After Charleston Shooting, a Sense at the White House of Horror, Loss and Resolve

Abstract: WASHINGTON — The shooting massacre of a black pastor and his parishioners at a South Carolina church on Wednesday night once again confronted President Obama with a moment of racial turmoil in a country that for all its progress has yet to completely shed the burden of hatred and division. After a series of police shootings, protests and riots, this latest eruption of violence reflected a country on edge and a president struggling to pull the American people together. Any hopes of what supporters once called a “postracial” era now seem fanciful as Mr. Obama’s second term increasingly focuses on what he termed “a dark part of our history.” In a pattern that has become achingly familiar to him and the nation, Mr. Obama on Thursday entered the White House briefing room to issue a statement of mourning and grief as he called on the country to unify in the face of tragedy. This time, though, the ritual was made all the more poignant because Mr. Obama knew the Rev. Clementa C. Pinckney, the pastor slain at Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, S.C., as well as other members of the congregation. “This is not the first time that black churches have been attacked, and we know that hatred across races and faiths pose a particular threat to our democracy and our ideals,” Mr. Obama said. “The good news is I am confident that the outpouring of unity and strength and fellowship and love across Charleston today from all races, from all faiths, from all places of worship indicates the degree to which those old vestiges of hatred can be overcome.” If those words of optimism were belied by his own grim face and subdued tone, perhaps it reflected a certain weariness or frustration over the limits of his ability to change the nation he leads. He grew especially pointed when he noted that this was the latest in a spate of mass shootings, and lamented what he called the easy access to guns, an issue he has tried and failed to address with legislation. “At some point, we as a country will have to reckon with the fact that this type of mass violence does not happen in other advanced countries,” Mr. Obama said. He added: “It is in our power to do something about it. I say that recognizing the politics in this town foreclose a lot of the avenues right now. But it would be wrong for us not to acknowledge it. And at some point it’s going to be important for the American people to come to grips with it.” To many, including the president, the shootings echoed the bombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Ala., in 1963 that killed four young black girls. Mr. Obama quoted extensively from the eulogy delivered then by the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. In that speech, Dr. King expressed hope that the tragedy would “transform the negative extremes of a dark past into the positive extremes of a bright future.” Mr. Obama’s election seemed to promise a brighter future in race relations, but events of recent years appear to mock that hope. The 1963 bombing reflected a broad campaign of white resistance to civil rights, and this week’s shootings represented a violent fringe condemned by whites and blacks alike. Yet Charleston now joins Ferguson, Mo., Staten Island and Baltimore in putting the nation’s unfinished business back on the agenda. By virtue of his own background, Mr. Obama has addressed these episodes with a personal perspective none of his predecessors in the White House ever could. But easy solutions elude him, just as they did them. Even his responses have generated criticism on cable television and talk radio from those saying his rhetoric itself has been divisive, fanning the flames of the racial divide by blaming the police or white America. “Part of what I take from this is on the one hand the realization that this struggle still continues and despite profound change there is still profound hatred,” said Lonnie G. Bunch, the founding director of the National Museum of African-American History and Culture, set to open in Washington next year. “It is a fundamentally different country. It’s a country that has changed in ways that are amazing. But it is still a country that is torn apart by race.” Mr. Obama has spent much of the final years of his administration addressing race in a more expansive way than he did in his first term, because of stark events as well as because of the anniversaries of important moments in the civil rights movement. He has started an initiative called My Brother’s Keeper to help young Latino and African-American men, and advanced policies in education, criminal justice and economics that are devised in part to address the racial divide. Yet in the end, he has run into the same limitations that other presidents have encountered. “The president has the power of the bully pulpit but his authority to affect change is very limited, at least on his own,” said Judith A. Winston, who was the executive director of former President Bill Clinton’s race initiative in the late 1990s. The challenge, Ms. Winston said, is even more complex for Mr. Obama than it was for Mr. Clinton. “He’s in a very difficult position politically,” she said. “My sense is there’s been not much conversation or policy action that’s been explicitly directed at racial bias because of concerns that it would be seen as favoring people of his own race.” Joshua DuBois, a former director of faith-based initiatives in Mr. Obama’s White House, said the president could not change deeply embedded attitudes by himself. “Hopefully most reasonable folks in the country are clear that he is doing all that is within his power to address issues of race in this country,” Mr. DuBois said. “But at the same time, he does not have a magic wand to fix issues that have been lying dormant and unaddressed for a long time.” The shootings in Charleston hit close to home in the White House, where Mr. Pinckney, a state senator, was known. Mr. Obama immediately recognized the name when he was informed about the victims. “They met and formed a bond back in 2007 when they were campaigning early on in the president’s effort to get to the White House,” said Eric Schultz, a White House spokesman. “And that bond was strong enough to endure all the way until today.” Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr., who appeared with Mr. Obama in the White House briefing room, said later that he last saw Mr. Pinckney less than a year ago at a prayer breakfast in South Carolina. “He was a good man, a man of faith, a man of service,” Mr. Biden said in a written statement. In Mr. Obama’s televised remarks, he noted the long history of the Charleston church. “Mother Emanuel church and its congregation have risen before — from flames, from an earthquake, from other dark times — to give hope to generations of Charlestonians,” Mr. Obama said. “And with our prayers and our love, and the buoyancy of hope, it will rise again now as a place of peace.”


Tempest for a Bank That Bet on Risky Loans

Abstract: CORAL GABLES, Fla. — A cheerful sign outside the glistening offices of Bank United beckons consumers to tap into “Mortgage-ade.” Another promises a “59 Minute Mortgage.” But easy money, it turns out, has created enormous problems at Bank United, Florida’s biggest regional bank. By aggressively peddling a popular type of high-interest loan to risky borrowers, the bank tripled its profits in 2006 as real estate on Florida’s Gold Coast peaked, only to lose nearly $100 million in late 2007 and early 2008 as the market cratered. Now, its chief executive, Alfred R. Camner, is scrambling to raise $400 million in capital, an amount nearly eight times the bank’s shriveled value on the stock market. Analysts and a corporate governance group are monitoring the bank’s asset quality and asking why Mr. Camner was allowed, with board approval, to amass a pool of volatile loans that at one point represented 75 percent of the bank’s mortgage portfolio, despite what has since proved to be great risk. In many ways, Bank United symbolizes the excesses exhibited by the nation’s banks as home prices soared in recent years — and the pain that is afflicting them now that home prices are falling. Florida has been hit especially hard by the housing slump, and so has Bank United. Since last September, the bank’s share price has plunged 93 percent, twice as much as the Standard & Poor’s 500 Regional Banks index. A year ago, the stock was $15.49 a share but closed on Wednesday at $1.50 a share, after gaining 19 cents. In an interview, Mr. Camner, who is also the bank’s controlling shareholder, testily defended the bank’s strategy. “We did it for over 10 years,” he said, referring to the bank’s use of a risky but highly attractive product known as an option adjustable-rate mortgage. “For a very long time, it was an excellent performing package.” he said. “It gave the borrower a chance to manage his money. If they qualified, it was an excellent loan.” He also dismissed as “completely absurd” and “idiotic” concerns that the bank’s practices have eroded the strength of the bank’s assets, despite a recent revision by one brokerage firm of its shares to underperform. Around 2003, as the Florida housing market took off, the bank, led by Mr. Camner and Ramiro Ortiz, its president, began promoting option adjustable-rate mortgages. Such loans enable borrowers to defer payments on interest as well as principal. Many banks found a bonanza in these loans, whose full interest expense can be counted as interest income by the bank whether or not the bank actually receives the money, making the loans all but irresistible to promote. The strategy proved lucrative: Bank United’s assets more than doubled to $15 billion from $7.1 billion in 2003, while its total loans rose to $12.5 billion from $3.9 billion. By last October, the end of the bank’s fiscal year, Mr. Camner had allowed option adjustable-rate mortgages to dwarf overall mortgages three to one. When the national housing market began to slide, Florida’s imploded. And while the broader banking industry struggled with mounting bad loans, falling home values and a weak economy, Bank United found itself on a particularly slippery slope as its newfound base of risky regional borrowers eroded. From mid-2006 to early 2008, the percentage of its assets designated as nonperforming soared more than fivefold to 4.75 percent. “The bank clearly did not understand the risks,” said Gerard Cassidy, a banking analyst at RBC Capital Markets. “We believed that they pursued that business because it drove revenue and earnings growth.” Indeed, the bank kept expanding. By the end of March, 48 percent of its $9.8 billion residential loan portfolio was outside Florida. “By opening up offices across the country,” Mr. Ortiz said in an interview, “we were diversifying risk.” But, he added, “we never anticipated a national downturn.” Now, some analysts fear that continued weakness in the housing market could cause an accumulation of nonperforming loans. Although losses as of May 31, were small, Mr. Cassidy said the ratio of nonperforming loans was high relative to other banks. For example, at the National City Corporation, an Ohio bank that expanded into Florida in recent years, the ratio is about 2 percent, less than half that of Bank United. “The bank is currently well capitalized,” Douglas Rainwater, a banking analyst at Janney Montgomery Scott, said of Bank United. “But given the amount of nonperforming loans and the trend in their growth, losses would most likely increase substantially at some point.” For the Corporate Library, an independent governance group based in Portland, Me., that is tracking the bank, the bank’s board also appears not to have fully understood the risks the company was taking. Mr. Camner’s compensation, which ballooned to $5.64 million, including a salary of $475,000, had grown “way out of whack” compared with other institutions its size, the group said. “Outrageous compensation often signals a failure of oversight and backbone, so it often correlates to poor performance for shareholders in other categories,” said Nell Minow, the editor of the Corporate Library. “A board that can’t say no to outrageous pay requests can’t say no to poor strategy.” In the interview, Mr. Camner repeatedly bristled at the criticisms and grew angry when a reporter asked questions about his compensation package, saying everything was fully disclosed. It was apparently not the first time the bank had reacted strongly to questions it felt were critical. When John Pandtle, then an analyst for the financial services company Raymond James, rated Bank United’s stock as underperform in February, the bank declined to allow Raymond James to participate in a meeting with investors and analysts. In a note, Mr. Pandtle told clients the bank’s executive management had repeatedly refused to take phone calls and e-mails “seeking information about several areas where we have fundamental concerns, including rapidly deteriorating asset quality.” Mr. Pandtle declined to comment for this article. Mr. Camner’s family ties have also been questioned by the Corporate Library. One daughter, Danielle, was previously at the bank but has left. Another daughter, Lauren, is a senior vice president and still serves on the board. Meanwhile, Mr. Camner remains senior managing partner of Camner Lipsitz and Poller, a law firm that reaped $12 million in fees from the bank over the last three years, and where a third daughter, Errin, is the managing director. Both Ms. Minow and Mr. Rainwater wondered whether these relationships were in the interest of shareholders. “If you bid the business out to other law firms,” said Mr. Rainwater, “perhaps you could save some money for shareholders.” Today, Bank United is sufficiently eager to raise money that Mr. Camner has agreed to give up the supervoting shares that have given him control of the bank he founded 24 years ago, if the bank is able to raise $400 million from investors. “There is a reality,” he said. “We need to conform to corporate governance, meaning that almost every company has one class of stock; there is only so long that you can have two classes.” Still, he defended his income and other benefits, saying that everything the company has done was fully disclosed. “There is an independent committee that passes on everything,” he said.


