Justices Hear Debate on Suing Companies for Seemingly Harmless Falsehoods

Abstract: WASHINGTON — A case about false information on the Internet gave rise to a vivid and occasionally personal argument on Monday at the Supreme Court . The question in the case was whether companies that say false but seemingly benign things about consumers may be sued under the Fair Credit Reporting Act. Justice Sonia Sotomayor said that many sorts of apparently harmless misinformation could cause damage. She said, by way of example, that she knew single people who searched the Internet to find out if prospective dates were married or not. “So if you’re not married and there’s a report out there saying you are, that’s a potential injury,” Justice Sotomayor said. Justice Anthony M. Kennedy suggested that the ubiquity of questionable information in the digital age may require a fresh approach. “On the Internet, in this cyber-age that we have where all this information is out, there has to be some real injury” caused by misinformation, he said, suggesting that mass dissemination of falsehoods may warrant different treatment than neighborhood gossip. The case concerned Spokeo, a company that sells personal data online. It distributed a profile of Thomas Robins that was riddled with errors. The profile said he had a graduate degree, though he did not; that he was employed and in good shape financially, though he was out of work; and that he was married and had children, though neither was true. The profile included a photograph of a different man. “These are not unimportant details,” Justice Elena Kagan said. “They basically got everything wrong about him. You know, they got his marital status wrong. They got his income wrong. They got his education wrong. They basically portrayed a different person.” Mr. Robins sued under a part of the credit law that provides damages of up to $1,000 without proof of direct harm, and he sought to represent a class of people with similar claims. Spokeo responded that Congress did not have the power to create a legal right to sue for plaintiffs who have suffered no direct and concrete injuries. The United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit last year disagreed . “A plaintiff can suffer a violation of the statutory right without suffering actual damages,” a unanimous three-judge panel ruled. Justice Kagan said that false statements may be damage enough. “Why isn’t the dissemination of false information about you in a credit report,” she asked, “perfectly sufficient if Congress says that’s a concrete injury?” Andrew J. Pincus, a lawyer for Spokeo, said suits should be allowed only if plaintiffs can show the concrete injury generally required to establish standing to sue. He gave two examples: harm to credit or a missed job opportunity. Justice Kagan responded that people almost never know why a bank or potential employer turned them down. “I mean,” she said, “it’s actually the quintessential kind of injury that you will never be able to detect and surely not to prove.” But Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. asked, “Is there anything here to indicate that anybody other than Mr. Robins ever did a search for him” on the Spokeo site? William S. Consovoy, a lawyer for Mr. Robins, said there was nothing in court records to show that. Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. gave examples of what he said were harmless falsehoods. He asked, for instance, whether someone with an unlisted phone number could sue Spokeo for giving an inaccurate one. Mr. Consovoy said Congress could allow suits over that misinformation. Malcolm L. Stewart, a lawyer for the Obama administration, argued in support of Mr. Robins, a stance that seemed to surprise Chief Justice Roberts. “I would have thought that the president would be concerned about Congress being able to create its own enforcement mechanism,” he said. “I thought that you would be concerned that that would interfere with the executive’s prerogative.” Mr. Stewart said he could imagine a law presenting that problem. The credit law, however, was appropriate and valuable, he said. Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg said the lurking issue in the case, Spokeo Inc. v. Robins , No. 13-1339, was the possibility of a class action involving “millions of plaintiffs and billions of dollars.” But both she and Justice Kagan suggested that class certification might not be appropriate for claims under the credit law like the one pressed by Mr. Robins.

Computers and the Internet
Tech Industry
Spokeo
Supreme Court,SCOTUS
Thomas Robins
Lawsuits


RIM’s Delay Caused by Poor Performance, Analysts Say

Abstract: OTTAWA — When Research in Motion said in December that a new line of BlackBerry phones would not appear until the end of 2012, the announcement provoked equal parts of shock and disbelief from analysts. Shock because even RIM acknowledges that the new phones are vital to reversing its rapid loss of market share in North America. At the same time, analysts were skeptical about the company’s explanation that the delay stemmed from its decision to wait for a new, improved microprocessor. Instead, many analysts say that both the new phones and RIM’s new operating system, BlackBerry 10, may have significant performance problems and are delaying the project. “They can’t get the infrastructure and the operating system ready in time,” said Peter Misek, an analyst with Jefferies & Company. Alkesh Shah, an analyst at Evercore Partners, agreed. “Waiting for the chipset is a contributing factor in a number of factors that led to the delay,” he said. “Creating the ecosystem for the phones is the bigger problem.” Mr. Shah and several other analysts said that delays in the development of BlackBerry 10 and poor battery performance in prototype versions of the new phones were behind the decision to further delay production until faster, smaller and more power-efficient chips became available in late 2012. Those delays made it impossible for RIM to begin selling the new phones early in 2012, as it first promised. “One of the problems is the delay in the BB 10 software and that may have led to the selection of chips that caused the most recent delay,” said Rod Hall, an analyst with JPMorgan Chase. While the analysts’ skepticism is partly based on speculation, it has also been fueled by RIM’s general loss of credibility with them. For more than a year, the company has been forced to repeatedly restate financial forecasts and failed to deliver some critical, new products on time. “They don’t have a firm grasp of the issues and realities of bringing these phones to market,” said Colin Gillis, an analyst with BGC Partners. “There are not many believers right now,” RIM has declined to identify the new chip. RIM also declined to comment directly about development problems with BlackBerry 10 or the battery life of the new phones. It reiterated the earlier remarks of its co-chief executives, Jim Balsillie and Mike Lazaridis, that the delay was simply the result of its decision to wait for an improved chipset. “RIM made a strategic decision to launch BlackBerry 10 devices with a new, LTE-based dual core chipset architecture,” the company said, referring to a chip that supports a high-speed wireless service known as LTE that is now available in some parts of the United States. “As explained on our earnings call, the broad engineering impact of this decision and certain other factors significantly influenced the anticipated timing for the BlackBerry 10 devices.” But it is no secret that RIM has been struggling with its new operating system, which is based on technology from QNX Software Systems, a company based in Ottawa that RIM acquired in 2010.The BlackBerry PlayBook , RIM’s money-losing tablet computer , was the company’s first product to use a QNX operating system. Despite the BlackBerry brand’s strong association with e-mail, it arrived in April 2011 without e-mail software or the ability to directly synchronize users’ address books and calendars. Software that was supposed to remedy those issues and others has been delayed and is now promised for February. Mr. Misek, said that RIM initially tried to merge, or thread, some of its current operating system with QNX to speed up the development timetable. But that proved unsuccessful, forcing RIM to create more software code from scratch than it initially anticipated. Michael Morgan, the senior analyst for mobile devices at ABI Research, said that many problems with BlackBerry 10 came from making it work on RIM’s network, which moves all BlackBerry data, giving corporate e-mail a high level of security and all users lower wireless data bills. To accommodate people with both BlackBerry phones and PlayBook tablets, RIM had to redesign security features on its network, which currently allow only one hand-held device access to any given user’s account, Mr. Morgan said. “When you change something that low level in an operating system, it has ramifications which affect every function,” Mr. Morgan said. Like many analysts, Mr. Morgan also says he thinks that RIM is struggling to bring the long battery life that has been a hallmark of BlackBerrys to the new phones. While the QNX operating system has a reputation for reliability, he said, it has been mainly used in situations where power consumption is not a significant concern. Many touch-screen navigation and control systems in cars, for example, use QNX. But automobiles carry large batteries and alternators that recharge them. When ABI’s researchers disassembled PlayBook tablets, Mr. Morgan said, they found several systems to reduce power consumption. He said, however, that those measures might not be enough for phones that will have much smaller batteries than the PlayBook. “QNX is being applied now in a place it hasn’t been before,” he said. Adding to the problem is RIM’s decision to make the new phones operate on LTE networks. Most current chips that operate on those high-speed networks have a reputation for quickly draining batteries. While LTE networks are relatively scarce today, they are likely to be an important selling point for new phones a year from now.

Blackberry (Handheld Device)
Research In Motion Ltd
New Models Design and Products
Wireless Communications


California: Contractors Arrested in Fire Sting

Abstract: Five men were arrested in South Lake Tahoe as part of a sting intended to catch unlicensed contractors preying on victims of the recent wildfires in the area. The arrests, announced by the state insurance commissioner, occurred Wednesday; all five men were charged with misdemeanors. The fires, which began on June 24 after an illegal campfire was left unattended, burned 3,100 acres and destroyed more than 250 homes. Damage estimates are more than $150 million.


