On the Run Around the World of Formula One Racing

Abstract: The road ahead looks as wide as a farmer’s field and seems to extend to the sky, going on into the distance as if it never ends. But then it turns sharp to the right and snakes down a steep drop into a valley, providing some relief for the weary body making its way through a seemingly endless journey around one of the world’s greatest racetracks, the 7-kilometer circuit of Spa-Francorchamps in Belgium. The body in question is that of a man who has only recently joined a craze that has taken hold at the 19 Formula One Grand Prix racetracks around the world: Joggers, either individually or in a group, are running around the circuits where the pinnacle of auto racing holds its Grand Prix races from March to November. On television, the tracks may look like a cinch to navigate as the world’s greatest drivers race around them in their Formula One cars at speeds of 300 kilometers an hour, or 185 miles an hour. But on foot, at the end of a long day working at the track, they seem to go on forever. The jogging idea, called “RunThatTrack,” was conceived in 2009 by a McLaren engineer, Simon Morillas, and some of his colleagues over a few drinks. It has since become a ritual for the entire Formula One paddock at each race weekend. It draws together the community of mechanics, drivers and other team personnel, as well as journalists and circuit employees and officials. In 2011, the Swiss bank UBS, a Formula One sponsor, offered to pledge $100 to the Make-a-Wish charity for children for each lap run on the track. At the Belgian Grand Prix in August, the paddock celebrated passing the $1 million mark raised for the charity, with more than 70,000 accumulated kilometers run since the program began. “We have a lot of sponsorships in a lot of sports, and I feel this is one of the best programs we have,” said Björn Wäspe, a managing director in sponsorship at UBS. “Running 70,000 kilometers, that’s nearly twice around the world. For me it’s really unbelievable.” What drives it is something shared by the majority of people who work in Formula One: a competitive mentality. “The idea was simple,” said Morillas, who now works as a freelance software engineer for Formula One teams. “Take the simply peaceful and individual activity of running around the F1 tracks to a ridiculously crazy and completely over the top F1 level, where competition and performance could be scrutinized and analyzed (and strange conclusions drawn) by people who really should be doing other things.” He created a website on which the runners — only those people who have passes into the circuit for working purposes — record the number of laps they have run and their lap times. That’s how the competitive edge took hold, with runners trying to beat each other and improve their own lap times. But the system works on trust, with no official timekeeping, but rather each person timing himself or herself. The fastest recorded lap at Spa was that of Georg Nolte, the driver Nico Rosberg’s manager, who ran the track in 27 minutes 20 seconds. (This reporter’s time of 40 minutes 30 seconds at Spa was listed as number 165 out of the 219 recorded lap times.) Aside from providing an opportunity to discover the tracks from a different point of view, the event, despite being competitive, draws together the Formula One community in a unique way. “There was a time when running tracks was the domain of super-fit racing drivers and their trainers — but now almost everyone does it,” said Jonathan Noble, a reporter for Autosport magazine who is based in England. “I cannot think of any other event outside of track action that brings the whole paddock together like RunThatTrack.” It is particularly the thousands of “wish children” who are the winners. The Make-A-Wish Foundation, which was started in the 1980s in the United States and has now spread around the world, is a nonprofit organization that arranges experiences for children between the ages of 30 months and 18 years with life-threatening medical conditions. Wishes can be for almost anything, from receiving a computer to visiting a fire station or meeting a celebrity. “It’s a beautiful relationship between Make-a-Wish and the Formula One family,” said Harmienke Kloeze, a vice president of Make-a-Wish International. “It also makes sense, because sport and ‘wish children’ have something in common: When you do sport and when you run that track, there are always moments when you think you can’t do it anymore, that you have to look for the last little bit of strength in you to find the way up again.”


Cochran Holds Off Tea Party Challenger in Mississippi

Abstract: HATTIESBURG, Miss. — With an unusual assist from African-American voters and other Democrats who feared his opponent, Senator Thad Cochran on Tuesday beat back a spirited challenge from State Senator Chris McDaniel, triumphing in a Republican runoff and defeating the Tea Party in the state where the movement’s hopes were bright. “We all have a right to be proud of our state tonight,” Mr. Cochran said at his victory party in Jackson, Miss. “This is your victory.” Mr. McDaniel, speaking in Hattiesburg, was angry, and he did not hesitate to say so. “There is something a bit strange, there is something a bit unusual about a Republican primary that’s decided by liberal Democrats,” he said. He accused Mr. Cochran of abandoning the conservative movement. “So much for principles,” he said. Mr. McDaniel, an uncompromising conservative, relied on the muscle of outside groups and the enthusiasm of conservative voters who are weary of Mr. Cochran’s old-school Washington ways. Image Thad Cochran celebrated his victory with supporters after the primary. Credit Edmund D. Fountain for The New York Times The 76-year-old senator ran a largely sleepy campaign until the primary on June 3, when he was edged out by Mr. McDaniel but won enough votes to keep his opponent from outright victory. Mr. Cochran, who is seeking his seventh term, used the past three weeks to turn out Democratic voters — especially African-Americans — to make up that deficit. A surge of voters showed up on Tuesday in African-American precincts and in Mr. Cochran’s other strongholds to surprise Mr. McDaniel, 41, who just Monday night declared his campaign had gone from impossible to improbable to unstoppable. Early Wednesday, with all but one precinct reporting, Mr. Cochran’s lead over Mr. McDaniel was a little more than 6,000 votes. Recounts are not required under Mississippi law, although Mr. McDaniel could seek to challenge the results through the courts. Mr. Cochran’s victory was powered in part by African-Americans in areas of north Jackson whose turnout shattered that seen in those precincts in the primary. Turnout jumped fivefold at New Hope Baptist Church, and sevenfold at Green Elementary School, where only 14 voters came out on June 3 but about 100 showed up on Tuesday. Their high numbers came despite pledges by conservative political action committees to monitor turnout in Democratic areas targeted by Mr. Cochran’s campaign. Both the N.A.A.C.P. — which sent its own poll watchers — and the United States Justice Department expressed concerns about the possible intimidation of black Democrats, but no irregularities were reported to Mississippi election officials. The state has no party registration, and anyone could vote in the Republican runoff who had not voted in the Democratic primary, which was won by former Representative Travis Childers, 56. It was an extraordinary end to a wild campaign, with a Republican standing up for the rights of black Democrats, and with Tea Party groups from the North, especially the Senate Conservatives Fund, crying foul. Also sure to inflame the right: a center-right super PAC, Defending Main Street, which contributed over $150,000 to Mr. Cochran during the runoff, received $250,000 from Michael Bloomberg in the same period, according to a source close to the former New York City mayor. Mr. Bloomberg also contributed $250,000 to Mr Cochran’s super PAC, Mississippi Conservatives, before the primary. For months, the contest between Mr. Cochran and Mr. McDaniel was viewed as this year’s main event in the six-year clash between conservative activists and Republican incumbents. Money and celebrities poured into Mississippi from all over the country, with the establishment determined to make the state a Tea Party Waterloo. For their part, conservative groups were hoping for one major victory for the season. Image Senator Thad Cochran addressed supporters after winning Tuesday's primary election. Credit Edmund D. Fountain for The New York Times But after the surprise primary defeat this month of Representative Eric Cantor of Virginia, the House majority leader, the Mississippi contest took on greater significance. Outside conservative groups hoped to emerge with a second victory that would propel challenges in Tennessee, where Senator Lamar Alexander was widely expected to win, and perhaps in Kansas, where Senator Pat Roberts appeared to have recovered from an early stumble over whether he lived in Kansas or the Washington area. Instead, establishment Republicans and a surprisingly high number of Democrats helped deliver a come-from-behind victory for a senator known for his soft-spoken patrician air and his ability to bring home millions in dollars of federal spending. Mr. Cochran shifted his campaign message from polishing his conservative credentials to extolling his record of keeping Mississippi flush with federal cash. He also attacked Mr. McDaniel for his vows of austerity, especially in education. Those attacks seemed to work with voters — at least enough to spook Democrats, and even some Republicans, who are accustomed to the protection and seniority of a long line of Congress members going back almost 100 years, including Senators John C. Stennis, James Eastland and Trent Lott and Representatives Sonny Montgomery and Jamie L. Whitten. Image Senator Thad Cochran of Mississippi celebrated his victory over a Tea Party-backed challenger, Chris McDaniel, at a party in Jackson on Tuesday. 1 / 11 Jeanie Munn, who lives in Hattiesburg, said Mr. McDaniel “represents a threat to the state.” She cited a vote he cast in the State Senate against a new nursing school building at the University of Southern Mississippi. Roger Smith, a black Democrat who said he was being paid to organize for Mr. Cochran, said, “I don’t know too much about McDaniel other than what McDaniel’s saying: that he’s Tea Party, he’s against Obama, he don’t like black people.” “You’re going to get one of the white guys in there,” he said. “You got to make a choice.” In downtown Hattiesburg, Democratic voters trickled out of the Court Street United Methodist Church, saying they had voted for a Republican for the first time in their lives — Mr. Cochran. Heath Kleinke, 38, held his 4-month-old baby and said he wanted her to get a good education in Mississippi, something he believed would be made more difficult if Mr. McDaniel were to make good on his proposal to cut federal funding. “The fact that he openly criticizes Thad Cochran for talking to Democrats riled me up from the beginning,” added Mr. Kleinke, a graphic designer. Image For months, the contest between Mr. Cochran and Mr. McDaniel was viewed as this year’s main event in the six-year clash between conservative activists and Republican incumbents. Credit William Widmer for The New York Times Kay Tyler, an African-American who works for the Jackson public school system, said Mr. Cochran simply never asked for her vote — until now. “He should have,” Ms. Tyler said. White Democrats also turned out for the senator. Dorothy McGehee, 88, a lifelong Democrat who registered blacks to vote in the civil rights era, found herself putting out Cochran yard signs in Meadville, Miss., and begging her friends to vote. Kino Sintee, 17, and three black friends waved “Thad” signs on a street corner in a black Hattiesburg neighborhood. They said the preacher from Mount Olive Baptist Church asked them to help out. “They’re talking about taking everything away from us,” he said. “People still need stuff.” Michael Davis, 44, said it was his “duty” to stop Mr. McDaniel. “If anyone wants to tell me I’m stealing the election or something ludicrous like that, it doesn’t work that way,” he said. In Tupelo, Miss., John Armistead, 73, a die-hard Democrat, and his wife, Sandra, 69, a Republican, put aside their differences on Tuesday, and both voted for Mr. Cochran. “Even though he votes with the Republicans on virtually everything, I’ve never seen Cochran as being so partisan,” Mr. Armistead said. “As a Democrat, that’s important to me. McDaniel is very partisan and will align himself with the right-wing, partisan-type people.” Those crossover votes from Democrats left many of Mr. McDaniel’s supporters seething. “Our whole system is corrupt,” said a glum Alicia Holloman of George County as the last results trickled into the McDaniel party at the Hattiesburg Convention Center. “We deserve to be called the most corrupt state in the nation.” Her husband, Michael, was more circumspect. “You should be able to vote the way you want to vote. It’s fair,” he said. “But when you’re on the losing side, it stinks.”