Nets Cruise Toward Playoffs, With Evans Suddenly a Force

Abstract: Closing in on the fourth seed in the Eastern Conference playoffs, the Nets wasted little time dispatching the Philadelphia 76ers on Tuesday, 104-83, at Barclays Center. It was a blowout from the outset, the type of all-around performance the Nets have been pining for at home, thanks to a milestone performance from Reggie Evans, who has suddenly emerged as a fourth offensive threat. With the win and a loss by the Chicago Bulls, the Nets held a three-game margin for the fourth seed. If they hold on to the spot, the Nets will have the home-court advantage in their opening-round series, no trifling matter. The Nets had no problems with the Sixers, outrebounding Philadelphia, 67-34, and scoring 25 second-chance points. Evans got things going early, scoring 10 points and grabbing 10 rebounds in the first quarter, the first time a Nets player has recorded a double-double in the first quarter. It had not been done in the N.B.A. since Dwight Howard accomplished the feat in February 2012. “I’ve got to do my best just to get the team something,” Evans said. “I want to go out there and do my best just to make something happen.” By the fourth quarter, Evans had more rebounds than the entire Sixers team. He finished with 17 points and 24 rebounds, his fourth double-double in the last seven games, after having only four in his previous 69 games. “We just fed off his energy,” point guard Deron Williams said. “When he’s playing like that, especially offensively, we’re tough to beat.” Image Brook Lopez led five Nets in double figures with 29 points, and added 11 rebounds. Credit Michelle V. Agins/The New York Times Brook Lopez had 29 points, and the rout allowed the Nets to rest their starters, with their next game at Boston on Wednesday. Joe Johnson, who was a game-time decision as he continues to nurse left heel and right quad injuries, scored 11 points and was 5 of 10 from the field in 23 minutes. The man who helped establish the team in Brooklyn, Jay-Z, was not in his customary seat next to the Nets’ bench. Yahoo! Sports reported Tuesday that Jay-Z was beginning to divest himself from his ownership share of the team. The Nets and the N.B.A. declined to comment on the report, as did Ron Berkowitz, a spokesman for Roc Nation Sports, Jay Z’s full-service entertainment company. Roc Nation Sports recently teamed with Creative Artists Agency , a powerful Hollywood agency with several prominent N.B.A. clients, including the Knicks’ Carmelo Anthony and J. R. Smith. By league rule, no person affiliated with a player representation company can maintain any ownership share of a team. Though Jay-Z’s stake in the Nets is minimal — one-fifteenth of 1 percent — he brought new life to the franchise that it could never claim in New Jersey. He helped design the new uniforms and logo, opened Barclays Center with a series of concerts, and clips from his assorted hits are played throughout each game, including the lineup introductions. “It would be hard to overstate how important he was to the rebranding of the team,” Coach P. J. Carlesimo said before the game. REBOUNDS Before Tuesday’s game, the Nets displayed the 1955 Brooklyn Dodgers championship banner on the court to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the opening of Ebbets Field. ...Deron Williams tied Kerry Kittles for the most 3-pointers in a season for the Nets with 158.

Basketball
Brooklyn Nets
76ers
Jay Z
Reggie Evans
Brook Lopez
Brooklyn


A Reason to Believe in Clutch Hitting

Abstract: PITTSBURGH — One strike from elimination in the 2011 World Series, the St. Louis Cardinals roared back and won . One strike from elimination in their division series last fall, the Cardinals did it again. So it should be no surprise that the Cardinals have been unusually clutch at the plate this season. Then again, the concept of clutch hitting could be a myth. Statisticians often suggest that over time, players simply perform to their career norms in tight situations. The sample size may still be too small, but the Cardinals and their cleanup hitter, Allen Craig, have challenged that notion. The team entered the weekend hitting .327 with runners in scoring position, well above the major league average, .254. Craig, their first baseman, was hitting a mind-bending .452. “It’s funny that it’s just .450, because it feels like he always gets the guy in,” Cardinals reliever Randy Choate said. “The thing is, he can hit it anywhere. One time he’ll pull it, and then all of a sudden, he’s in the right-center-field gap. It’s just amazing that every time we need it, he gets it done.” In the last 40 seasons, the highest team average with runners in scoring position is .311 by the 2007 Detroit Tigers. The highest individual average in that time is .469 by Kansas City’s George Brett in 1980. With a hot September, the Cardinals and Craig could top the lists. Craig said he would rather not analyze his approach, preferring to focus on basic concepts like making solid contact and not missing pitches over the middle. But he does believe that some players are better than others at thriving under pressure. “I definitely think that guys can be clutch,” Craig said. “I think it’s hard to label anything in black and white, like you’re either clutch or you’re not. There’s different levels of it. “From my experiences in the big leagues, you look back at the 2011 World Series, what David Freese did, hitting that big home run — I think it takes a kind of presence to calm yourself to be able to get the job done. If you think that home run was just a random case of the statistics evening out, or the odds being in his favor for that to happen, I disagree with you.” Freese hit a game-tying triple in the ninth inning of Game 6 against Texas, then won it with a home run in the 11th. Craig, now 29, was in his second major league season, and homered in that game as a replacement for the injured Matt Holliday. Then he ripped the go-ahead homer in Game 7. Last season, Craig kept coming through when it counted, hitting .400 with runners in scoring position. He continues to build on that success. Image St. Louis’s Allen Craig, top, entered the weekend batting .452 with runners in scoring position. Credit Chris Lee/St. Louis Post-Dispatch, via Associated Press “Allen goes up there with extreme confidence and a very simple approach,” Freese said. “He has a great swing, but he also has an idea of how he wants to go about attacking the pitcher. “The No. 1 priority in those situations is to be relaxed and have confidence up there. If you don’t have those two things, the odds of you coming through diminish immensely. When you get in those situations, you’ve got to understand that it’s just you and the pitcher, just like any other scenario.” The Cardinals showed faith in Craig by letting Albert Pujols leave as a free agent after the 2011 season. Pujols, who signed for 10 years and $240 million with the Angels, has crumbled physically and failed to produce as he did in St. Louis. Craig is in the first year of a five-year, $31 million deal and helps anchor a deep lineup. “I didn’t really have time to sit and focus on that, as being the guy replacing those guys,” Craig said, referring to Pujols and Lance Berkman, who left after last season. “I just saw it as an opportunity to play. I still needed to prove myself more. There was no time for me to sit around and worry about that. “I just think that we have a lot of good players that have had really good careers offensively. You look at Carlos Beltran, you look at Holliday. Yadi Molina’s improving every season on the offensive side, and the younger guys have always hit well through the minor leagues and early in their big-league careers. We enjoy talking about hitting and getting better. It’s a good combination.” Choate compared the Cardinals’ faith in Craig with the sense of dread he felt as a Yankee in 2001, when Randy Johnson or Curt Schilling took the mound for Arizona. Both were elite pitchers, but they seemed even better when it mattered most. “There are people who are made for those moments,” Choate said. “Some people feel comfortable in certain situations. They kind of need that pressure, and it makes them locked in even more.” Freese, the most valuable player of the 2011 National League Championship Series and World Series, has been inconsistent this season. Entering the weekend, his average with runners in scoring position was just .239. Yet when he watches Craig, the concept of clutch still seems real. “You’ve got to have talent, first and foremost, but you can build on being a good hitter in those situations,” Freese said. “I firmly believe in the term clutch, and he’s showing it.” Pitching for a Payday The injury last week to the Mets’ Matt Harvey, who has a partial tear of the ulnar collateral ligament in his right elbow, seemed to underscore the fragility of the modern pitcher. But one important factor is often overlooked in the changing workload of pitchers. Image Alex Rodriguez, above, was supported by Dan Marino, who inspired Rodriguez to wear No. 13 for the Yankees. Credit Barton Silverman/The New York Times Jim Palmer, an eight-time 20-game winner for the Baltimore Orioles, pointed to the salary structure in today’s game. Palmer was in Boston last week for an Orioles broadcast, and Red Sox fans wondered when Clay Buchholz, the All-Star right-hander out nearly three months, would pitch again. “He’s had shoulder stiffness,” Palmer said. “But if your next year’s salary depended on it, you’d be out there. You’d figure out a way to pitch.” Palmer won 83 games from 1970 to 1973, but he hurt his ulnar nerve in 1974 and made only 26 starts. He was healthy enough to throw a complete game in the playoffs, but the Orioles cited his lack of durability as a reason to cut his salary the next season. Pitchers tried everything to grunt through injuries, Palmer said, because it was the only way to be paid. “It didn’t make us any better than these guys,” Palmer said. “I’m not saying these guys aren’t terrific players who play their hearts out, because they do. It’s just a different era.” No. 13s Stick Together When Alex Rodriguez played for Seattle and Texas, he wore No. 3 to honor Dale Murphy. Rodriguez, the embattled Yankees third baseman, grew up in Miami before the city had a major league team, and Murphy was the star for the Atlanta Braves, whose games Rodriguez watched on cable. Rodriguez could not wear No. 3 on the Yankees, who retired it for Babe Ruth, so he chose No. 13 to honor Dan Marino, the Hall of Fame quarterback for the Miami Dolphins. In retirement, Murphy has been outspoken against steroid use, saying in July that players should be barred for life the first time they are caught using performance-enhancing drugs. Rodriguez is appealing a 211-game ban after investigators concluded he had ties to doping. Marino takes a different view. He said he did not know much about his off-field issues, but wished him only the best. “I’ve always been a fan of him,” Marino said last week after throwing out the first pitch before a Pittsburgh Pirates game at PNC Park. “I just hope he gets through what he’s going through. I hope it comes out in a positive way for him, I really do, because I’ve known him since he was 16 years old. He’s been a friend for a long time.” You might say, literally and figuratively, that Marino has Rodriguez’s back.