Snacking at the Roman Colosseum? Prepare to Pay a Fine

Abstract: ROME — Dapper as always in their bleached white shirts and matching caps, members of Rome’s municipal police force were out on the Spanish Steps one warm autumn day, trolling for offenders. “Stefano, look! There’s another eater,” one officer said to another before sauntering over to a baffled couple who had begun munching on an inoffensive-looking meal while sitting on the steps. The culprits, a couple of foreign tourists, had settled down on the landmark, one of Rome’s most famous. In their hands were the offending items: sandwiches. The officers pounced, and after much waving of hands, the couple wrapped up the sandwiches and slouched away, looking sheepish. They were in violation — unwittingly, in all probability — of a municipal ordinance that went into force this month. The measure outlaws eating and drinking in areas of “particular historic, artistic, architectonic and cultural value” in Rome’s center, to better protect the city’s monuments, which include landmarks like the Colosseum , the Pantheon and the Spanish Steps . Fines range all the way up to $650 for culinary recidivists. Italian cities, Rome included, have long enacted ordinances and regulations to protect monuments from ill-mannered tourists (and residents). But after a recent stroll through the city center, where he saw several people making themselves at home, literally, Rome’s mayor, Gianni Alemanno, decided the rules needed toughening. Antonio Gazzellone, the municipal council member responsible for tourism, noting that alcohol may have been involved, said, “There were people camped out, and we weren’t able to move them.” The new ordinance, which also outlaws camping or “setting up makeshift beds,” will “give monuments back their proper decorum,” he said. “Rome needs to be protected, its beauty respected.” But there has already been some grumbling around town. Recently, a salesclerk named Massimo strode off with his lunch after a police officer sharply blew her whistle until he stopped eating a sandwich on the Spanish Steps. “It seems to me that the municipal police have more important things to deal with than people eating sandwiches,” said Massimo, who asked that his last name not be used because, after all, he had just broken the law. Others fretted that the ordinance is too broad. “From now on, a tourist walking around the Colosseum with an ice cream cone will be fined,” said Angelo Bonelli, a member of Italy ’s Green Party, who flagrantly challenged the ban by eating a sandwich in front of the Pantheon while taunting a municipal police officer. Rome has passed any number of bans during the past five years, against prostitutes, homeless people and men taking their shirts off in parks to sunbathe, Mr. Bonelli noted, often to little effect. “You can’t govern with bans,” he said of Mayor Alemanno. “It’s a sign of his inability to control the city.” Many Romans agree. One recent Saturday, a few hundred protesters gathered in a flash mob on the steps leading to City Hall, chomping on pizza and panini as police officers registered the offenders. “Panino is not a crime,” one attendee wrote on his Facebook page. Other Italian cities, where tourists and residents coexist in a delicate balance, have also taken measures to promote civility and good manners. For years it has been illegal in Venice to eat bag lunches while sitting on the steps around St. Mark’s Square, where 25 million tourists converge each year, said Marco Agostini, the city’s director general. “It’s the one place in Venice that all visitors want to see,” he said, “and we can’t have a situation where you have to climb over people eating salami sandwiches.” This summer, Venice — along with the square’s business association — hired eight people to act as “guardians” of St. Mark’s, answering sundry questions, like “Where do I find the Colosseum?” Mr. Agostini said, and not only politely informing tourists that the Colosseum is in Rome but also directing them to the gardens just around the corner, where munching outdoors is legal. In Florence , too, rope cordons went up this summer around the steps of the city’s cathedral, where visitors were asked not to sit. Custodians kept watch from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. each day, “but in fact, after hours, people went back to sitting there,” said Ambra Nepi, the spokeswoman for the Opera di Santa Maria del Fiore , which oversees the cathedral and nearby religious monuments. Ms. Nepi said she understood that Florence could be expensive for some tourists, hence the bag lunches, and that there was a distinct lack of benches in the city center. But some visitors “abused the situation” and sprawled on the cathedral steps to suntan or nap, she said. “People need to know that after all this is a church,” she added. “It’s a way of educating visitors, and it’s not as though we went out with guns.” Mr. Gazzellone, Rome’s head of tourism, dismissed concerns that visitors strolling with ice cream or slices of pizza would be fined, “as long as they throw any waste in the trash bins.” It’s more a question of civility, he said: “You wouldn’t eat a pizza and drop tomato sauce all over the steps of the White House in Washington .” The ban must be renewed at the end of the year, he said, but that is considered pro forma. “We’ll see what the results are,” he said of the new law. “Personally, I hope it is never applied — because it means that citizens and guests to Rome have understood how to behave. I hope we don’t make a penny — because it means the city is being respected in its beauty.”

Food
Historic preservation
Rome
Fines
Colosseum


On Patrol With Police as Philippines Battles Drugs

Abstract: MANILA — Officer Kathlyn Domingo walked through a maze of narrow alleys, ducking under jumbles of electrical wires and hanging laundry to the open doorway of a flimsy two-story house made of found wood and rusty nails. Tough, earnest and carrying a .45-caliber pistol with a pink grip, Officer Domingo, 30, patrols one of Manila’s most destitute slums, Santa Ana. Last month, I spent a night on patrol with her and some colleagues, to see, from their perspective, the Philippines’s deadly crackdown on drug dealers and users. More than 2,000 people have been killed by the police — and at least an additional 1,000 by vigilantes — since President Rodrigo Duterte took office in July and promised to rid the country of the drug scourge. Officer Domingo prefers to focus not on the violent nature of Mr. Duterte’s campaign , but on the 750,000 people who have surrendered to the police and presumably given up a life of drugs and crime. She called through the doorway to one of them, Roberto Elsis. Officer Domingo said Mr. Elsis was holding down a job. He told me he had not used drugs since 2007, so I asked him why he was surrendering now. Image Roberto Elsis came to the door at the beckoning of Officer Kathlyn Domingo. Credit Aurora Almendral “I was on the watch list,” Mr. Elsis explained, referring to the list of names drawn up by government officials. “I had no choice.” Neighborhood leaders and police and drug enforcement officers compile lists of those suspected of using or dealing methamphetamine, and then officers go door to door to find them. Those who do not agree to turn themselves in can end up dead . As we walked back to the car, a woman stopped us. It was Mr. Elsis’s mother, who had heard that the police had gone to her son’s door. “I was scared,” she said. “I thought they were going to kill him.” I saw no killings on my shift, but I saw plenty of fear. Residents of Santa Ana and other slums told me that armed, masked police officers roam their streets at night threatening young men who worry about being shot dead or swept into overcrowded jails. One woman, who did not want to give her name for fear of reprisal, said life was easier when she only had to avoid drug dealers. Now, she said, the enemy is the police. But the officers say Mr. Duterte has ushered in a new era of safety and order. The streets have been cleaned up, there is less crime and drug dealers have gone into hiding. The police say people are grateful, a sentiment backed up by polls showing Mr. Duterte’s job approval rating has remained steadily high at 77 percent. Image Col. Robert Domingo, a onetime commander of the Santa Ana station, is among those who believe the Philippines is under a new era of safety and order. Credit Aurora Almendral “The community trusts us,” said Col. Robert Domingo, who was commander of the Santa Ana station, but has since been reassigned. He said Mr. Duterte had bolstered officers’ morale and inverted the relationship between the police and criminals: “We’re the ones hunting them down now, when before they used to hunt us.” As part of the antidrug campaign, the Santa Ana force swelled to 250 officers from 149, part of Mr. Duterte’s effort to expand the national police by thousands of officers. “This is not business as usual in the Philippine National Police,” Colonel Domingo said. “This is a war. This is the golden age of the Philippine police.” When I arrived at the Santa Ana station at 6 p.m. on a Saturday, I was immediately confronted with a steaming tangle of limbs and shirtless bodies. The station’s jail — a single cell, about 12 feet wide by 20 feet deep — held 48 men, some of whom said they had been there for more than a month. Men crouched on the floor, leaned against one another, hung from the rafters in hammocks. They share one toilet inside the cell. The air was rank with sweat. Image The jail at the station in Santa Ana, whose officers patrol one of Manila’s most destitute slums. Credit Aurora Almendral I headed out for patrol with three polite young officers. Mark Castañeda, 25, ran through the typical cases he might encounter on patrol: busted manhole covers, fights between neighbors. He joked that the cruelest call he had ever responded to was for cat abuse. When we turned a corner into Dagonoy, a slum crammed with makeshift houses, Officer Castañeda said: “Now we’re entering the war zone.” Video Our reporter, Aurora Almendral, spoke to a police officer, Mark Castañeda, in the Philippines about vigilante killings prompted by President Rodrigo Duterte's campaign against drugs. Drugs are openly dealt and used in Dagonoy, but “war zone” felt like an exaggeration. Families were sitting outside, children playing in the street. As we drove through with police lights spinning, teenagers stopped their basketball game to glare at us. I asked Mr. Castañeda about the vigilante killings, and he assumed I was referring to the widespread belief in the slums that the police were involved, backed up by a growing body of anecdotal evidence collected by the Philippine Commission on Human Rights that supports that assumption. He does not believe the police are involved but says that many people do because “we’re the only ones with the capacity” to kill. At the 8 p.m. shift change, Mr. Castañeda dropped me off at the Dagonoy police substation, where a sign taped to the wall reads: “Dagonoy PCP observed human rights.” Image The police substation in Dagonoy, a slum in Santa Ana where drugs are openly dealt and used. Credit Aurora Almendral Dave Abarra, the station’s captain, said he posted the sign to remind officers not to abuse suspects. When I asked him about the rights of the suspects killed without trial, Captain Abarra said, “Human rights activists defend the rights of the drug addicts and users, not the rights of their victims.” Then I met Officer Domingo, who was preparing for a night of visiting drug suspects. She proudly showed me a three-inch-thick file of signed papers of surrender, and we flipped through her cellphone photos of users. Image Officer Domingo showing photos of drug users who have surrendered. Credit Aurora Almendral She tapped the face of a man she encountered on a previous door-to-door operation. “He surrendered to me and promised to stop,” she said. The next time she saw him, he was in the Santa Ana jail, having being swept up by other officers. “It was so annoying,” she said. “He even tried to hide from me.” During the shift, Officer Domingo met with Bernardita Enales, chairwoman of the Barangay 775 neighborhood, who had called for drug suspects to come to her office to surrender. Image Bernardita Enales, center, the chairwoman of the Barangay 775 neighborhood, in her office with a couple seeking to surrender. Credit Aurora Almendral Ms. Enales was dozing in her chair when we arrived. No one had shown up. “They’re afraid of getting killed!” Ms. Enales said, laughing. Officer Domingo laughed politely, and added that maybe they were afraid of getting caught, or put in jail. A watchman eventually rounded up a husband and wife. The man admitted to using drugs; the woman said she had never tried them. Officer Domingo filled out the surrender papers for both. The effectiveness of the antidrug campaign depends on the cooperation of neighborhood officials like Ms. Enales, but she has produced only seven surrenders in the five months since the start of the campaign, according to police records. Image At the end of the night of patrolling, the police car sat outside the Dagonoy police substation. Credit Aurora Almendral We spent the rest of the night making rounds. Captain Abarra joined us, and pointed out an empty alley where he said drug dealers used to hang out, until three of them were killed the week before. “It’s true that fear has an effect,” he said. “If you’re gentle with the right hand, you have to be hard with the left.”

