occasional equipment failures have required some ships to make long trips back to port. Since Fugro’s part in the search began, three cyclones have torn through the search zone, producing “some of the roughest weather we have ever seen,” Mr. Kennedy said. During one storm, 55-foot waves were recorded, compared with 15 feet on a normal day, Mr. Kennedy said. “The boat got stuck in it,” he said. “There was nowhere to run. It was too dangerous to turn the ship around, so they had to stick it out.” The scientists and sailors on the vessels work 12-hour days, spending 42-day stretches at sea, he said. One of the three ships, the Fugro Equator, mapped nearly 40,000 square miles of seabed before being joined by a second ship, the Fugro Discovery. Both vessels have deep-sea towed submersibles that scan the seafloor for debris. Data is transmitted to the surface in real time, and later to analysts working in Perth, in the Australian capital of Canberra and in Connecticut, he said. “We have multiple sets of eyes looking at it,” Mr. Kennedy said. “When we run over it, the guys offshore are the ones who are going to see it first.” A third vessel, the Fugro Supporter, which carries an autonomous submersible, has searched around underwater volcanoes and in other places the towed equipment cannot reach. The Go Phoenix, a ship dispatched by Malaysia, is also working with the Fugro vessels. Mr. Kennedy said he was confident that the search area was indeed where the plane came to rest, citing the multiple experts who drew that conclusion independently of one another. Once the debris is found, it will be photographed, Mr. Kennedy said. “In an ideal world, they will try and get the tail section with a big Malaysia Airlines logo, and there will be no doubt in anyone’s mind then,” he said.

Malaysia Airlines Flight 370
Paul Kennedy
Fugro
Plane Crash
Indian Ocean
Malaysia Airlines
Australia


Mets’ Bay a Standout Player Happy to Blend In

Abstract: PORT ST. LUCIE, Fla. — For the first time in Jason Bay’s recollection, perhaps in his entire career, he was roundly booed. It happened here March 11, when the Mets played the Red Sox and many of the Boston fans in attendance chose to express their displeasure with Bay’s decision to leave the Red Sox with a sustained, grumbling boo when he came to the plate. As a player who is honest with himself, Bay would readily enumerate the times he had been booed before then, if only he could recall them. “Uh, I’m sure there was a time in Pittsburgh when I was having a rough year one year,” he said, shrugging. “But I honestly don’t know.” Until a few months ago, Bay, 31, was never the type of player to elicit any passionate negative sentiments, and even now after causing a minor stir when he left Boston, he still barely registers on the controversy meter. Although not nearly as reticent as John Olerud, a comparison some people have made, neither is he as outlandish as Manny Ramirez or as compelling as Mike Piazza. Despite being the Mets’ marquee free-agent acquisition last winter, Bay has been practically incognito this spring. He signed a four-year, $66 million contract Jan. 5, but aside from his first day at camp, he has been largely ignored. “That’s good,” he said of his low-profile spring. “That’s kind of how I like to live my life. In a lot of aspects, it’s because I’m not flashy. I’m not going to wow anyone in one certain category. I just kind of feel like I’m a good complement to those guys who are out there, and at the end of the year hopefully, it will be like, hey, you did really well.” Bay so far ranks about 14th on a list of story lines that have captivated fans and reporters since camp opened six weeks ago. Before a discussion of Bay bubbles to the surface, fans want to know about Jose Reyes’s thyroid, the buzz surrounding Jenrry Mejia and Ike Davis, the uncertainty about the pitching staff, David Wright’s muscles, K-Rod’s pink eyes and even Kelvim Escobar’s shoulder. Bay, meanwhile, just plays baseball and chats with teammates. “He’s just a guy that goes out and quietly plays like a superstar,” Wright said. “He goes about his business without a lot of flash, but he’s one of the best run producers in the game.” Even when there was controversy surrounding Bay, it barely registered in the public consciousness. He has changed teams five times, but until this off-season, the decision about where to play was never his. He could not help the fact he was traded four times. But for the first time in his seven-year career, he actually became the focus of a modicum of controversy when he left the Red Sox, and there followed a dispute about his health, and some of the things that were said about it. Originally, Bay was welcomed as a hero in Boston when he was traded there by Pittsburgh on July 31, 2008, as much because he was seen as the anti-Manny. So when he chose to sign with the Mets, some Red Sox fans, even though their team seemed almost indifferent at times about re-signing Bay, took umbrage. Hence the booing. “It doesn’t bother me,” Bay said, and in his case, one could actually believe it. “It’s just that in some aspect, you wish people would be a little more informed,” he said. “But that’s life.” The reference there was to the inner workings of his negotiations with the Red Sox, and the concise version is that Bay felt the Red Sox were not nearly as interested in signing him as the Mets were. Now, with less than a week to go in spring training, Bay is doing what Bay does. Among the starters, he has the second-most runs batted in (8) behind Wright, who has 11. In 16 games, Bay has hit .295 with two home runs, four doubles and a triple. “He’s just a pro,” Mets General Manager Omar Minaya said. “You don’t even know he’s there, but you really appreciate that he’s there.” INSIDE PITCH Manager Jerry Manuel hinted that Pedro Feliciano was the leading candidate to become the eight-inning setup man. Feliciano has been superb this spring. In eight appearances, he has not allowed a run and has struck out 11 and walked only 1. But he has been so valuable to the Mets as a left-handed specialist that they had hoped to keep him in that role and have someone like Ryota Igarashi be the setup man. But Igarashi has been inconsistent. ... Jose Reyes took live batting practice for the first time in a month Monday and was further along than the Mets expected. He is expected to run the bases Tuesday. ... The Washington Nationals claimed catcher Chris Coste off waivers. ... Johan Santana will pitch against the St. Louis Cardinals’ Class AAA team Tuesday. ... The answer to the question posed in the article on Page B11, who was the winning pitcher in Game 7 of the 1986 World Series, is Roger McDowell.