Baseball
St. Louis Cardinals
Matt Holliday
Carlos Beltran


Uber Banned in India’s Capital After Rape Accusation

Abstract: NEW DELHI — The Delhi region on Monday banned Uber, the popular hail-a-ride service, after one of its drivers appeared in court on suspicion of raping a passenger who dozed off during a ride home only to discover that the driver had taken her to a secluded spot and climbed into the back of the vehicle. Criticism of Uber’s licensing and screening procedures was heightened when it emerged that the driver, Shiv Kumar Yadav, had been detained for seven months on suspicion of raping another female passenger three years ago. That case was ultimately closed and Mr. Yadav was acquitted, said Madhur Verma, the deputy commissioner of the police for the northern district of New Delhi. Regional authorities followed up late on Monday by banning all taxi services based on smartphone apps, which may result in the closure of as many as 20 popular services. Since its launch last December, Uber had gained a large following among young, tech-savvy women in Delhi, where finding safe transportation after dark is especially difficult. But the new service — which uses a smartphone app to link customers with available drivers — ran afoul of well-established taxi firms and with government regulators, who saw so-called aggregators as ducking legal and safety obligations shouldered by ordinary city cabs. Uber is running into similar problems in cities in other countries. A Dutch court on Monday prohibited the UberPop service, which links clients with drivers who do not have professional licenses, from operating in the Netherlands. The UberPop service has been banned in the German cities of Berlin and Hamburg, and London’s main taxi association has brought lawsuits against Uber and a number of its drivers. Lawmakers in Thailand and Vietnam have banned the service, and the city government in Seoul has said it plans to do the same. None of these cases were as dramatic, though, as the one unfolding here. Delhi has yet to recover from a brutal rape that took place two years ago, when a woman returning home after seeing a movie boarded a private bus with a male companion and was gang-raped so brutally that she later died of her injuries . A wave of street demonstrations followed that crime, and the authorities appeared to be braced on Monday for turbulence that did not materialize. As the driver, Mr. Yadav, left a courthouse in Delhi, he was surrounded by around three dozen police officers who whisked him away at a sprint. Uber executives, too, seemed to be girding themselves for a fight. The company’s chief executive, Travis Kalanick, issued a statement saying that Uber “will work with the government to establish clear background checks currently absent in their commercial transportation licensing programs.” He also said Uber would try to use technological advances “to help make New Delhi a safer city for women.” “What happened over the weekend in New Delhi is horrific,” the statement said. “Our entire team’s hearts go out to the victim of this despicable crime. We will do everything, I repeat, everything to help bring this perpetrator to justice and support the victim and her family in her recovery.” Women here are severely constrained by the difficulty of finding safe transportation after dark. In an essay published Monday, one high-ranking news executive recalled working late on a story early in her career and being mortified when her father called to berate her editor for exposing her to danger, “reducing me to a helpless little girl in front of my boss.” Image Protesters in New Delhi rallied on Monday in support of a passenger who says she was raped by a driver for Uber, the car-hiring service. Credit Anindito Mukherjee/Reuters Uber attracted business swiftly, in part because its marketing material focused so squarely on safety. Much of the reaction to the reported rape has had a tinge of betrayal. “Uber was the one thing that gave me the confidence to feel independent in Delhi, which you don’t feel here,” said Neha Sinha, 28, who said she had used the service regularly for the last six months. “Now I’m back to square one.” Ayesha Perera, in a commentary on the news website Firstpost, said she had become equally relaxed about late-night cab rides, and could sympathize with the reported victim. “It is likely that she was sufficiently relaxed to nod off precisely because she believed she was safe in an Uber,” she wrote. The woman, who is in her late 20s and works at a finance company, was returning from New Delhi to her home in nearby Gurgaon on Friday night. She said she awoke after Mr. Yadav had changed his route, taking her to a secluded area not far from a garbage dump. He then parked and raped her, she told the police early Saturday morning. Mr. Verma, the police investigator, said a physical examination showed signs of a “fierce sexual assault and rape.” The police said the woman took a photograph of the cab, including its license plate, using the camera on her mobile phone, which she provided to the police. Mr. Yadav was arrested Sunday night, when police burst into a house where he had barricaded himself, in his native village 90 miles southeast of New Delhi. During questioning, Mr. Yadav confessed to raping his passenger on Friday, as well as another woman he drove home in 2011, Mr. Verma said. It remains unclear how Mr. Yadav was hired given the previous allegations against him. In 2011, then driving a cab for another service, he picked up a 22-year-old woman who needed to go home after working a night shift at a bar. She later told the police he had driven her to a farmhouse and raped her; a medical examination confirmed a sexual assault. Uber does not conduct background checks on its drivers in India, one of its local executives, Neeraj Singhal, told The Wall Street Journal last month. It accepts partner drivers if they have valid insurance documents, a driver’s license and a commercial permit to drive a taxi, he said. The Delhi Transport Department acknowledged, in a statement, that it had granted Mr. Yadav an “All-India Tourist Permit” this May, “after due verification of character and antecedents of the permit holder.” It added, however, that such a permit did not authorize him to carry local fares within Delhi. Police investigators have been scathing in describing their dealings with Uber. Mr. Verma said he was unable to find any contact number or email address for Uber on its web pages and finally located its headquarters by booking an Uber cab and asking to be taken to the company’s head office, which turned out to be several rooms in a hotel. He said he was not able to get any information about Friday’s bookings for five hours because the database was in New York. Mr. Verma also said that Uber had failed to demand that Mr. Yadav show a badge, which can only be acquired by submitting to a criminal background check. He said Uber had registered Mr. Yadav under an inaccurate residential address, had not registered his vehicle as a cab, and had not installed a global positioning system in the vehicle, which is mandatory for commercial taxis. In fact, Uber and other “aggregators,” as they are known, manage to duck regulations that apply to traditional city cabs — including the requirement that each driver possess a badge, said Kunal Lalani, the president of the Association of Radio Taxis. Mr. Lalani said “this new technology business,” including Uber, had initially focused on “the luxury segment,” and that risks had only begun to increase as they expanded into what he called “the entry-level segment.” “Unfortunately, this guy was a single taxi owner, and he went and joined Uber,” he said. “As long as Uber was doing premium services, there was never a problem. There was always going to be an owner who was vigilant. They have now gone on to the entry-level services.”

Uber
Rape
New Delhi
Shiv Kumar Yadav
Car Service
India
Taxis


A Glass Ceiling Now Broken, Is U.S. Ready for a Madam President?

