Bitterly Divided Senate Panel Backs Hagel for Defense

Abstract: WASHINGTON — After a combative two-hour debate that tested the bounds of Senate collegiality, the Armed Services Committee on Tuesday approved the nomination of former Senator Chuck Hagel as defense secretary on a sharply partisan vote. The 14-to-11 vote to send the nomination to the Senate floor with a favorable recommendation was the latest step in a process that has deepened festering hostilities between Congressional Republicans and the White House and has exposed stark disagreements over wartime foreign policy. After the vote, Republicans threatened to try to filibuster the nomination of Mr. Hagel, a decorated Vietnam War veteran whom some had worked with as a member of their own party, while Democrats were promising to force a vote of the full Senate as early as Wednesday night. At times, the meeting slipped into an unusually accusatory and bitter back-and-forth, with Republicans like Ted Cruz, a freshman senator from Texas, going as far as to suggest that Mr. Hagel had accepted money from nations that oppose American interests. Saying that he had serious doubts about the source of payments that Mr. Hagel had accepted for speaking engagements, Mr. Cruz declared, “It is at a minimum relevant to know if that $200,000 that he deposited in his bank account came directly from Saudi Arabia, came directly from North Korea.” Senator Bill Nelson of Florida and other Democrats countered by saying that Republicans had unfairly questioned the integrity of both Mr. Hagel, a two-time Purple Heart recipient, and had undermined the work of the normally bipartisan committee itself. “Senator Cruz has gone over the line,” Mr. Nelson said. “He basically has impugned the patriotism of the nominee.” Senator John McCain, Republican of Arizona, who is opposing his former colleague, also bristled at the attacks on Mr. Hagel, saying that “no one on this committee should at any time impugn his character or his integrity.” Tension reached its height when Senator James Inhofe of Oklahoma, the senior Republican on the committee, said that those who had suggested that Mr. Hagel was “cozy” with terrorist states had a basis for their claims because Iran had expressed support for his nomination. “He’s endorsed by them,” Mr. Inhofe said. “You can’t get any cozier than that.” Senator Claire McCaskill, Democrat of Missouri, gasped in disgust. “Senator Inhofe, be careful,” she later warned him. “What if some horrible organization said tomorrow that you were the best guy that they knew?” Then, looking directly at Mr. Cruz, she insisted that the president should be free to choose his own cabinet. “As much as some people in this room don’t like it,” she said, “he was elected president of the United States by the American people. And he has selected an honorable veteran, a Republican who has served our country in various capacities, including in this body.” Blocking such a high-level presidential appointee is a rare move. Since 1917, when the Senate’s modern filibuster rules were created, a cabinet-level nominee has faced a supermajority barrier to confirmation only twice: Ronald Reagan’s nominee for commerce secretary in 1987, C. William Verity Jr., and George W. Bush’s nominee for interior secretary in 2006, Dirk Kempthorne. Image Senators Lindsey Graham, right, and Carl Levin, members of the Armed Services Committee. Credit Doug Mills/The New York Times Mr. Inhofe has vowed to use procedural tactics to slow the Senate’s consideration of Mr. Hagel, a step that would require 60 votes for confirmation instead of the usual simple majority of 51. The tactic could prove mainly symbolic, however, because at least 60 senators, including some of those who voted against him on Tuesday, have indicated that they will allow his nomination to come to the Senate floor. Even as Mr. Inhofe threatened to draw the process out, the Senate majority leader, Harry Reid, was preparing to hold a vote as early as Wednesday night. Still, Senate Democrats said that given the late timing of the committee vote, they did not expect Mr. Hagel’s nomination to reach the Senate floor until Thursday morning. Mr. Hagel has faced opposition from Republicans and Democrats alike, drawing criticism over past remarks that were seen as anti-Jewish, anti-gay or insufficiently supportive of American foreign policy. And a confirmation hearing performance that members of both parties said was uneven and underwhelming — at one point he misrepresented the Obama administration’s policy toward Iran as “containment” but later corrected himself to say it was preventing Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons — seemed to do him little good. Mr. McCain said bluntly, “His performance before this committee was the worst that I have seen of any nominee for office.” Criticism of Mr. Hagel from other quarters in the Senate has died down. Senator Charles E. Schumer, Democrat of New York, who initially expressed reservations, announced last month that he was reassured that Mr. Hagel did indeed support Israel despite derisive comments that the nominee once made about the “Jewish lobby.” And Mr. McCain and other swing-vote Republicans like Senator Susan Collins of Maine came out against a filibuster last week. Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, one of the Republicans who objected the most vociferiously to Mr. Hagel’s nomination, told the committee on Tuesday that the nominee’s previous statements and positions on national security issues like sanctions on Iran, which he opposed, should disqualify him from the job. “He’s in a league of his own, guys,” an animated Mr. Graham said. “I say dumb things every day. But it’s a series of things, a series of votes, an edge about him that makes many of us unnerved about his selection when the world is on fire.” The meeting served as the latest example of the deep partisan rift that has left the Senate dysfunctional and, at times, inoperative in carrying out some of its most basic functions like voting on presidential nominees. In the case of Mr. Hagel, the clash has drawn greater notice because senators and former senators generally receive a warm reception before the Senate. “I’m often asked what’s happened to the committee,” Mr. Graham said. “Nothing. We just disagree on occasion.” As he concluded the meeting, Senator Carl Levin, Democrat of Michigan and the chairman of the committee, remarked, “And we look forward to another wonderful year together.” The room rumbled with laughter.

Chuck Hagel
Pentagon
Senate
Congress
Appointments and Executive Changes
US
US Military


As Berlusconi's Fortunes Fall, So Do A.C. Milan's

Abstract: LONDON — Nowhere on earth are the fortunes of rich men, their ups and their downs, more intrinsically bound to soccer teams than in Italy. Silvio Berlusconi , the former prime minister, built up, or bought up, an imperious era for A.C. Milan while he was running the country. But now that he stands convicted of tax fraud, his team struggles to fill half its stadium. And struggles to hold its head above water in the Italian league. Saturday night at the San Siro was a chastening experience. Milan beat a fellow struggler, Genoa, 1-0, with a goal stolen toward the end by Stephan El Shaarawy. The scorer, born of an Egyptian father and an Italian mother, refused to celebrate on the field because Genoa had been his first club, his home from the age of 13 until Milan signed him a year ago. Saturday was El Shaarawy’s 20th birthday, and he is, if anyone can be, the promise of a better tomorrow for A.C. Milan. He is a modern young man, distinctive through his Mohawk hair cut, and still almost shy in the media spotlight. “I dedicate this goal to President Berlusconi,” he said. “It’s a tough moment. I dedicate it to my family as well. They are very special people, and always close to me.” The toughness of the moment, perhaps, alludes to making his way with a club living on fading memories of when those great Italian defenders — Franco Baresi and Paolo Maldini — stood solidly behind the Dutch flair players Marco van Basten, Frank Rijkaard and Ruud Gullit. That blend, bankrolled by Berlusconi, conquered Europe in a glorious fashion a decade and a half ago. The stadium was always full in those days, as was the presidential tribune at the San Siro. Now it is a different story. Innumerable empty seats are the signs of disillusionment. The owner and president is one of the absentees. Berlusconi claims to be the victim of political and judicial harassment, but whatever the truth, he is now 76, and like his team, not what he was. The media aims its fire toward the customary place, asking day and night how long it can be that Massimiliano Allegri can remain coach of a team that has made the worst start in Milan’s history since 1941. “I put myself on the line every day,” Allegri said late Saturday night. “I’m the first one that’s responsible for the whole team. I’m happy for this win, and for the president who is not going through a good period and has always been kind to us, always splendid, always close to us.” So close you can almost feel the ties. Berlusconi’s political party, then called Forza Italia, a famous soccer slogan, rose with his team. He took on, and shamelessly outspent, everyone, even the Agnelli family at Juventus. And the one thing that should not be taken away from Silvio Berlusconi is that he knew how to build a team and how to entrust it to coaches who by pleasing him enthralled millions of Italians. Indeed, more than Italians. The Milan team financed by Berlusconi went above and beyond the relatively easy satisfaction that Italy gained from winning. In a word, Milan entertained. Now, it suffers. Allegri is not to blame. He has been dealt a collapsed pack of cards. The great Berlusconi sell-off started three years ago, when Milan received an offer from Real Madrid for the playmaker Kaká. The Brazilian did not want to go, in fact he cried openly at being sold like an expensive trinket from the place he called his sporting home. Berlusconi’s chief soccer administrator, Adriano Galliani, described it as an offer Milan could not afford to turn down. But more followed. The generation of Filippo Inzaghi, Alessandro Nesta, Clarence Seedorf and Andrea Pirlo was ending. The young Brazilian Alexandre Pato was suffering recurrent injuries. And the final cuts, the final indignities, came this last summer when the goal scorer Zlatan Ibrahimovic and the defender Thiago Silva departed for Paris Saint-Germain. They went, of course, because Paris, backed by its Qatari investor, made more offers that Milan could refuse. Worse, they went because Carlo Ancelotti, who had been both a fine player and successful coach for Milan, is now the head coach at P.S.G. It says much about Serie A, and not only about Berlusconi’s fall, that Paris has also signed Marco Verratti, the young midfielder who everyone deems to be the closest thing Italy possesses to a reincarnation of Andrea Pirlo’s mastery. Verratti is almost the same age as El Shaarawy, but they are leagues apart and no one could have foreseen the French league’s enticing away Serie A’s jewels before now. It was always, from the days of Michel Platini’s joining Juventus 30 years ago, the other way around. While Milan ground its way to an unconvincing win Saturday, Ibrahimovic was scoring a typical Ibra goal for P.S.G. at Nancy. There, on the ground of Platini’s original club, Ibrahimovic faced four defenders, he dodged one, played the ball against the leg of another and, from the rebound, stroked home the decisive goal from the edge of the penalty box. Ibrahimovic to a tee. A conjuror’s strike out of the blue in a game where nobody else was scoring. Back on his former ground, at the San Siro, El Shaarawy’s goal was just as precious, but nowhere near as expansive. It was a young striker’s instinctive run into the goalmouth, an outstretched foot onto a fine low cross from Ignazio Abate. At least that ended a moribund game between two sides afraid to entertain the meager crowd. And to the scorer, it was a precious stepping stone to something that he hopes will happen. “I think Ibra leaving has been to my benefit,” El Shaarawy told reporters. “I have more space to show my worth. We don’t think about players who have left, we think of ourselves and there are other champions here.” Maybe he is right. Maybe the cycle of Milan is going through a rough rebirth and, with or without its benefactor Berlusconi, a new generation is having to fight for the affections of the supporters. There might even be a post Berlusconi glory one day.