Police Brutality,Police Misconduct,Police Shootings


French Publisher Won’t Print Book on Moroccan King After Authors’ Arrest

Abstract: PARIS — A major French publishing house has decided not to publish a book critical of King Mohammed VI of Morocco after its two authors were arrested last week in Paris and charged with blackmail and extortion on accusations they demanded 2 million euros, or about $2.3 million, to keep the book unpublished. The latest developments in the affair have been likened by the French foreign minister, Laurent Fabius, to a “bad movie.” The scandal, which raised questions of journalistic ethics here, has nonetheless erupted less than a year after relations between Morocco and France were mended following a long diplomatic row. Lawyers on both sides are now fighting a media battle to paint the authors either as devious journalists interested only in leveraging their work to make money or as respected but fallible professionals who fell into a financially tempting trap laid before them by the Moroccan leadership. The Éditions du Seuil publishing house said in a statement on Monday that its “relationship of trust” with the authors, Catherine Graciet and Eric Laurent, had been “dissolved” and that publication of their book, initially planned for early 2016, could not go ahead. Mr. Laurent has said that he will try to publish the book elsewhere. The two authors were arrested last week during a police sting operation after a meeting with a representative from the Moroccan royalty in a luxury hotel in Paris. The Moroccan authorities had filed a complaint of blackmail after a first meeting between Mr. Laurent and the royal representative, which led to the opening of a formal investigation in Paris. The Journal du Dimanche newspaper, which said it had obtained audio recordings made by the representative at the meetings and a document signed by the two journalists, reported on Sunday that Mr. Laurent and Ms. Graciet had agreed to never write about Morocco again in exchange for 2 million euros. They left the hotel with a cash advance of 40,000 euros, or about $45,000, each, the newspaper reported. The police, who were monitoring the meeting, then swooped in to arrest them. Lawyers for Mr. Laurent and Ms. Graciet confirmed in telephone interviews that their clients had signed the document and received the cash advance, but said that the Journal du Dimanche had published truncated and misleading excerpts from the audio recordings made during the meetings. Both lawyers questioned the legal grounds of the sting operation and said they would try to have the case thrown out. Mr. Laurent and Ms. Graciet are currently free under court supervision and have been barred from speaking with each other. Neither has denied that they accepted a financial transaction. But both assert that it was Mohammed VI’s representative, not them, who first made the offer to pay to keep the book under wraps, rejecting accusations that they were attempting to blackmail the king and describing the deal instead as a “trap” that they fell into. Mr. Laurent, in a phone interview from his lawyer’s office, said that the idea of paying not to publish had first been put forward by the Moroccan representative, a lawyer named Hicham Naciri, whom he first met in Paris on Aug. 11. The meeting, the first of three, was set up after Mr. Laurent called the king’s office in late July for comment on the two journalists’ reporting. Mr. Laurent said he ended up accepting the deal, mainly for personal reasons — his wife has cancer, he said. “I was tempted,” Mr. Laurent said. “Do I regret it? Yes, probably. But I’ve been doing this job for over 35 years, I don’t have anything to hide, and I work on the assumption that what was offered to us was a private transaction related to my work.” “I took risks to investigate, to discover a certain number of things, to acquire a certain number of documents,” Mr. Laurent added. “After that, it’s my right to publish a book or not to publish a book.” Ms. Graciet trod a similarly fine line between journalistic integrity and criminal liability in her defense, acknowledging that the deal was ethically wrong but arguing that it was a private transaction consented to by both parties, and that it broke no laws. She told Le Parisien, a newspaper, that Mr. Laurent had told her about the Moroccan representative’s offer but that she was incredulous about it, and agreed to attend the last meeting at Mr. Naciri’s insistence to learn more — only to be tempted by the offer as well. “I had a moment of weakness,” she said. “It’s human, no? Everyone wonders what one could do with their life with 2 million euros. Try to imagine the situation. And it was to forgo publication of a book, not to kill someone.” Still, the news that Ms. Graciet and Mr. Laurent had consented to pull their book project in exchange for money was all the more shocking in France and Morocco because they had established a reputation in both countries as fierce critics of the Moroccan leadership. In 2012 they published a book that depicted Mohammed VI as a “predator king” who had carved up Morocco’s economy to increase his personal wealth. Ms. Graciet also wrote a book with Nicolas Beau in 2009 that criticized Leila Trabelsi, the wife of the former Tunisian dictator Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali , and in 1993 Mr. Laurent had published a more positive book made up of interviews with Hassan II, Mohammed VI’s father and predecessor. Eric Dupond-Moretti, the Moroccan king’s lawyer in France, speaking to the i-Télé news channel on Monday, said that Mr. Laurent was the “first to mention money” and maintained accusations that the journalists had blackmailed the Moroccan king by suggesting that the book would contain information that might destabilize the monarchy. Without offering specifics, Mr. Laurent did not deny that he and Ms. Graciet were working on information that was compromising for the king, saying that the book had the potential to “rattle” the monarchy. He said Mr. Naciri insisted that they reveal the sources of their reporting for the book, which they refused to do. France and Morocco recently resumed judicial cooperation after an extended diplomatic spat , but Mr. Fabius, the foreign minister, brushed aside any suggestions that their relationship might sour once more over the affair. “It’s a bad movie,” Mr. Fabius said on French radio and television on Sunday. “It doesn’t shake up relations between our two countries.”

Catherine Graciet
Eric Laurent
Mohammed VI
Editions du Seuil
Publishing
Extortion and Blackmail
Books
Morocco
France


Family Battles U.S. Over 10 Double Eagle Coins Worth Millions

Abstract: PHILADELPHIA — Who owns 10 exceedingly rare American gold coins from 1933? Is it the family of a local gold dealer who died 21 years ago? Or is it the United States government, which produced a half million of the coins before melting all of them — well, almost all of them — down? Family members, who say they found the coins in a safe deposit box in 2003, argue they are the rightful owners of the exquisite “double eagle” $20 coins, each now worth millions of dollars. The government argues that the coins, never officially released, belong to the United States, and not the heirs of Israel Switt, the gold dealer. And so to court. In a case that began on Thursday, jurors are getting an unusual lesson in Depression-era history, and will ultimately decide whether Mr. Switt was merely “colorful,” as a lawyer for the family described him, or a thief. Each side explained in opening arguments that, for all of the history and complexities of 1930s Mint procedures and records to come, the case is quite simple. They disagreed, however, about what the simple point of the case was. Assistant United States Attorney Jacqueline Romero, presenting the government’s case, told jurors, “You are going to hear a remarkable and intriguing story about gold coins that were stolen from the U.S. Mint.” “Israel Switt was somehow involved” in the theft, she said, probably with the help of a corrupt cashier at the Philadelphia Mint. The government had linked Mr. Switt to every double eagle that had emerged over the decades, she said, including 10 tracked down in the 1940s and one sold with the agreement of the government by a dealer, Stephen Fenton, in 2002 for $7.6 million. That sale was based on a government mistake, she said; these coins would not get the same dispensation. The government will prove, she pledged, that the heirs knew that the goods were not legitimately theirs, and so the jury should return the coins “to their rightful owner, the people of the United States of America.” Barry Berke, a lawyer arguing on behalf of Mr. Switt’s heirs, the Langbord family, told the jury that the case was, simply, about power and government overreach. Washington should not be able to seize property from citizens “unless it can prove it is entitled to — and not just powerful enough to take it,” he said. He called the government’s case an attempt to “rewrite history,” and promised to present alternate explanations for treasured coins coming legitimately into the Langbords’ hands: the mint commonly exchanged coins for gold, he said, and the cashier of the mint kept an “open bag” of 1933 double eagles near his desk. How did the coins get out? Gloriously designed by Augustus Saint-Gaudens, the 1933 double eagles were never officially distributed. President Franklin D. Roosevelt, trying to stop a bank panic and to stem hoarding, issued an executive order that made owning large amounts of gold bullion and coins illegal. So while nearly a half million were made, all but two, sent to the Smithsonian, were supposed to have been reduced to bullion. But in 2004, Joan Langbord, Mr. Switt’s daughter, and her sons contacted the United States Mint to say they had discovered the 10 coins tucked away in a safe deposit box, within a folded Wanamaker’s department store bag, and asked for help in authenticating them. Instead, the government seized the double eagles — an eagle was a $10 piece, a half eagle a $5 — saying that since they had never been circulated, they must have been stolen. The Langbords sued to get them back. In 2009, Judge Legrome D. Davis of Federal District Court, said that the government could not simply assume the coins were government property, and would have the burden of proving the facts in court. While the government has the burden of proof, this is not a criminal case in which guilt must be established beyond a reasonable doubt. It must convince jurors only that a preponderance of the evidence supports its case. In a tough pair of detailed orders issued just before trial, Judge Davis stated flatly that some of the evidence could allow jurors to infer that the coins were stolen and that the family knew it and concealed them. He noted somewhat acerbically in a footnote that the safe deposit box in which Ms. Langbord “claims to have discovered” the coins had been opened by her in 2002, “the day before the Fenton coin was sold at auction.” Even if the jury decides in favor of the Langbords, Judge Davis could still declare the government the rightful owner. That possibility worries coin collectors, said Armen Vartian, a lawyer who filed briefs in the case on behalf of the Professional Numismatics Guild. “The government cannot just go around saying, ‘You have this. We think it’s ours. Give it back,’ ” he said. Having looked at the evidence against the Langbords, he said, “At best, it’s inconclusive,” and added, “You would think that the government has better things to do.” In the courtroom, jury selection took much of the first day. The process, as usual, was grindingly slow, but had its moments. Judge Davis, a large man with a sonorous voice who tips back so far in his chair that sometimes only his head is visible over the desk, asked a potential juror whether the fact that her husband collected coins would influence her. Did she share his hobby? “I don’t collect coins,” she said. “I spend them.” She was seated.

Numismatics
United States Mint
Switt Israel


Liberty Lose in Indianapolis

Abstract: Tamika Catchings scored 23 points, including the winning free throws with eight seconds left, to give the Indiana Fever an 84-82 win over the visiting Liberty. Cappie Pondexter scored a season-high 33 points and Essence Carson added 14 for the Liberty (6-11). The Liberty were playing their seventh straight game without their No. 2 scorer and rebounder, Plenette Pierson. ¶ The Knicks and the Toronto Raptors will play a preseason game on Oct. 19 in Montreal.