Abstract: PHILADELPHIA — First a black president and now, just maybe, a woman. Karen Willis, an African-American delegate to this week’s Democratic convention here, was exhilarated by the historic possibilities of Hillary Clinton’s election run, viewing it as a natural succession to Barack Obama’s eight years in power. But when it comes to persuading voters, she noted, Mrs. Clinton’s gender milestone was the one thing her party was likely to play down. “We don’t want to offend some of the white men out there who may not take too well to a first woman,” said Ms. Willis, who is from San Diego, citing internal party talking points. “We don’t want to rub it in their faces that she’s a woman, any more than we rubbed it in their faces that Barack Obama was black. It makes sense.” As the United States kicks off an unprecedented presidential campaign contest this week, setting Mrs. Clinton against her Republican opponent, Donald J. Trump, the sensitivities of the country’s gender politics are bubbling to the surface. Americans find themselves confronted with an uncomfortable question: Are they really ready to accept a Madam President? The soaring optimism of Mrs. Clinton’s address to her party in Philadelphia, with its promises of breaking the world’s highest glass ceiling, comes against the backdrop of a contest notable for its misogynistic discourse. Casual prejudices once reserved for the locker room or the bar stool have been projected loudly onto a national stage, mostly from the podium of Mr. Trump, who has variously described women as fat pigs, dogs and slobs, and blamed their menstrual cycles for criticism of him. In particular, he has accused Mrs. Clinton of playing the “woman’s card.” Beyond Mr. Trump’s schoolboy imprecations, the bilious environment has drawn attention to the more serious issue of the United States’ record of putting women in positions of power. American popular culture celebrates women who combine power and success, like Sheryl K. Sandberg, the Facebook executive whose prescriptions on balancing a high-powered career with family life are received with great solemnity. In government, American diplomats monitor human rights in other nations and can be outspoken against egregious abuses involving women, like acid attacks and honor killings, in poor countries. But despite progress toward gender equality in recent decades, women struggle to achieve equal pay or seniority to men of equivalent qualification in business, even in liberal bastions like Hollywood . Image Madeleine Albright, the United States’ first female secretary of state, spoke at the second day of the Democratic convention this week. Credit Saul Loeb/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images The gap is most striking in politics. After a surge in female members of Congress in the early 1990s, rates have stalled or fallen back; currently, 20 percent of representatives and senators are women, far below the 30 percent goal set by a United Nations conference on women. The World Economic Forum, in its latest Global Gender Gap report , ranked the United States 72nd of 145 countries for political empowerment, trailing countries like Cuba, Cape Verde and Kenya. In part, experts say, the American system is at fault. The presidential nominating process, with its long and ruinously expensive campaigns, is tougher on nonconventional candidates than the parliamentary system is in many countries. And American politicians are averse to the quotas that helped increase female participation in other countries. Badges and T-shirts deriding Mrs. Clinton in obscene terms or using sexual slurs are common at Trump rallies. But women who have succeeded in Washington also point to deeply ingrained male chauvinism as a powerful impediment to success. Madeleine Albright, the United States’ first female secretary of state, recalled in an interview how she had often encountered more resistance from American colleagues than from the Arab heads of state she had been warned about. “It was the little things,” she said. When she raised her voice in meetings, “men would say, ‘Don’t be so emotional,’ or would drum their fingers on the table and say I was talking too long — when the men actually talked much longer.” Similar attitudes endure today, powerful women say. Shamila N. Chaudhary, a former Obama administration official now at New America, a think tank in Washington, said she encountered workplace friction with male subordinates every day. “People don’t like women to be leaders,” she said. “They get angry. It’s always about my demeanor or my tone. I tell them I’m just trying to get the work done.” Female politicians in other countries hope that Mrs. Clinton’s run will set an example for them, too. Joyce Laboso, the deputy speaker of Kenya’s Parliament, who was in Philadelphia this week, said she had followed Mrs. Clinton’s campaign with a mix of envy and empathy. Back home she, too, had endured taunts from men who questioned her suitability to run for office, or who said she had the wrong husband for the job (although in her case, it was because her spouse is from another ethnic group). “Men say that positions of authority are not our sphere,” she said. “But if Hillary becomes president, that myth will be shattered.” If she wins, Mrs. Clinton promises more than symbolism. But away from the curated, TV-friendly environment of the convention, with its rousing slogans, the coming battle with Mr. Trump is likely to feature further ad hominem attacks. “I’m taking the gloves off,” he said at a rally in Colorado Springs on Friday. Just as Mr. Trump was accused of using dog-whistle tactics to attack Mr. Obama — by supporting, for instance, the “birther” conspiracy theories claiming that Mr. Obama had been born in Kenya — Mr. Trump could well return to attacks based on gender. It’s not just Mr. Trump, though. Mrs. Clinton suffers from unusually high negative ratings from voters, including many women, who see her as an impenetrable figure whose life has been framed by compromised politics and the ultimate power marriage. Some were uncomfortable with a convention speech this week by her husband, Bill Clinton, that tried to paint her as an object of desire. Surveys show that young people, in particular, do not trust her. Many young female supporters of her opponent in the race for the Democratic nomination, Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont, said they resented being pressured into supporting her on the basis of her sex. “I get it that some people just don’t know what to make of me,” Mrs. Clinton admitted during the convention. The gender debate, both overt and coded, is part of the broader tumult of a campaign that has challenged many core notions of American political identity, and that has been filled with astonishing turns. In just the past week, Mr. Trump called for Russian intelligence agencies to find Mrs. Clinton’s missing emails , only to retract the statement as an apparent joke. At the Democratic convention, former Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg of New York suggested that Mr. Trump was not sane. In an electrifying moment, the father of a fallen Muslim American soldier brandished a copy of the Constitution on stage and waved it at Mr. Trump. “You have sacrificed nothing and no one,” he said. Mrs. Clinton’s advisers have debated how much they should focus on gender in the coming months. Many see parallels with the delicate balancing act of 2008, when the party sought to reassure some voters about Mr. Obama. Ms. Willis, the delegate, said she had been told then that “we can’t make race an issue, because there are some people out there who might not take well to that.” But in Philadelphia, at least, Mrs. Clinton owned her historic achievement. Her first appearance, on a video screen, showed her surrounded by the shards of a shattering glass ceiling. During the speeches, some delegates — men as well as women — cried openly. “It’s the end of a long struggle,” Representative John Lewis, a civil rights champion from Georgia, told MSNBC just before Mrs. Clinton was officially nominated. “I cried when Barack Obama was nominated, cried when he was elected, cried when he was sworn in. And I may cry again tonight.”

Hillary Clinton
2016 Presidential Election
Women and Girls
Discrimination
Democratic National Convention,DNC
Democrats
US Politics


A Bleecker Street Salesman Dealing in Knives, Garrotes and Blowguns

Abstract: Officers patrolling the busy Bleecker Street corridor of bars between Macdougal Street and LaGuardia Place saw him outside Wicked Willy’s, talking to another man. He was hard to miss, openly demonstrating a device in his hand. An officer approached him and took it. “When I pressed the trigger,” the officer wrote in a criminal complaint that day, Sept. 24, “I observed a strong blue spark between the electrodes of the weapon, indicating a high-voltage electrical current.” It was a stun gun , and the man carrying it, Larkland Tabois, 23, of Rosedale, Queens, appeared to be trying to sell it on the street. Officers arrested Mr. Tabois and searched him and his backpack. They discovered a stunning array of exotic and eclectic weaponry, the origins of which span continents and centuries and movie house tropes. Mr. Tabois appeared to be a cross between a lethal traveling salesman and an overachieving ninja, a figure, either way, who was at odds with the beer-pong scene on that stretch of Bleecker. First, the stun gun. Possessing one is illegal in New York City. Mr. Tabois had six more in his backpack, the police said. He wore a Velcro pad strapped to his left arm that warranted further examination. The pad contained a knife that was more than four inches long, and the backpack held another, the complaint stated. There was a gravity knife, its blade released “through the application of centrifugal force” before locking in place, the officer wrote in the complaint. There were two belt knives and two neck knives, both named for where they are worn, the police said. There was a blowgun, a weapon often associated with big-screen pygmies and assassins, but as unlikely on the streets of New York as a garrote. More: “I took two grappling hooks and three lock pick sets from the defendant’s backpack,” the officer wrote. More: “I took three sets of brass knuckles, one knuckle knife, seven retractable batons, one butterfly knife.” “I took 10 loose firecrackers,” the officer wrote. “I took one small bag of crack/cocaine.” And one more thing: “A garrote.” Mr. Tabois was charged with possession of weapons, burglar tools, a controlled substance, stun guns and fireworks. His arrest was reported in police blotters in The Villager and The New York Post . He has since been released on bail. He listed his address as a home in Queens where no one answered the door on Thursday. He described himself on the LinkedIn website as a self-employed personal trainer. Mr. Tabois has a history of arrests, and was twice charged with carrying a gravity knife, the police said. In Nassau County, he has an open case stemming from his behavior in court in April on a traffic matter. Mr. Tabois insulted the judge and raised his middle finger, even approaching the bench before officers stopped him, according to a criminal complaint. Mr. Tabois resisted, knocking himself and three officers into the courtroom seats before he was subdued. In the Greenwich Village precinct near Bleecker Street, Mr. Tabois told the police he got the weapons from a dealer in Pennsylvania and had them shipped to his home, the police said. He said he intended to sell them on the street. Websites offering the weapons abound. The contents of his backpack were full of surprises for most civilians, so H. Clay Aalders, managing editor of TheTruthAboutKnives.com , was asked by this reporter to characterize the collection. “Wow, that’s a menagerie,” he said. “Let’s see how many banned things we can bring into the city.” The weapons did not necessarily mean Mr. Tabois was a dangerous person, Mr. Aalders said. In fact, they suggested he was something else altogether. “A mall ninja,” he said, a label for someone who seeks out exotic blades and throwing stars and that sort of thing. But Mr. Aalders also noted how many of those same knives he himself carries on a regular basis in Knoxville, Tenn., where he is no mall ninja but an avid fisherman. “The neck knife,” he said. “That’s extremely common for a backup knife.” He said gravity knives and butterfly knives are often prohibited by decades-old bans. “Too many politicians watched ‘West Side Story’ and James Dean movies,” Mr. Aalders said. “Most people are killed by kitchen knives.” However, one weapon caught his attention as both absurd and full of potential. “I can think of nothing more fun than going to a Dumpster in New York City and shooting rats,” he said, “with a blowgun.”