Soccer
Berlusconi Silvio
Milan (Soccer Team)
Genoa (Italy)


Puerto Rico to Restructure Up to $5.7 Billion in Debt

Abstract: Puerto Rico has secured a first foothold in its struggles with a towering $72 billion mountain of debt. The island’s electric power authority and a group of big investors agreed late Tuesday on terms for restructuring as much as $5.7 billion of bonds. That deal offers a possible model for a much bigger, and almost certainly messier, restructuring of debt that Puerto Rico’s governor, Alejandro García Padilla, has described as “unpayable.” Melba Acosta Febo, president of Puerto Rico’s Government Development Bank, called the agreement “an example of the promising results that can be achieved when the commonwealth and its creditors work together.” Each side granted concessions, but the agreement also has elements that each side can point to as victories. Bondholders, who had initially feared that they might end up with losses of more than 50 percent, were happy to take a loss of 15 percent on their holdings. Puerto Rico in turn gets to receive interest rate relief and a five-year payment moratorium. Such harmony has been rare. The island’s government is close to running out of cash and can no longer borrow on reasonable terms. Last month, it defaulted on a $58 million bond payment. At the same time, Puerto Rico has been trying without success to get access to the federal bankruptcy courts, something that would take an act of Congress. Restructuring the utility’s debt alone does not solve those problems. Still, the new term sheet gives the Puerto Rican government something to show other creditors why a negotiated restructuring could be more beneficial for all than a long, ferocious battle in the courts. “I hope this process — and its outcome — will further confirm our commitment to work collaboratively with our creditors to find satisfactory solutions for them and the people of Puerto Rico and their families,” Governor García Padilla said in a statement. He previously asked the island’s creditors to work with his administration on a “negotiated moratorium.” His idea is to buy time and preserve cash so the government can keep providing essential services while trying to revive the island’s depressed economy. But bondholders have shown little enthusiasm, and some say they believe Puerto Rico can, in fact, pay its debts. Some also question whether any democratically elected government could use a moratorium to achieve the kind of economic reforms that Puerto Rico needs, because they are likely to resemble the tough austerity measures that the International Monetary Fund must impose unilaterally on troubled sovereign debtors. Mr. García Padilla initially said the details of his proposed moratorium would be ready at the beginning of this week, but on Saturday his chief of staff announced a one-week delay, attributed to a tropical storm. The new restructuring plan covers only bonds issued by Prepa, Puerto Rico’s public electric power monopoly. Its debt has a total face value of $8.1 billion, but $2.4 billion of that is insured, and the insurers are expected to negotiate separate terms for resolving that debt later. That leaves about $5.7 billion worth of bonds, held by a variety of investors, including hedge funds, mutual funds and individuals. The agreement calls for an exchange of debt, according to a summary posted on Prepa’s website and people briefed on the terms. Current bondholders have agreed, as one option, to accept new bonds with a par value of 15 percent less than the bonds they now hold. The new bonds are to be backed by a securitized stream of revenue that is intended to make them much safer and likelier to repay investors than Prepa’s current bonds. With less risk, the new bonds are also intended to cost Prepa less in interest. The bonds have not yet been rated, but the securitization is supposed to make them so much stronger that they would pay an average interest rate of 4 to 4.75 percent — significantly less than the double-digit interest that Prepa would presumably have to pay if it tried to issue ordinary bonds in the current uncertainty. As Puerto Rico’s financial problems mounted over the last year, some of Prepa’s bonds changed hands for less than 50 cents on the dollar. The terms also call for one category of the new bonds to pay only interest — no principal — for the first five years, to help Prepa conserve cash. Another optional category of bonds would pay neither interest nor principal for the first five years, then make cash interest payments until maturity, when the holders would get their principal back. Those bonds would allow Prepa to conserve even more cash over the next five years, but they would involve more risk for investors and would therefore offer a higher yield. Stephen Spencer of the investment bank Houlihan Lokey, which advised the bondholders, said the deal was structured to produce savings that the utility could use to get back on its feet. “We believe it provides Prepa with a fresh start and financial flexibility, with bondholders providing meaningful sacrifices to make that happen,” he said . Ms. Acosta of the Government Development Bank said the Prepa deal represented “the type of equitable burden sharing” that would ultimately “contribute to the Commonwealth’s ongoing economic recovery.” The negotiations for Prepa’s restructuring have been going on for more than a year. The participating bondholders included mutual funds, hedge funds and other institutions that hold about 35 percent of Prepa’s debt. Individual “retail” bondholders did not participate directly, but the agreement includes an option with terms intended to attract risk-averse small investors. If all of them decide to participate, roughly 80 percent of Prepa’s debt would ultimately be restructured. The details are not final, but the restructuring is expected to include a cash tender facility that would give risk-averse small investors a way to redeem their bonds for cash, instead of new Prepa bonds. The loss in that case would be bigger — perhaps 35 percent — but small investors frightened by Puerto Rico’s recent financial turbulence might welcome the chance to cash out, even at such a loss. Prepa said on Wednesday that negotiations with its bond insurers, MBIA and Assured Guaranty, and with the banks that finance its purchases of fuel, would continue.

Puerto Rico Electric Power Authority,PREPA


Manufacturer in $2 Million Accord With U.S. on Deficient Kevlar in Military Helmets

Abstract: A North Dakota manufacturer has agreed to pay $2 million to settle a suit saying it had repeatedly shortchanged the armor in up to 2.2 million helmets for the military, including those for the first troops sent to Iraq and Afghanistan. Twelve days before the settlement with the Justice Department was announced, the company, Sioux Manufacturing of Fort Totten, was given a new contract of up to $74 million to make more armor for helmets to replace the old ones, which were made from the late 1980s to last year. Sioux upgraded its looms in 2006, company executives say, and the government says it has started inspections at the plant. The United States attorney for North Dakota, Drew H. Wrigley, called the accord “an appropriate resolution” because the Defense Department had said that 200 sample helmets passed ballistic tests and that it “has no information of injuries or deaths due to inadequate Pasgt helmet protection.” Pasgt, pronounced “pass-get,” stands for the Personal Armor System for Ground Troops, which includes the helmet model being replaced. At the core of the investigation was the contention by two former plant managers that Kevlar woven at Sioux failed to meet the government’s “critical” minimum standard of 35 by 35 threads a square inch. When properly woven, Kevlar, a polymer thread made by Dupont, is stronger than steel, and able to deflect shrapnel and some bullets. Government regulations call for rejecting Kevlar below the 35-by-35 standard. The company “was underweaving,” Mr. Wrigley said. “That is undebatable,” he said. The factory’s own inspection records often showed weaves of 34 by 34 threads or as low as 32 by 34 and 33 by 34. Looms were “always set for 34 by 34, always,” said Jeff Kenner, who operated and repaired the looms and oversaw crews on all three shifts. In a statement, the company president, Carl R. McKay, denied “any and all of the allegations originally brought to the attention of the Department of Justice by disgruntled ex-employees.” Settling the case, United States v. Spirit Lake Tribe, filed in Federal District Court in Fargo, Mr. McKay said, was “a prudent business decision” to avoid legal costs and “should not be construed as an admission of wrongdoing.” The potential harm is difficult to judge. Helmet damage depends on the projectile. Whether a damaged helmet would hold up better with a tighter weave is hard to calculate, experts said. “You must have a certain amount of protection, and you can’t go below that,” said Gwynedd A. Thomas, associate professor of ballistics and protective fabrics at Auburn University. Although the difference between 34 and 35 threads a square inch seems modest, the cumulative loss in layers of fabric is significant, Dr. Thomas said. “Every time that you’re losing some mass, you’re losing some integrity,” she said. The strength comes from crossed yarns, the points that disperse projectile impact. “The fewer crossovers, the less energy dissipation you’re going to have,” she added. A 34-by-34 weave results in 5 percent fewer crossovers than 35 by 35, a difference Dr. Thomas called “quite a lot.” “I’m surprised somebody is not pursuing that more vigorously from the government,” she added. Were she a soldier’s parent, she said, “I would want to give my son a better helmet.” The $2 million settlement is far short of what the two former managers, Mr. Kenner and Tamra Elshaug, hoped for in 2006 when they filed a whistle-blower suit. The suit, for $159 million in damages, accused the company of defrauding the government and violating safety standards. “I think they got away with it,” said Mr. Kenner, who worked at Sioux for 20 years and was the weaving supervisor. “Sioux Manufacturing basically got a slap on the wrist,” he said. “The Justice Department did a really good job, but the Department of Defense is really just downplaying this. They’re embarrassed and want it to go away and would not admit to anybody’s getting hurt or even killed.” Mr. Kenner and Ms. Elshaug’s lawyer, Andrew J. Campanelli, challenged Defense Department contentions that it was unaware of injuries from defective helmets. “There are tons of injuries with shrapnel and bullets going through helmets,” he said. “My clients documented that American soldiers did not get the protection that the government paid for, that the taxpayers paid for.” In the evidence in the suit were hundreds of daily inspection records showing repeated violations of the weaving standards, as well as tape recordings of six managers and employees’ admitting covering up violations. In a conversation Mr. Kenner secretly taped, Rhea Crane, quality assurance officer, worried “if we ever had someone get killed, and they decided to investigate because they thought maybe the helmet wasn’t any good.” “If we ever got audited,” she said, “you know what they would do to us. Shut us down and fine us big time. Probably never see another government contract.” Ms. Crane did not return repeated calls for comment. Justice Department officials said some Sioux records listed looms with 35-by-35 counts, with a few at 36. Dr. Thomas agreed looms could be adjusted to do so. Mr. Kenner and Ms. Elshaug, who worked at the plant for 26 years and was in charge of buying Kevlar, say thread counts were routinely rounded up to reach the 35-by-35 minimum. The papers in the suit showed a Kevlar surplus of up to 30,000 pounds and a resin shortage. Extra resin was applied to the Kevlar to bring it up to a specified weight, the former employees said. Extra resin also poses a hazard to soldiers, Dr. Thomas said, adding, “If they were putting more resin in, they were doing something that will hurt soldiers, because it reduces elasticity and increases brittleness.” Mr. Kenner said, according to the suit, that when he asked Mr. McKay about the violations, he responded: “That is the way we are going to weave it. Don’t you worry about it.” Mr. McKay did not respond to e-mail and phone messages. Despite excellent job ratings, Mr. Kenner and Ms. Elshaug were fired after protesting the violations. Mr. Campanelli will share part of the settlement totaling $406,350. There is no further legal recourse, he added. Soldiers generally cannot sue the government. And Sioux is owned by an Indian tribe, the Spirit Lake Nation, that can, he said, assert sovereign immunity against private suits. The company also benefits from a 5 percent federal incentive program for Indian contractors and preferences for disadvantaged small businesses. Ms. Elshaug and Mr. Kenner said they did not regret suing. “It was never about the money,” he said. “It was about the soldiers. I’m still shocked. I wouldn’t be wearing one of those helmets.”