2014 Midterm Elections
Thad Cochran
Mississippi
Tea Party movement
Republicans
Chris McDaniel
US Politics
Senate races
Primaries


Whistle-Blower Suit Accuses Visiting Nurse Service of Fraud

Abstract: The Visiting Nurse Service of New York, one of the largest nonprofit home health care agencies in the United States, likes to highlight a lineage going back to its founder, Lillian Wald , who began nursing the poorest immigrant New Yorkers in their homes in 1893. Whatever its outcome, a federal whistle-blower lawsuit served on the agency on Thursday showcases how far today’s billion-dollar entity has come from its early days, when Ms. Wald’s visiting nurses charged a dime, or nothing at all, for their services. The lawsuit, brought under federal and state False Claims Acts by a senior manager who worked at the agency for 16 years, charges that the Visiting Nurse Service of New York has systematically extracted hundreds of millions of dollars from Medicare and Medicaid through falsified and improper billings, while shortchanging needy patients of the care their doctors ordered. “Beyond this massive financial fraud on the government, the ultimate victims here are the tens of thousands of elderly, disabled and impoverished New York residents who because of V.N.S.N.Y.’s misconduct have not been getting the critical home health care services they require,” the lawsuit says. In an emailed statement, Richard Rothstein, a spokesman for the agency, called the lawsuit “self-serving and baseless.” He said its allegations were made by “a disgruntled former employee with no responsibility for and little knowledge of the clinical realities of our business who has spun a tale out of whole cloth.” The lawsuit was brought by Edward Lacey, vice president of operations improvement and integration until he left the company in January. It is the most far-reaching in a cascade of audits , investigations and legal actions that have shaken the Visiting Nurse Service in recent years, even as the agency played a key role in the Cuomo administration’s overhaul of Medicaid. The suit was originally filed under seal in 2014 in the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York, prompting a confidential investigation by federal and state authorities, who allowed the amended complaint to be unsealed last week. Federal and state prosecutors have declined to join the case for now but reserved the right to intervene later . The current complaint alleges three main areas of fraud, all involving the agency’s core operations as a provider of home health care services to about 150,000 patients a year in New York City; Nassau, Suffolk and Westchester Counties; and several upstate counties. It charges that for financial gain, the agency “intentionally ignored” the plans of care prescribed by physicians, providing only a fraction of the nursing and rehabilitation visits that had been ordered under Medicare, which pays a set rate for an “episode of care.” The practice seriously endangered the welfare of patients, the lawsuit charges, and resulted in needless rehospitalizations. Among the examples cited from the agency’s own 2014 records is a patient with lupus who had undergone a lower-limb amputation and used a wheelchair. The patient’s doctor had ordered 27 rehabilitation visits and 38 nursing visits to be made over a 60-day period. The agency provided none of the rehabilitation visits and only five nursing visits during the two-month period, but it collected a full $3,537 in government reimbursement, the lawsuit says. Similar cases cited in the complaint involve patients coping with the aftereffects of a mastectomy, a kidney transplant, a hip fracture and a knee replacement, some with complications from diabetes, high blood pressure or heart disease, others with bedsores and Alzheimer’s disease. All are said to have received a fifth or less of the care prescribed, without the agency notifying them, their doctor or the government of the reduction in services. Mr. Lacey tried to get executives at the agency to correct the fraud and misconduct, to no avail, according to the lawsuit. Through his lawyers at Constantine Cannon , he declined to talk about the case. Under the rules of this type of suit, he could be awarded up to 30 percent of any money the government recovers. The lawsuit depicts an agency in escalating turmoil. Regional managers warned of agency patients languishing without care, but agency policy, enforced by the chief executive, was still to accept all patient referrals in order to maximize billings, the suit says, despite a shortage of staff to provide the ordered services. “The scope of V.N.S.N.Y.’s failure to provide its patients with the level of care they require has been increasing and engendering a growing chorus of complaints,” the lawsuit says, quoting heated exchanges at executive meetings from April to July 2014. At a meeting that Mr. Lacey attended with several other agency vice presidents that April, for example, the manager overseeing home health care services in Brooklyn warned that in her region alone, there were 600 patients for whom the agency was unable to provide the ordered therapy services, and that even if the services could eventually be provided, it would be too late for the patients to derive any benefit. Similar concerns were voiced by those overseeing the agency in Manhattan, Queens, the Bronx and Westchester. An internal report showed that nearly half the 5,000 patients referred for rehabilitation services during that period had gone without the prescribed services; another internal report, titled “Therapy Services Not Provided as of May 9,” showed 2,038 patients still waiting, including some who had gone eight weeks without any care. The lawsuit quotes Eloise Goldberg, who oversees the agency in Queens, telling an executive meeting that the failures were damaging the agency’s reputation and causing some to refer to it as “the ‘No’ Visiting Nurse Service.” But when executives briefly told certain referring hospitals that the Visiting Nurse Service would have to limit the number of patients it accepted, Mary Ann Christopher, then the chief executive, angrily ordered that those instructions be rescinded, the lawsuit said. Ms. Christopher resigned in November 2014 , two weeks after the agency completed a $35 million Medicaid settlement with state and federal officials in a different whistle-blower lawsuit. The settlement related to VNSNY Choice, the agency’s company for Medicaid managed long-term care, which had been cherry-picking able-bodied, ineligible older New Yorkers to enroll in its program through adult day care centers that offered table tennis and free casino trips. After the state temporarily suspended enrollment, the agency laid off more than 1,500 employees. Nevertheless, shortly before Ms. Christopher’s resignation, it was awarded a $2.3 billion state contract for a new managed-care program. Ms. Christopher did not return calls seeking comment. A second type of fraud alleged in the suit is the falsification of time and service records by hundreds of agency nurses and therapists. For years, the Visiting Nurse Service’s internal reports tracking home-care visits have shown claims for an impossibly high number of visits, or visits too short to provide meaningful care, and without required patient verification that the visits ever took place, the lawsuit says. Based on the agency’s standards, the average full-time nurse should be providing roughly six home care visits a day of about 37 minutes each. But agency records show routine claims made for more than triple that number of visits in a single day. Among the examples cited is a nurse in Manhattan who claimed to have made 20 patient visits at nine different addresses on the Upper East Side on a single February day and said none of the patients were capable of providing a signature to verify the visit. Another nurse, in Brooklyn, claimed 20 visits each workday for an entire year, or about 4,000 visits instead of the standard 1,300. The agency has been aware of these patterns of fraud for years, the lawsuit says, but has taken no action because its prevailing practices yield more billings. The third type of fraud described involves the agency’s billing for home health aides who are provided through Partners in Care, its wholly owned subsidiary, and many other vendor agencies. The lawsuit charges that the Visiting Nurse Service has routinely billed the government for home aide services that were not provided or properly supervised, and that it routinely double-bills when patients are eligible for both Medicare and Medicaid.

Visiting Nurse Service
Fraud
New York Metropolitan Area
Whistleblower
Home Health Care
New York
Medicare
Lawsuits
Health Insurance
Medicaid