Larkland Tabois
Crime
Knife
Stun Guns
NYPD
Greenwich Village Manhattan
Guns


Thought of Shifting Police Officers Reopens Debate

Abstract: As city elections approach, Superintendent Jody Weis’s proposal to shift more police officers to crime-ridden areas has reignited an intense debate among aldermen. Black aldermen, many of whom represent high-crime wards, said the extra help was long overdue, while most white aldermen vowed to fight any plan to shift officers, fearing an uptick in crime in their communities. It is an emotional political fight that has recurred repeatedly when the city has been faced with both high-profile crime and static, or even shrinking, police resources. “This is common sense,” said Alderman Anthony Beale, chairman of the Police and Fire Committee. “When you have rapes, murders and assaults, you have to move resources.” Alderman Margaret Laurino (39th Ward) said she was “going to fight to keep police.” A resident of her ward was recently beaten to death during a home burglary, Ms. Laurino said, and “that just reinforces it for me.” Aldermen say they know little about where the new deployments will be — or what the staffing is now — because the Police Department refuses to share the information with them. Police officials reported last week that overall crime in the city had dropped for the last 22 months, but a flare-up of violence — including the killings of three police officers — shook the city over the summer. Mr. Weis has been under pressure to undo the city’s bloody image, a task Chicago police chiefs have been burdened with since the days of Al Capone. Mr. Weis must navigate these challenges with an ever-leaner department. As of mid-October, there were 11,187 police officers, a drop of more than 400 since 2005, according to city records. Budget officials have said that police hiring will probably not keep up with retirements next year. Staffing is typically based on finding the right number of officers to respond to calls while maintaining a visible presence and sticking to a budget. It is not simple. One problem is measuring the relationship between police visibility and crime prevention, said William Stenzel, who led the Center for Public Safety at Northwestern University for 26 years and now consults on staffing for police agencies. “What you want to have happen is nothing,” Mr. Stenzel said, “but how do you prove later that it was because of police presence?” In addition, Mr. Stenzel said, it is prohibitively expensive to hire enough officers to respond to every call immediately. The Police Department still accounts for nearly a quarter of Chicago’s $6.2 billion annual budget. “If you want to lower your expense, which means lowering your staffing levels, you’re talking about less reactive policing, which means longer response times,” Mr. Stenzel said. Police officials said the department last made major alterations to its deployment strategy in 1978, when some beats were redrawn to reflect crime and demographic trends. In general, a beat is the area patrolled by one squad car. The beats were drawn smaller in higher-crime areas. Police officials have announced plans to redraw the beat map significantly at least six times since the late 1970s — most recently last year — but each time the plans were dropped. “We looked at beat realignment, and we decided it wasn’t worth the trouble,” said Phil Cline, the police superintendent from 2003 to 2007. “Beat realignment is just about politics.” Mr. Cline said the department had other ways to send officers to areas in need. “The best approach to urban policing,” he said, “is to layer your resources,” with the beat as the first layer. Additional cars patrol groups of beats as needed. Other officers work across beat boundaries in gang or tactical units. Still more are assigned to mobile teams that can flood “hot” areas. Mr. Cline said that the layering strategy worked and that homicides and other crimes dropped sharply on his watch. But he was forced to retire after officers in one of the mobile units — the Special Operations Section — were implicated in a series of crimes, including a murder plot. The unit was disbanded in 2007, though the next year Mr. Weis created a similar one with a new name, the Mobile Strike Force. The Police Department continues to rely on mobile units, and other officers are frequently moved from their regular assignments to help out elsewhere. For example, patrol cars are regularly sent from the Northwest Side to hot spots on the West Side. Mark Donahue, president of the local chapter of the Fraternal Order of Police, said he was not sure what Mr. Weis meant by resource reallocation. “They don’t want to call it beat realignment because the aldermen will get their shorts in a knot,” Mr. Donahue said. Mr. Weis did not give the Council details last month, saying, “We anticipate in the very near future having a resource reallocation that will better balance the workload of our officers throughout the entire city.” Maureen Biggane, the superintendent’s spokeswoman, emphasized that Mr. Weis was not considering drawing new police beats. She said he hoped to announce specifics of the reallocation plan by the first of the year. Mr. Beale, the police committee chairman, said Mr. Weis had good reason for permanently shifting some officers. “In some areas,” he said, “officers are averaging one call in an eight-hour shift when you have officers responding to 25 calls in an eight-hour shift in other areas.” Still, the idea of reallocation troubles aldermen from lower-crime communities. “I can see a car or two being pulled to help for a special event — let’s say if the Cubs win the World Series and they need some extra police over at Wrigley Field,” said Alderman Pat Levar (45th Ward). “But our community pays taxes, and they deserve police protection, too.” Clouding the debate is the department’s reluctance to reveal even basic information about police deployment. Department officials denied a request for current data on the grounds that disclosure could pose a security risk. They also denied a request for deployment data from 2008, saying they do not keep such records because officers are shifted too often. Mayor Richard M. Daley and Mr. Weis have said they moved hundreds of officers to street duty from desk jobs in the past year after commissioning an efficiency study. But department officials will not say where the officers were assigned. They also declined a request for the study. Council members say their access to department information is not much better. “Everything is a secret, and I don’t understand it,” said Alderman Walter Burnett Jr. (27th Ward). Ms. Biggane said aldermen had not been kept in the dark. “The superintendent attends meetings regularly with aldermen to listen to their concerns and to keep them apprised of developments and strategies in the department,” she said. “Once a firm plan is outlined regarding resource allocation, it will be addressed with aldermen.” It is most likely to be a tough sell to members representing the North and Northwest Sides. Mr. Levar said he would not support any major change to deployments until he had current data. Until then, he will continue to use his own means of estimating staffing levels in his ward. “I drive around and see on a Sunday night, for instance, that there are a lot of squad cars in the parking lot of the police station,” he said. “That tells me we don’t have enough manpower here.”


Animals Put at Risk in New York City’s Shelters, Audit Finds

Abstract: The nonprofit group that cares for New York City’s stray and unwanted animals has administered unsafe drugs and stored vaccines improperly, according to an audit released by the comptroller’s office on Sunday. The group, Animal Care and Control of New York, has served as the city’s municipal animal shelter provider since 1995. It is now under a five-year, $51.9 million contract with the city’s Department of Health and Mental Hygiene, operating shelters in Manhattan, Brooklyn and Staten Island, with drop-off centers for strays in Queens and the Bronx. Scott M. Stringer , the comptroller, said the four-month-long audit revealed that the health of animals was repeatedly put at risk: Expired drugs were given to animals 499 times; 92 bottles of expired controlled substances, some 13 years old, had not been disposed of; vaccines were stored next to employee lunches or animal remains; the Manhattan shelter was overcrowded. “Animal Care and Control is running an operation that could make your skin crawl,” Mr. Stringer said at a news conference on Sunday in Manhattan, before dozens of animal rights’ advocates, many with pets in tow. The organization has been the target of scrutiny from the comptroller’s office in the past: In 2002, William C. Thompson, Jr., the comptroller at the time, issued a scathing account of the organization’s practices, documenting instances of animal maltreatment and unsanitary conditions. Another audit in 2006 found the conditions had improved to an “adequate” level, but there were several areas that needed improvement, including cleaning cages, looking for missing animals and walking dogs in its care. Alexandra Silver, a spokeswoman for Animal Care and Control, said the group met with members of Mr. Stringer’s office throughout the audit, and had begun to carry out several recommendations listed in the report. “Animal Care and Control of New York will continue to strengthen our policies and procedures to ensure optimum performance and the best possible care for our animals,” Ms. Silver said in a statement. A spokesman for the health department said in a statement, “We are addressing the concerns raised in the comptroller’s audit” and that Mayor Bill de Blasio has pledged “$8 million in new capital funding to build a new adoption center in Manhattan, modernize the Brooklyn care center and double the organization’s current fleet of mobile adoption vans.” Mr. Stringer began urging for reform of Animal Care and Control when he was Manhattan borough president. In 2013, he released a report called “Led Astray,” which offered a blueprint for the organization. “How we treat our most vulnerable creatures is a reflection of our decency as a society,” he said on Sunday.

Animal Care and Control of New York,Animal Care Centers of NYC


Wounded Candidate in Armenia Likely to Postpone Vote

Abstract: An opposition presidential candidate who was shot and wounded Thursday outside his home in the capital said Friday that he would probably seek to postpone the Feb. 18 election. The candidate, Paruir A. Airikyan, 63, is one of eight opponents challenging President Serzh Sargsyan, who is widely expected to win re-election by an wide margin. Mr. Airikyan was shot in the shoulder by an unknown assailant but is expected to make a full recovery. Investigators offered no immediate motive for the attack. He spent years in Soviet prisons for promoting Armenian independence and was stripped of his citizenship and expelled to Ethiopia in 1988. He lived in Los Angeles before returning to Armenia after the fall of the Soviet Union. He has run for president several times but never won more than a small share of the vote. A provision in the Constitution allows for the postponement of elections by two weeks if a candidate faces an “insurmountable obstacle” and potentially for another 40 days if the obstacle cannot be removed.