Protective Clothing
Sioux Manufacturing Corp
Defense Department
Armor
Textiles
Suits and Litigation
North Dakota
Whistle-Blowers
Iraq


Line Cook Was Steered Into the Kitchen, Thanks to Mom

Abstract: William Patrick Harrison was cooking scrambled eggs with freshly snipped home-grown chives by age 8, though at that stage of his culinary education his mother supervised his use of scissors. Two degrees from the Culinary Institute of America later, Mr. Harrison, 23, totes his own self-sharpened knives to his job as a line cook at the River Café in Brooklyn. He lives with his parents in Glendale, Queens. Senior slump: I never thought about becoming a chef until my senior year at McClancy High School in Elmhurst. I hadn’t applied to any colleges. I was looking into going into the Army. But everything changed one night in March. Recipe for success: My mom was working in the city part-time as a sort of housekeeper and happened to be having a horrible day. When I called her and asked her what we were having for dinner, she sort of hung up on me. So I went online and found a recipe for shrimp scampi, and when she walked in the door that night I had the meal ready: shrimp scampi, rice stir-fry, and baked asparagus. While we were eating, my brother, who had a mouthful of shrimp, sort of mumbled, “You should be a chef.” My mom took it from there: She got information about the Culinary Institute, set up a tour for us, and I applied and got in. Summer prep: I worked as a busboy at this Irish bar called Bridie’s , asking the cook lots of questions like “Why are you hitting that steak with that hammer?” The first degree: I loved school. I did my 18-week externship at the River Café; I was really lucky to get in. There was a line cook named Kevin Jenkins who was my go-to guy when I needed to ask little questions. He inspired me to go back to school for a second associate’s degree — baking and pastry. He unfortunately died in a motorcycle accident last year, so we never got to cook together on the line. The second degree: I went back to school but had to withdraw for a while because money was a problem — my parents put me through school — but we got things in order. I did my pastry externship at the River Café, and I got my baking and pastry degree this past April. There is no forgiveness in pastry: make one mistake and it’s ruined. Dancing at the stove... The week after I graduated, I got the job as a line cook; there are nine of us, not counting the chefs. We’re busy and we have to move fast. I compare it to a ballet in the kitchen. ...But no drama: One night, three lobster dinners I’d plated were sent back for being a little undercooked. Brad Steelman, the chef, turned a lobster tail over and said: “See that meat? It’s clear when it should be white. No plate leaves our kitchen like that.” And then he just walked away. He’s not a screamer like some of those TV chefs. He’s a teacher. Kitchen chic: We’re given a white chef’s coat, checkered pants and an apron. The kitchen supplies toques, but they tend to fall off when you’re cooking. I bring my own hat, a black skullcap like the chefs wear. Off-duty treat: On my day off I tend to find myself at Totonno’s pizza on Coney Island. Friday night was always pizza night at our house, so I guess it’s like comfort food to me. Pulling out the stops: I met my girlfriend, Bailey Mitchell, in the pastry program. She’s from Chicago, and when I went to visit her, we went to Alinea and had the 21-course tasting menu. If I ate like that every day I wouldn’t weigh 190 for long.

Harrison William Patrick
Chefs
Restaurants
Cooking and Cookbooks
Queens (NYC)
Brooklyn (NYC)
Culinary Institute of America


Oil Price Decline Shrinks Trade Deficit

Abstract: Two government reports released Thursday showed continuing signs of weakness in the economy. A decline in crude oil prices helped to narrow the United States trade deficit in September, but both imports and exports fell sharply. Separately, a report from the Labor Department showed that first-time claims for jobless benefits in the week that ended Nov. 8 increased to 516,000, an increase of 32,000 from the previous week. The Labor Department also reported that the number of Americans collecting jobless benefits jumped to 3.9 million in the week that ended Nov. 1, hitting a 25-year high. Announcements of job cuts at companies including Citigroup, the Goldman Sachs Group, Ford Motor and Circuit City Stores will probably add to unemployment claims in the weeks ahead. The Commerce Department reported Thursday that the trade deficit shrank by $2.6 billion, or 4.4 percent, to $56.5 billion in September, from $59.1 billion a month earlier. Much of that resulted from a 15.7 percent decline in petroleum imports as prices for crude oil declined throughout the month. Crude oil is now trading at less than $60 a barrel. Excluding oil, the deficit widened to $35.5 billion in September, from $33.7 billion in August, as American exports slumped, said James O’Sullivan, United States economist at UBS. American exports fell $9.9 billion from August to September. “It’s reflecting weakening domestic as well as foreign demand,” Mr. O’Sullivan said. “In some sense, they offset each other.” In total, the United States exported $155.4 billion in goods and services in September, a 6 percent decline from the previous month. Overall imports declined 5.6 percent, to $211.9 billion. America’s oil imports fell by $7 billion from August to September. Economists said they expected numbers for crude oil imports to keep sliding as government data catches up with oil’s falling prices and consumption. Demand slackened for a range of foreign goods in September. Imports of raw materials fell as American industrial output slowed, and the American market for foreign-made televisions, computers, clothing, cosmetics, cookware and other goods also shrank. The United States’ trade gap with China widened in September to a record $27.8 billion as exports fell while more Chinese goods and services entered American markets. A 57-day strike by Boeing machinists contributed to slumping export statistics. Exports of civilian aircraft fell by $3.3 billion from August to September, largely a reflection of stilled aircraft production lines at Boeing, economists said. Stephen Stanley, chief United States economist at RBS Greenwich, said that the overall trade gap would continue to narrow as American consumers cut back on their purchases, reducing the demand for foreign-made stereos and plasma-screen televisions. “We’re not selling luxury consumer goods to Europe. We’re selling capital goods to developing countries,” Mr. Stanley said.

Oil (Petroleum) and Gasoline
Prices (Fares Fees and Rates)
International Trade and World Market