New York Liberty
Indiana Fever
Basketball


N.B.A.’s Great East-West Divide Remains, but Styles of Play Evolve

Abstract: Another N.B.A. season is scheduled to begin Tuesday night, but not much has changed from the last one. The Western Conference is again loaded with up-tempo, star-laden teams. Superficially at least, the East is about the luminary named LeBron James and his quest for a sixth straight league finals appearance. One longstanding mystery of the N.B.A. universe is the freewheeling style that took root in the West while the East embraced a more methodical brand of ball. Along conference lines, the geographical word association would be: Out West — Los Angeles, Denver, Phoenix and Golden State. Back East — Boston, Detroit, New York and (pre-LeBron) Miami. There have been exceptions, but by reputation the West has traditionally elevated the game as a more aesthetically pleasing form of entertainment while the East has prided itself as survival of the brawniest. Ask Rod Thorn, who has been around the pro game since 1963, why that is, and he says, playfully, “Well, you know, the Western part of the country is more about open spaces, and the East has the congested, more urban cities.” Seriously, he doubted that athletic art had been imitating life. More likely, he said, “it has to do with the makeup of the coaches.” Then again, Mike D’Antoni was an innovating celebrity with his precision fire drill of an offense in Phoenix but a failure with it in New York. And Pat Riley coached Magic Johnson and the Showtime Lakers to four championships in Los Angeles, but when he moved into Madison Square Garden with the Knicks and later to Miami, his teams nearly qualified for the Olympics in Greco-Roman wrestling. The East-West divide probably originated in the early 1980s with the league’s ultimate rivalry: those Johnson-and-Riley Lakers — whose architect was the aptly named Jerry West — and Larry Bird’s lunch-pail Celtics. Those franchises were already the most historically successful, and as Thorn said, “this has always been a copycat league.” He added that after Golden State won the championship in June, led by Stephen Curry’s single-season record barrage of 3-pointers and with a high-voltage pace that had N.B.A. advocates in full-throated cheer, we should expect the game to continue trending in the direction that credentialed old-school folks like Phil Jackson and Gregg Popovich generally loathe. But to cling stubbornly to the past is to fade away with it. In an effort to eradicate the image of them as so 1990s, the Knicks say they are planning to play a faster version of Jackson’s beloved triangle offense this season. Popovich years ago recalibrated his once-plodding offense to feature the pace-pushing skills of Tony Parker. In winning the 2014 finals over Miami, the Spurs launched more 3-pointers (averaging 23.6 per game) than any title-winning team in history — until Curry and the Warriors fired them up at a clip of 31 a game in disposing of James and his Cleveland Cavaliers last June. “We all know if you don’t shoot the 3, you’re probably not going to win,” Popovich said last spring. “Everybody in the league shoots the 3-point shot well and knows the importance. I still hate it.” Image From left, Grizzlies forward Jeff Green, Oklahoma City Thunder center Steven Adams, Grizzlies guard Lazeric Jones and Thunder guard Andre Roberson scrambled for the ball in a preseason game on Oct. 16. Credit Brandon Dill/Associated Press Shooting the 3 at last season’s rate — an average of 22.5 per game — does not require a commitment to a speedball game, as teams increasingly space the floor in their halfcourt offenses and use drive-and-kick penetration to free up long-range marksmen. But Thorn said the spread of up-tempo play around the East was inevitable. “It used to be that no matter how fast teams played in the regular season, the feeling was that the game would slow down in the playoffs,” Thorn said. “With Golden State playing the way they did, I’m not so sure people are thinking that anymore.” He knows that Jason Kidd isn’t buying into any old East-West divergence as he begins his second season as the coach in Milwaukee. The Bucks are blessed with one of the game’s best young end-to-end athletes in Giannis Antetokounmpo, along with Jabari Parker, expected back soon after knee surgery last winter, and point guard Michael Carter-Williams. With the addition of Greg Monroe to score and pass from the post, Kidd’s team, which opens its season at home Wednesday night against the Knicks, could pose an intriguing challenge to James and the Cavaliers, along with last season’s contenders Chicago, Washington, Atlanta and Toronto. Thorn will be in Milwaukee for the opener. After retiring from the N.B.A.’s executive office last spring at 74, he thought he was out until Kidd pulled him back in, hiring him as a consultant. Kidd was part of Thorn’s second-most-impactful player transaction as a team front-office executive (next to drafting Michael Jordan in Chicago) when Thorn brought Kidd — a pass-first point guard — to the Nets in 2001 from Phoenix in a trade for Stephon Marbury. With the ball in Kidd’s hands, the Nets made two consecutive finals, mixing a quicker pace with a version of the Princeton halfcourt offense. Curry and the Warriors may be the rage, but none of their four playoff opponents last season were at full strength, and Thorn is old and wise enough to know that embracing one style does not, or should not, necessarily negate another. Before the playoffs began, West, now a Warriors consultant, told Thorn that the one team he feared was the Spurs. “Jerry thought they had the size and ability to control pace in a way the other teams couldn’t,” Thorn said. To that end, the Spurs are stronger inside with the additions of LaMarcus Aldridge and David West. In Oklahoma City, what restores the Thunder as a serious threat, beyond the presumed health of Kevin Durant and Russell Westbrook, is the front-line athleticism provided by Serge Ibaka, Steven Adams and Enes Kanter, the kind of low-post scorer the team has lacked. Even by old East-West standards, Thorn noted, the truly great teams are those not easily typecast, as demonstrated by Jackson’s six title teams in Chicago and five with the Lakers. “Go back to those Bird teams — they didn’t have fast guys, but they knew how to run a pretty good fast break,” Thorn said. And the Showtime Lakers, he added, could always “slow the game down and throw it inside.” He referred to Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, the league’s career leading scorer.

Basketball
NBA
Golden State Warriors
Spurs
Earvin Johnson


Croatian Presidential Election Heads for January Runoff

Abstract: After a close first round in the Croatian presidential election, the center-left incumbent, Ivo Josipovic, will face his conservative opponent, Kolinda Grabar-Kitarovic, in a runoff election on Jan. 11, the electoral commission said on Monday. With 99.98 percent of ballots counted, Mr. Josipovic of the Social Democratic Party won 38.5 percent in the first round of voting on Sunday, compared with 37 percent for Ms. Grabar-Kitarovic, the electoral commission said. Two other candidates finished with significantly smaller shares of the vote. Candidates needed more than 50 percent in the first round to avoid a runoff. The presidency in Croatia is a largely ceremonial position, but the vote was considered an important test for the main political parties before parliamentary elections scheduled for next year. Croatia, which joined the European Union in 2013 , has one of the weakest economies in the bloc and an unemployment rate of nearly 20 percent. The Social Democratic Party, the largest group in the center-left government that has been blamed for the continuing economic crisis, backed Mr. Josipovic, a law expert and composer. “We won the first round, we will win the second,” Mr. Josipovic, the third president of the former Yugoslav republic, told supporters at his party’s election headquarters late on Sunday. Ms. Grabar-Kitarovic, a former foreign minister and former assistant secretary general of NATO , has vowed to lead the country “toward prosperity.” She is the candidate of the main opposition party, the center-right Croatian Democratic Union. She also served as the Croatian ambassador to the United States from 2008 to 2011. Turnout in the elections was 47 percent, a showing attributed to bad weather, as most of the country was hit by a blizzard overnight.

Ivo Josipovic
Croatia
Kolinda Grabar-Kitarovic
Election


Veterans’ Cemetery on Long Island Opens a Memorial Garden

Abstract: Farmingdale WHEN Norma Burlone visits her nephew’s grave at Long Island National Cemetery, she usually spends only 10 minutes. Ms. Burlone, the aunt of Cpl. Julien Alberto Ramon, a marine who died two years ago in Iraq, said she cannot bend or kneel easily and needs frequent rests after leg surgery four years ago. A brick shelter nearby houses makeshift seats, but they are uncomfortable and crowded, she said. “Now I will have more time,” she said, pointing to four new benches where throngs of people were attending a service behind her last Sunday. “I can sit over there and talk to him.” Ms. Burlone, 56, of Flushing, Queens, came on a clear, cool afternoon, not knowing a ceremony was under way to unveil the cemetery’s new 40-foot by 40-foot memorial garden. About 250,000 military veterans are buried there, said Bill Rhoades, the cemetery director. More than 125 veterans and relatives came for the event, some wearing dog tags or McCain campaign buttons. Others carried flowers. Some arrived in uniform. Many with bowed heads had tears in their eyes. “We are today mindful of the past, yet we keep an eye toward the future,” said Dorothy Oxendine, one of the leaders of the memorial effort. “Today we express our commitment to our nation and the message of patriotism and sacrifice as we dedicate this Long Island National Cemetery Memorial Garden in memory of all veterans.” Mrs. Oxendine is past president of the Long Island National Cemetery Memorial Organization and past national president of American Gold Star Mothers, which offers support to and represents mothers of those killed while in the military. Mrs. Oxendine, 82, wanted to create the memorial garden to help those who lost loved ones, she said. And she seemed a fitting choice. She was born on Memorial Street in Middle Village, Queens, and lost her son Pfc. Willie Oxendine III, a marine, on Memorial Day in 1968, when he was killed in Vietnam. Both Mrs. Oxendine’s son and husband, Willie Oxendine Jr., are buried here. It took three years for the memorial garden to become reality, with money coming from the American Legion, Veterans of Foreign Wars, the United States Submarine Veterans of WWII and Farmingdale’s Rotary Club, among others. The memorial at the 365-acre cemetery contains 118 shrubs, 1,228 bulbs, a Japanese maple tree and four stone benches in the center. Cheryl Anne Lombardo, 49, a horticulturist who lives in Bay Shore, designed the garden. “I came down here and it spoke to me,” she said at the event. Emily Toro, who was celebrating her 49th birthday, said she would use the garden when she visits the grave site of her son Isaac Cortes, an Army private buried nearby. Since he died at the age of 26 in Iraq last November, Ms. Toro said she had come only about four times. “It’s hard,” she said. “It’s hard to come, but I plan to come more often.” Jeanin Urbina, 21, came with her niece, Cydney, 9, and her father, Agustin, 56, to pay respects to her brother, Specialist Wilfredo Urbina, of the Long Island National Guard’s 69th Infantry unit, and to see the memorial garden. Specialist Urbina, of Baldwin, was 29 when he died four years ago in Baghdad. “I think it’s nice to have a place to sit,” Ms. Urbina said. “It gives you perspective.” Ms. Burlone and her family watched with others as the color guard marched around the memorial. They listened as the pledge of allegiance was said, prayers were led and the national anthem sung. American flags flapped in the breeze as a salute was fired by members of the American Legion in Babylon, and taps was played. “To me it’s the perfect setting,” Mr. Rhoades, the cemetery director, said after the event, pointing to rows of white marble headstones of soldiers killed in action, buried to the left and right of the garden memorial. Before she left, Ms. Burlone said she would return the next weekend to spend more than 10 minutes — maybe an hour — visiting her nephew, Corporal Ramon, who was a sniper in Iraq. She said he died at age 22 in 2006 on July 20 — Independence Day in Colombia, which he left when he was 5. He seemed certain he would not return after his second tour of duty, Ms. Burlone said. “But I know he’s around,” she said with swollen eyes. “He’s always around.”