In Stop and Go Driving, One Pedal for Both Jobs

Abstract: TAMANA, Japan — Two pedals, inches apart, one for gas and the other for brakes. For years, a Japanese inventor has argued that this most basic of car designs is dangerously flawed. The side-by-side pedal arrangement, the inventor says, can cause drivers mistakenly to floor the accelerator instead of the brakes, especially under stress. The solution? A single pedal that accelerates the car when pressed with the side of the foot. More to the point, when the pedal is pushed down, it always activates the brakes. “We have a natural tendency to stomp down when we panic,” said the inventor, Masuyuki Naruse, who owns a small factory here in southwest Japan. “The automakers call it driver error. But what if their design’s all wrong?” Mr. Naruse, 74, is one of a handful of people who have designed combined brake-accelerator pedals in an effort to prevent accidents caused by unintended acceleration, which has come under a spotlight since charges that some Toyota vehicles accelerate without warning. Regulators in Sweden are testing a single-pedal prototype by the inventor Sven Gustafsson. In Japan, about 130 cars equipped with Mr. Naruse’s pedal, mostly owned by friends and acquaintances, have been declared street-legal, including Mr. Naruse’s own Mitsubishi Diamante sedan. He holds patents for the Naruse (pronounced NAH-roo-say) Pedal in Japan, the United States and six other countries. Yasuto Ohama, a security company executive whose Toyota Harrier has one of the pedals, said he switched after his foot hit the gas instead of the brakes and he almost struck a bicyclist. “I can never go back,” Mr. Ohama said. “I now have peace of mind, because there’s no mistaking when there’s only one pedal.” Toyota, which attributes reports of unintended acceleration to gas pedals that stick or get caught under floor mats, has recalled 8.5 million vehicles worldwide to address the problems. It has also gently suggested that in some cases the driver might have been at fault. Last month, it said that an internal investigation of 2,000 vehicles reported to have accelerated unintentionally found “pedal misapplication” in most cases, with drivers mistakenly pressing the accelerator instead of the brakes. Ririko Takeuchi, a Tokyo-based spokeswoman for Toyota, said the company could not comment on Mr. Naruse’s pedal design. But she said Toyota “listens to ideas we receive from the public, because we believe there’s always room for improvement.” “If you ask whether the current pedal design is the best we can do, the answer is no,” Ms. Takeuchi said. Mr. Naruse’s pedal, in various versions, has been around for two decades. But until recently his testimonials fell mostly on deaf ears — despite many accidents linked to pedal confusion. In 2009, nearly 6,700 traffic accidents involving 37 deaths and more than 9,500 injuries were thought to have been caused by drivers in Japan mistakenly pushing the accelerator instead of the brakes, said the Institute for Traffic Accident Research and Data Analysis, a government affiliated group based in Tokyo. Car safety specialists say it is likely that tens of thousands of crashes in the United States have also been caused by pedal errors. In an accident in Santa Monica, Calif., in 2003, a driver believed to have hit the wrong pedal killed 10 people when his car plunged into an outdoor market. Since at least the 1980s, researchers have pointed to the propensity for drivers to press the accelerator instead of the brakes. In a 1989 study, Richard A. Schmidt, a psychologist now at the University of California, Los Angeles, described how disruptions to neuromuscular processes can cause the foot to deviate from the intended motion, even slipping from the brake to the accelerator. And when the car accelerates unexpectedly, Mr. Schmidt said, even experienced drivers can panic, “braking” even harder. In experiments in Japan by Katsuya Matsunaga, an engineering and psychology specialist at Kyushu Sangyo University in Fukuoka City, drivers were asked to switch feet from the accelerator to the brakes on cue, at times while accompanied by startling noises. Subjects under stress sometimes hesitated or found it difficult to switch from one pedal to the other, he said. The current standard pedal arrangement is a function of automotive evolution. Drivers of Ford’s 1908 Model T maneuvered an accelerator lever on the steering column and three pedals: for shifting gears, reversing and braking. Over time, the advent of various manual and automatic transmissions has required different footwork. Mr. Naruse’s design is a unified pedal, shaped to accommodate the entire foot. On the right side is an accelerator bar. At any point, the driver can push down on the pedal to activate the brakes, while automatically releasing the accelerator bar. In light of the recent Toyota recalls, the Obama administration has said it might require automakers to equip new cars with “smart pedals,” systems already used in some cars, that deactivate the accelerator when the brake pedal is pressed. But the smart pedals would not prevent drivers from pressing the gas pedal instead of the brakes. “Simply speaking, the conventional pedal setup, which forces drivers to switch back and forth between pedals, is dangerous,” Mr. Matsunaga said. “Mr. Naruse’s pedal works because it takes into account how our bodies work,” he said. “It makes sure that when we make a mistake, the car stops.” Replacing standard pedals with the Naruse device requires no big changes to a car’s braking or acceleration systems, Mr. Naruse said, and retrofitting costs about 100,000 yen ($1,156) each. The biggest challenge of mass marketing the pedal, driving specialists said, would not be cost or technology, but the need to fundamentally change the way millions of people drive. “For wider adoption, there would have to be solid proof that drivers used to the old pedal setup can adapt quickly and without error,” said Koya Kishida, who specializes in traffic psychology and ergonomics at Chukyo University in Japan. Two episodes in the late 1980s, when Mr. Naruse hit the gas pedal instead of the brakes, inspired his quest for a better pedal. (He has invented other things, including a commercially successful machine that helps harvest edible seaweed). In one incident, his car lurched into a busy road, but he avoided a collision. By 1991, he finished his first prototype. Mr. Naruse said Toyota engineers tested a prototype in 2000, but were dissatisfied with the design; the automaker would not comment, saying its research and development efforts were confidential. Mr. Naruse said that in May he invited Akio Toyoda, president of Toyota, to try a Lexus sedan fitted with the latest version of his pedal. Mr. Naruse said he had received no response.

Automobiles
Automobile Safety Features and Defects
Brakes
Accidents and Safety
Toyota Motor Corp
Naruse Masuyuki
Inventions and Patents


Harvard’s Kathy Delaney -Smith Tied for Most Wins by an Ivy League Basketball Coach

Abstract: Coach Kathy Delaney and her Westwood High School girls basketball team returned from a road game in the mid-1970s to find their locker room occupied by a visiting boys squad. The girls, tired, sweaty and eager to retrieve their belongings, were told to wait. Although Delaney had suggested to officials at Westwood, in Massachusetts, alternative space for visitors to dress, this was hardly the first time such a conflict had occurred. She made certain it was the last. “Girls,” she announced to her startled teenagers, “we’re going in.” She barged past the math teacher guarding the door, and chaos ensued. “Thank God there were no naked boys, but the boys were shocked to see us in there,” she said. “I think it was a little frenetic, to be honest.” Now known as Kathy Delaney-Smith, she allowed little to stop her when she was at Westwood or when she was found to have breast cancer in 1999 or during her 32 years at Harvard, where she is on the brink of a significant record. With a victory at home against Yale on Friday night, she can surpass the Hall of Fame coach Pete Carril for the most basketball victories by an Ivy League coach with a 515-347 mark. Carril went 514-261 as the men’s coach at Princeton from 1967-96. To Delaney-Smith, victories represent a small measure of her impact. When her husband, Francis Smith, was asked what the milestone would mean to his wife, he said: “Not much, really. It sounds trite, but wins are not as important as the girls every year and their welfare. She is a lot more than a coach. She has to mother a dozen girls every season.” The players appeared to be more excited than their coach Saturday night after Delaney-Smith tied Carril with a 64-51 victory at Columbia before an announced crowd of 485. “She doesn’t think about her own accolades,” said the senior guard Christine Clark. “She is just focused on getting us better. She won’t take the time to realize what an important accomplishment it is.” In a lengthy interview, Delaney-Smith never mentioned that she was the first girls basketball player in Massachusetts to score 1,000 points, accomplishing that when she played for her mother, Peg, at Sacred Heart High School in Newton, Mass. She instead spoke of her early days at Westwood, which followed her graduation from Bridgewater State College in 1971. She agreed to take over a losing girls basketball program, but only because it also allowed her to coach girls swimming, the job she coveted. There was one problem: She competed in three-on-three at Sacred Heart and knew nothing of the five-player game. “I went to every coach’s clinic I could find and read every book I could read,” she said. “I can remember reading about a drill and saying, ‘This is a good one for today.’ ” Her first team went 0-11. As much as the defeats rattled her, it equally upset her that her players were forced to play in turtleneck tops and wool kilts passed down by the field hockey team. After requests for more comfortable uniforms and other improvements were rejected, she ultimately filed a lawsuit. “She didn’t understand why women had to wait for anything,” said Francis, her husband of 38 years. Delaney-Smith said of her groundbreaking efforts: “I went through proper channels to ask for a set of uniforms and equal practice time in the gym, and I didn’t even talk about salaries. I was just trying to get my athletes to be athletes. It was a bit of a struggle, to be honest, to make girls sports an integral part of their life preparation.” Delaney-Smith compiled a 204-31 record at Westwood, with six undefeated regular seasons and one Massachusetts state title, in addition to 96 straight wins in the regular season. A greater struggle came when she was found to have breast cancer in 1999. She went on a power walk to calm her nerves, then scheduled surgery and chemotherapy so she would not have to miss a game. “When she was on the job, she did not want to show that she was sick,” Francis said. “When she would get home, she would just let go. She would allow herself to be sick.” He said she suffered from such extreme nausea that she could not tolerate it when he sat on the edge of the bed. But she was there for her team throughout the ordeal and has been cancer free since her treatment. “I strongly recommend that, if you love what you are doing, it is better to be distracted by that than to sit home and think about cancer,” she said. Delaney-Smith could not be more heavily invested in her career. She regularly instructs bench players during the game. She has developed 36 first-team All-Ivy League selections while guiding the Crimson to 11 league championships and six N.C.A.A. tournament berths, most recently in 2007. Her current team is 19-7 and is third in the Ivy League at 9-3. Above all, she said, she delights in Harvard’s 98 percent graduation rate of its student-athletes. “I am passionate about the balance between athletics and academics and making it work,” she said. Her husband and others close to Delaney-Smith believe she will soon retire. But she is not so sure. Whenever she coaches her last game, she will know that she made a significant mark in the Ivy League and beyond, and all but broke down the door for women while doing so.

College basketball
Kathy Delaney-Smith
Harvard
Coaches
Women and Girls
Records and Achievements
Pete Carril
Princeton


Graeme McDowell’s Comeback Falls Short

Abstract: The defending champion Graeme McDowell’s comeback fell short, while Henrik Stenson rallied from three holes down at the Volvo World Match Play Championship in Ash, England. McDowell fell to Mikko Ilonen 2 and 1 in their second pool match at the London Club. ■ Haeji Kang shot a five-under 67 to take a two-stroke lead over five players, including three fellow South Koreans, after the first round of the L.P.G.A.’s KEB-Hanabank Championship in Incheon, South Korea.