Finding Work From Fly-Fishing’s Popularity in Mexico

Abstract: PUNTA ALLEN, Mexico — For nearly two millennia, the Mayan people along the Yucatán Peninsula’s Caribbean coast have relied on fishing for sustenance and trade. The tradition continues, though today many Mayan fishermen are as likely to be throwing a 10-weight graphite fly rod as a net. With the Yucatán’s emergence as a popular flats fishing destination, local lobstermen have been recruited as fly-fishing guides to lead anglers to bonefish, tarpon and permit. “At some saltwater destinations, it’s not uncommon for guides from the Florida Keys to be airlifted in to lead guests to fish,” said Dick Cameron, owner of the Palometa Club, a fly-fishing lodge in Punta Allen, a village near the end of the Boca Paila peninsula, 30 miles from Tulum , that specializes in permit, or palometa in Spanish. “It’s been different on Ascension Bay. Jan Isley, a renowned Keys guide who discovered the region’s fly-fishing possibilities in the ’80s also recognized the potential the local lobstermen had as guides. He understood that these men are out on the water all the time and know where the fish are.” Through a happy coincidence, the spiny lobster fishing season runs from July through February and the prime sport fishing season on Ascension Bay runs from March through June. Lodge owners like Cameron have selectively recruited guides from the local lobster fishing cooperative — Mexican Pescadores de Vigía Chico Spiny Lobster Cooperativa — for more than 20 years. “There are three good jobs you can find in Punta Allen,” said Gerardo Velasquez, one of the Palometa Club’s staff of 14 guides. “Lobster fishing, eco guiding, and guiding fly fishermen. Guiding fishermen pays better than guiding eco-tourists, and it’s fun. I’d say that lobster fishing is easier than guiding, especially if you’re trying to catch permit. To be a good permit guide, you need lots of passion and patience. It’s a hard game.” Punta Allen has less than 500 residents. Velasquez estimates that 60 to 70 men in town guide anglers for at least part of the fishing season. Lobster fishing in Ascension Bay bears little resemblance to the occupation as it is practiced off the coast of Maine. Fishermen place small “houses” at depths from 2 to 60 feet. The houses provide shelter on the sandy expanses of the bay, attracting lobsters. Fishermen free dive to collect lobsters that have gathered in the houses. Cooperative rules dictate undersize and female lobsters are returned to the water. “I grew up around commercial fishing in Alaska,” Cameron added, “and in my experience, commercial activities don’t tend to complement sport fishing efforts. It’s been the opposite here. As the commercial fishery has thrived, there have been more little lobsters around, and that means more food for the bonefish and permit.” On a bright March morning, I accompanied Raza Tallim, an angler from Calgary, Alberta, and the guides Julio Octavio Gamboa and Charlie Rendon for a day of fishing. The water was an ever-shifting palette of blues and greens as we motored across Ascension Bay in a 23-foot panga, the de facto fishing craft for these parts. Tallim hoped to catch a snook, as he had landed his first tarpon and permit during the previous days’ fishing. We reached some stands of mangroves at the southern end of the bay, ideal snook habitat. Rendon climbed to the poling platform and Gamboa went to the bow with Tallim. As Rendon poled the panga around the mangroves, he shared how he came to guiding. “I knew nothing about fly-fishing when I started 17 years ago,” Rendon said. “A friend asked me to take some guys out to where the fish are. I did so. The guys had a good time, and they asked me to take them another day. I did this for a month and was offered a job guiding. A friend taught me how to cast in his yard. I was given an old fiberglass rod and eventually bought my own graphite rod.” Near some mangroves populated by a noisy flock of pink spoonbills and white ibis, Gamboa spotted a snook. He instructed Tallim to cast his fly into a pocket among the branches where the fish was resting, but Tallim’s casts were a bit high and landed in the mangroves. Rendon stepped down and demonstrated a sidearm technique. Tallim was a quick study and slid his next cast under the branches, but the fish was gone. After lunch, Rendon motored to a large flat of slightly deeper water. “We saw big schools of permit here yesterday,” he said. As he killed the motor and began poling the boat, Gamboa changed Tallim’s fly to a crab pattern. “Permit!” Rendon cried suddenly. The mood on the boat became serious. Rendon called out rapid instructions in Spanish to Gamboa in the bow. Gamboa interpreted them for Tallim. “Cast 10 o’clock, 40 feet,” he said softly. Tallim made the cast, perhaps a bit long. Several ghostlike shadows (the permit) flew past the boat, and a larger shadow (a shark) lumbered slowly away. “I was casting to the shark, I thought it was the permit,” Tallim said dejectedly. As the afternoon wore on, the wind came up. We fished the flat a few more times. Each drift through, a few permit appeared. The guide team positioned Tallim to make casts, but there were no takers. Tallim, like most sage permit anglers, was philosophical. “We didn’t get any today, but I learned so much,” Tallim said. “The casting and fly retrieving tips I got from Charlie and Julio are worth more than getting a fish.”

Fishing Sport
Eco-Tourism
Mexico
Tulum (Mexico)


Chicago Inaugurates Costly Plan to Replace Aged Water Mains

Abstract: On a computer-generated wall map, Thomas H. Powers outlined the first steps in what promises to be the biggest investment in Chicago’s labyrinthine water and sewer system since Mayor Richard J. Daley built the enormous Jardine water treatment plant on the lakefront almost 50 years ago. The map being developed by Mr. Powers, the commissioner of the city’s water department, represents a major focus of Mayor Rahm Emanuel ’s 10-year plan: the subterranean web of aging and decayed water mains. At the same time that Mr. Emanuel is making deep cuts to City Hall’s out-of-whack, day-to-day operating budget, he is championing an expensive program that he promised would be the largest public-works initiative by any city in the country. The city has replaced about 30 miles of water mains a year in recent years. That pace is not nearly quick enough, given that Chicago put down about 75 miles of mains a year between 1890 and 1920, and that those pipes were not expected to serve for more than a century. The department’s 2012 construction season customarily would begin in March, but it has essentially started already, Mr. Powers said last week, because the mayor demanded that his department more than double its work rate to meet the program’s timetable. In the next year, the city aims to rebuild 70 miles of water mains, the first stage in a 10-year effort to replace 900 miles of century-old tubing in the city’s 4,300-mile network. “Barring any kind of crazy weather, we are going to work through the winter,” Mr. Powers said in his office at the Jardine plant near Navy Pier. “We have to, or we’re not going to make it. And I’ve been told in no uncertain terms that we are going to make it. I’m going to make 70 miles come hell or high water.” High water is precisely what many people find gushing from buckled streets across Chicago after corroded water mains rupture. One such incident in August opened a gaping hole that swallowed an Acura sport-utility vehicle on a North Side street. Last month aldermen cited the need to replace deteriorating infrastructure as they approved Mr. Emanuel’s plan to sharply raise water and sewer rates for the accelerated program of public works projects. “If we don’t do this, our streets will sink,” Alderman Ariel Reboyras (30th Ward) said. The plan to improve the city’s water-distribution and sewer systems could create about 1,800 jobs a year, winning Mr. Emanuel favor with a unionized work force that has often viewed his budget-slashing zeal with trepidation. But the initiative also comes at a moment when the city’s water and sewer budgets have been increasingly hard-pressed to keep up with even the debts incurred when the city borrowed for its previous, less aggressive infrastructure-replacement efforts, according to bond-market analysts. From Jardine and another plant on the Lake Michigan shore at 79th Street, tap water is pumped to about five million people across the city and in 125 suburbs. Revenues have risen over the past 10 years, thanks in part to rate increases from 2008 to 2010. Water and sewer fees generated almost $650 million for City Hall last year. By cutting the payroll of the Water Management Department, the city has kept operating expenses stable at about $250 million a year. Another $225 million a year has been invested in upgrading the water system and sewers. But the cost of servicing debt issued for those projects has grown sharply, eating up an ever-growing chunk of the revenues that the city gets from water customers. Debt-service payments from the water and sewer budgets will increase next year to almost $250 million, double the level of eight years ago, budget records show. The situation prompted Fitch Ratings to downgrade the credit worthiness of the city’s water fund a year ago. The analysts cited “a gradual erosion of financial flexibility that has occurred in recent years, coupled with the system’s rising debt levels.” Mr. Powers said city officials had crunched the numbers and stood ready to borrow more money to help pay for the intensified water and sewer replacement program. The city plans to spend more than $350 million on the water system and sewers next year, an increase of $130 million over 2011. Most of the first year’s work will be paid for with additional borrowing early in 2012. As revenues from the higher consumer rates pour in, Mr. Powers said, the city will try to pay for much of the work as it proceeds. Water rates will rise 25 percent next year, with further 15 percent increases in each of the next three years. “It’s financially a responsible program,” Mr. Powers said. From the two treatment plants on the lakeshore, tunnels buried as deep as 200 feet carry purified lake water to 12 pumping stations throughout the city. The city plans to spend some of the infrastructure money to convert the last four steam-powered pumping stations to run on electricity. The pumping stations send lake water coursing through the water mains. The 10-year plan will supplant an average of 88 miles a year of mains that are at least 100 years old, at a cost of about $2 million per mile. Sewer replacement, which costs $4 million a mile, will also increase next year, to 17 miles from 11 miles. The department wants to continue expanding its efforts to line sewers with resin, to better preserve them and forestall total rebuilding. Mr. Powers said he had begun the process of hiring more laborers, bricklayers, plumbers, heavy-machine operating engineers and truck drivers. About half of the work on water mains has been outsourced to private contractors, he said, while city employees perform about 70 percent of sewer-improvement work. Mr. Powers said he expected that ratio to persist as the workload increased to meet the mayor’s goals. The waterworks plan was “something we have been howling about for years,” said Jorge Ramirez, president of the Chicago Federation of Labor. “It’s a good way to rebuild the middle class.” Of the roughly 1,900 employees of the Water Management Department, more than 600 blue-collar workers are paid $40 to $50 an hour, with another 900 receiving hourly wages of $30 to $40, according to city payroll data. Driven by the desire for such wages, as well as benefits, workers made the department a hotbed of patronage hiring and promotions in Mayor Richard M. Daley’s administration. The department was also involved in bribery and time-card fraud scandals, while a heroin-dealing ring there in 2005 inspired some City Hall observers to jokingly suggest a new slogan to appear on water bills: “We put the H in your H20.” Mr. Powers said that he believed there was room for improved productivity in the department but that he saw no reason to fear that corruption would spoil the mayor’s plan. “Any company at all is going to have some problem children,” he said, “but by and large the work force wants to do the right thing.”

Water
Infrastructure (Public Works)
Budgets and Budgeting
Emanuel Rahm
Chicago (Ill)
Sewers and Sewage


Massachusetts: Archdiocese Is Guarding Against Flu

Abstract: The Archdiocese of Boston told priests on Thursday that they could suspend distributing communion wine from a shared chalice and suggested that they ask parishioners to bow instead of shaking hands to wish one another peace to curb the spread of flu. Auxiliary Bishop Robert P. Deeley also said communion ministers should sanitize their hands before and after giving communion and try not to touch parishioners’ hands or tongues when distributing communion.