Alibaba Faces U.S. Accounting Inquiry

Abstract: HONG KONG — The Alibaba Group, the e-commerce giant, said Wednesday that it was under investigation by United States securities regulators over its accounting practices, a potential setback for a company long seen as a symbol of China’s growing technological might. The investigation — disclosed in a stock filing — appears to focus on how Alibaba deals with a web of companies in which it owns stakes or has some say in the operations. The company said the Securities and Exchange Commission was investigating how Alibaba accounts for affiliated companies, including a logistics venture, and how it treats related-party transactions. It also puts under scrutiny Alibaba’s handling of Singles Day , a one-day shopping event in China that the company says gave it the world record for most online sales volume in a day. Alibaba said it had provided the commission with information about how it reported data from that event. Alibaba said that it was voluntarily cooperating with the commission, and that the investigation was not an indication it had violated any law. Still, the disclosure risks tarnishing a rare Chinese company that has won global fame for its business acumen. Two years ago, Alibaba raised $25 billion in the world’s largest initial public offering. Its executive chairman, Jack Ma, rubs elbows with global technology and political leaders . Last week, he attended a private lunch with President Obama at the White House. But as Mr. Ma’s profile has risen, Alibaba has grappled with challenges, including allegations from the owners of famous brands that it takes a lax stance on counterfeit goods on its sales platforms — a charge it denies. Its shares have also seesawed over investor concerns about China’s slowing economic growth and Alibaba’s enormous shopping spree to try to cater to the growing legions of Chinese consumers who order everything from taxis to in-home massages on their smartphones. The company has spent billions of dollars on services as varied as logistics, food delivery and film production. It is unclear whether the investigation will have an impact on Alibaba. Asked for comment, an Alibaba spokeswoman reiterated the company’s statement to the commission. Alibaba’s share price has stabilized in recent months. In the most recent quarter, the company had strong revenue growth despite the broader worries about China’s slowdown. Alibaba is at the center of a complicated web of companies in China that broadly touch the lives of Chinese consumers. Mr. Ma also controls the parent company of an electronic payment service called Alipay. Alipay is a giant in its own right, with a financial smartphone app widely found on Chinese handsets and with offerings including money-market-like investments and easy money transfers. Chinese consumers often use Alipay to buy merchandise from Alibaba’s platforms. Alipay, which was valued at about $60 billion in its last fund-raising round, was once part of Alibaba but was peeled off into a separate company in 2011 in a move that spurred acrimony with Yahoo, then a major investor in the Chinese company. Alipay’s parent company says that, to date, it has lent more than $100 billion, mostly to small businesses. Those businesses could spend that money on marketing on Alibaba’s e-commerce sites, which would in turn become Alibaba revenue. According to data from Dealogic, Alibaba has also spent $25.5 billion since its listing in September 2014 to broaden its services to compete with Tencent and Baidu, fellow Chinese Internet giants that are scrambling to make money from a shift to mobile devices. Its key investments and acquisitions include its purchase of Youku Tudou, once a YouTube-like service that now streams movies and TV shows, and an investment in Koubei, a food-ordering app in which Alipay’s parent company is also an investor. One focus of the S.E.C. investigation appears to be Alibaba’s investment in logistics, which itself signaled a shift in its business approach. In its filing, Alibaba said it had provided information to the commission about its logistics arm, Cainiao. Alibaba has long eschewed building a logistics network to keep down costs. That approach has increased profit margins but made it more vulnerable to competitors with better control over delivery channels, which are underdeveloped in China. Image Jack Ma, executive chairman of the Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba. The company says it is cooperating with the inquiry. Credit Pool photo by Aaron Favila As Chinese e-commerce rivals offered fast delivery, Cainiao was created in 2013 as a way to make Alibaba’s logistics more efficient. Cainiao is jointly owned by Alibaba and a number of the logistics companies that deliver the bulk of the goods ordered on Alibaba’s sales platforms, like Taobao and Tmall. At the time, Alibaba said Cainiao would spend up to $16 billion in developing smart logistics in China in the coming years. Mr. Ma was named as chairman when Cainiao was created, Alibaba holds a 47 percent stake in the company, and a number of companies Alibaba has invested in have since worked with Cainiao. Still, Alibaba does not consolidate Cainiao’s results with its own. That relationship has been questioned by some short-sellers and researchers. In a 40-page report released to its clients in October, Pacific Square Research, a market analysis firm, argued that Alibaba did not disclose enough information about its large number of investments. It said that at times Alibaba used that web of investments to control companies like Cainiao without taking their losses onto its balance sheet. The Alibaba spokeswoman said that the company had provided disclosures about Cainiao’s financials in its most recent annual report. That “is exactly the kind of robust and transparent information that will address the underlying issues in the S.E.C.’s inquiry,” she said. Alibaba recorded losses of about $60 million over the past two years in connection to Cainiao, according to the filing. The Pacific Square report also described instances that it said showed Alibaba did not disclose related-party transactions. For example, it said that Alibaba had failed to disclose the amount it had spent in advertising on Weibo, the Chinese social-media service, even though at that time Alibaba had made a $1 billion investment in Weibo. By comparison, Weibo, also a listed company, disclosed the amount it had received from Alibaba. In its most recent filing, Alibaba disclosed that it had spent about $230 million on Weibo marketing in the past three years. “We haven’t seen anything quite as difficult to untangle as this in our respective careers,” Herb Greenberg, a managing partner of Pacific Square, wrote in an email. “In our view, Alibaba is like a big ball of wet knotted yarn.” Asked about Pacific Square’s assertions, the Alibaba spokeswoman said the company did not comment on market speculation.

Alibaba
China
Accounting
Accountants
Securities fraud
SEC


Philippines Will Impound Ship Linked to North Korea

Abstract: MANILA — The Philippines will become the first country to enforce tough new United Nations sanctions on North Korea when it begins formal procedures on Monday to impound a cargo vessel linked to the reclusive nation, a government spokesman said on Sunday. The Jin Teng, which is suspected of being a North Korean ship, arrived Thursday at Subic Bay, a commercial port about 50 miles northwest of Manila. It will be impounded, its crew will be deported, and it will most likely be inspected by a team from the United Nations, said Charles Jose, a spokesman for the Philippine Department of Foreign Affairs. The vessel is registered and flagged under multiple countries, but it is one of 31 listed as being owned by North Korea, Philippine officials said, and therefore subject to seizure under the new sanctions. The sanctions are a result of a United Nations Security Council resolution that was passed Wednesday after a North Korean nuclear test on Jan. 6 and a long-range rocket test on Feb. 7. One component of the new sanctions requires countries to inspect all cargo passing through their territory en route to or from North Korea. Inspections previously had been required only if there was reasonable suspicion of contraband aboard. “The world is concerned over North Korea’s nuclear weapons program, and as a member of the U.N., the Philippines has to do its part to enforce the sanctions,” Manuel L. Quezon III, a member of the president’s communications team, said on a government-run radio station on Saturday. The 4,355-ton vessel had a crew of 21 North Korean citizens and was in the Philippines to unload a shipment of agricultural byproducts often used as livestock feed. The Philippine Coast Guard searched the vessel on Friday and found no prohibited items. Only minor safety violations, including missing fire hoses and exposed wiring, were discovered. The vessel’s last port of call was in Indonesia, and it was going to proceed to Zhanjiang Port in China after unloading in Subic Bay, Philippine Coast Guard officials said Saturday. It was not scheduled to pick up any cargo in the Philippines. In 2008, the police seized about 1,500 pounds of crystal methamphetamine, with an estimated value of more than $100 million, in Subic Bay that drug enforcement officials at the time said had been produced in North Korea.

Philippines
Ships and Shipping
North Korea
UN
Subic Bay
Embargoes Sanctions


West Bank: Clash Over Olive Trees Leaves 8 Wounded

Abstract: At least seven Palestinians were wounded by gunfire and rubber bullets in clashes with Israeli settlers and soldiers in the northern West Bank on Monday, according to a Palestinian official and the Israeli military. One settler was reported wounded after being hit by a rock. Palestinians accused the settlers of having uprooted olive trees in the area. A military spokeswoman said that settlers and soldiers opened fire after being attacked by Palestinian stone throwers. Three of the Palestinians were shot by settlers, and four by soldiers, the spokeswoman said, adding that of the four, two were wounded by rubber bullets and two by live fire.

Defense and Military Forces
Palestinians
West Bank
Israel


Two American Tourists Kidnapped in Egypt, Officials Say

Abstract: CAIRO — Bedouin gunmen stormed a minivan in Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula on Friday, kidnapping two American tourists and an Egyptian tour guide for several hours before releasing them to the police, Egyptian security officials said. Maj. Gen. Gamal el-Ba’ie, the director of investigations for the south Sinai area, said that Bedouin tribesmen took the hostages in the hopes of pressuring the government into releasing two of their relatives who had been arrested on suspicion of dealing drugs. An official in south Sinai, Gamal Abdel Barry, said the relatives were not released and that the abductors relented after being told “this was bad for Egypt’s image and tourism.” He also said no one was arrested. The tourists’ minivan was attacked in the town of Saint Catherine, a tourist hub near Mount Sinai, police officials said. Egyptian state media said that an unspecified number of gunmen sped up to the minivan in a small pickup truck and a car. The minivan was carrying three other tourists in addition to the Americans, but their nationalities were not given. The men robbed the passengers of money, watches and cellphones before abducting the two American women and their guide and driving off into the mountains, according to state media reports. The local governor, security director and police officials traveled where the hostages were being held as part of the rapid negotiations that freed the hostages after roughly six hours of captivity, the reports said. The American Embassy in Cairo did not respond to numerous requests for confirmation of the kidnapping or release. The abduction followed the kidnapping by armed Bedouin tribesmen on Tuesday of 25 Chinese factory workers who were taken from a company bus traveling in Sinai. The gunmen in that case has also demanded the release of fellow tribesmen from prison and held the Chinese workers for less than a day before freeing them. It was not clear how Egyptian officials obtained their release. The disappearance of two American tourists threatened to deal a further blow to Egypt’s sputtering tourism industry, among the nation’s most important sources of income, which collapsed in the wake of the revolution last year and in the political uncertainty that has followed. The Minister of Tourism called the two women to ensure that they were unharmed, state media reported, inviting them to dinner in Cairo on Saturday as a gesture of apology. The kidnappings come as a climate of lawlessness is gripping Egypt, especially after a soccer riot on Wednesday night that left about 70 people dead. During the melee, some witnesses said, the police stood nearby but did not intervene to stop the bloodshed, prompting protests and accusations of deliberate inaction ordered by the military-led government. Protesters clashed with police officers in the streets of Cairo surrounding the Interior Ministry on Thursday night and Friday morning, and four more deaths were reported. Maj. Gen. Mohammed Naguib, the head of south Sinai security, told The Associated Press that the gunmen in Friday’s kidnapping had taken the two Americans into the nearby mountains. Three other people were on the bus but were not taken, he said. Their nationalities were not given. In 2008, masked gunmen grabbed 11 tourists — five Germans, five Italians and a Romanian — along with eight Egyptian guides. They were freed in a raid by Egyptian and Sudanese commandos days later.