Report Shows Rise in E.R. Visits for Concussions Among Young

Abstract: Emergency room visits by children and adolescents for brain injuries jumped more than 60 percent over an eight-year period, according to a report released Thursday by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention , which said the increase was believed to be a result of increased awareness of concussions and other head injuries . The report said emergency rooms recorded an increase of visits from 153,375 in 2001 to 248,418 in 2009 among those 19 years old and younger because of traumatic brain injuries sustained in recreational activities. According to the study, the sports most likely to lead to the injuries are bicycling, football, playground activities, basketball and soccer. “We believe that one reason for the increase in emergency department visits among children and adolescents may be a result of the growing awareness among parents and coaches, and the public as a whole, about the need for individuals with a suspected T.B.I. to be seen by a health care professional,” said Dr. Linda C. Degutis, director of the C.D.C.’s National Center for Injury Prevention and Control. Concussions and their debilitating effects have been receiving increased attention, particularly in the N.F.L., which has taken steps to reduce the number of head injuries to players after years of distancing itself from research about the lasting impact of such injuries. The N.H.L. was also slow to adjust its rules to address the issue and was set to open its season Thursday with one of its best players, Sidney Crosby of Pittsburgh, sidelined because of the lasting effects of a concussion. The issue has also become a flashpoint in youth sports. According to a recent report by the National Center for Catastrophic Sport Injury Research, more than 500,000 concussions are sustained by the 4.4 million children who play tackle football. According to Dr. Julie Gilchrist, one of the C.D.C. study’s authors, the emergency room data is the first to quantify that the effort to educate coaches, parents and children about concussions is taking hold. “We would like to see the numbers go down because we hope we have gotten better at preventing them, but we knew the numbers would have to go up before they start to come down because awareness has to go up first,” Gilchrist said. Dr. Robert Cantu, co-director of Boston University’s Center for the Study of Traumatic Encephalopathy, also says the publicity surrounding concussions is having a significant impact. “I view the numbers as encouraging,” he said. “Some people will say that the numbers go up because the number of concussions is going up, but I don’t believe it is.” Although Gilchrist said a rise in concussions is possible because even youth athletes are getting bigger and faster, she said that if that were the reason for the increase, the numbers of children admitted to the hospital for head injuries would also increase. But those numbers have remained relatively constant. Still, Cantu said the biggest danger area is the amount of concussions that go undiagnosed, leading to potentially more debilitating and even fatal second-impact injuries. He said in football and hockey the number of actual concussions is six or seven times higher than the number diagnosed. Those numbers in hockey stem from research done in Canada in which physicians watched and counted the number of likely concussions sustained in games and practices in youth leagues. It is why Cantu, who is writing a book about concussions at the youth level, believes children under 14 should not play collision sports until they are made safer. “They should not play collision sports as they are currently played,” he said. “Listen, I love sports. I’m not trying to get rid of sports. I’m trying to get rid of head trauma in sports, particularly at the youth level.” Collision sports were not at the root of all head injuries in the C.D.C. study. The report said that children under 10 are most likely to visit the emergency room for head injuries sustained on a playground or while bicycling. The injuries among males ages 10 to 19 are most likely from football, followed by bicycling. From ages 15 to 19, football causes by far the most concussions (30.3 percent). Soccer, basketball or bicycling are the most likely culprits for females ages 10 to 19. Gilchrist said it was not possible to use the numbers to assess the risks of any particular activity because participation numbers are not part of the study. “Those activities may have the most concussions simply because they are so common,” she said. She also said future research hoped to pin down head injuries that are treated by primary care physicians and other doctors, not just ones that land in emergency rooms, to get a better handle on just how many concussions are being sustained and how they are treated. The C.D.C. has worked to increase awareness of the dangers of concussions with its Heads Up initiative, which began in 2003. It includes a section on its Web site dedicated to educating parents on the subject. It warns that even if an injury does not appear to be serious, it can have lasting repercussions, if left untreated, that affect memory, behavior, learning and emotional development. And while the numbers signal progress, experts agree it is only a start. “We are never going to get all of them, but we have to get a lot better,” Cantu said. “Not all the fault lies with the people on the sidelines. The kids have been to blame, too, playing through symptoms and not reporting. That’s why we have to educate them about the dangers of playing through them.” Cantu said 32 states had passed legislation mandating concussion education for young athletes, parents and coaches.