Boston
Massachusetts
Flu
Catholic Church
Epidemic
Thomas M Menino
Priest


Sri Lanka to Tighten Laws to Curb Terror

Abstract: COLOMBO, Sri Lanka , Dec. 6 (Reuters) — Sri Lanka will introduce tough emergency regulations to outlaw terrorist activities but will not impose an outright ban on the Tamil Tiger rebels, the government said Wednesday. The cabinet made the decision after months of worsening violence between the army and the rebels, including bomb blasts in the capital, and amid fears that a ban could sink hopes of avoiding all-out civil war. Last week President Mahinda Rajapakse’s brother, Gothabaya Rajapakse, who is also the defense secretary, was the target of a suicide attack. He escaped unscathed. “The government has decided to bring amendments to emergency regulations,” the government’s chief parliamentary whip, Nimal Siripala de Silva, told Parliament. “These regulations will be updated to face the threat we face from terrorism.” The regulations include a definition for terrorism, and ban trading with people engaged in terrorist activities, supporting or assisting them or giving information judged detrimental to national security. The penalty would be up to 10 years in jail.

Sri Lanka
Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam
Terrorism
Politics and Government


U.N. Takes New Steps in Central African Republic

Abstract: UNITED NATIONS — The United Nations Security Council voted unanimously on Tuesday to impose a travel ban on and freeze the assets of people suspected of war crimes in Central African Republic, as the European Union prepared to send a battalion to protect civilians from an unrelenting sectarian war there. The resolution approved by the Security Council did not name perpetrators of violence who are to face sanctions; that will be taken up later. Last week, Secretary of State John Kerry raised the threat of American sanctions as well. United Nations officials described a spiraling conflict, with the mostly Muslim Seleka rebels disarmed and rival Christian gunmen going on retaliatory rampages. “Muslim civilians are now extremely vulnerable,” the United Nations high commissioner for human rights, Navi Pillay, warned this week. Christians and Muslims have lived peaceably in Central African Republic for generations, but political struggles between former President François Bozizé and Michel Djotodia, who ousted Mr. Bozizé last year with the backing of Muslim militias, have engendered sectarian strife. Mr. Djotodia’s departure this month and the installation of an interim president , Catherine Samba-Panza, have not brought relief to civilians. United Nations officials continue to warn of the risk of genocide . Children have been recruited to fight. Roughly one in five people have fled their homes, and the World Food Program estimates that a majority of the country’s 4.6 million people are eating one meal a day. Troops from the African Union have tried to stop the violence, but with minimal effect. Just under 5,500 troops have arrived, shy of the 6,000 the union has pledged. France has sent 1,600 of its own soldiers to help but has insisted for months that a United Nations peacekeeping force is needed. The subject is expected to be discussed at an African Union summit meeting that starts this week in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. On Tuesday, the French ambassador, Gérard Araud, said that at least 10,000 peacekeepers would be required to restore order in the country, along with assistance from the United Nations to rebuild state institutions. Mr. Araud sought to emphasize that the United Nations would not supplant the African Union force. “It’s obviously an African endeavor,” he told reporters, careful not to invite a dispute with African Union member countries, whose troops the United Nations would need for any mission in Central African Republic. “It’s obviously an endeavor where Africans have taken the burden.” “We want to tell the Africans, ‘It’s very difficult, it’s more difficult than we were anticipating, and the U.N. can help you,’ ” he said. Ban Ki-moon, the United Nations secretary general, will present recommendations at the end of February as to whether a peacekeeping force should be deployed. French soldiers have been guarding the airport in the capital, Bangui, where tens of thousands of displaced people have erected a makeshift camp. The European Union has authorized the deployment of a battalion of European troops — roughly 500 to 600 soldiers — to relieve the French. They will arrive within weeks, the European Union envoy to the United Nations, Thomas Mayr-Harting, told reporters on Tuesday. The Security Council measure authorizes those troops to use “all necessary measures” to help African Union forces. They will be there for up to six months, Mr. Mayr-Harting said.

War Crimes,Genocide,Crimes Against Humanity


Despite Flash of Rose’s Prime, Knicks Are Dazed by Westbrook and Thunder

Abstract: As each Knick took his turn to talk, it became an exercise unto itself. The Knicks had been defeated, soundly, by the Oklahoma City Thunder, 112-103, at Madison Square Garden on Monday night. It was a loss in which the Knicks lacked cohesion, marksmanship and, by their own admission, fortitude. Yes, the Knicks had fallen prey to the habitual wizardry of the Thunder star Russell Westbrook, who had 27 points, 18 rebounds and 14 assists, his third straight triple-double and his eighth in 19 games this season. But that is the cost of playing Oklahoma City — a statistical line that opponents bake in. Instead, the Knicks embarked on a bout of self-flagellation, rebuking themselves for the errors they could have avoided in their second consecutive loss. For most of the game they were outmuscled and outplayed, which left them bruised, physically and emotionally. “We got manhandled,” Knicks center Joakim Noah said. The Knicks’ shortcomings were plain to see. The Thunder grabbed 13 more rebounds and had 17 on the offensive glass. They scored 28 second-chance points. Steven Adams and Enes Kanter wreaked havoc for Oklahoma City. Kanter came off the bench to score 27 points, block three shots and add 10 rebounds. Adams had a double-double, too, with 14 points and 10 rebounds at center. “They just outmuscled us,” Knicks Coach Jeff Hornacek said. “Outmuscled and then, for a stretch, out-hustled.” He added, “Kanter, Adams, those guys — you’re going to have to hit them and hit them hard. They were just tougher than us.” It was not as if the Knicks were short on firepower, at least. Derrick Rose scored a season-high 30 points. He played like the point guard the Knicks surely hoped they had acquired in June. Even after four fallow years in Chicago marred by injuries, Rose was still a 28-year-old with a Most Valuable Player Award on his résumé, and this was the production and quality he was still capable of, if not often enough yet this season. Rose played efficiently and aggressively, attacking the rim with verve and catalyzing the Knicks’ offense as he had been brought in to do. But even Rose’s best game with the Knicks was not good enough to keep up with Westbrook, Kanter and Adams. “That 30 don’t mean nothing when we lose,” Rose said. “And the way that we lost, like, there wasn’t any grit. There wasn’t any grind. Can’t come out and play like that, period.” While Rose tried to keep up with Westbrook, the Knicks’ Carmelo Anthony struggled mightily, going 4 of 19 for 18 hardscrabble points. Anthony’s performance was all the more glaring as he frequently found himself isolated on the wing or elbow, trying to break down Oklahoma City’s defense but finding himself caught in a forest of burly Thunder big men or clanging shots off the rim. At times, the Knicks’ offense looked short-circuited. Anthony, despite his cold hand, kept shooting. “They all feel good, to be honest with you,” Anthony said. “It wasn’t long, it wasn’t short, they were bouncing off the rim, they were chippers, the same shot I hit all the time so I can’t stop taking my shots.” The Knicks’ Kristaps Porzingis had his problems, too, scoring 21 points but cooling off in the second half. He and Rose led the Knicks with 14 points each at halftime but only Rose kept up the pace. The shooting woes came as the Thunder continued to pressure the Knicks’ beleaguered defense. Westbrook prodded and poked, dribbling into the lane and finding open teammates or finishing by himself. Oklahoma City scored 64 points over the second and third quarters and took a 7-point lead in a game that the Knicks had once led by double digits. But the Knicks stagnated. Their offense sputtered, straining to mesh Porzingis, Rose and Anthony. It meant possessions on which Anthony and others traded off the ball. Rose, however, looked comfortable the whole night, as he has of late. With him flying around and Porzingis shooting well, the Knicks looked like a cohesive unit early on. Noah, whose playing time and value have fluctuated this season, was a key cog, too. With the Thunder employing Adams and a power forward — either Domantas Sabonis or Kanter — the Knicks needed Noah on the floor. But the added size did not give them an advantage this time. Not when Kanter and Adams, two mountainous players, could match the Knicks’ girth with their own. “There’s a difference in being big and strong and having a little nastiness,” Hornacek said. “I think Kanter and Adams had a little nastiness to them. That’s where our guys have to get, where you’re not afraid to knock a guy down, especially if he keeps shoving you under the basket. You’ve got to do something at some point. To their credit, they did that.”

Basketball
Knicks
Oklahoma City Thunder
Russell Westbrook
Derrick Rose
Carmelo Anthony