Chancellor Talks of Cuts for Schools, Amid Hissing

Abstract: If Schools Chancellor Joel I. Klein were looking for allies in his latest battle with state officials over education funding, he would have found few in the City Council chamber on Tuesday. During a nearly four-hour hearing filled with skepticism that bordered on hostility from council members, Mr. Klein testified that the city badly needed more flexibility from the state to avoid significant cuts at dozens of public schools. But several council members said they found the argument difficult to believe. They also said that rather than appealing to the state, the Bloomberg administration should restore millions to the education budget so that no individual school would face cuts. “There is no doubt and no way around the fact that this city, state and country are in difficult economic times, but even with that reality those level of cuts are not ones that I can, in good faith, support,” said Speaker Christine C. Quinn, who added that the Council would work to find “other cuts in other places” to reduce those faced by schools. Several council members criticized Mr. Klein for not doing more publicly to fight the mayor’s education budget, which allocated $428 million less than what had been planned for education. Still, Mr. Klein insisted that Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg was acting responsibly as the “fiscal steward” of the city. “The city can’t give us what it doesn’t have,” Mr. Klein said. “We’re in this as a city; we should address this as a city.” Last week, Mr. Klein announced that some schools would face cuts of as much as 5 percent next year, unless Albany loosened restrictions on roughly $63 million in new state aid. Under the restrictions, the money must be spent largely on low-performance and high-poverty schools. Mr. Klein said that many of the schools facing the harshest cuts were some of the most coveted and top-performing in the city, and that if the state allowed him flexibility, he would cut all school budgets by 1.4 percent. That has prompted outcries from several lawmakers and advocates, who say the administration is trying to pit parents against each other. “Those charges are baseless,” Mr. Klein said. “We are here to protect all our children. My job as chancellor is to make sure that all children receive it equally.” Mr. Klein said Tuesday that if the regulations were scaled back, the Education Department would be roughly $99 million short of keeping all schools from facing cuts. If the state did not amend its restrictions, he said, it would take roughly $400 million to prevent any school cuts. Several council members said that they were confused by the chancellor’s math, and that it was not clear how much money was needed to protect all schools. “I hate to say this, but I don’t believe you,” said G. Oliver Koppell, a councilman from the Bronx, prompting a few cheers from the audience. At the start of the hearing, onlookers packed into the chamber, and Ms. Quinn pleaded with them to stop hissing at Mr. Klein and his supporters. Several were escorted out after shouting, “Chancellor Klein, don’t cut a dime!”

Klein Joel I
Education and Schools
Budgets and Budgeting
City Councils
New York City


A Conflicted Donald Trump Tries a New Tactic: Sticking to the Script

Abstract: After months of flailing attempts, Donald J. Trump has begun to recast his political message in more structured terms and wrestle with his temptation to go off script, as his campaign seeks to revive his fading candidacy and turn the focus this fall to Hillary Clinton’s honesty and integrity. Working off a script from his reshuffled team of advisers, Mr. Trump is also drastically tempering his language about the signature issue of his campaign: immigration. After winning the Republican nomination on a promise to deport all 11 million immigrants who are in the United States illegally, he indicated on Wednesday night that he was considering allowing some to stay if they had lived in the United States for many years, lacked criminal records and paid back taxes. “We are going to come out with a decision very soon,” he said on Fox News, signaling flexibility on an issue that sharply divides undecided voters. He is expected to deliver a speech on immigration next week in Phoenix. Mr. Trump is also spending far less time attacking his fellow Republicans and picking fights with people other than Mrs. Clinton, instead hammering away at her State Department tenure and her family’s charitable foundation . And he is aligning his stump speeches with his television advertising, vowing to crack down on violent crime and improve border security. Aware of his unpopularity with white moderate voters, especially women who have been turned off by his racially charged words, he is trying to show interest in the lives of African-Americans and Hispanics, too, even as he uses language that offends those groups. Many Republicans, weary of repeated promises of a reborn Mr. Trump, remain skeptical that he can stick to his message over the next 11 weeks, and some say it is too late to persuade most voters to see him anew. Image Mr. Trump met with volunteers at a voter registration drive outside his campaign event in Tampa, Fla., on Wednesday. Credit Damon Winter/The New York Times And the message he has delivered with fresh rigor, especially his emphasis on crime, still diverges widely from what most Republicans view as a winning pitch. Even Mr. Trump is not sure he can be letter-perfect. He said in an interview that he still loved his freewheeling rallies of old, even when they got him in trouble, and that he would not always rely on prepared remarks or stop waging warfare with his Twitter account, even if he ended up overshadowing his advisers’ preferred arguments. Yet Mr. Trump seems to be confronting the reality that his political fortunes could rise or fall on his ability to show restraint. Over the last week, his new political team shared grim polling data with Mr. Trump and told him directly that he was in grave danger of losing if he did not sharpen and steadily prosecute strong arguments against Mrs. Clinton. He came away persuaded and has been heartened by upticks in some recent polls. “I have been staying on message more now because, ultimately, I’m finding that I do better with voters, do better in the polls, when I’m on message,” he said in a telephone interview on Tuesday. Mr. Trump ousted his chief strategist, Paul Manafort, last week and appointed two advisers who had more expertise with his brand of bare-knuckle public relations: Kellyanne Conway, a veteran pollster and cable news commentator, and Stephen K. Bannon, the chairman of Breitbart News, a conservative website. Mr. Trump sees Ms. Conway as a polished and energetic defender who can help him attract female voters and shape the message that he wants to deliver, rather than impose one on him. She, in turn, wanted him to have prepared remarks at rallies, and he decided to use teleprompters to help stick to those scripts. 2016 Election Forecast: Who Will Be President? The Upshot’s presidential forecast, updated daily. “Ultimately, I said I want to do this my way,” he said. “I had 80 days at the time, and I want to do it my way.” Few presidential candidates have indulged their impulses and spoken off-the-cuff as much as Mr. Trump, a political outsider who is used to playing the tough guy in boardrooms and business negotiations. Assuming the role of party standard-bearer has been a struggle for him, and even now, as he tries to follow a new script, he has not abandoned the caustic tone that has defined his candidacy. His evolving language on immigration reflects his conflicting desires: In the space of a few hours on Tuesday, he said he was open to “softening” his hard-line policies toward some people who had entered the country illegally and then whipped up a rally in Austin, Tex., with promises to make Mexico pay for a border wall. His new pleas for support from black voters have also carried a hard edge, including last week in Wisconsin, when he questioned why they would not vote for him. Describing blacks as besieged by crime and bereft of economic opportunity, he asked, “What the hell do you have to lose?” In Ohio on Monday, he described American cities as more dangerous than war zones, and in Mississippi on Wednesday night, he called Mrs. Clinton a “bigot” who courted minorities only for their votes. And at a rally in Tampa, Fla., on Wednesday, Mr. Trump still showed a penchant for going off script, reading the word “premeditation” as “premedication” during an attack on Mrs. Clinton — and then, after a pause, saying he preferred “premedication,” an apparent nod to conspiracy theories that his allies have spread about her health. Several Republican leaders and strategists, including those critical of Mr. Trump, said they had noticed adjustments in his performance since Ms. Conway became his campaign manager last week. Where previous advisers have sought to recraft the basics of his message, the new team around him appears intent mainly on arranging his favorite themes in a more consistent, linear format. Still, with early voting set to begin in many states in late September and October, and given Mr. Trump’s history of popping off on Twitter, at rallies or in cable interviews at any moment, they said it was impossible to say whether his current message would endure and help turn the focus to Mrs. Clinton’s character. “Is what he’s doing enough for him to win? We’ve got to play the hand we’re dealt, so it will have to be enough, but it’s very hard to know,” said Matt Borges, the head of the Ohio Republican Party, who has urged Mr. Trump to adopt a more positive tone. “He just needs to focus on all of Hillary Clinton’s problems. But look, we’ve all been saying that for months.” John Brabender, a Republican strategist who has worked extensively in swing states, said there was clearly an effort in progress to guide Mr. Trump toward a “more focused and more consistently delivered message,” within the limits of what comes naturally to him. But Mr. Brabender also suggested that Mr. Trump needed to do more. “He should be talking about: What is the vision of what America is going to look like after four years of Donald Trump, and what does that mean for people’s lives?” Mr. Brabender said, allowing that Mr. Trump had improved on his practice of “making it up at every campaign stop they have.” Mr. Trump, in the interview, argued that it took “more talent to do freethinking rallies” than to stick to a script, noting that he had to remember to make points about jobs and immigration while also engaging his audiences. He said that he was adjusting to his latest style of communicating, and that it sometimes felt at odds with his desire to entertain the crowds at his rallies. Yet as he mulls important shifts on immigration, he is still making muddled statements and remains far from clear on policy details. There are signs of change. In an interview last month, shortly after the F.B.I. director, James B. Comey, issued scathing comments about Mrs. Clinton’s email practices as secretary of state, Mr. Trump said he could not “spend more than five minutes talking about her emails at my rallies, because people will lose interest, and you have to talk about other things to keep their attention.” But in the interview this week, he said he needed to “give people a mix of things at the rallies” and wanted “to be more on message.” “Now we’re getting to Labor Day, and things will be different,” he said. Still, if aides have helped bring new focus to Mr. Trump’s stump speech, they have been unable to tame him on social media, where he continues to deliver outlandish attacks on all manner of adversaries, especially in the news media. He attacked the MSNBC hosts Mika Brzezinski and Joe Scarborough on Monday in extraordinarily personal terms and threatened to “tell the real story” about them. Mr. Trump said he would not hesitate to do so again if they criticized him, or to consider taking on others — even if that meant stepping on his scripted message. “If people hit me, I will certainly hit back,” he said. “That will never change.”