Veterans
Monuments and Memorials
Tombs and Tombstones
Long Island (NY)
Long Island National Cemetery


Dalai Lama Urges Aung San Suu Kyi to Help Myanmar’s Rohingya

Abstract: BANGKOK — When they embraced democracy and vowed to leave behind their repressive and dictatorial past, the leaders of Myanmar enjoyed a honeymoon of praise and admiration from luminaries across the globe. But the country’s harsh treatment of its Rohingya Muslim minority, setting off an exodus of people by boat across Southeast Asia, has unleashed a barrage of criticism in recent days aimed not only at the country’s former generals but also at the leader of Myanmar’s democracy movement, the Nobel laureate Daw Aung San Suu Kyi . The Dalai Lama , the Tibetan Buddhist spiritual leader and a fellow Nobel Peace Prize winner, was quoted on Thursday in an Australian newspaper as saying that Ms. Aung San Suu Kyi should be helping to address the plight of the Rohingya, who number more than a million but are not recognized as citizens of Myanmar, are restricted in their travels and suffer persecution and deprivation. “I met her two times, first in London and then the Czech Republic,” the Dalai Lama told The Australian. “I mentioned about this problem and she told me she found some difficulties, that things were not simple but very complicated.” “But in spite of that I feel she can do something,” he added. The Rohingya are widely reviled in Myanmar, which is overwhelmingly Buddhist and has an influential radical Buddhist political movement. Speaking out for the Rohingya is seen as a form of political kryptonite for any Buddhist politician like Ms. Aung San Suu Kyi. Understanding Southeast Asia’s Migrant Crisis About 25,000 migrants left Myanmar and Bangladesh on rickety smugglers’ boats in the first three months of 2015, according to a United Nations estimate. Ms. Aung San Suu Kyi has offered various explanations in recent years for her reluctance to speak out for the Rohingya, saying at one point that a public airing of her views could further stoke the fires of radical Buddhists, who have ransacked Rohingya villages, displacing more than 100,000 Rohingya. Jonah Fisher, a BBC correspondent in Yangon, said in a Twitter post on Thursday that Ms. Aung San Suu Kyi’s latest statement on the Rohingya was that it was the government’s duty to solve the issue. Her critics have said that someone of her enormous moral authority in Myanmar should take a stronger stance. Archbishop Desmond Tutu of South Africa, another winner of the Nobel Peace Prize, said in a recorded message aired this week that aid donors, including the European Union, should make their funding for the impoverished country “conditional on the restoration of citizenship, nationality and basic human rights to the Rohingya.” “A country that is not at peace with itself, that fails to acknowledge and protect the dignity and worth of all its people, is not a free country,” Archbishop Tutu said in remarks that were broadcast at a conference on the Rohingya in Oslo this week. He said he agreed with those who say a “slow genocide” was being committed against the Rohingya. At the same conference, George Soros, the financier and philanthropist who for more than two decades has been active in promoting democracy, sent a videotaped speech in which he said he was “growing discouraged” by developments in Myanmar. “The most immediate threat to Burma’s transition is the rising anti-Muslim sentiment and officially condoned abuse of the Rohingya people,” he said. How Myanmar and Its Neighbors Are Responding to the Rohingya Crisis Myanmar and its neighbors see the people of the Rohingya ethnic group and the seaborne trafficking of migrants in the region very differently, complicating the refugees’ plight. Mr. Soros said he visited a Rohingya settlement in January and saw parallels to his youth as a Jew in Nazi-occupied Europe. “You see, in 1944, as a Jew in Budapest, I too was a Rohingya,” he said. The Rohingya settlement was a ghetto, he said, an “involuntary home to thousands of families who once had access to health care, education and employment.” “Now, they are forced to remain segregated in a state of abject deprivation. The parallels to the Nazi genocide are alarming.” Myanmar officials are scheduled to meet with their counterparts from other Asian countries in Bangkok on Friday for a meeting to address migrants, chief among them the Rohingya, who have been fleeing Myanmar by the thousands. Myanmar, which changed its name from Burma during the previous military dictatorship and lashes out at governments that continue to refer to the country as Burma, refuses to recognize the term Rohingya and calls the people Bengali instead, suggesting that they come from neighboring Bangladesh. Officials in Myanmar said they would not attend the government meeting in Thailand if the term Rohingya were used. Thailand, which has been reluctant to anger its neighbor, agreed to Myanmar’s demands and titled the conference Special Meeting on Irregular Migration in the Indian Ocean.

Rohingya
Myanmar,Burma
Aung San Suu Kyi
Dalai Lama
Islam


With Council Win, Diana Reyna Completes Break With Vito Lopez

Abstract: Diana Reyna was in her late 20s when she first won a seat on the City Council , backed by her powerful patron, Assemblyman Vito J. Lopez, the Brooklyn Democratic leader. Inexperienced and seen as serving an ambitious mentor, her opponents dubbed her “Vito Lopez’s Vanna White .” But she distanced herself from Mr. Lopez, and by her second term in office, their fights had broken out into the open. On Thursday, two days after Ms. Reyna won a third term on the Council, soundly beating a challenger backed by Mr. Lopez, her allies said Ms. Reyna’s rebellion meant she would be seen as a true independent, another milestone in her political journey. Ms. Reyna, 35, reflected on the bitter contest, her voice still hoarse from shouting. “My battle representing my community is now made public,” she said. In fact, the subtext of the race for City Council the 34th District drew notice long ago, and it read like this: Assemblyman Lopez, motivated in part by his long-running feud with Ms. Reyna, threw his influence behind Maritza Davila, a Democratic district leader. The quarrel seeped into zoning fights and churches: In an unusually forward venture into politics by a religious leader, Nicholas A. DiMarzio, the Roman Catholic bishop of Brooklyn, urged voters, via robocalls, to support Mr. Lopez . But the assemblyman’s pull was apparently not enough: Ms. Reyna narrowly beat Ms. Davila in the Democratic primary, and she did it again on Tuesday, beating her opponent, who ran on the Working Families Party line, by 25 percentage points. Martin S. Needleman, who has known Ms. Reyna for more than a decade, said, “She’s grown into a significant player, and she’s clearly no longer waiting for Vito to come back.” Whether the nature of her victory has real implications for her work on the City Council — or her future — remains to be seen. Ms. Reyna says she is now better equipped for housing battles with the Bloomberg administration. But others said they doubted that it would have a real impact on her power, and wondered where Ms. Reyna would go after her four-year term was up. The real winners may have been Ms. Reyna’s supporters, who engineered a victory without Mr. Lopez. Many of those supporters are now counting on her help opposing a planned rezoning of the Broadway Triangle, a 31-acre parcel of land that is the subject of a housing dispute in Williamsburg. They face an uphill battle: The City Council is set to decide the matter this month. The plan was a central front in the campaign. In an interview, Mr. Lopez said Ms. Reyna’s opposition to the project was another example of her “undercutting some of the things I do.” Mr. Lopez said the race had not dented his influence in Brooklyn Democratic politics, noting the strong showing there for the Democratic mayoral candidate, William C. Thompson Jr. “I’m proud of my role as county leader,” Mr. Lopez said. But Ms. Reyna’s supporters saw her victory as proof that Mr. Lopez was not invincible. Representative Nydia M. Velázquez , who has her own long feud with Mr. Lopez and who campaigned for Ms. Reyna, said: “It exposed his vulnerability. He challenged these activists to take destiny into their own hands.” Jo Anne Simon, who ran for City Council in a neighboring district but lost the primary to a candidate backed by Mr. Lopez, said Ms. Reyna’s contest had implications for Brooklyn’s already fractured Democrats. “This was a very divisive season,” she said, citing a “mean-spirited” campaign, and the fact that Mr. Lopez backed a Working Families candidate. “That doesn’t build cohesiveness in the party,” said Ms. Simon, who campaigned for Ms. Reyna. The divisions were captured in a video featured prominently on Ms. Davila’s Web site. In it, Ms. Davila stands next to Mr. Lopez on the steps of City Hall, the two of them flanked by politicians from Brooklyn. They all work together, Mr. Lopez says. “There’s one link that’s missing,” he adds, referring to Ms. Reyna. For her part, Ms. Reyna saw no reason for Brooklyn Democrats on the Council to be at odds. “The assemblyman is not a Council member,” she said. “I look forward to working with my colleagues.”

Reyna Diana
City Council (New York City)
Elections
Lopez Vito J
Davila Maritza
DiMarzio Nicholas A
Velazquez Nydia M
Simon Jo Anne
Democratic Party


Horse Trainer Faces Labor Case

Abstract: Steve Asmussen, a leading thoroughbred trainer, is being sued by the Labor Department, which said his stable had not paid overtime since at least 2012 to grooms and hot walkers who worked more than 40 hours in a week. The federal lawsuit seeks back wages. Asmussen’s lawyer, Clark Brewster, said his client is confident the regulations were met.