Basketball Player From Dallas Is Hero in Nation of Georgia

Abstract: TBILISI, Georgia — During the war between Georgia and Russia last year, many Georgians felt abandoned when their closest ally, the United States, did not enter the conflict. But they remained steadfast in their support of Tyrone Ellis, a basketball player from Dallas. On the court, Ellis did something his fellow Americans had not done during the war: He fought for Georgia, and he won. The Georgian national team featuring Ellis became an unlikely success story, especially considering that its 2008 season began with an evacuation as bombs fell within earshot here in the capital. The Russian army bivouacked 30 miles away. Despite the war, the team won 9 of 10 games over two years and clinched Georgia’s first berth in Division A, European basketball’s biggest stage. Ellis, who was granted a Georgian passport in 2006 by President Mikheil Saakashvili, was a veteran anchor for the talented but erratic team. In an early-season victory over Luxembourg this summer, Ellis, a 6-foot-4 shooting guard, stole the ball, dunked on a breakaway and turned to salute the 200 or so Georgian soldiers sitting behind the home team’s basket. The crowd at the Tbilisi Sports Palace chanted: “Ellisi! Ellisi!” “I can’t imagine we would have won without him,” said the team’s coach, Igor Kokoskov, who is also an assistant coach with the Phoenix Suns of the N.B.A. “He was our main weapon as a perimeter player, and our main weapon on defense.” Ellis, 32, is hardly the first United States-born athlete to play under a different flag in Europe. National teams there are eager to take advantage of a loophole that allows them one player — usually an American — who has been granted a passport to represent another country. For the Americans, most of whom play in competitive European leagues during the regular season, a European passport means they do not count against quotas for American players. It instantly makes the players more valuable free agents. Soon after obtaining his Georgian passport, for example, Ellis landed a lucrative contract (worth more than $500,000 a year after taxes) with Cajasol Sevilla , a Spanish league team that has five American-born players, three of whom plan to play, like Ellis, under a second passport. Such citizenship maneuvering is widespread. A Pittsburgh native, J. R. Holden, won the European title for Russia in 2007 with a last-second field goal; and this year’s European tournament featured Kelly McCarty, a Chicago native who played at Southern Mississippi before joining the Russian national team, and Jeremiah Massey, who played at Kansas State before representing Macedonia. Some arrangements may be marriages of convenience, but a genuine affection seems to have developed between Ellis and Georgia. “America has done so much for us in the last 10 or 15 years,” said Merab Ratishvili, head of the Georgian Basketball Federation. “Tyrone is another bridge.” Ellis is a natural ambassador, his coaches said. Even though he speaks almost no Georgian — the correct pronunciation of Tbilisi still eludes him — he makes a point of beginning and ending interviews with a Georgian phrase or two. He stays after games to sign autographs and takes his role as a national player seriously. “It’s a different experience playing for your country, not just your team,” he said. “Especially this country, where they need positive things now.” He knows what it is to be the underdog. Lightly recruited out of high school, Ellis enrolled at Southern Nazarene University in Bethany, Okla. He was so eager to please and so stung by criticism that at the start of his sophomore year, his coach, Bobby Martin, said he had to warn Ellis, “If you tear up and cry on me again this year, I’m going to send you home.” Ellis did not go home; he willed himself to become a relentless defender and a reliable shooter, helping lead the team to its first National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics championship game in 1998. He arrived in Europe in 2001 after an unsuccessful bid to make the N.B.A. (He tried again in 2006, and was cut in the preseason by the Minnesota Timberwolves.) But European teams were playing at a high level, and the Americans they signed mostly came from Division I programs that had overlooked Ellis. As he had at Southern Nazarene, Ellis ultimately succeeded by outworking everyone else. When Gordon Herbert, then coach of the Georgia team, needed a defense-minded veteran, he thought of Ellis. “I knew he could get along with the Georgians,” said Herbert, who had won the 2004 Bundesliga title in Germany with Ellis. “He’s got good values.” Last year, Ellis and the rest of his team reported to Tbilisi in July, unaware of the brewing danger. Fighting broke out on the night of Aug. 7, and soon the players, watching CNN at the Vedzisi hotel, began hearing bombs fall. “That’s when I started to panic,” Ellis said. The Georgian players left to look after their families, and the foreign players and coaches were evacuated to a house in the mountains outside the city. Ratishvili of the Georgian Basketball Federation’s figured it was safer there. “We felt like refugees,” Kokoskov said. That the team went on to win and advance to the next EuroBasket division has given hope to the country as it rebuilds from the war. Ratishvili said one sign of the team’s popularity is that camps and academies in Georgia had doubled their enrollment this year. “It’s hard to stay positive these days,” he said. “Basketball helps.” Ellis will not stay in Europe forever, and he is trying to lay the groundwork for an N.B.A. coaching career. But he vowed to represent Georgia for as long as he continues to play. “Now, I don’t play for the passport,” he said. “I play because I want to play. This is my family.”

Basketball
New York Knicks
Golden State Warriors
D'Antoni Mike
Walsh Donnie


A Sharp Attack on Obama

Abstract: This advertisement for the Republican ticket of Senator John McCain and Gov. Sarah Palin is scheduled to be broadcast in what the McCain campaign describes as key states, though as of late Friday it had run only once, in Denver on Sept. 10. Called “Disrespectful,” it is 30 seconds long. PRODUCER Foxhole Productions SCRIPT “He was the world’s biggest celebrity, but his star is fading. So they lashed out at Sarah Palin. Dismissed her as ‘good looking.’ That backfired, so they said she was doing ‘what she was told.’ Then desperately called Sarah Palin a liar. How disrespectful. And how Gov. Sarah Palin proves them wrong, every day.” THE SCREEN Senator Barack Obama is shown at a lectern, gesticulating, with crowd noises in the background and cameras flashing as a female voice speaks. Next, head shots of Mr. Obama and his running mate, Senator Joseph R. Biden Jr., fill the screen. As the accusations against Mr. Obama roll across the screen, his face alone appears, intermittently smiling, fretful or frowning. The final image is that of a smiling Mr. McCain standing at Ms. Palin’s side as she speaks at a public event. ACCURACY Mr. Obama is pictured when the phrase “good looking” appears on the screen, but it was actually Mr. Biden who made the remark, and clearly in a self-deprecating context. The Obama adviser accused of saying Ms. Palin was doing what she was told merely said that she might have been fed misinformation about Mr. Obama and repeated it. An Obama advertisement does accuse both Mr. McCain and Ms. Palin of “lying” about their records, in her case as regards her claimed opposition to the so-called bridge to nowhere, which she opposed only once it became a symbol of wasteful spending. And this is the second McCain advertisement to call Mr. Obama “the world’s biggest celebrity,” a contention that will no doubt come as a surprise to several actors and athletes, and seems odd at a moment when Ms. Palin is omnipresent on television and in newspapers and magazines. SCORECARD The advertisement is the latest in a number that resort to a dubious disregard for the facts. The nonpartisan political analysis group Factcheck.org has already criticized “Disrespectful” as “particularly egregious,” saying that it “goes down new paths of deception,” and is “peddling false quotes.” Even the title is troublesome. “Disrespectful” is one of those words that is loaded with racial and class connotations that many people consider offensive.

McCain John
Presidential Election of 2008
Palin Sarah
Advertising and Marketing
Obama Barack


Republicans Setting Sights on Same-Sex Marriage Law

Abstract: WASHINGTON — Days after a showdown over the Confederate battle flag, House Republicans are barreling toward a new confrontation on another contentious issue: How should Congress respond to the Supreme Court’s decision to legalize same-sex marriage? Legislation granting protections for tax-exempt organizations and individuals objecting to same-sex marriage on religious or moral grounds is gathering momentum in the House. The bills , drafted by Representative Raúl R. Labrador, Republican of Idaho, and Senator Mike Lee, Republican of Utah, already have 130 co-sponsors. On Thursday, the Republican Study Committee, the largest, most organized group of conservatives in the House, demanded a vote. “All religious Americans deserve assurance that they can carry out their conscience without a federal government crackdown,” said Representative Bill Flores, Republican of Texas and the committee’s chairman. At the same time, wary Republican moderates have quietly drafted a novel alternative that would actually expand legal protections for gay men and lesbians. Their legislation would narrow the scope of protection offered to groups declining services to same-sex couples seeking to marry. The brewing dispute is coming at a delicate time for the Republican Party. Donald J. Trump, the billionaire businessman seeking the Republican nomination for president, has stirred up Hispanic voters with the anti-Mexican and illegal immigration diatribes he has delivered since beginning his campaign. Last week, after Republican governors in South Carolina and Alabama pressed for the removal of the Confederate battle flag at their capitols, Southern Republicans in the House moved to preserve the right to lay those flags on Confederate graves at federal cemeteries, prompting an uproar led by African-American House members. Republican leaders have found themselves once again caught in a wedge between the conservative sentiments of the majority of their conference and the more liberal social trends in the nation at large. Asked about the First Amendment Defense Act, which is the name of the bill to protect tax-exempt organizations and individuals objecting to same-sex marriage on religious grounds, House Speaker John A. Boehner of Ohio on Thursday was careful not to dismiss it even as he declined to embrace it. “The Supreme Court’s decision on marriage raises a lot of other questions, and a number of members have concerns about issues that it raises and how they might be addressed,” he said. “But no decision has been made on how best to address these.” The bill proposed by moderates, though, would attach two provisions expanding protections long-sought by gay rights groups: the Employment Non-Discrimination Act, which outlaws workplace discrimination based on sexual orientation, and an amendment to the federal Fair Housing Act to add sexual orientation and gender identity to the list of protected characteristics of housing seekers. “This opens up a can of worms, and Congress needs to show it can do two things at once: protect religious freedoms and provide legal protections for nondiscrimination,” Representative Charlie Dent, Republican of Pennsylvania, said Friday. Mr. Dent told his colleagues in a closed-door meeting on Tuesday that they were risking the same protests from business leaders and other gay rights supporters that Gov. Mike Pence of Indiana prompted in March when he signed legislation allowing businesses to refuse services to same-sex couples. The bill was quickly amended to outlaw discrimination based on sexual orientation or gender identity. His appeal was greeted with silence, he said, but “the message was delivered.” “I would really hate to see the Indiana nightmare turn into a national debacle,” he said. The House Oversight and Government Reform Committee had intended to formally draft the bill next week, but its chairman, Representative Jason Chaffetz of Utah, said Friday it is now unlikely that drafting will come before Congress’s August recess. At the same time, Republican leaders made it clear they saw a need for a legislative response to the court’s action. Without legal protection, Republicans fear religious broadcasters could lose their federal licenses if they do not grant same-sex marriage benefits to employees. Faith-based charities like World Vision, which rely on government grants, could face pressure — or even the loss of their tax-exempt status — if they do not drop requirements that employees sign a statement of faith, including respect for “traditional” marriage. Catholic schools risk losing federal teacher-assistance grants and assistance with school meals, Republicans say. Mr. Labrador, in an interview Friday, said he was willing to work with Mr. Dent — and even the Human Rights Campaign, the nation’s largest gay rights group — to get the language right, although he said measures expanding legal protections for homosexuals were outside the scope of the bill. “We’re trying to draft the narrowest bill possible. We’re just trying to protect people’s freedom of religion,” he said. Gay rights advocates say those concerns are overblown. In the last 30 years, only a handful of organizations have ever lost their tax-exempt status, and those have been mainly over fraud charges. Religious organizations that do not hire women have never been threatened. “The right to believe is fundamental. The right to use taxpayer dollars to discriminate is not,” Sarah Warbelow, legal director of the Human Rights Campaign, said Friday. The moderate Republican alternative would draw religious protections narrowly, ensuring that they shielded religious nonprofit organizations from threats to their tax-exempt status and other federal benefits because of their adherence to heterosexual marriage, according to a one-page description of the legislation circulating in the House.