2016 Presidential Election
Donald Trump
Republicans
Kellyanne Conway
Illegal Immigration


Warnings of New Turmoil as Pakistan Pursues a Treason Case for Musharraf

Abstract: ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — Pakistan’s government said Sunday that it was initiating a treason prosecution of the country’s former ruler, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, in what would be a groundbreaking, if politically charged, assertion of civilian supremacy over the powerful Pakistani military. Interior Minister Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan said that the government had asked the Supreme Court to establish a special panel to try General Musharraf on accusations that he subverted the Constitution in late 2007 when he imposed emergency rule and fired much of the judiciary. The military has ruled Pakistan for about half of the country’s 66-year history, and no ruler or top military commander had ever faced criminal prosecution until General Musharraf’s return from exile in April. Since then, he has faced criminal prosecution in four cases related to his time in power. But a treason prosecution would sharply raise the stakes between civilian and military leaders — the charge carries a potential death penalty — and, analysts warned on Sunday, could cast the country into new political turmoil. “It is a can of worms,” said Talat Masood, a retired general and respected political commentator. “It is really absurd.” The decision to proceed against General Musharraf comes at a tough time for Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, whose government is facing increasing scrutiny for its handling of the economy, foreign relations and security. And personally, Mr. Sharif, who is visiting Thailand, has been criticized for his frequent foreign tours even as Pakistan has faced struggle after struggle. On Friday, at least nine people were killed and 50 were wounded in Rawalpindi, the garrison city next to the capital, as sectarian riots broke out between Shiite and Sunni groups. The violence led the government to clamp a two-day curfew on the city, suspend cellphone services and bring out troops in several other cities to quell tensions. And relations with the United States are under strain over accusations that an American drone strike that killed the Taliban leader Hakimullah Mehsud sabotaged nascent peace talks with the Pakistani Taliban. With such a turbulent political environment as backdrop, the sudden announcement of treason charges brought immediate questions and criticism. Image Gen. Pervez Musharraf Credit Rehan Khan/European Pressphoto Agency “What we saw today was a political decision,” said Fahd Hussain, the director of news at the Express News television network. “It was important for Nawaz Sharif to be seen to deliver on his past pledges.” What seems clear, at least, is that Mr. Sharif’s government wanted to prevent General Musharraf from slipping out of Pakistan into exile. General Musharraf, a former army chief, had been under house arrest at his villa outside Islamabad until earlier this month, when he was released on bail on all cases and later requested permission to go to Dubai, United Arab Emirates, to visit his mother. On Monday, lawyers for General Musharraf are due to make a court application to have him taken off an official list that prevents him from leaving Pakistan. A treason prosecution would result in new restrictions on Mr. Musharraf’s movements, although it remained unclear how quickly the Supreme Court would move on Monday. In a statement on Sunday, General Musharraf’s office described the treason charges as a “vicious attempt to undermine the Pakistan military” and a “botched attempt” to divert attention from the country’s other problems. Babar Sattar, a lawyer and columnist with the English-language daily newspaper Dawn, said that Mr. Sharif appeared to be betting that the army would not stop the judiciary from trying General Musharraf in open court. “I think Nawaz realizes that Musharraf is a bygone for the army,” he said. “He wants to fix him but does not want to give an impression that it is revenge.” General Musharraf’s supporters say the law is being applied selectively, pointing out that many senior justices, including the country’s crusading chief justice, Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry, validated the 1999 coup that brought the military ruler to power. Mr. Chaudhry was among the judges fired by Mr. Musharraf during the state of emergency, and later became a rallying point for opposition to the former general’s rule. The decision to put General Musharraf on trial also comes at a time of transition for the military. The current army chief, Gen. Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, is due to retire at the end of this month. Chief Justice Chaudhry is due to retire in December. But if Mr. Sharif is seeking to take advantage of this period of transition in Pakistan’s power politics, many warned that it could backfire. “They are adopting an unchartered course of action that contains many hazards,” said Hasan Askari Rizvi, a defense analyst. “This case may ultimately alienate the military.” Mr. Rizvi added that governance had been “very poor” and that ordinary people had been severely affected in the last five to six months by inflation and chronic power shortages. “It just shows very poor sense of priority. What are they trying to achieve?” said Mr. Masood, the retired general. “The army is involved in the tribal belt. It is also involved in maintaining peace in Karachi and now in Rawalpindi. What message is the government sending?”

Pervez Musharraf
Pakistan
Treason
Nawaz Sharif


Fitbit Says It Plans to Price I.P.O. at $14 to $16 a Share

Abstract: Fitbit, the maker of wearable health-tracking devices, expects to price its initial public offering at $14 a share to $16 a share, according to filing on Tuesday with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The company intends to sell 22.4 million shares and its existing shareholders expect to sell 7.5 million shares, according to the filing . At the midpoint of the price range, Fitbit would be valued at nearly $3.1 billion. Fitbit could raise up to $358.4 million from its sale of shares in the offering, but it will not receive any proceeds from the sale of the 7.5 million shares belonging to existing investors, according to the filing. Fitbit unveiled its plans for an I.P.O. last month. Founded in 2007 and based in San Francisco, Fitbit sells wearable devices that allow consumers to track their physical activity, heart rate and calories burned. Their products range from a simple activity tracker to a more complex sports watch. Through the end of March, the company said it had sold more than 20.8 million devices since its inception eight years ago. The company reported revenue of $745.4 million in 2014. The company is looking to go public while it faces increasing competition in the wearable technology sector from the likes of Apple, Microsoft and Samsung. Jawbone, a privately held competitor, sued Fitbit in California last month, accusing its rival of “systematically plundering” confidential information by hiring Jawbone employees who improperly downloaded sensitive materials shortly before leaving the company. Fitbit will have two classes of stock when it is listed. Class B shares will have 10 times the voting power of the Class A shares that will be sold in the offering. As a result, insiders will effectively maintain control of the company following the I.P.O.

Fitbit
IPO
Wearable Computing
Stocks,Bonds
SEC
San Francisco
Medicine and Health


A Business Traveler’s View of the Latest Airline Merger

Abstract: WHEN discussing the airline business, Michael Boyd uses the term “raw, naked economics” as if it ought to be followed by a shriek off a movie screen. But raw, naked economics will decide the corporate success of the merger between American Airlines and US Airways that the Justice Department gave the green light to last week. It will also define the effect that merger will have on business travel. So here’s one man’s raw, naked prediction: “I’m not being totally facetious when I say that business travel will be just as awful as it is today,” said Mr. Boyd, the president of Boyd Group International, an industry forecasting company. What, you expected the sort of eye-batting optimism pumped out by the Justice Department with its announcement that it had settled its antitrust complaint against the merger by requiring the two airlines to give up some airport gates to competition from “low-cost carriers?” Let’s take the Justice Department’s assertion that the settlement will change the landscape in a way that’s positive for fliers rather than just the airlines. “By guaranteeing a bigger foothold for low-cost carriers at key U.S. airports, this settlement ensures airline passengers will see more competition on nonstop and connecting routes throughout the country,” according to Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr., who added that the agreement would result in “more choices and more competitive airfares.” Well, hooray, but hang on a minute while we contemplate raw, naked economics. First of all, what, exactly, is a “low-cost carrier?” In much of the media, the first name that reflexively pops out is Southwest Airlines. Say what? Southwest says it is “definitely” interested in acquiring some of the 52 slots that would become available at Reagan National Airport — and 17 at La Guardia Airport — after the two merging airlines release them under terms of the settlement. But do we really agree with defining Southwest as a low-cost carrier? Not me, and probably not you, either. I like Southwest and fly it when it’s feasible for me, but you can’t get to Shanghai on Southwest, and I routinely find its fares on many domestic routes to be higher than its rivals’ on comparable routes. Image Credit Chi Birmingham Topaz International, a corporate travel auditing firm, found last November in a study of 100 business travel markets that fares on eight competing airlines, on comparable routes, were lower than Southwest’s over 60 percent of the time. Alone among the major carriers, Southwest does not charge for checked bags, potentially skewing those comparisons on costs. But business travelers, who make up about a third of Southwest’s passengers, a relatively low percentage, tend not to check bags anyway on domestic routes like Southwest’s. And Southwest’s prices have been rising, as the airline cuts back on periodic fare sales. In a recent conference call, the chief financial officer, Tammy Romo, referred to the “nice healthy fares” — up 11 percent in the third quarter. The issue of defining low-cost carrier aside, what other ramifications does the merger portend? Here Mr. Boyd and others see some good news. In the South, for example, the merged carrier, which the principals are calling the “New American,” will increase air travel access, including global access, in places where it is limited by the US Airways route structure. “One upside is that places like Sarasota, Fla., will probably get more air service,” Mr. Boyd said. When the merger is in place, the former US Airways will have shifted from one international airline alliance, Star, to another, Oneworld, where American has far-flung worldwide partners including British Airways, Cathay Pacific, Qantas, Qatar and Japan Airlines. “What this basically does is level the playing field a whole lot more for the Oneworld alliance, which has been way behind the curve, particularly in the deep South,” Mr. Boyd said. On the other hand, he said, the shift in alliances raises questions about easy partnership access to and from China by the new American Airlines. In China, Star Alliance — one of whose major partners is United Airlines — is considered to have wider presence than Oneworld. And a US Airways move out of Star will diminish easy access for that alliance’s international partners to the strong US Airways networks on the United States East Coast and in the South. In the domestic market, it’s unclear to what extent other carriers in the “low cost” niche, including JetBlue, Spirit and Allegiant, will move to significantly expand service by acquiring newly open gates at Reagan National and La Guardia, and other airports like Boston Logan, Chicago O’Hare, Dallas Love Field and Los Angeles International where a relatively small number of slots will become available. Low-cost carriers are “increasingly unreliable as a source of competitive discipline in the industry,” Diana L. Moss, the vice president of the American Antitrust Institute, said in Senate testimony this year on the merger implications. Business travelers have other concerns about the merger besides prices. Among them are misgivings about the effects of funneling the membership (and mileage points) of the US Airways Dividend Miles program. I’d like to hear more from business travelers on whether upgrades and awards travel will be harder to get in a giant mileage program. There’s also growing concern among consumer advocates about the effects of this new merged presence on international competition, fares and so-called fare and ancillary fee transparency in a global market where consolidation and reliance on international alliances and code-share route partnerships are growing. And that’s an aspect of raw, naked economics that we’ll leave for another time.