Before Arms Pact Expires, U.S. Seeks Ways to Keep Watching Russia

Abstract: WASHINGTON — With a key arms control treaty set to expire soon, the Obama administration is searching for ways to keep inspectors in Russia or else it risks losing American eyes on the world’s second most formidable nuclear weapons arsenal for the first time in decades. The administration has been negotiating a replacement for the pact , the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty, or Start, which goes out of force on Dec. 5. But even if the talks produce a new agreement by then, the Senate and the Russian Parliament will not have time to ratify it before the old one expires — and some Republicans on Capitol Hill are warning that approval is far from certain. In the absence of a treaty or an ad hoc but legally binding “bridge” authority, American inspectors would be forced to leave Russia when the treaty expired, and Russian inspectors would have to leave the United States. State Department lawyers are examining several options in hopes of preserving the ability to monitor and collect information about Russia’s nuclear weapons, administration officials confirm. Under Start, the United States is allowed a maximum of 30 inspectors in Russia to monitor compliance with the treaty. Russia likewise has interests in finding a bridge mechanism to continue its similar rights to inspections in the United States. If negotiators for President Obama and President Dmitri A. Medvedev of Russia reach agreement on a follow-up treaty that the two leaders can sign by Dec. 5, then the administration may seek what is called “provisional application,” putting the terms of the treaty into place on a temporary basis pending a Senate vote. If the two sides do not settle on a new treaty, then the administration may seek some form of executive agreement with the Russians permitting inspectors to stay and information to be shared on terms similar to the current Start agreement while negotiators continue to talk. Such an agreement, at least according to administration officials, would not require Senate approval, although lawmakers are demanding that the Senate Foreign Relations Committee be brought into the discussion. Administration officials said they would consult with Senate leaders on the plan. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton raised the issue with her Russian counterpart, Foreign Minister Sergey V. Lavrov, during talks in Moscow last week, according to senior officials. But the two sides have not yet agreed to any specific measures to continue verification efforts in the absence of a new treaty, these officials said. “We are working on options to provide transparency on strategic forces during the time before the new treaty enters into force,” a senior administration official said Friday. “But I think it’s premature to discuss specifics of any transparency options. Our focus is on getting the new treaty finished.” The impending lapse of the treaty is already raising significant concerns on Capitol Hill. Senator Richard G. Lugar of Indiana, the ranking Republican on the Foreign Relations Committee, asked the State Department for a report on what legal instruments were being considered as a “bridge” between the expiration of Start and a new treaty, and for a description of what verification activities could take place without a treaty. Andy Fisher, a senior adviser to the senator, said Mr. Lugar had also asked whether any of the proposed verification mechanisms would require Congressional authority. The senator has expressed specific concern that verification measures not be allowed to lapse, Mr. Fisher said. The Start agreement was signed in 1991 before the collapse of the Soviet Union and went into effect in 1994, requiring both sides to reduce their arsenals to 6,000 warheads. The two sides are trying to produce a new treaty that keeps many of the verification and inspection elements of Start, while bringing the legal ceiling on strategic warheads and delivery vehicles down even below today’s much lower levels. The administration hopes to follow up with a new round of negotiations on another treaty with Russia that would enact more far-reaching reductions in nuclear weapons as part of Mr. Obama’s goal of eventually ridding the world of all nuclear arms. Mr. Obama and Mr. Medvedev struck a preliminary agreement on the terms of a new treaty during a meeting in Moscow in July that would cut the arsenals of both sides by at least a quarter. The two presidents agreed to cut each side’s strategic nuclear warheads to between 1,500 and 1,675, down from the 2,200 called for in 2012 by the Treaty of Moscow, which was signed in 2002. The number of delivery vehicles, like land-based intercontinental missiles, submarine-based missiles and long-range bombers, would be cut to between 500 and 1,100, down from the 1,600 currently allowed under Start. Negotiations are progressing, but Russia continues to press for restrictions on missile defense systems to be included in the treaty, something the United States has refused to consider. Even though Mr. Obama reshaped President George W. Bush’s plan for an antimissile shield based in Europe, Russian officials insist on legal limits. Senior Republican aides in the Senate said a number of members were angered that the administration had undermined relations with two important NATO allies by canceling the Bush plan. It had called for 10 interceptors in Poland and radar in the Czech Republic; some senators have vowed to fight any post-Start treaty that includes provisions limiting missile defense. Republicans also have called attention to comments by Russian military officers, who said that they might decide to field missiles with multiple warheads, which is seen as destabilizing and contrary to any new effort to lock in nuclear arms reductions. Ratification of a follow-up treaty would require Mr. Obama and the Democratic leadership to hold all members of their party and gain at least seven more votes from Republicans. Senators from both parties who specialize in arms control and military issues are asking that the president concentrate as well on how to enhance the safety of the nuclear stockpile and modernize the nation’s weapons facilities in parallel with submitting a draft treaty for ratification. Senators Jon Kyl and John McCain, both Republicans of Arizona, are leading that effort. A senior Republican Senate aide said some members were gearing up to push the administration to commit to developing a new warhead, although a number of senior Democrats argue that reopening a warhead assembly line would undermine the administration’s nonproliferation message.

Arms Control and Limitation and Disarmament


Rinderpest Virus, Deadly in Livestock, Is Eradicated, U.N. Says

Abstract: In only the second elimination of a disease in history, rinderpest — a virus that used to kill cattle by the millions, leading to famine and death among humans — has been declared wiped off the face of the earth. Rinderpest, which means “cattle plague” in German, does not infect humans, though it belongs to the same viral family as measles . But for millenniums in Asia, Europe and Africa it wiped out cattle, water buffalo, yaks and other animals needed for meat, milk, plowing and cart-pulling. Its mortality rate is about 80 percent — higher even than smallpox , the only other disease ever eliminated. “This is something the entire global community can be proud of,” said Dr. William R. White, director of the United States Department of Agriculture’s foreign animal disease diagnostic laboratory on Plum Island, N.Y. “Rinderpest has caused almost unimaginable misery for a very long time.” The last case was seen in Kenya in 2001. On Thursday, the United Nations Food and Agricultural Organization announced that it was dropping its field surveillance efforts because it was convinced that the disease was gone. The official ceremony in which the World Organization for Animal Health will declare the world rinderpest-free is scheduled for May. (That organization, known as the O.I.E. for its initials in French, was created in 1929 chiefly to fight rinderpest.) “This has been a remarkable achievement for veterinary science, evidence of the commitment of numerous countries,” the Food and Agricultural Organization said in its statement. Still to be decided is how much virus to keep frozen in various countries’ laboratories, along with tissue from infected animals and stocks of vaccine, which is made from live virus. Virologists like to have samples handy for research, but public health experts, fearing laboratory accidents or acts of terrorism, usually press to destroy as much as possible. The smallpox virus is officially supposed to exist only in two lab freezers, one in Atlanta and one in Moscow. Rinderpest is thought to have originated in Asia and spread through prehistoric cattle trading; it was in Egypt 5,000 years ago. It never became established in the Americas (though there was a small outbreak in Brazil 90 years ago), nor in Australia or New Zealand. Cattle infected with it would have started dying aboard ship and the herd would be slaughtered or quarantined on arrival. But it reached Africa in the late 19th century, with devastating consequences. The near total destruction of herds meant widespread famines; in one of those, a third of the population of Ethiopia died, according to the Food and Agricultural Organization. It was apparently introduced to Abyssinia, which is now Ethiopia, in cattle from India imported by the Italians during their campaign to conquer Abyssinia, said Dr. Jeffrey M.B. Musser, a rinderpest expert at Texas A&M’s veterinary school. Some experts believe it was deliberate, as a form of biological warfare, he said, while others contend that it was accidental. It also infected game animals, like giraffes and antelopes, but did not kill as many of them. For centuries, cattle owners and local veterinary officials fought the disease with slaughter, quarantine and crude immunization efforts. As with smallpox, many tried “inoculation” — cutting open the skin and introducing pus or tissue from infected animals, sometimes treated with heat or chemicals, hoping to cause minor infections that would create immunity . But these efforts sometimes just spread the disease. Then in the 1950s, Walter Plowright, a British veterinary pathologist working in Africa, developed a successful vaccine using live, weakened virus produced with the same cell-culture techniques pioneered for polio . The global effort to eliminate rinderpest was officially begun in 1994. It relied on the vaccine and a network of field agents and laboratories that could hunt for and confirm outbreaks. Nine years passed between the last known case and this week’s de facto declaration that the disease was gone, but such timelines are typical in disease eradication. Many diseases resemble one another, and the authorities need both time and frequent blood testing to be sure one is really gone. The last case of smallpox was seen in Somalia in 1977, but the disease was not declared eradicated until 1980. (In April, there was a brief scare in Uganda when doctors reported a new case; it turned out to be chicken pox .) Veterinary diseases need longer surveillance; while mothers will carry sick children many miles to a doctor, herders often just have to let animals die. The virus that caused a worldwide outbreak in 2002 of SARS, or severe acute respiratory syndrome , was effectively contained by mid-2003. The last known case, caused by a lab accident, occurred in 2004, but SARS is not considered eliminated because it is assumed to persist in bats, wild civets and perhaps other animals, and could return.

Livestock Diseases
Viruses
Vaccination and Immunization
Science and Technology
Medicine and Health