US Politics
Republicans
Conservatism in the United States
Same-Sex Marriage,Gay Marriage
Freedom of religion
House of Representatives
Congress


Federal Deficit in January Higher Than a Year Ago

Abstract: The federal government ran a bigger deficit in January, pushing the imbalance this budget year up 6.2 percent from the same period a year ago. The Treasury Department said on Wednesday that the deficit for January stood at $17.5 billion compared with $10.3 billion a year ago. For the first four months of the budget year that began in October, the deficit widened to $194.2 billion from $182.8 billion during the same period last year. The deficit has gradually narrowed since 2012, which was the fourth straight year in which it topped $1 trillion. The Congressional Budget Office forecast a deficit of $468 billion for the full 2015 budget year, 3.1 percent lower than in 2014. For the current budget year, government revenue totals $1.05 trillion, up 8.7 percent from a year ago. Spending is at $1.24 trillion, up 8.3 percent over last year.

Federal Budget
Congressional Budget Office
US Economy


Under Bloomberg, Budget and Revenues Swell

Abstract: Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg has promoted himself as a model of fiscal restraint, issuing dire warnings about the slowing economy, recently asking agencies to limit hiring, and even listing “fiscal responsibility” as an interest on his MySpace page. At the same time, a review of the city’s budget since 1980 shows that Mr. Bloomberg has been presiding over one of the greatest expansions of city government since the John V. Lindsay administration, fueled by an extraordinary surge in real estate revenues, both from higher property taxes and transfer taxes from sales. Since Mr. Bloomberg took office in 2002, the city budget, adjusted for inflation, has swelled faster than it has under any other mayor during the last 27 years, increasing by 23 percent, to $60 billion. By contrast, spending rose 8 percent during Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani’s eight years, and 4 percent under Mayor David N. Dinkins, who served one four-year term. Mr. Bloomberg’s spending also outpaced that of Mayor Edward I. Koch, who increased the budget by 19 percent over his last two terms. No one is predicting a collapse of the city’s fiscal stability as a result of the increased spending, and Mr. Bloomberg, who is scheduled to speak about economic policy to Britain’s Conservative Party at the end of the month, generally receives high marks for his stewardship of the budget. But some worry that New York, along with other cities where the real estate market has been hot, is ill-prepared to grapple with a downturn, having grown accustomed to booming revenues from flush times. According to the mayor’s Office of Management and Budget, approximately 75 percent of the growth under Mr. Bloomberg has been driven by expenses that are difficult to control, like employee health care costs and benefits, pension payments and Medicaid . But Mr. Bloomberg, who declined to be interviewed for this article, has also significantly increased more discretionary accounts, reflecting his emphasis on quality-of-life issues and his desire to make New York attractive to people and businesses. Spending on parks, often one of the first areas to lose money in lean times, jumped 27 percent over his tenure, to $298 million, for example. The budget at Information Technology has almost tripled to $157 million, largely due to establishing the city’s popular 311 service hot line and to upgrading other technology systems. Spending on schools jumped 14 percent, to $16 billion, driven by a 40 percent increase in teacher salaries favored by Mr. Bloomberg, among other expenses. And although the number of city workers has declined by about 1 percent since Mr. Bloomberg took office, he has been increasing the staff of late, adding nearly 10,000 workers since 2004, bringing the total up to 367,643. City officials argue that their approach has been restrained, and that the mayor’s investment in services has helped the city thrive, bringing about a still-declining crime rate, cleaner streets and safer traffic conditions. “Any way you look at it, city government has functioned well over the last almost six years,” said Edward Skyler, the deputy mayor who oversees the budget. “And the resources the mayor has allocated have been well spent.” The New York Times examined overall city spending as reported by the Independent Budget Office, including state and federal aid, dating back to 1980, the earliest year for which reliable records are available. The spending increases described in this article have been adjusted for inflation. Of the $60 billion spent in the last fiscal year, $16 billion came from state and federal sources, a smaller percentage than in 2002. When Mr. Bloomberg took office, he inherited a budget punch-drunk from the aftereffects of 9/11 on an already slowing economy, facing a $5 billion deficit in what was then, in 2002 dollars, a $41 billion budget, including $14 billion from Albany and Washington. The mayor spent his first months in office looking for ways to reduce spending through cutting staff and modestly trimming services, but he increased revenue through borrowing and eventually raising taxes, fines and fees. “He very deliberately, early on, made the choice that rather than really jamming down services, he was going to hold the service level and raise taxes,” said Mark Page, director of the Office of Management and Budget. Mr. Bloomberg has also personally contributed tens of millions of dollars to the city, forgoing his salary, paying his own travel expenses, donating to social service and cultural groups whose city grants he trimmed, and supporting projects and experimental programs. Since then, Mr. Page added, the growth in population and the economy has led to “a major increase in revenue that has enabled us to cut taxes and spend more. Smaller class sizes, dividing up large schools, maintaining parks, cleaning streets, what-have-you are all things that people like and they all cost money.” James Parrott, chief economist of the Fiscal Policy Institute, a left-leaning research group, said this dynamic was at work in 2003, when the mayor pushed through an 18.5 percent property tax increase. The mayor and City Council agreed to reduce property taxes by 7 percent for this fiscal year. “He was very clear at the time, saying we can’t just slash public services, because we did that in the fiscal crisis and we’ve been paying for the damage for a long time,” Mr. Parrott said. Although the rise in revenues is overwhelmingly due to growth in the economy, roughly 15 percent of the increase resulted from Mr. Bloomberg’s imposition of new taxes and fees, primarily the property tax increase, according to an analysis by the Independent Budget Office, a publicly financed research and policy agency that does not report directly to the mayor. “He does look to the revenue side to meet needs,” said Charles Brecher, research director at the Citizens Budget Commission, a business-backed research group and a co-author of “Power Failure,” which studied New York politics and policy from 1960 to the early 1990s. “It’s not that he’s necessarily taken on new roles for government, but he’s put money into education, he’s paying people more, and there has been selected expansion in some services.” Many fiscal experts applaud the mayor’s use of recent windfalls to pay down spiraling long-term expenses, such as future interest on debt and pensions. Still, some analysts see a danger in ever-rising spending based on volatile sources that are eventually bound to decline, like the financial or real estate markets. “You’ve continued expanding a government that’s tuned to run on high-test — it basically wants to grow at a certain level,” said E. J. McMahon, a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, a conservative research organization. “It creates unsustainable appetites among all the major consumers of city tax money, and you’re still not fixing infrastructure.” The spending also underscores Mr. Bloomberg’s belief in the power of government to solve problems, a notion that runs counter to the small-government rhetoric of the Republican Party he abandoned in June. Ester R. Fuchs, a political science professor at Columbia University who was a special adviser to the mayor in his first term, said that Mr. Bloomberg’s spending pattern represents a new strategy for keeping cities healthy and competitive. “He was never antigovernment,” Ms. Fuchs said. “He actually viewed government as having a role, and by making government both more responsible and efficient, he made people more comfortable with the idea that government could spend the money effectively.”

Bloomberg Michael R
Budgets and Budgeting
New York City
Mayors
Finances
Politics and Government
Economic Conditions and Trends
Lindsay John V
Health Insurance and Managed Care


The Long Reach of the Aliso Canyon Gas Leak

Abstract: When a geyser of gas began spewing from the ground in October 2015, it was just the beginning of an energy and environmental crisis in Southern California with far-reaching repercussions. In nearby communities, like Porter Ranch, the disaster upended lives: Schools relocated. Thousands of people moved to motels and temporary housing. The leak at an Aliso Canyon gas storage facility not only sent vast amounts of methane — a heat-trapping greenhouse gas — into the atmosphere, it also ended up spraying other chemicals, including some that were being used in the effort to plug the leak. The catastrophe led officials to shutter the facility, at least until investigations and testing could determine the cause of the leak and demonstrate the safety of the wells. The Southern California Gas Company has had other, smaller leaks in the year since — one as recently as last month — but it says that 34 of its 115 wells are now certified to be in good working order and it is pressing to reopen the facility. Many residents, however, as well as environmentalists and some officials, are fighting to keep it shut. __________________ Image Credit Coley Brown for The New York Times George Chang and Susan Gorman-Chang liked the area’s hiking and horse trails that wind through old sheep pastures. Like many of their neighbors, they did not pay attention to the depot, a depleted oil field that had become a gas storage facility in the 1970s, until they learned that an oil company was looking to drill anew. “We thought we’d moved to ‘Little House on the Prairie,’” Mrs. Gorman-Chang said, “and we moved to ‘Little House on the Methane Dump.’” __________________ Image Credit Coley Brown for The New York Times Patricia Larcara, who moved to Porter Ranch in 1989 to be near the mountains, said she still suffered headaches, fatigue and nausea in her home. She said officials assigned her to one place where she stayed for three months, then another 30 miles away. “I was so depressed,” she said. “I wanted to have my golden years, golden. __________________ Image Credit Coley Brown for The New York Times Even before the leak, there were complaints about an odor of gas and symptoms like headaches and fatigue, said Matt Pakucko, who relocated for months along with Kyoko Hibino and their five cats. A group he helped found, Save Porter Ranch, had arranged for an area health study, but it was pre-empted by the catastrophe. The couple, who wore their gas masks while outside during the height of the leak, are among those pressing for a study to be completed and for the depot to remain shut down. __________________ Image Credit Coley Brown for The New York Times The effects of the fumes on residents varied widely — even on opposite sides of the street or within households — a result, residents said, of different sensitivities and dispersal patterns from the strong winds that whip down and around the hilly, winding streets. Some at the edge of the canyon felt nothing, while others miles away complained of rashes. __________________ Image Credit Coley Brown for The New York Times While the compromised well was actively leaking, residents received automated calls warning that an oily mist was wafting out of the canyon and that they should stay inside and avoid eating fruit from their trees. Jane Fowler, who had been considering selling her home, said she went into her pool one day to find the water slippery with oil. “My house no longer feels lovely,” she said.