United Airlines
American Airlines
Mergers and Acquisitions
Business travel
Airlines,airplanes


In Tahrir Square, Hopes Mount and Then Are Dashed

Abstract: CAIRO — Hours before the president’s speech, through dark, downtown streets, groups of young men and women stepped over the rocks of recent battles and walked toward the lights in Tahrir Square. They wore their country’s colors on headbands, lanyards and T-shirts and arrived to a celebration already begun. Popcorn was sold, dates were passed around and a voice of the uprising, the singer Abdel Halim Hafez, floated from a loudspeaker. Two men scaled lampposts, risking death to hang a martyr’s picture. Other men hammered at a wooden roof, a semipermanent addition to a tent city. Lashed to light posts were loudspeakers, so that the crowds could hear the news. Surrounded by the architecture of their struggle, the protesters waited for their reward. Dozens of men from Sinai, who had camped in the square for two weeks, smiled as they talked about finally going back home. Another man, with a cast on his arm from the battle of the stones, said he would finally tell his wife where he had disappeared to on Jan. 28, when he ran into a protest and never looked back. “I cannot believe this day has already come,” said Amr Gala, an accountant, about 8 p.m. “I cannot believe that the president will step down.” Everyone shared his relief, and no one was worried about what came next. “He leaves, and then we think,” said Mina George, 31. “And then we choose,” his brother Mario added. It all seemed unbelievable and it turned out that it was. At first, there was serenity, as hundreds of thousands of people stopped chanting and talking and moving. At 10:45 p.m., President Hosni Mubarak started to speak, a tinny version of his voice leaking from speakers like the scratchy audio from a newsreel. For many of the protesters his words were hard to hear. Near one stage in the square, people pulled out cellphones and banded in knots, as relatives on the other end of the phones piped in the speech from their televisions. At another stage, a young man in a black jacket held up a tiny radio to a microphone. Soon, the protesters were shaking their heads. Then they started to groan or curse, calling Mr. Mubarak a donkey. Static filled the speakers at critical moments, as when the president tried to explain that he was transferring power to his vice president. It was clear what had happened. Before the speech was over, chanting filled the square. “Leave! Leave! Leave!” With no reason to cheer, or even exhale, people shuffled around the square, frowning or arguing with one another. Many said Mr. Mubarak’s speech had been a ploy to divide the protest movement by peeling off those who thought the president had offered his opponents enough. Other people said the coming days would be violent. Young men, desperate for answers, surrounded Amr Hamzawy, who belongs to a group that was mediating between the protesters and the government. Were there any guarantees that the president would honor his pledges, one man asked? Their only guarantee would come from sitting in the square, Mr. Hamzawy said. “He is stubborn, and he doesn’t want to be brought to account,” said Yasmin Fawzi, 24, looking stunned. “If he doesn’t step down, these people won’t leave.” Some of the protest organizers wept after the speech. “Now more people are going to die,” said Sally Moore, one of 14 leaders of the youth movements at Tahrir. “Mubarak wants to provoke us so that we march on the presidential palace and he can shoot us.” Anger turned to festivity much later in the night, as thousands poured past the concrete barriers to demonstrate — and set up camp —in front of the Stalinist state television headquarters, an imposing tower on the Nile that looks like a fortress even when not protected by tanks. “We must surround all the symbols of state power and choke them off,” said Alaa Abdel Fattah, a blogger and activist. A 20-year-old musician brought a drum to keep the chants in rhythm. Men and women made beds out of blankets and sheets on the Corniche overlooking the Nile. Mr. Mubarak’s speech had energized them. “Yes, we are disappointed,” said Ahmed Amesh, a veterinarian. “It’s strange, now people are asking for more. Instead of asking for his resignation, they’re asking for the president to be prosecuted and put to death.”

Demonstrations Protests and Riots
Tahrir Square (Cairo)
Egypt
Mubarak Hosni


Hedge Fund Managers at Bear Stearns Found Not Guilty of Fraud

Abstract: It was, prosecutors claimed, a clear case of Wall Street crime — and a chance to bring to account two culprits of the subprime age. But jurors disagreed, and on Tuesday, two former Bear Stearns hedge fund managers were found not guilty of securities fraud in federal court in Brooklyn , in what legal experts called a setback for prosecutors hoping for easy victories in this era of bailouts and foreclosures. The verdict, the first in a major criminal case stemming from the current financial crisis, brought to an end a two-year ordeal for the managers, Ralph R. Cioffi and Matthew M. Tannin. They had been led away in handcuffs in June 2008 and accused of lying to their investors about the precarious state of the funds they oversaw. Investors lost $1.6 billion when the funds, heavily invested in mortgage securities, collapsed in the summer of 2007. The fiasco presaged the financial turmoil that would later upend Wall Street and the broader economy. The three-week trial riveted the financial and legal communities, which viewed it as a bellwether for other cases, both criminal and civil, involving the financial industry. The jury of eight women and four men, drawn mostly from working-class neighborhoods, essentially found that while Mr. Cioffi and Mr. Tannin may have made bad investments , making a bad investment was not a crime. The jurors, who waded through a stack of financial lingo and complex investments, reached their verdict after six hours of deliberation. The case turned on e-mail messages between Mr. Cioffi and Mr. Tannin which, prosecutors claimed, showed that the money managers knew their investments were souring but nonetheless assured their investors that the funds were sound. In interviews Tuesday, several jurors said the men’s apparent salesmanship did not cross the line into fraud. “There was a reasonable doubt on every charge. We just didn’t feel that the case had been proven,” said Ryan Goolsby, one of the jurors. Mr. Cioffi and Mr. Tannin still face civil action by the Securities and Exchange Commission , which said on Tuesday that it expected to proceed with its case. Emerging from the Federal District Court in Brooklyn Tuesday afternoon, Mr. Cioffi pumped his fist as he rushed to a car with his lawyers, his family in tow. Susan Brune, Mr. Tannin’s lawyer, said: “This has been a tremendous team effort. I am thrilled for Matt and his family.” From the start, the government presented its case as one of “black-and-white lies” that violated the basic trust between Wall Street professionals and the investing public. The defense focused on the investment strategy of the hedge funds and the nuances of the e-mail messages between the two men. Dane Butswinkas, Mr. Cioffi’s main lawyer, told jurors during the trial that prosecutors had taken e-mail messages out of context and provided “misleading sound bites” to try to prove a criminal conspiracy. “When you look at the world through dirty glasses, everything looks dirty,” he said in closing remarks last week. “They tried to make these guys the poster children for the recession,” said Thomas E. Peisch, a partner at the law firm of Conn Kavanaugh Rosenthal Peisch & Ford in Boston , who was not connected with the case. “The lesson is that the government has to be pretty careful in the future about the cases it selects to prosecute because they obviously didn’t even come close to selling it here.” In a statement, the United States attorney’s office for the Eastern District of New York expressed disappointment with the outcome. “But the jurors have spoken,” the statement said, “and we accept their verdict. Honesty and integrity are the principles upon which our financial markets function. Enforcing and protecting those principles will continue to be one of the principal efforts of this office.” Mr. Cioffi was also found not guilty of insider trading charges on accusations that he moved $2 million he had invested in one of the failing funds to another less risky fund while telling investors he was adding to his position. The verdict is expected to have wide-ranging implications for how the government approaches similar white-collar cases. It has been closely watched by law enforcement and other prosecutors, especially in light of the recent contentions of insider trading centered around the billionaire Raj Rajaratnam . “These acquittals provide a cautionary tale for white-collar investigations premised on facially ‘ smoking gun’ e-mails,” said John Hueston, who prosecuted Enron ’s former top executives, Jeffrey K. Skilling and Kenneth L. Lay . “The texting, twittering, BlackBerry-toting jurors of today understand that an e-mail capturing a concern, doubt or momentary distress does not reflect thought over time, much less a vetted public statement.” One of the main documents in the case was an e-mail message that Mr. Tannin sent from his private Gmail account to the e-mail account of Mr. Cioffi’s wife. He wrote that the subprime market — the market to which the funds were tied — “looked pretty damn ugly,” and that if a recent report was correct, “then the entire subprime market is toast.” Days later, during a conference call, Mr. Tannin told investors that “we’re very comfortable with exactly where we are.” When the defense asked that the entire e-mail be read before the jury, a different picture emerged, according to a juror, Aram Hong, the director for food and beverage at a hotel. The complete e-mail, said Ms. Hong, suggested that the defendants were considering two options. The first was to close the funds, and the other was to approach the flagging subprime mortgage market as a buying opportunity. “They decided, ‘We need to make a decision now. And we need to be aggressive whichever way we go,’ ” Ms. Hong said. Defense lawyers argued much the same throughout the trial. “The entire market crashed,” Ms. Hong said. “You can’t blame that on two people.” Bear Stearns collapsed in March 2008 and was taken over by JPMorgan Chase . Given the resentment directed at Wall Street these days, some legal experts warned that jurors might be quick to convict two high-flying money managers like Mr. Cioffi and Mr. Tannin. But Jenny McCaughey, the jury forewoman, said: “We made a point of saying, ‘We’re not going to look at the fact that we’re in a recession, or that the markets are down. Because that wasn’t relevant to the case.’ ”

Decisions and Verdicts
Bear Stearns
Ralph R Cioffi Jr
Matthew M Tannin
Fraud
Hedge fund