Nevada: Flooding Shuts Stretch of Interstate

Abstract: Heavy rains and flash flooding throughout the Southwest washed away portions of Interstate 15 in Nevada, prompting state officials on Tuesday to close a nearly 50-mile stretch of the major trucking artery, which runs between Las Vegas and Salt Lake City. Transportation officials said the I-15 corridor could be closed for three to four days while they rushed to repair pavement that had crumbled into slabs over muddy red dirt. The rain was blamed for at least two deaths in southern Arizona. A woman died after her car was swept away and became trapped against a bridge in Tucson, and a second woman drowned when her husband tried to drive across a flooded area in Pinal County. In addition, Zion National Park in southern Utah was closed after officials said roads were made impassable by debris from heavy rains.

Flood
Southwest US
Nevada
Las Vegas
Salt Lake City
Roads and Traffic
Delays


Browns Cut Kicker Ahead of Bengals Game

Abstract: Cleveland waived the slumping kicker Billy Cundiff and replaced him with the veteran Garrett Hartley, who will most likely kick against Cincinnati on Sunday.

Football
Browns
Billy Cundiff
Garrett Hartley
Bengals


Tech Industry Frets Over Possible Immigration Changes

Abstract: SEATTLE — American technology companies for years have relied on a steady stream of skilled engineers from overseas to help them create their products. Now many of those companies and their workers are girding for expected changes to immigration policy under President Trump that the companies say could hurt their ability to tap the technical talent they need to stay competitive. Mr. Trump, who has signed a series of executive orders related to immigration, is expected to soon take similar action on visa programs for foreign workers. A draft of a proposed executive order on the matter was leaked this week. While it is not clear how the final order will look and the draft contains some changes many in the technology industry support, some language alarmed people in Silicon Valley. The technology industry relies heavily on the H-1B visa program , through which highly skilled workers like software engineers are permitted to work in the United States for companies like Microsoft, Google and Intel. The draft proposed a regulation to “restore the integrity of employment-based nonimmigrant worker programs” and to consider options for modifying the H-1B program to “ensure that beneficiaries of the program are the best and the brightest.” That language rattled some executives and lawyers representing technology companies because of its implication of sweeping changes. “You’d be shocked at the number of people who are feeling fear, calling our firm alarmed based on what’s coming out,” said Priya Alagiri, an immigration lawyer based in the Bay Area who has tech clients. “It’s not just the undocumented. Even people who are here on green cards, legally. Citizens. They’re scared.” Some technology companies have started warning their investors of potential threats to their business from the changes. In a filing on Thursday with securities regulators related to its quarterly financial results, Microsoft included new language related to immigration. “Changes to U.S. immigration policies that restrain the flow of technical and professional talent may inhibit our ability to adequately staff our research and development efforts,” the company said in the filing. Brad Smith, Microsoft’s president, said in a statement that the company believes “in a strong and balanced high-skilled immigration system and in broader immigration opportunities for talented and law-abiding young people like the Dreamers,” a reference to young people who entered the country illegally as children but were allowed to remain by President Barack Obama. On Friday, Mark Zuckerberg, the chief executive of Facebook, waded into the broader immigration debate with a post in which he said he was concerned about Mr. Trump’s actions. Mr. Zuckerberg said his great-grandparents came from Germany, Austria and Poland, while his wife’s arrived from China and Vietnam. “We are a nation of immigrants, and we all benefit when the best and brightest from around the world can live, work and contribute here,” Mr. Zuckerberg wrote. “I hope we find the courage and compassion to bring people together and make this world a better place for everyone.” The technology industry is open to changes that have been proposed by members of Congress to better enforce the skilled worker program and adjust limits on the number of visas. But the companies see skilled worker visas as a signature policy issue that they have fought to protect and expand. They fear Jeff Sessions, the nominee