Horse racing
Steve Asmussen
Wages and salaries
Labor Department


More Details Provided in Death of Immigrant

Abstract: In court documents filed this week, prosecutors in Westchester County provided more details about the death of a homeless Guatemalan man in Mount Kisco in April, saying that the village police officer who drove him to a remote spot and abandoned him also delivered the blow to the abdomen that ultimately proved fatal. The officer, George Bubaris, has been charged with second-degree manslaughter in the death of the man, Rene Perez. Officer Bubaris, who is originally from Queens, was also charged with one count of unlawful imprisonment and two counts of official misconduct. He has pleaded not guilty. The county district attorney, Janet DiFiore, had previously said only that Officer Bubaris “restrained Rene Perez and exposed him to a risk of serious physical injury.” But the court documents show that Mr. Perez, an illegal immigrant, had frequent run-ins with the authorities and had been arrested at least 59 times on charges including indecent exposure and petty larceny. He had been drinking heavily that night, and police officers in the neighboring town of Bedford drove him to Mount Kisco after complaints that he was bothering customers at a department store. Sometime before 11 p.m., Mr. Perez called 911 from a coin laundry in Mount Kisco and asked for a ride to a hospital, according to police records. Officer Bubaris was the first of three officers who responded. In the court documents, filed in Westchester County Superior Court on Thursday, prosecutors said Mr. Perez was “highly and visibly intoxicated” and asserted that Officer Bubaris, at some point during his encounter with Mr. Perez, “inflicted blunt force trauma to Perez’s abdomen” and left him on Byram Lake Road. The prosecutors added, “The defendant then abandoned the helpless and severely injured Perez in this remote area knowing that he could not extricate himself from his predicament nor protect himself from the elements or other potential dangers or avail himself of any assistance.” “All of the above,” prosecutors wrote, “resulted in Perez’s death.” According to other court documents, Officer Bubaris told a fellow officer that he had picked up Mr. Perez and taken him to Byram Lake Road. A day later, Officer Bubaris told the same officer, “You’re the only one who knows, bro’.” Eddie Hayes, Officer Bubaris’s lawyer, said of the prosecutors’ statements, “They have nothing to support this allegation.” He added: “There were faint contusions on the guy’s abdomen. That fact that his insides rotted out shouldn’t surprise anyone, since he’s been abusing himself for decades.” A wrongful-death lawsuit seeking damages was filed this week on behalf of Mr. Perez’s estate, according to Jonathan Lovett, a lawyer representing Mr. Perez’s family. The suit claims that Officer Bubaris struck Mr. Perez multiple times with a metal baton or a police club, according to Mr. Lovett, who said that claim was based on the autopsy report. The suit, filed in Federal District Court in White Plains, also faults the Village of Mount Kisco and the Town of Bedford for what Mr. Lovett called “border dumping,” or the practice by police officers of escorting troublemakers out of town.

Immigration and Refugees
Westchester County (NY)
Murders and Attempted Murders
Homeless Persons


Obama to Appeal Ruling Curbing Recess Appointments

Abstract: WASHINGTON — The Obama administration has decided that it will appeal to the Supreme Court a sweeping ruling by an appeals court in January that President Obama violated the Constitution when he bypassed the Senate in making three recess appointments to the National Labor Relations Board last year. While the dispute grew out of a narrow and novel legal question — whether brief “pro forma” sessions by the Senate could prevent the president from making recess appointments during a lengthy winter break by lawmakers — the appeals court blew past that issue and called into question nearly two centuries of recess appointments by presidents of both parties. The three-judge panel of the appeals court in Washington ruled that presidents may bypass the confirmation process only during the sort of recess that occurs between formal sessions of Congress, rather than other breaks throughout the year. The gaps between formal sessions generally arise just once a year and sometimes — as in 2012, when the Senate had not formally adjourned before the next session began — are skipped entirely. Two of the three judges on the panel also ruled that presidents may fill only vacancies that arise during that same recess. Together, the reasoning would virtually eliminate the recess appointment power for future presidents at a time when it has become increasingly difficult to obtain up-or-down Senate votes on nominees. Partisan views on the issue are volatile. In the fairly recent past, Democrats have argued against the validity of appointments in the middle of a session, and Republicans have supported them. In 1993, after President George Bush made a recess appointment just before leaving office, the Senate legal counsel developed a friend-of-the-court brief for a legal challenge to the appointment, arguing that it was invalid because it did not come between sessions. The Senate majority leader at the time, George Mitchell, Democrat of Maine, wanted to file the brief in the lawsuit on behalf of the Senate, but the minority leader, Bob Dole of Kansas, blocked him from doing so. The case was later resolved on different grounds. Image Terence F. Flynn’s appointment to the National Labor Relations Board is among those at issue. Credit NLRB And in 2004, after President George W. Bush, during a weeklong break in the midst of a Senate session, made a recess appointment of William H. Pryor Jr. to be an appeals court judge, Senator Edward M. Kennedy, Democrat of Massachusetts, filed briefs in several court cases challenging the appointment. Mr. Kennedy also sent letters to each of the judge’s fellow jurists warning them that any ruling they might make with him on the bench could be invalid. The Bush administration and conservative groups defended Judge Pryor’s appointment, and the appeals court on which he served later upheld its validity even though the appointment was not made between sessions. The Supreme Court declined to hear an appeal. Three lawyers who helped work on legal challenges to Judge Pryor’s appointment — Laurence H. Tribe, Martin Lederman and Ronald Weich — later became officials in the Justice Department during Mr. Obama’s first term. Now, however, it is the Obama administration that is arguing for those same recess appointments in the face of a ruling celebrated by conservatives. An official familiar with the deliberations said that lawyers at the White House and the Justice Department, including the White House counsel, Kathryn Ruemmler, and Solicitor General Donald B. Verrilli Jr., had been meeting to discuss strategy with the labor board lawyers. One option was to petition the full United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit to rehear the case, hoping that at least one of the judges might write a dissenting opinion that could put more formal analysis before the Supreme Court to counter the ruling. In the end, however, the officials decided that such a move would only delay a resolution that both businesses and labor unions are anxious to have. The current dispute traces back to the end of the George W. Bush administration, when Democrats in the Senate, seeking to prevent recess appointments over its breaks, developed the tactic of sending a senator into the nearly empty chamber every three days to bang the gavel. That act was deemed a pro forma session that carved the longer adjournment into a series of short ones, considered too brief for recess appointments. Then, in 2011, after Republicans took over the House, they used their power under the Constitution to refuse to let the Democratic-controlled Senate adjourn for more than three days. But in January 2012, Mr. Obama challenged the tactic, calling the pro forma sessions a sham and appointing the three members of the labor board, Sharon Block, Terence F. Flynn and Richard Griffin, as well as Richard Cordray to be the director of the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. Mr. Obama has made fewer recess appointments than recent predecessors. But his pronouncement that a president got to decide whether the Senate was in session led many conservatives and some liberals to accuse him of an unconstitutional power grab.

Supreme Court
Barack Obama
Appointments and Executive Changes
NLRB
Senate
Congress
President of the United States
Decisions and Verdicts


John G. Smale, Procter & Gamble Chief, Dies at 84

Abstract: John G. Smale, who as chief executive led Procter & Gamble through a period of extraordinary growth, and then helped engineer a turnaround of General Motors as its chairman, died on Saturday at his home in Cincinnati. He was 84. The cause was complications of pulmonary fibrosis, a Procter & Gamble spokesman said. Mr. Smale ran Procter & Gamble from 1981 until 1990. During his tenure the company strengthened its position internationally, pushing aggressively into Eastern Europe and Asia. He also oversaw a series of major acquisitions, including the $1.2 billion purchase of Richardson-Vicks in 1985. The largest deal in Procter & Gamble’s history at the time, it brought the company well-known brands including Vicks cold medicine, Olay skin care products and Pantene shampoo. He joined the company in 1952 after responding to an advertisement in a Chicago newspaper looking for brand managers. Starting in what was then called the toilet goods division, Mr. Smale earned his stripes managing Procter & Gamble’s new Crest toothpaste brand. He persuaded the American Dental Association to endorse the toothpaste, a pioneering agreement at the time. There were missteps, including a failed push into soft drinks and orange juice. But over his nine-year tenure, Procter & Gamble’s overall revenue doubled to more than $24 billion and profits doubled to $1.6 billion. In 1982, while Mr. Smale was still chief executive at Procter & Gamble, General Motors named him to its board. Ten years later, Mr. Smale and the G.M. board led a coup, ousting Robert C. Stempel as chairman and chief executive. Mr. Smale became chairman, and John F. Smith Jr. the chief executive. During his tenure as G.M.’s chairman, which lasted until his retirement in 1995, Mr. Smale helped rescue the automaker from the brink of bankruptcy and returned it to profitability. He also put in place management techniques from Procter & Gamble, streamlining G.M.’s balkanized management structure and pushing for more forceful marketing of its brands. Mr. Smale also served on several other corporate boards, including those of J. P. Morgan and Eastman Kodak. John Gray Smale and his twin sister, Joy, were born in Listowel, Ontario, on Aug. 1, 1927, and grew up in Elmhurst, Ill. Their father was a traveling salesman for the Marshall Field’s department store chain. He graduated from Miami University in Oxford, Ohio, in 1949. While there, he helped pay for his education by writing two how-to books — “Party ’Em Up” and “Party ’Em Up Some More” — that he sold to fraternities and sororities around the country, according to a 2009 interview in the school alumni magazine. His wife of 56 years, the former Phyllis Weaver, died in 2006. His twin sister died in 2000. He is survived by four children, John Gray Jr., Peter, Catherine Anne Caldemeyer and Lisa Smale Corbett; and five grandchildren. An avid fisherman, Mr. Smale had homes in Marathon, Fla., and at McGregor Bay in Ontario. He also kept an apartment in Cincinnati. Mr. Smale was a major figure in Cincinnati’s civic and philanthropic circles. This year he made a $20 million donation to the city in his wife’s memory for construction of the Cincinnati Riverfront Park, which was renamed the Phyllis W. Smale Riverfront Park. He also remained committed to Procter & Gamble after leaving the company. Robert A. McDonald, the current chief executive, said that just before he assumed the top post, he flew to London with Mr. Smale for a company event. Mr. Smale pulled out seven pages of typed notes in midflight and said that he wanted to discuss the future of the company and what it should concentrate on. In capital letters across the front page, Mr. McDonald said, was “INNOVATION, INNOVATION, INNOVATION.” Each year the John G. Smale Innovation Award, a prize financed personally by Mr. Smale, recognizes young scientists at the company. “He represented the soul of P.& G.,” Mr. McDonald said. A. G. Lafley, who preceded Mr. McDonald as chief executive, said that last year Mr. Smale spoke at a meeting of Procter & Gamble leaders. His health failing, Mr. Smale took the stage carrying a machine to help him breathe. He spoke about the importance of having a long-term focus for the 174-year-old company. “He said, we don’t want to think in quarters or even years but in terms of decades and centuries,” Mr. Lafley said. “I learned that from John.”