Clint Smith, Who Won Title With Rangers, Dies at 95

Abstract: Clint Smith, who was the oldest living member of the Hockey Hall of Fame and the last surviving player from the Rangers ’ 1940 Stanley Cup championship team, died Tuesday. Smith, who lived in Vancouver, British Columbia, was 95. His death was announced by the Rangers. In March 1994, when the Rangers were in Vancouver to play the Canucks, they received a visit from a ruddy-cheeked, white-haired old-timer. The man was wearing a gold ring with a small Rangers logo on a blue stone as he carried a bag into the Rangers’ dressing room. Inside the bag was a woolen No. 10 Rangers jersey. It had some holes because it had withstood considerable wear on National Hockey League rinks and it had kept him warm through many a Canadian winter, when he bundled it beneath his jacket while duck hunting. This was the jersey worn by Smith in the 1939-40 season, when his deft passing at center helped propel the Rangers to the Stanley Cup championship. In 1990, Neil Smith, the Rangers’ general manager (no relation), gave gold rings to Clint Smith and the other living members of that 1940 team, the last one to win an N.H.L. title. Clint Smith was providing a thoughtful gesture in return in 1994, presenting his jersey to the team in hopes it would be a good luck charm. Indeed it was. The Rangers defeated the Canucks later that spring for their first Stanley Cup championship in 54 years. Clint Smith was born in Assiniboia, Saskatchewan, on Dec. 12, 1913, four years before the N.H.L. was founded. He signed with the Rangers organization in 1932 and became a regular with the team five years later. Hockey was something of a formal event back then at the old Madison Square Garden. “When I first got there fans used to come in tuxedos,” Smith recalled in an interview with USA Today. “It wasn’t unusual to see top hats.” The Rangers made it to the N.H.L. finals against the Toronto Maple Leafs in 1940. “We had three strong lines, two good sets of defense and a great goalie in Davey Kerr,” Smith told The Globe and Mail of Toronto. “We had a string on the puck and never gave it away.” Smith was known for setting up his teammates and, at 5 feet 8 inches and 165 pounds, for his gentlemanly play, which brought him his first Lady Byng Trophy in 1939. “I never got into much trouble because I wasn’t big enough,” he said. He had modeled himself after Rangers Coach Frank Boucher, who won the Lady Byng Trophy seven times as a Rangers center. On April 13, 1940, the Rangers faced Toronto at Maple Leaf Gardens in Game 6 of the finals. Midway through the third period, Smith assisted on a goal by Alf Pike that tied the score at 2-2. In overtime, Smith won a face-off, and the puck went to forward Bryan Hextall, who beat Leafs goalie Turk Broda to give the Rangers the championship. Neither Art Coulter, the Rangers defenseman and captain, nor any of his teammates skated around the rink with the Cup, nobody drank Champagne from it and no one kissed it. The team settled for a party that night at the Royal York Hotel. When the Rangers returned to New York, “there wasn’t any parade,” Smith recalled. “The Yankees were the biggest thing in town then,” he said. Smith was sold to the Chicago Blackhawks before the 1943-44 season. He had an N.H.L.-record 49 assists in a 50-game season and won the Lady Byng Trophy again in his first year with the Hawks. He became the third player in N.H.L. history to score four goals in one period, accomplishing the feat in March 1945 against the Montreal Canadiens. Smith had 161 goals and 236 assists in 11 N.H.L. seasons and served only 24 minutes in regular-season penalties. He was voted into the Hockey Hall of Fame in 1991 by the Veterans Committee. After his N.H.L. career ended, he coached and played in the minors, operated a service station in Vancouver, imported industrial machinery and sold industrial chemicals. A listing of survivors was not immediately available. In looking back on his Ranger days, Smith told The Hartford Courant how “we would have played for the Cup for nothing back then.” The Rangers paid him about $6,000 for his championship season, and the players each earned $636.60 in American money and $377.62 in Canadian money for winning the Stanley Cup. The Rangers tacked on a $500 bonus and a gold watch for each player. The joy from that season lingered. As Smith put it when he presented his jersey to the team in 1994, “Once a Ranger, always a Ranger.”

Smith Clint
Hockey Ice
Athletics and Sports
Deaths (Obituaries)
New York Rangers
Hockey Hall of Fame


Reversal Upholds Guantanamo Prisoner’s Detention

Abstract: WASHINGTON — A federal appeals court on Tuesday upheld the detention of a Yemeni man at Guantánamo Bay , Cuba, reversing a District Court judge who had ordered the prisoner freed on the grounds that there was “no reliable evidence” that he was a member of Al Qaeda . The ruling was the first by an appeals court to overturn a decision, in a habeas-corpus lawsuit, that a Guantánamo detainee must be released. Writing for a three-judge panel, Judge A. Raymond Randolph said the District Court judge, Gladys Kessler , had incorrectly analyzed the evidence when she ruled that the government had failed to prove that the detainee, Mohammed Al-Adahi, was a terrorist. “In all, there can be no doubt that Al-Adahi was, more likely than not, part of Al Qaeda,” Judge Randolph wrote, characterizing Judge Kessler’s contrary conclusion as “manifestly incorrect — indeed startling.” The disagreement centered on a common problem for judges and intelligence analysts alike: how to analyze ambiguous cases where there is an array of suspicious information but no definitive proof that someone is a terrorist. Mr. Al-Adahi admitted that he had relatives with Qaeda links and that he had attended a wedding celebration for his sister at a Qaeda compound in Afghanistan, where he met the group’s leader, Osama bin Laden. He also admitted attending a Qaeda training camp, but was expelled after about a week — because, he said, he disobeyed a rule against smoking. The government, which made several other accusations, argued that such facts were enough to make Mr. Al-Adahi detainable as part of Al Qaeda. But the detainee said he never joined the group, did not share its ideology and did not fight with it. He contended that his expulsion from the camp — shortly before the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001 — broke any ties. Judge Kessler examined each piece of evidence and found each insufficient to declare him part of Al Qaeda, arguing that flawed accusations cannot be assembled into a persuasive mosaic. But Judge Randolph criticized that logic as “a fundamental mistake that infected the court’s entire analysis.” He argued that the evidence should be piled together as mutually corroborative because it is probable that a person with many suspicious indicators was part of Al Qaeda. Mr. Al-Adahi’s lawyer, John Chandler, pronounced himself “utterly stunned” at the ruling. He criticized the appeals court for substituting its judgment of the facts for that of the trial judge. “Mr. Al-Adahi is not and has never been a member of Al Qaeda or a terrorist,” Mr. Chandler said. “We will study the opinion and figure out what to do next.” Benjamin Wittes, a Brookings Institution terrorism specialist, argued that Judge Kessler’s ruling was an outlier among detainees’ victories because of the volume of evidence tying Mr. Al-Adahi to Al Qaeda. Still, he said, the reversal on Tuesday could have a sweeping impact because “the government wins a lot more cases” under the appeals court’s approach. The randomly assigned panel consisted of three conservative judges. Judge Randolph previously wrote several rulings against Guantánamo detainees that the Supreme Court later reversed. Courts have now upheld the detention of 15 Guantánamo prisoners, while ordering 36 freed.

Guantanamo Bay Naval Base (Cuba)
Terrorism
Detainees
Al Qaeda
Randolph A Raymond
Kessler Gladys


Stopping OS X Apps From Automatically Starting

Abstract: Q. When I turn on my Mac, I notice the Dock shows Google Chrome always open, even though the browser window doesn’t appear on screen and I’m not opening the program myself. Why is this and how do I turn it off? A. The OS X operating system can have your favorite applications open and waiting for you when you log into your Mac each time, so the Google Chrome browser is most likely on your computer’s list of programs to start automatically. (As you install them, some programs ask if you would like to open them when you start the computer. If you say yes, the program sets itself up that way.) In recent versions of OS X, one way to check whether a program is set to automatically open is to right-click (or Control-click) on its icon in the Dock, select Options and see if Open at Login is selected on the menu. If it is, you can turn it off there. You can also stop programs from opening when you log in by clicking the System Preferences icon in the Dock, selecting the Users & Groups icon and then choosing the Login Items tab. The Login Items tab lists all the programs set to open after you type in your user account password when you log in to your Mac. If Chrome is set to open — but not open any windows on the screen — you should see the box checked in the Hide column next to the program name. Click a program’s name in the list and then click the minus (-) sign to remove it from the list. (Some programs may add themselves back to the Login Items list when you update the software, so you may need to revisit the settings.) You can also designate programs, files, folders and servers you want to open when you log in. Click the plus (+) button under the list of Login Items and choose them in the next window. You can temporarily prevent any applications from starting when you log in by holding down the Shift key after you have typed your password but before you click the Login button; stop holding down the Shift key when you see the Dock appear.

Computers and the Internet
Tech Industry
Google Chrome
Computer Programs And Systems


20 Years After Fall of Wall, Women of Former East Germany Thrive

Abstract: BERLIN — When the Berlin Wall collapsed and Germany became one again, women in the former Communist East seemed to be the big losers. They lost their jobs and their maternity and child-care benefits. And they lost the form of equality that Communism had brought: Raised in a culture where women drove cranes and studied physics, they were reduced to clichés depicting them as oversexed. The assumption was that as with everything else, East German women would become more “Western” — more domesticated and somehow more docile. But as Germany celebrates 20 years of reunification, it is Western women who, in many ways, strive to be more like their Eastern sisters. Eastern women are more self-confident, better-educated and more mobile, recent studies show. They have children earlier and are more likely to work full time. More of them are happy with their looks and their sexuality, and fewer of them diet. If Western women earn 24 percent less than men, the pay gap in the East is a mere 6 percent (though overall levels of pay are lower). Eastern women have made their mark: Chancellor Angela Merkel , a physicist, is from the East, as is Manuela Schwesig, the No.2 in the opposition Social Democratic Party. The most high-profile political talk show is run by Maybritt Illner, another Easterner, while actresses like Nadja Uhl and Nora Tschirner are among the most popular. As Ms. Schwesig, 36, put it: “Eastern women are where Western women want to be.” Jutta Allmendiger, a West German sociologist and author of “Women on the March,” a survey on young German women’s attitudes, said “women in the East are more holistic,” and “combine their children and their careers and their sexuality in a completely matter-or-fact way.” “West German women wobble,” she said. “Eastern women have no fear.” When the Cold War split Germany in two, the country became a living experiment in social engineering. East and West had the same history — a history in which women principally raised children and kept the home according to the mantra “kinder, küche, kirche,” or “children, kitchen, church.” Four decades of radically different socialization led to two very different sets of attitudes, illustrating how politics can shape gender relations. In the East, a Communist state losing male labor to the West set up free day care centers and all-day schools so that women could work. Women had an extra vacation day per month, a year of paid maternity leave and shorter work hours after the second child. In the West, they could be divorced for being a “bad housewife” until the 1960s. They needed their husbands’ permission to work until 1977. Schools finished at lunchtime, and nurseries were scarce. Until reunification, single mothers were assigned a legal guardian. When the Berlin Wall fell, female employment in the West was 55 percent, in the East 90 percent. Since then, much was done to bring Eastern conditions into line with Western ones. Yet East German women, like many women in the ex-Soviet bloc, tended to embrace change more readily than their menfolk. Whether because they needed to see their children fed, or because of an inbred independence, they would move or learn a new skill. Hundreds of thousands have spread out across Western Germany in search of job opportunities, challenging stereotypes by doing as their mothers did: having children, working and competing with the guys for the top job. “Eastern women have infected Western women,” said Anke Domscheit-Berg, 42, director of government relations at Microsoft Germany. She left the East in 1991 and looked for work by flicking through the phone book and calling companies alphabetically. The travel agent Ameropa hired her. “Most places I worked, I was the first mother in a full-time job, I was the bulldozer, I created the precedents,” Ms. Domscheit-Berg said. “There were always other women after me. “It’s a no-brainer: When Western women see that it can be done, they want the same. When they hear that the pay gap in the East is so much smaller, they ask: ‘Why not here?”’ Eastern women may have been raised under Communism, but they seem more entrepreneurial than Westerners. To this day, in the East, women are more likely to reach top management levels than women in the West. In Chemnitz, formerly Karl-Marx-Stadt, Birgit Mayer runs a car parts supplier. All employees are men, but “they all grew up with working mothers, so there is no problem,” said Ms. Mayer, a 48-year-old engineer. Ms. Mayer said women in the East were also less fazed by the economic crisis “because we’ve lost our entire existence once and had to be creative to bounce back.” She said she had to halve her staff in recent years but plans to expand again next year. In Linda, another Eastern town, Romy Harnapp was once a part-time accountant but in 2005 decided to buy the Eastern metal company BlecTec from her boss. Her daughter was 4 at the time and her son only 6 months. None of the big Western banks would lend her €3 million, or $4.1 million today, so she stuck with a small regional Eastern bank. “Since then we’ve grown from 35 to 67 employees, and all the banks are knocking on my door,” she said. She isn’t easily shaken by stereotyping — even when men assume she is a hostess at industry fairs. Her husband, an air-traffic controller also from the East, doesn’t mind that she earns more — “as long as he gets his pocket money,” she jokes. The success former Soviet bloc nations had in harnessing female labor offers lessons now that many Western countries are facing looming skill shortages, rising debt levels and declining birthrates. Today, 66 percent of German women work. For those with children under 3, that figure plunges to 32 percent. German politicians have pledged to increase all-day schools and child care places. “Of course nobody dares to say that this might be inspired by the East,” Ms. Mayer said. “They say it’s inspired by Scandinavia and France.” The Eastern regime mostly got it wrong, Ms. Domscheit-Berg said, recalling the security services pressing her to inform on fellow students in the summer of 1989, or chaining her best friend to a radiator in solitary confinement. “But on women, the East was ahead,” she said. “We are still far from where we were 20 years ago, but at least we are now moving in the right direction.”