Greenhouse gas
Methane
Southern California Gas
Porter Ranch


A Mac-to-iPhone Handoff

Abstract: Q. I have OS X Yosemite and iOS 8, yet I can’t get my email in progress on the Mac to “hand off” to my iPhone. What should I do? A. Apple’s Continuity feature allows Macs and iOS devices to share tasks like phone calls, text messages and files from certain applications including Mail, Calendar, Safari and Maps. However, all participating hardware needs to be set up properly for it to work. For starters, make sure both the Mac and the Phone have Bluetooth turned on in the settings and are on the same Wi-Fi network. They should also be logged into the same iCloud account . On the iPhone, open the Settings icon, choose General and then Handoff & Suggested Apps to make sure Handoff is switched on. Likewise on the Mac, open the System Preferences icon in the Dock, click General and make sure the Handoff option is checked; if you do not see it, your Mac may not work with Handoff. Apple has further troubleshooting suggestions. A Windows 10 Checkup Q. My Windows 7 PC is eligible for Windows 10 and I have signed up for the upgrade later this month. But how do I know if my programs and hardware devices will still work with the new system? A. Microsoft says Windows 10 is “designed to be compatible with the vast majority of Windows 7 and Windows 8.1 devices,” but this is no guarantee that everything will work. However, you can use the same Get Windows 10 app you used to reserve your copy of the system to get a rough idea of potential compatibility issues. Click the Get Windows 10 icon in the taskbar’s notifications area, and when the app’s window opens, click the menu icon in the upper-left corner. From the list on the left, select Check Your PC to have the app scan your computer for known potential conflicts or compatibility issues with Windows 10. Microsoft updates its findings regularly , so you can check again if you have installed new applications or updates to your existing programs. You can also look up hardware and software products in the Windows Compatibility Center to see if the items work with the current Windows 10 Technical Preview. TIP OF THE WEEK: Want to pick which apps you see and use directly on your phone’s lock screen? In Android 5.1 and later, open the Settings icon and make your selections in the Sounds & Notification area. When a notification from certain types of apps (like mail or a message) pops up on your Android lock screen, you can interact with it . For example, swipe down within the notification box to expand it and see its contents without having to unlock the screen. Double-tap the notification to open its corresponding app, or swipe it off the screen to dismiss it. In Apple’s iOS 8, tap the Settings icon and select Notifications to set up your alerts. The Notifications feature allows you to respond to messages, calendar invitations and other nudges without unlocking the screen or leaving the program you are using. If you want to reply from the lock screen, put your finger on the alert and swipe to the left to get buttons for responding. When you are already using the device, swipe down on the notification banner at the top of the screen (or tap the alert box) to reply to the notification immediately. In Windows Phone 8.1, visit Settings and choose Notifications + Actions to get your alerts set up the way you prefer. While in Settings, you can also open the Lock Screen icon to select which apps can send notifications to your screen.

Mac OS
iPhone
Mobile Apps
Microsoft Windows
Microsoft
Android


Debate Grows as Europe Fears Return of Fiscal Crisis

Abstract: BERLIN — The European financial crisis has shown signs of reigniting in recent days, sharpening the debate between the champions of austerity and a growing chorus urging more expansionary policies to promote growth. Even the traditionally hard-line International Monetary Fund called on Tuesday for stronger European nations to ease the fiscal brakes by stretching out budget cuts over a longer period. But if that message was intended foremost for Germany , it seemed destined to fall on deaf ears: with two state elections coming up next month, Chancellor Angela Merkel is unlikely to shift her position, popular with voters, against additional help for the economies of struggling European partners. “We don’t see the need that perhaps other countries see to boost growth through additional increases in expenditures,” said a senior official in the German Finance Ministry, speaking on the condition of anonymity. “Instead, we see quite clearly, and will remind our partners about their responsibilities from Toronto,” the official said, referring to commitments made at the Group of 20 summit meeting in June 2010, “to cut their deficits in half and stabilize their debt levels.” At the same time, the official said that Germany hoped other countries would join in increasing the International Monetary Fund’s resources to help it combat the crisis. Politics as much as economics is adding to the sense of uncertainty in Europe. President Nicolas Sarkozy of France, who is trailing the Socialist candidate François Hollande in the polls before the first round of the presidential election on Sunday, has joined his opponent in promoting pro-growth policies. In Greece, nationalist anti-German fringe parties are gaining strength ahead of next month’s parliamentary election. The German state elections may not directly affect the federal government in Berlin, but they distract from Continent-wide concerns and crisis management while thrusting parochial issues to the forefront. The German government does not have a mandate to share further the burden of the common currency on less competitive economies like those of Greece, Portugal, Ireland and, increasingly, Spain and Italy. What seems certain, however, is that the crisis will continue to fester until new measures are taken to address its root causes. Borrowing costs for struggling southern European countries like Spain and Italy have begun to rise again as the effect of the European Central Bank’s injection of about $1.3 trillion in cheap loans into the banking system in December and March has faded much faster than expected. The three-year loans were meant to buy time for struggling governments and financial institutions, but the breathing room appears likely to be measured in months rather than in years. The recent shift has underscored that there have been no substantive fixes beyond promises by countries to reduce their budget deficits. “It looks like it’s coming back with a vengeance, largely because none of the underlying problems have been solved,” said Philip Whyte, a senior research fellow at the Center for European Reform. Mr. Whyte said that despite two years of crisis management, the fundamental structure of the euro zone remained intact, with lower-productivity economies in the south yoked to higher-productivity economies in the north, which prevents the laggards from competing through a currency devaluation. “The E.C.B. bought time, but what it ended up doing was simply tightening the link between national banks and their sovereigns,” Mr. Whyte said. “They made the system more vulnerable if markets started losing faith in debt sustainability in countries like Spain.” Yields on Spain’s 10-year bonds climbed above 6 percent on Monday, though they fell slightly on Tuesday after a successful auction of short-term debt by Spain’s treasury. Spain has emerged as the central test this year after missing its deficit targets as it slips back into recession. The government in Madrid has had a difficult time reining in spending by the 17 regional governments. A bailout of Spain would be much costlier than one for smaller economies like those of Greece, Portugal or Ireland, testing the resources of the euro zone countries. Many economists, particularly in the United States, have argued that Spain has to stimulate its economy with additional spending if it hopes to return to economic growth, an argument rejected by the German government. In an interview with the German newspaper Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung on Tuesday, Christine Lagarde, the managing director of the International Monetary Fund, said she was concerned about the health of Spanish banks and warned against slashing spending too quickly. It is not a view shared here in the German capital. In an interview with Reuters on Tuesday, Germany’s finance minister, Wolfgang Schäuble, praised Spain for making difficult economic changes. “You don’t win back trust overnight,” Mr. Schäuble said, adding that Spain was following the right path by cutting spending. German officials have also recommended changes in labor markets as a longer-term strategy to promote growth. As deficits balloon in countries across Europe, Germany continues to watch its deficits and financing costs fall. In another sign of Germany’s recent strength, the Bundesbank said on Tuesday that the country’s debt had fallen to 81.2 percent of gross domestic product in 2011, compared with 83 percent in 2010. That is still far above precrisis levels: in 2007, German debt was 65.2 percent of the size of the country’s economy. “The problem with the crisis in Germany is that we know we have a crisis, but we don’t feel it,” said Eckart D. Stratenschulte, a political scientist and the director of the nonprofit European Academy Berlin. Even as the European Central Bank loans improved market conditions, European leaders, including Ms. Merkel, were clear that they did not believe that the crisis was over. Many in Germany argue that a sense of crisis — and the elevated borrowing costs that come with it — is necessary to end out-of-control spending in the heavily indebted nations and to push through the economic liberalization they need to restore growth. But the higher borrowing costs and austerity measures cut into growth, critics say, lowering government revenues in a self-defeating downward spiral and leading to higher interest rates and further budget cuts. “It’s concerning that the markets are again running out of patience and driving yields higher,” said Thomas Mayer, chief economist at Deutsche Bank in Frankfurt. “That creates further head winds.” The I.M.F. on Tuesday raised its forecast for global growth slightly for the year. In Europe, the fund projected recovery in the second half of 2012, except for Spain, Italy, Greece and Portugal, where substantial improvement is not expected until next year. The crisis, Mr. Mayer said, is like “a manic depressive moving between euphoria and worries, and now we’re in the valley of worries again.”

Europe
European Sovereign Debt Crisis (2010- )
International Monetary Fund
Merkel Angela
Germany
Spain