Crisis in Ukraine Underscores Opposing Lessons of Cold War

Abstract: MUNICH — The Cold War is history, but its spirit this weekend stalked the security conference held here each winter for the past 51 years. Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany and Senator John McCain drew very different lessons from the West’s 20th-century showdown with the Soviet Union, as they clashed over whether to arm Kiev’s troops in response to Russian aggression in eastern Ukraine. That disagreement represents one of the sharpest rifts yet over how the allies should respond to the current challenge from Moscow. Europe is very different from the days when the militaries of NATO and the Soviet bloc stared each other down. But the crisis in Ukraine has reopened familiar differences as to whether the threat of force — in this case, Washington’s readiness to bolster Ukraine’s military against pro-Russian rebels backed by the Kremlin — is more effective than months of so-far failed negotiations. It is not quite Winston Churchill’s choice of “jaw-jaw” or “war-war.” Everyone agreed that a negotiated solution is the preferred outcome. Secretary of State John Kerry, addressing the conference on Sunday, insisted therefore that the West is united. But even he said that “we are in the midst of a defining moment” in the trans-Atlantic partnership, and there were differences over tactics as leaders headed into another round of talks this week. Ms. Merkel travels to Washington for talks on Monday with President Obama, who is said to be undecided on whether to provide Ukraine with anti-tank artillery and an array of communications and other equipment, which some American officials say could enable Ukraine to build and hold a line against pro-Russian forces moving west in eastern Ukraine. Diplomats will gather for more talks in Berlin on Tuesday. An additional summit of the leaders of France, Germany, Ukraine and Russia is to be held in Minsk, Belarus, on Wednesday. Speaking in Sochi, Russia, President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia said that a Wednesday meeting would require agreement between Russia and the West on key points beforehand. A meeting then is possible if “we are able to agree on a number of points that we’ve recently been discussing intensely,” he said. On Sunday, Mr. Kerry issued a statement of support for the European efforts, but noted that Washington is concerned by new reports of “fierce fighting today in Debaltseve and Mariupol, and press references to new Russian convoys into eastern Ukraine.” Germany’s foreign minister, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, spoke Saturday of the real danger of a new division in Europe and a “parting of the ways” with Mr. Putin if negotiations fail. Laurent Fabius, foreign minister of France, was firm on Sunday that “what we must seek right now is not peace on paper but peace on the ground.” That echoed comments by Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr., who recalled the many hours he had spent trying to end the conflict. “Don’t tell us. Show us, President Putin,” he said Saturday. “Too many times President Putin has promised peace and delivered tanks, weapons.” Mr. Putin’s view has been that the crisis in Ukraine, far from being a violation of international law, has been caused by a peremptory West eager to impose its way on Russia. Accordingly, his foreign minister, Sergey V. Lavrov, delivered a speech brimming with Cold War-style bromides at the alleged strength of fascists in Ukraine, or Kiev’s supposed mistreatment of ethnic Hungarian minorities, which the Russians have cited as causes for them to support the rebels. Emotion is sometimes rare in international diplomacy, but was very much present in the public and private discourse here all weekend. Unusually, Ms. Merkel offered up a memory of her childhood in Communist East Germany in reply to Malcolm Rifkind, a former British foreign and defense secretary, who questioned whether the diplomacy she has pursued in the Ukraine crisis was effective without a threat of force. “Look,” said Ms. Merkel, who, like President François Hollande of France, had just returned from hours of negotiations with Mr. Putin, “I grew up in East Germany, and when I was 7 the Berlin Wall was built.” Nobody expected the West to mount a military attack to bring it down, she said, meaning that East Germans waited 28 more years in “dictatorship and unfreedom” until the Wall came down in November 1989. She did not begrudge the West, Ms. Merkel said. But she implied that it informed her idea that “I do not believe that the advances Ukraine needs will be achieved with weapons.” Senator McCain, Republican of Arizona, in remarks on Saturday and a speech on Sunday, rebuffed the chancellor, despite German complaints about his tone while in the country she heads. “Asserting that there is no military solution, which is a truism, should not lead us to believe that there is no military dimension to the problem — or that hard power can play no role in a favorable solution,” Mr. McCain told the conference. Responding to Ms. Merkel’s Berlin Wall story, Mr. McCain said Saturday, “What I particularly took exception to was Chancellor Merkel comparing this situation with that during the Cold War.” Hundreds of thousands of Americans had defended West Germany, and “when Berlin was surrounded, we sent in an airlift,” he said, recalling the mission that broke the Soviet blockade of Berlin in the late 1940s. “We didn’t say, ‘Hey, we don’t want to provoke the Russians.’ So I just take strong exception to that comparison.” He said the Soviets were kept at bay during the Cold War by “the price they would have to pay for their aggression, and right now there is no price that Putin is paying for his aggression.” Mr. McCain’s view contrasted with the vision of Mr. Steinmeier, who emphasized the need for a peaceful end to the conflict through negotiations. “It would be irresponsible not to use the opportunities we have,” Mr. Steinmeier said. He spoke broadly of a new “security model” that might restore trust with Russia, an idea that seems distant as death and misery spreads in eastern Ukraine. The German foreign minister recalled that a Canadian colleague at a NATO meeting last summer had asked whether Russia should be seen as “a friend, partner, enemy or opponent to us.” “Perhaps,” Mr. Steinmeier said, “this is easier to answer when you are further away from the conflict region. Our experience in Europe — in good times or bad — is that Russia remains our neighbor.” It was an observation steeped in decades of Ostpolitik, Germany’s policy of détente with Eastern Europe, forged by German Social Democrats like Mr. Steinmeier. Ms. Merkel, a center-right Christian Democrat, governs in coalition with the Social Democrats, another factor influencing her Ukraine policy, in which the two politicians from opposing camps have so far been able to keep the support of most Germans. President Petro O. Poroshenko of Ukraine said Sunday that any Minsk meeting should result in a durable and effective cease-fire in his country. European and American leaders expressed hope that their unity, and not their differences, would prevail. “We have to stick together and we have to negotiate,” Mr. Fabius said, “but not agree to concessions that would undermine the key pillars of European security. It is the time to make a choice.”

Ukraine
Germany
Angela Merkel
John McCain
Russia
Cold War
John Kerry


Google in Deal to Settle Europe’s Antitrust Case

Abstract: BRUSSELS — GOOGLE is looking three times lucky. The tech giant escaped serious antitrust action in the United States early this year, and in April it dodged a hefty penalty in Europe. The third piece of good fortune — from Google’s standpoint, at least — came on Tuesday. The European Union’s antitrust chief, Joaquín Almunia, announced that in his inquiry into Google’s search practices, he had tentatively reached a deal he could live with — one requiring Google to give higher visibility to competitors’ listings on Web search queries. After the company’s rivals comment on the settlement, Mr. Almunia said, he intends to have the final deal in place by next spring. The European deal would go much further than a settlement early this year with the Federal Trade Commission, which required only minor concessions from Google. It would also allow Google to avoid a potential fine of up to $5 billion and a finding of wrongdoing that could limit its future activities. And yet, the deal with Mr. Almunia would come nearly four years after he opened his case. During that time the company’s business model — and all its various ways of making its billions of dollars — changed considerably. To some experts, that suggests that Google could end up winning a protracted waiting game. Not covered by the investigation and tentative settlement, for example, are Google’s methods for mining and making money on data from services like Gmail and maps that are separate from its search engine but integrally linked to it. But much of the digital world has moved to mobile phones, where Google and its competitors face different issues. “By the time this decision comes down, the world will have moved on,” said Luke M. Froeb, who teaches competition policy at the Owen Graduate School of Management at Vanderbilt University and formerly worked on antitrust at the F.T.C. Nicolas Petit, a professor of competition law and economics at the University of Liège in Belgium, said the latest deal “appears to be a major success for European enforcers when you compare them to how timorous their American counterparts have been. “But can you really talk of success when the resolution of the case comes four years down the line?” he added. “In the digital economy, that’s an eternity.” Google’s competitors on Tuesday raised immediate concerns about the proposed European settlement. “It is far from clear from Commissioner Almunia’s description of the revised package of proposed commitments that they go nearly far enough,” said David Wood, the legal counsel for Icomp, an industry group backed by Microsoft and other companies that have complained about Google to European authorities. Other competitors who have in the past complained about Google’s behavior to regulators said the time had come and gone for a decision in Europe to make a big difference. They have already been forced to adapt to living in Google’s world , they said, and have in most cases been growing despite the hurdles that Google had erected. These competitors spoke on the condition of anonymity because they did not want to comment publicly on a rival and because they still support efforts to rein in Google’s power. The antitrust case, which the European Commission formally opened in November 2010, revolves around claims that Google has abused its dominance in Internet search and advertising by, among other things, favoring its own products and services in search results. Google powers 90 percent of searches in many European markets; its share in the United States is closer to 70 percent. Mr. Almunia met briefly last Friday in New York with Eric E. Schmidt, Google’s executive chairman, to take stock of the negotiations on a deal, according to one person with direct knowledge of the meeting and who spoke only on the condition of anonymity because the meeting was not meant to be public. Discussions between lawyers and officials at Google, and commission officials, then continued until late on Monday, commission officials said. Mr. Almunia said Tuesday that he “cannot describe the details” of the latest offer by Google, and the company said it would not release them yet, either. But in the area of search, Mr. Almunia said that links to rivals would be made “significantly more visible” and that a “larger space of the Google search result page is dedicated to them.” The rivals “have the possibility to display their logo next to the link, and there will be a dynamic text associated to each rival link to better inform the user of its content,” he said. Google on Tuesday portrayed its latest offer as something it agreed to only under considerable pressure from the Europeans. The commission had “insisted on further, significant changes to the way we display search results,” Kent Walker, Google’s general counsel, said in a statement. “While competition online is thriving, we’ve made the difficult decision to agree to their requirements in the interests of reaching a settlement.” Yet since the commission’s investigation began, Google has expanded a number of its Web services like cloud data, as well as improving its advertising products. As a result, industry analysts said any European settlement would be unlikely to threaten the company’s dominance in Europe. “There’s a fundamental misconception over how Google operates,” said Daniel Knapp, director of advertising research at the consultant IHS Screen Digest in London. “It’s moved away from a pure search business model,” he said. Google’s leading market position has helped the tech giant mine the data collected from its other services, like Gmail, to gain a better understanding of how consumers use the Internet, which helps Google improve the underlying algorithms that underpin its search engine. “Search can no longer be seen as an isolated activity,” said Ed Barton, a director at the consultant Strategy Analytics in London. “All of Google’s other services form part of a wider platform. That’s where it gets its advantage.” In April, Mr. Almunia began so-called market testing of the company’s first offer to settle the case. By July, Mr. Almunia had rejected that deal , which would not have required the company to change its search algorithm. Mr. Almunia underlined on Tuesday that he was not seeking to regulate “a specific algorithm.” Under the proposed settlement, Mr. Almunia and, to some degree, Microsoft could claim to have forced Google for the first time to accept binding legal commitments on its search business, said Emanuela Lecchi, a partner at the law firm Watson, Farley & Williams in London. And even though Google “appears to get away with light touch requirements,” the company also may “be concerned that this should not become a paradigm for intervention in other jurisdictions,” Ms. Lecchi said. As for consumers, they “probably do not lose out,” she said. Mr. Almunia also suggested on Tuesday that some of the concessions he had extracted from Google would apply to mobile devices. He said he was still investigating a separate complaint about Google’s Android operating system for mobile devices that was filed this year by a group of Google’s competitors.

Google
EU
Joaquin Almunia
Competition law
Search Engines