Smale John G
Procter & Gamble Company
Deaths (Obituaries)
General Motors


Pakistan Sentences 10 to Life Terms Over 2012 Attack on Malala Yousafzai

Abstract: ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — A Pakistani court on Thursday sentenced 10 men to life in prison for their role in the 2012 shooting of Malala Yousafzai , the teenage Nobel laureate who defied the Taliban with her calls for girls’ education and won worldwide acclaim for her courage. The sentences were handed down by an antiterrorism court in Swat, the picturesque northern valley that was once a stronghold of the Taliban until a military offensive in 2009 broke their hold. Ms. Yousafzai, who is now 17, was shot in the head in October 2012 when she was returning home from school with her classmates on a bus. After a brief stay in a military hospital in Rawalpindi, she was airlifted for treatment to Britain, where she is now studying and living with her exiled family. In September 2014, the Pakistani military announced the arrest of 10 men it accused of being involved in the attack. Officials said the gunmen took orders from Maulana Fazlullah, the leader of the main Pakistani Taliban branch who is believed to be hiding in Afghanistan, when they attacked Ms. Yousafzai and the other students. The militants held sway in the Swat Valley until 2009, terrorizing the population with their brutal reign, marked by public killings and the lashing of their opponents. Ms. Yousafzai rose to prominence after her blog chronicled life in the valley under Taliban rule and the ambitions of a young girl yearning for an education. Guided by her father, Ziauddin, an advocate for education, she became a symbol against Taliban oppression. Her fame and relentless campaigning rankled the Taliban, who threatened to kill her. Ms. Yousafzai has won several awards for her bravery and was the joint winner of the 2014 Nobel Peace Prize along with Kailash Satyarthi, an Indian campaigner for the rights of children.

Malala Yousafzai
Pakistan
Taliban
Criminal Sentence


New Carbon Dating Suggests Neanderthals and Early Humans Didn’t Mingle Much

Abstract: An improvement in the dating of fossils suggests that the Neanderthals, a heavily muscled, thick-boned human species adapted to living in ice age Europe, perished almost immediately on contact with the modern humans who started to enter Europe from the Near East about 44,000 years ago. Until now bones from several Neanderthal sites have been dated to as young as 29,000 years ago, suggesting there was extensive overlap between the two human species. This raised the question of whether there had been interbreeding between humans and Neanderthals, an issue that is still not resolved. But researchers report that tests using an improved method of radiocarbon dating, based on a new way to exclude contaminants, show that most, and maybe all, Neanderthal bones in Europe are or will be found to be at least 39,000 years old. Thomas F. G. Higham, a specialist in radiocarbon dating at Oxford University, and Ron Pinhasi, an archaeologist at University College Cork in Ireland, have dated the bones of a Neanderthal child less than 2 years old whose remains were found in the Mezmaiskaya Cave in the northern Caucasus Mountains. A second Neanderthal baby, found in a lower layer in the cave, was previously dated back 29,000 years. The first baby, since its bones were retrieved from a higher layer, must be even younger, but in fact it turns out to be 39,000 years old when an improved version of the radiocarbon dating technique is used, Dr. Higham and Dr. Pinhasi reported Monday in The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Radiocarbon dating depends on measuring the radioactive isotope of carbon known as carbon 14, which is ingested during a person’s lifetime and steadily decays after death. Very little carbon 14 remains in specimens more than 30,000 years old, and even tiny amounts of contaminating carbon 14 can make a sample seem much younger than it is. Dr. Higham has developed a method of ultrafiltration that removes contaminants and leaves whole molecules of collagen recovered from fossil bone. Reviewing other Neanderthal dates ascertained with the new ultrafiltration method, Dr. Higham sees an emerging pattern that no European Neanderthal site can reliably be dated to less than 39,000 years ago. “It’s only with reliable techniques that we can interpret the archaeological past,” he said. He is re-dating Neanderthal sites across Europe and so far sees no evidence for any extensive overlap between Neanderthals and modern humans. “There was a degree of contemporaneity, but it may not have been very long,” he said. A short period of contact would point to the extinction of the Neanderthals at the hands of modern humans. “It’s very unlikely for Neanderthals to go extinct without some agency from modern humans,” Dr. Higham said. Paul Mellars, an expert on Neanderthals at Cambridge University in England, said that the quality of the dates from Dr. Higham’s laboratory was superb and that samples of bone re-dated by the lab’s method were almost always found to be several thousand years older than previously measured. The picture supported by the new dates is that the interaction between modern humans and Neanderthals in Europe was brief in each region, lasting perhaps a few hundred years, Dr. Mellars said, until the modern humans overwhelmed their competitors through better technology and greater numbers. Richard Klein, a paleoanthropologist at Stanford University, said Dr. Higham’s re-dating was “compelling” and fit with his own view that “modern humans were technologically and intellectually far superior to the Neanderthals.” This, he said, “would have allowed them to spread very rapidly and to precipitate the extinction of the Neanderthals almost immediately on contact.” The new radiocarbon findings show little evidence that the two species peacefully coexisted within Europe. But geneticists who have decoded the Neanderthal genome reported last year that some 2.5 percent of the modern human genome is derived from Neanderthals. The interbreeding, they postulate, occurred not in Europe 40,000 years ago but in an earlier encounter 100,000 years ago. They believe that this encounter must have been in the Near East. Modern humans and Neanderthals occupied the same sites in what is now Israel, but it is not clear that the populations overlapped. The Neanderthals seem to have occupied the sites during cold periods and the modern humans during spells of warmer weather. The presence of modern humans in Israel 100,000 years ago was long assumed to have been a failed attempt to leave Africa, since there is no archaeological evidence of modern humans outside Africa until some 44,000 years ago. But geneticists led by Svante Paabo of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology argue that this earlier attempt was in fact successful, and that modern humans commingled with Neanderthals in the Near East before going on to occupy Europe and Asia. This would explain, they say, why Neanderthal genes are found in Europeans and Asians but not in Africans. Dr. Klein said interbreeding between the two species was perfectly possible in principle, “but it’s kind of anti-archaeological because there is no evidence that they overlapped” in the Near East. “I would be more convinced if it were in fact postulated for the extensive, if brief, contact between Neanderthals and modern humans after 50,000 years ago,” he said.

Neanderthal Man
Archaeology and Anthropology
Carbon Dating
Science and Technology


Microsoft Gives Europe Antitrust Documents

Abstract: BRUSSELS, Nov. 23 — Microsoft submitted a new batch of technical information about its Windows operating system to the European Commission on Thursday, meeting the latest deadline to provide information on whether it is complying with a 2004 antitrust ruling. “This is an important milestone,” Microsoft said in a statement. Final edits and technical review of the information already submitted in July have now been completed, it added, insisting that it had not broken the summer deadline. The commission, which fined Microsoft $357 million in July for failing to comply with the antitrust order, disagrees. Last week, the European competition commissioner, Neelie Kroes, expressed growing impatience with Microsoft when she imposed the latest deadline. She described the dossier submitted in July as incomplete and warned Microsoft that it faced daily fines of 3 million euros ($3.9 million) if it did not hand over all the technical information about Windows that the commission had requested. Her department welcomed the company’s submission. “Now the dossier from Microsoft is worth testing,” her spokesman, Jonathan Todd, said in a telephone interview on Thursday. “Potential licensees of the technical information will be invited to Microsoft’s headquarters in Redmond to look at it.” In the meantime, the commission and the trustee chosen by Microsoft to oversee the process of compliance with the 2004 ruling will examine the newly submitted information, Mr. Todd said. In 2004, Microsoft was found guilty of abusing the dominant strength of Windows to muscle in on other separate software markets, including the market for server operating systems. The 2004 ruling ordered Microsoft to disclose enough information about Windows to allow rival server software manufacturers, including Sun Microsystems and open-source companies like Red Hat, to design server operating systems that worked as well with computers that run Windows as Microsoft’s own server operating system. If the information provided by Microsoft does not satisfy the order, the company will face a fine of 3 million euros a day, backdated to July, Mr. Todd said. Microsoft said Thursday that it had met the July deadline. “The trustee and Microsoft have now completed the technical review and edits to the more than 100 documents, totaling 8,500 pages, that we submitted in July of this year, in accordance with the deadline established by the commission,” it said. It described the submission of technical documentation in July, and the revision process since then, as “an unprecedented undertaking involving over 300 engineers and technical writers at Microsoft.” Even if the information submitted Thursday is satisfactory, Microsoft may still face fines for the period between the July deadline and Thursday. “We’ll take a decision about this period of time in due course,” Mr. Todd said.