Germany
East Germany
Berlin (Germany)
Merkel Angela
Women and Girls
Communism (Theory and Philosophy)


Norman Gorbaty’s Art Moves From Garage to Gallery

Abstract: FAIRFIELD, Conn. — Norman Gorbaty , a retired advertising executive, stood in a corner of the Walsh Art Gallery at Fairfield University here, rag in one hand, can of tung oil in the other, patiently polishing his 7-foot-by-5-foot walnut bas relief, called “Struma.” “Why did I make such big pieces?” he asked, gesturing toward the substantially larger ones around the room. “I should have made little ones so we can move them around.” Mr. Gorbaty, 78, has been making artworks — many of them large — for more than half a century — hundreds, probably thousands, of pieces in more than a dozen media. For most of that time, the pieces were set aside — leaned against a wall, thrown in a drawer or folder, relegated to the basement or attic — and rarely seen by anyone other than friends or relatives. But after Mr. Gorbaty’s wife died in 2003, his son thought that organizing and perhaps showing the art would be therapeutic, so he secretly entered a drawing into a juried show. “It was the clear winner,” recalled the juror, Susan Greenberg Fisher, then associate curator of modern and contemporary art at the Yale University Gallery. She described Mr. Gorbaty’s work as “the highest level.” Ms. Fisher was the first of many experts to praise the work as Mr. Gorbaty’s son, Ben, and daughter-in-law, Shelley Kaiser, shared it with hundreds of galleries and museums. The Walsh exhibition, part of a two-gallery spread with the Bellarmine Museum of Art that runs through March 27, is Mr. Gorbaty’s third solo show. His work was previously displayed at the Hotchkiss School’s Tremaine Gallery in Lakeville, Conn., in 2008, and at Queens Community College in 2009. Ben Gorbaty says that about a dozen drawings, paintings and pastels have been sold, and that smaller works are priced at $2,500 to $5,000. “He draws like an old master and yet has this contemporary flair,” said Charles Noyes, co-head of the arts department at Hotchkiss. “The wood carvings, the bas reliefs, were stunning,” said Sylvia Herskowitz, then the director of the Yeshiva University Museum in New York. “Very finely done; and to think that he was working all this time and never showing it. I couldn’t understand it.” Norman Gorbaty, a faux curmudgeon with a twinkle in his hazel eyes, trained at Yale with the artist Josef Albers and the architect Louis Kahn, and won a spot in a 1954 Young American Printmakers show at the Museum of Modern Art. But he chose Madison Avenue as a more reliable way to support his new wife and, eventually, two children, becoming art director at Benton & Bowles and then opening his own agency during an era that has lately returned to renown because of the television hit “Mad Men.” “I was in advertising at a time that I considered was the great period in advertising,” he said. “We had fun. Oh, God, did we have fun.” Mr. Gorbaty designed ads for Crest toothpaste, Post cereals and I.B.M.’s then-groundbreaking Selectric typewriter, and also created covers for Time magazine, titles for Woody Allen films and illustrations for more than 85 children’s books. But he said he sometimes “felt like a traitor” to fine art. So, night after night, year after year, he created. There were small carvings and sculptures from ivory, scrimshaw, stone, plaster and even the children’s clay Sculpey. There were enormous wood pieces that fit only in the garage of his home on Long Island. Endless pastels, using the leftovers from the advertising world’s premagic marker days; the occasional oil painting; and, always, drawings — his favorite — in pencil, charcoal, pen, brown ink, even crayon. The subjects were similarly varied: naturescapes and other sights from yearly trips to Europe and elsewhere; portraits, both realistic and abstract; and Judaica, a passion borne of his Russian-Jewish heritage and Brooklyn upbringing. Some works reflect religious practices; some explore persecution from the Crusades through World War II. “Struma,” at the Walsh — Mr. Gorbaty’s first all-Judaica exhibition — is named for a ship of Jewish refugees from Romania who died after their boat was set adrift at sea by Turkish officials and then sunk by a Russian submarine. “To me, the whole thing was the doing,” not the display, Mr. Gorbaty said of his work. “One advantage,” he said, was that because “I was not in art full time, I would do things that weren’t up for criticism. I could just do them and put them away” and not have to field comments like “ ‘Oh, he’s losing it; oh, he’s getting it; oy, he should be making this.’ ” And, he added, “Maybe I was a little scared.” Preparing the vast collection for the public was a painstaking task. Works had not been named, cataloged or photographed. “It was ‘CSI’ in the art world,” said Ms. Kaiser. Ben Gorbaty added: “It was just like uncovering a tomb from a dead artist.” Ben Gorbaty and his wife have moved much of Mr. Gorbaty’s large work into storage, though Mr. Gorbaty’s home — which now has a large studio, where he continues to make pieces — remains stuffed with art, some of it dating to the 1950s. There are pieces, Mr. Gorbaty admitted, that he cannot remember making. “Not only that, I don’t know which is up and which is down on some of them,” he said, laughing. But sometimes some of his old works stun him. “Boy, could I draw,” he said. “Now it’s not the same. I don’t have the same hand. So now I do other things.” Mr. Gorbaty said that “it would be nice” to be appreciated commercially at this stage, but that he knew it was unlikely. Galleries, he said, prefer younger people who can keep producing. And he does not relish the preparations required for a show like the one now at the Walsh. “It ruins the whole day,” he said. “I can’t wait until this is over so they leave me alone. So I can carve a little statue, do a little this; something that I feel like doing at the time.”

Art
Fairfield County (Conn)
Long Island (NY)
Walsh Art Gallery
Gorbaty Norman


Matt Harvey Progresses, but Work Remains

Abstract: Matt Harvey struck out 10 San Diego Padres on Sunday, the first time this season he has reached double figures in that category. During the course of six innings, he looked dominant at times, but once again he had trouble in the middle of the game. He surrendered a two-run bomb in the bottom of the fifth inning to catcher Christian Bethancourt, who had just three career homers to that point, and only escaped that inning with a 3-2 lead when a tag play at home plate was generously called in favor of the Mets. So what to make of Harvey’s seventh start of the season? He threw consistently harder than he had at any previous point this season, struck out the side in the first inning, gave up just four hits and two runs, and, shades of Bartolo Colon, hit a long drive of his own that almost went out of the park. Still, when you pitch only six innings, as Harvey did Sunday, a lot of things can happen after you leave the game. And in the case of the Mets, they only won the game — and moved back into first place in the National League East ahead of the Washington Nationals — because of the eighth-inning dominance of the left-handed reliever Antonio Bastardo. So while this surely was Harvey’s best start of the season, and one that will leave everyone around the Mets encouraged, it still feels as if there is a ways to go for a pitcher who was fearsome for much of 2013 and reasonably tough in 2015 in his comeback from Tommy John surgery, but who has basically been a work in progress through the first chunk of the 2016 season. It is worth noting, for instance, that Harvey has yet to pitch into the seventh inning this season. A year ago, he pitched at least seven innings in five of his first 10 starts in April and May. Pitching only six innings — and Harvey has gone that far in only three of his seven starts — inevitably puts more pressure on the team’s relievers. And sure enough on Sunday, the Mets’ bullpen balked home a run in the seventh inning and appeared about to blow the game in the bottom of the eighth until Bastardo came in with the bases loaded and no outs and got two strikeouts and a pop-up to protect a 4-3 lead that Jeurys Familia closed out in the ninth. Harvey is now 3-4 with an E.R.A. that is more than four runs a game. It is logical to think that he is still feeling the effects of his war-horse effort in 2015, when he ended up pitching 216 innings in the regular season and postseason. That was more innings than anyone — most notably his agent, Scott Boras — wanted to see him throw after missing all of 2014, but the Mets were on a roll, eventually making it to the World Series, so it simply became almost unthinkable for him to sit down. He did not. He even insisted on going out to pitch the ninth inning of Game 5 of the World Series against the better judgment of his manager, Terry Collins. Kansas City ended up tying the score in that inning and winning the Series a few innings later, and Harvey was left to brood about all of it during the off-season. This season has not been any easier for him to deal with than that ninth inning was last November, but after Sunday’s game, in which he threw 102 pitches, Harvey was clearly upbeat, telling reporters that his mechanics were better, his command was better, everything was better. Now he just needs to make it into the seventh inning, and then eventually the eighth. But maybe forget about the ninth.