for attorney general, and others in the administration will take a more severe approach to immigration and sweep up H-1B visas into prohibitions on refugees and stronger border protection. “The effect would end up being exactly the opposite of what Trump wants. Companies would go offshore like Microsoft did with Vancouver, Canada” to seek talent, said Robert D. Atkinson, president of the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation, a research group sponsored by several tech firms. Mr. Zuckerberg has been an outspoken proponent of immigration issues and how they may affect those inside and outside of Silicon Valley. In 2013, with other tech leaders, Mr. Zuckerberg backed Fwd.us , a nonprofit group dedicated to comprehensive immigration change. But Mr. Trump has made it increasingly clear that immigration policy may change drastically. Any changes to the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA, program, initiated under the Obama administration, could have significant effects on current tech employees who fear for their status. “Right now, we are focused on making sure for protections for 750,000 Dreamers who have DACA stay in place,” said Todd Schulte, president of Fwd.us, in an interview. “If the goal is to increase public safety and prevent future illegal immigration, the way to do that is to modernize the legal immigration process. That’s radically different than a large-scale ramp-up of rapid deportation.” The White House did not respond to a request for comment. On Friday, Mr. Trump signed a separate executive order that imposes a temporary ban on visas to people from seven predominantly Muslim countries. The Computing Research Association, a nonprofit organization that represents computing professionals in academia, government laboratories and other areas, said in a statement that the order “creates uncertainty and potential hardship among current students and researchers already here making important contributions and endangers our leadership role in a key field.”

Foreign Workers
Visas
Illegal Immigration
Facebook
Donald Trump
Mark E Zuckerberg
Executive Orders
DACA


Russia Raises Key Interest Rate

Abstract: MOSCOW — Russia’s central bank raised its key interest rate Thursday in an effort to curb inflation and slow the plunge of the ruble. The rate increase is the latest sign of the problems in the troubled Russian economy, which is expected to fall into recession next year. Falling prices for oil, Russia’s main export commodity, and Western sanctions over the Ukraine crisis have battered the currency and economy. Some economists say Russia is now trapped in the insidious economic quicksand of stagflation, or high inflation and low growth, with few good policy options. The bank said it would continue raising rates, if inflation and by extension the ruble decline did not come under control. But the central bank is fighting an uphill battle, as the economy continues to deteriorate. The increase in the bank’s base rate on Thursday to 10.5 percent from 9.5 percent should have encouraged Russian individuals, companies and banks to hold savings in rubles, rather than shift them into dollars. Instead, the ruble continued its plunge on Thursday. The central bank has also tried to defend the currency, by spending $75 billion since the beginning of the year in an effort to prop up the ruble. But it has been a fruitless task. The currency has weakened preciptiously since the start of the year, falling more than 40 percent to around 55 rubles to the American dollar. The bulk of the drop has taken place since September. Officially, the Russian central bank has decided to let the ruble float freely, so that a decline against the dollar might actually help domestic manufacturers and farmers, while rising prices of imports in ruble terms crimp demand for them, helping the trade balance. The bank has largely switched from setting a target for exchange rates, to setting a target for inflation. But it is a difficult balancing act. And because a large portion of consumer goods, including food, is imported, the bank cannot cap inflation without controlling the ruble slide. The bank had been striving to keep rates low, to bolster business activity and growth, rather than steepen the economic slowdown with higher rates, but pivoted to raising rates last spring after the Ukraine crisis put more pressure on the ruble. The pressure has only mounted. A week ago, the Russian government conceded for the first time that the economy was facing a recession. The government said the economy will contract by 0.8 percent in 2015, while inflation is now running at 9 percent.

Russia
Interest rate
Ruble
Banking and Finance
US Dollar
Central Bank of Russia
Moscow