Microsoft Corp
European Commission
Antitrust Actions and Laws
Computer Software


Red Wings Begin Finals in Same Way Last Season’s Ended

Abstract: DETROIT — Pittsburgh Penguins goalie Marc-Andre Fleury felt as if he had some extra company after allowing two weird goals in a 3-1 Red Wings victory that opened the Stanley Cup finals Saturday night. “It felt like a full moon was over my end of the ice,” he said. Both of Fleury’s gaffes were the result of caroms off Joe Louis Arena’s famously lively end boards. His first faux pas came when Brad Stuart’s routine slap shot from the blue line caromed off those end boards, struck him in the rear end and dribbled into the net 13 minutes 38 seconds into the game to give Detroit a 1-0 lead. With a minute left in the second period and the score tied 1-1, embarrassing misfortune struck Fleury once more, again courtesy of the arena’s supercharged end boards. Brian Rafalski’s long shot sprang off the dashers to Johan Franzen at the side of the net, who centered the puck just as Fleury was diving headfirst back into position. The puck hit Fleury’s trailing leg, ricocheted 60 degrees into the net, and it was 2-1 for Detroit. “Yes, the boards here are quick — I’ll cogitate and see if I can do something about it,” said Fleury, whose first language is French. Fleury has not had the best of luck at this building. When he charged onto the ice before Game 1 of the Stanley Cup finals last year, he stumbled comically and fell — a bad omen, it turned out, as the Red Wings won the opener and the series in six games. Fleury made it onto the ice without mishap for this year’s Game 1, and he played well over all, making 27 saves. Still, the rear-end-assisted goal he allowed to Stuart looked a lot like one he gave up to the Red Wings in last year’s finals. Asked Saturday about that full moon, Fleury smiled and said, “Hopefully, tomorrow it’ll be over the other end of the ice.” Penguins Coach Dan Bylsma said the Penguins knew about the lively boards and practiced for it. “That’s just the situation in this building,” he said. “If the shooting lanes are blocked, you try to shoot a little wide and hope that the rebound from the back boards comes out.” This was the first Stanley Cup finals rematch in 25 years. And except for the two odd goals, the Penguins had the edge in play, at least through the first 40 minutes. The Penguins scored their first goal at 18:37 of the first period when Detroit goalie Chris Osgood let the rebound of a Evgeni Malkin slap shot trickle away for Ruslan Fedotenko to bury, making it 1-1. The play started when the normally dependable defenseman Niklas Kronwall gave the puck away to Malkin in the Detroit zone. That was an encouraging sign for the Penguins, who were shut out in the first two games here last year. Osgood made some very good saves throughout the game, finishing with 31 over all. Early in the second period, he robbed Malkin on a 120-foot breakaway after Malkin got away with tripping Kronwall and stole the puck from him. Later in the period, he stopped Sidney Crosby, who shot a backhander after making a nifty spin move. He was also lucky, as when a Crosby shot in the third period hit the goalpost and landed on his back. Saves like those kept Detroit in the game until the Wings were able to break it open on the rookie Justin Abdelkader’s first career playoff goal in the third minute of the third period. That goal, from the line of Abdelkader, Ville Leino and Darren Helm, highlighted Detroit’s depth. They were playing because of the absence of Pavel Datsyuk, the Wings’ finalist for the Most Valuable Player award, who is out with a foot injury, and Kris Draper, their top face-off man, who is sidelined with a groin injury. Nicklas Lidstrom, the Wings’ talismanic defenseman and captain, was back in the lineup after missing the first two playoff games of his 17-season career and led all players with 24 minutes of ice time. Detroit also had defenseman Jonathan Ericsson back after he missed one game because of an emergency appendectomy on Wednesday. Despite the three small incisions in his abdomen, he played nearly 17 minutes. The game was chippy, as befits a Cup finals rematch. Crosby went out of his way to throw an open-ice shoulder check into Henrik Zetterberg, Detroit’s indefatigable two-way center who usually plays opposite him. Brooks Orpik jarred Marian Hossa, who left the Penguins after last season to play for Detroit because the Wings, Hossa said at the time, had a better chance of winning the Cup. On Thursday, Orpik said he wished Hossa was still with Pittsburgh, but that did not stop him from nailing him in open ice.

Hockey Ice
Detroit Red Wings
Pittsburgh Penguins


Corey Kluber, Indians’ Ace, Rises as Precisely as His Two-Seam Fastball Dips

Abstract: GOODYEAR, Ariz. — As the actor Will Ferrell skipped merrily from camp to camp last Thursday in a madcap Cactus League odyssey, the best pitcher in the American League worked stoically on a back field at the Cleveland Indians’ training complex. No numbers on the scoreboard, no paying customers, not even an umpire. Corey Kluber might smile if he watched Ferrell’s slapstick comedy. Kluber, his teammates insist, is a witty prankster. Last May, he wore a chicken costume in the outfield during batting practice. “Oh, he’s very sneaky,” Indians pitcher Zach McAllister said. “If there’s something going on, he’s probably got his hand in it somehow.” But after Thursday’s simulated game — a controlled setting to build innings, without the stress of competition — Kluber revealed nothing. He wore no expression. He looked neither happy nor irritated, speaking to a few reporters in monotone, the personification of the nickname some teammates wear on a T-shirt: Klubot. Kluber, 28, earned the A.L. Cy Young Award last season with robotic, methodical efficiency. A right-hander, he finished 18-9 with a 2.44 earned run average, 269 strikeouts and better advanced metrics than the runner-up, Felix Hernandez of the Seattle Mariners. He got the award at a banquet in New York in January. “It’s just sitting on a desk in my office,” Kluber said. “I haven’t found a good spot for it.” Yet Kluber has reason to be proud. He became the third Cleveland pitcher to post a season of at least 18 victories and 260 strikeouts and an E.R.A. below 2.50. The others were Bob Feller and Luis Tiant. That is impressive company for any pitcher, especially one in his first full major league season who was not even ranked as a top-10 prospect in the San Diego farm system in 2010. That was when the Indians acquired him in a three-way trade that sent pitcher Jake Westbrook to St. Louis. “I don’t worry about what people predicted my career path to be,” said Kluber, who was drafted in the fourth round from Stetson University. “That’s kind of a waste to do that. I think it’s better off to just focus on what you can do now to improve in the future. I don’t think looking back makes much sense.” Looking forward did not interest him much, either, beyond generalities, but the Indians do not pay Kluber to talk. They pay him — not very much, actually — to pitch, and they thought he was intriguing enough to pluck from the Padres’ Class AA team for Westbrook. (San Diego got outfielder Ryan Ludwick from the Cardinals.) “What we try to do is identify those attributes that we think have a chance to lead to success,” said Chris Antonetti, the Indians’ general manager. “In Corey’s case, he’s a big, physical starting pitcher with good stuff, had a track record of success in terms of missing bats — he was leading the league in strikeouts at the time — and our reports were really good on his makeup and work ethic.” Kluber, who is listed as 6 feet 4 inches, advanced to Class AAA soon after the trade but struggled there the next season, with a 5.56 E.R.A. and more than four walks per nine innings. He relieved three times for Cleveland in September 2011, but he began the next two seasons in the minors. Kluber refined his skills on the farm, working diligently on a sinking two-seam fastball that one day would devastate major league hitters and make his cutter and curveball even more effective. But mastering the pitch took time. “Guys are in the minor leagues for a reason, and his was fastball command,” said Mickey Callaway, the Indians’ pitching coach and their former minor league coordinator. “And with stuff like that and throwing the ball over the plate, you don’t know when that’s going to come. It could be four years. It could never come.” Success came for Kluber midway through the 2013 season. He went 8-1 in his final 16 starts, and last spring Manager Terry Francona predicted a breakthrough. Kluber had gotten on a roll, and Francona believed his competitive drive would sustain it. As last season went on, Francona said, Kluber rarely shook off a sign from catcher Yan Gomes. He had total trust in the two-seamer. “When you have that good stuff and you throw it with conviction, even if it may not be the right pitch, it probably is,” Francona said. “He went one outing where Gomer wanted to establish his fastball, and he was locating it. I don’t think he threw an off-speed pitch until the ninth hitter of the game. And he just said: ‘I never really thought anything. Gomer put it down, so I threw it.’ ” Francona said he was pleased to see a younger Indians starter, Trevor Bauer, finding a similar rhythm with Gomes this spring and pouring strikes into the zone. Bauer is one of several starters in the Indians’ boom-or-bust rotation who could be poised to blossom, and he is using Kluber’s two-seamer as a template. At one point last season, Bauer asked Kluber if he could stand behind him in the bullpen and film his practice session. Kluber agreed, and Bauer — who chose his angle to best view Kluber’s release point — said he captured his teammate in 240, 480 and 1,000 frames per second. Bauer watched the film, and other clips he collected of Toronto’s Marcus Stroman, who has a similar two-seamer, and studied the footage as part of his off-season routine, watching it on a loop three out of every five days once he started throwing on Nov. 1. Bauer said Kluber’s two-seamer, which averages 93 miles an hour, veered eight inches down and in to a righty, and he spotted it with such precision that it perfectly set up his curveball, if hitters got that far. “He puts a lot of pressure on the hitter to swing the bat,” Bauer said, “because I noticed toward the end of the year, a lot of guys were going up there and swinging really early in the count, almost like they were in defensive mode from the beginning. There was an intimidation factor you could see.” Bauer said his own version was a work in progress — inconsistent, but coming along. For years, that also described Kluber’s career, and his late development has kept him from cashing in on his Cy Young Award. Kluber was not eligible for salary arbitration this season and will make only $601,000 on a one-year deal. The Indians traded their last two Cy Young winners — C. C. Sabathia and Cliff Lee — before they reached free agency, getting outfielder Michael Brantley for Sabathia and starter Carlos Carrasco for Lee. They are in no rush to move Kluber, who cannot be a free agent until after the 2018 season. “I’m not talking about that,” Kluber said when asked about the possibility of a long-term contract, and the answer was predictable. The Klubot is not programmed to discuss such matters, or to elaborate on much of anything. He is programmed, simply, to dominate. It was a long-running script, but it is finally up and running.

Baseball
Corey Kluber
Zach McAllister
Terry Francona
Cleveland Indians


Reaching Back 2,000 Years to Unravel a Curse

Abstract: A vegetable seller named Babylas was the target of an alarming curse nearly 2,000 years ago. Written on a lead tablet found in Antioch, one of the largest cities in the Roman Empire, the curse calls on the gods to tie up the hapless greengrocer, then “drown and chill” his soul. The curse is described in the German journal Zeitschrift für Papyrologie und Epigraphik by Alexander Hollmann, a classicist at the University of Washington who studies Greek and Roman magic. The curse was written on both sides of the tablet. One side calls upon the god Iao to bind Babylas; the other side addresses multiple gods and calls for the tablet to be thrown down and “killed” in a well — followed, in the same way, by Babylas. “It also shows where he lives,” Dr. Hollmann said. “It’s all sort of designed so the gods know exactly where to find him.” Although the author of the curse is not mentioned in the writing, Dr. Hollmann speculates that it may have been a rival businessman. “This is a pretty serious curse,” he said. “And we have other evidence that these kinds of practices went on.” The tablet was found in a well in the 1930s, presumably the same one it was dropped in. Since then, along with many other items excavated from Antioch, which lies near Turkey’s Syrian border, the tablet has been at the Princeton University Art Museum. Curse tablets like this one have shown up in Rome, in Carthage in Africa and throughout the ancient Mediterranean region, said Dr. Hollmann, who has deciphered one other such tablet from Antioch and is working on six others. “They are so similar, because professionals were using magic books that circulated,” he said. “These had templates that were used for hundreds of years.”

Zeitschrift fur Papyrologie und Epigraphik (Journal)