Sri Lankan War Nears End, but Peace Remains Distant

Abstract: TRINCOMALEE, Sri Lanka — Just north of here, after a string of recent victories, the Sri Lankan military is closing in on separatist rebels in what it calls the climactic battles of the country’s long-running civil war. But in this heavily militarized port city, there are no signs of jubilation. The government similarly declared victory here in Eastern Province 18 months ago. Though there are clear hints of reconstruction, the fear and lack of development apparent in the area reveal just how far the government still has to go to win the peace, even if its forces ultimately prevail on the battlefield. “What the victor does after the battle will determine whether you win or not,” said Rohan Samarajiva, a former government regulator who is now a business consultant. “It’s appalling to see how little things have improved in the north and the east.” The government has yet to address the cultural and political grievances that fueled the insurgency among the ethnic Tamil minority, analysts say. But more than that, the northern and eastern regions that have been the scene of most of the conflict are several decades behind the southern areas that are home to the Sinhalese majority in terms of wealth and development. Without addressing the gap, analysts say, there is little hope of securing a peaceful and prosperous future for Sri Lanka’s 21 million people. “They lost their investor class, they lost their physical assets, their infrastructure,” said Sirimal Abeyratne, professor of economics at the University of Colombo. “People lost their skills.” The country’s economy has been remarkably resilient in recent years despite the conflict. But today any effort at reconstruction is likely to be hampered by the global economic crisis, even if the government is fully committed to it — and that remains an open question. Money today is literally in short supply in Sri Lanka. Tourist arrivals were down 32 percent in January. The garment industry is shedding jobs, and the prices of two major exports, tea and rubber, are plummeting. The central bank’s foreign reserves are down to an estimated $1.5 billion, enough to pay for about six weeks of imports. Security here in Trincomalee has improved, according to S. Thevarajah, an employee of the local government health service, but he does not plan to tell his son, who has lived in Britain for the last 17 years, to come back. “There are too many problems here,” Mr. Thevarajah said. “And he’s my only son.” The capital, Colombo, is buzzing about whether President Mahinda Rajapaksa will seek a bailout from the International Monetary Fund or the Indian government. Opinion about the country’s future seems sharply divided between north and south. In Colombo, which is in the south, many say they are both relieved and hopeful that the country can finally exploit its full potential as a tropical paradise for tourists and a strategic port between the Middle East and East Asia. For Lohitha Kalhara Peiris, a 35-year-old lifeguard from the majority Sinhalese ethnic group who works in a hotel in Dubai, the end of the conflict may mean he is finally able to start a family in Sri Lanka. “Seeing the war ending, I feel we have a future,” he said. “We can do something.” Farther north, however, ethnic Tamils are waiting for signs that the government will address what a Tamil politician named Douglas Devananda, who opposed the rebels, called their “genuine political grievances,” chiefly a desire for greater political autonomy. Even with a military victory apparently at hand, the prospect of new bloodshed looms. Before the war is over, intense fighting is expected inside the tiny wedge of territory still held by the rebels, where an estimated 200,000 civilians are trapped. And even if the separatists, who call themselves the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam , lose all their territory, they are likely to retain the capacity to unleash terrorist attacks. Major fighting in this corner of the east ended months ago, but residents here say they are still too scared to leave the city limits after dark, fearing retribution from rebels or pro-government factions. Ariyawathie Gallapathy, a member of the Eastern Provincial Council, which oversees development plans, shrugged off a question about recent violence, including the assassination of the chief priest of a Hindu temple in September and an attack near the beach resort of Nilaveli several weeks ago. “In the wartime, how many people died and how many bombs were there?” she asked rhetorically. “We are not as concerned when one or two people die.” The argument might not be enough to persuade foreign tourists to return, however. The beaches are nearly deserted. The small handful of foreigners in Trincomalee these days work for the Red Cross or other aid agencies. Analysts worry that Mr. Rajapaksa and his government are not committed to the type of political power-sharing that may be needed to ensure peace. “I don’t think the prospects of a follow-up political agreement for the Tamils is in the cards for some while, unfortunately,” said Alan Keenan, an analyst for the International Crisis Group, a nonprofit research organization based in Brussels. Without greater recognition of Tamil minority rights, Mr. Keenan said, the “odds are that there will be significant political resistance and some degree of armed resistance.” The victories on the battlefield have lifted the popularity of Mr. Rajapaksa, at least among the Sinhalese majority. His party won solid majorities in two provincial council elections on Sunday. The president’s fortunes have risen as those of Vellupillai Prabhakaran, the rebel leader, have fallen. Mr. Prabhakaran urged Tamils to boycott national elections three years ago, effectively giving Mr. Rajapaksa, whose campaign pledge was to end the war, the margin he needed to win. The Rajapaksa administration has managed to corral political support to quash the Tamil Tigers, crush dissent and dismiss any international criticism of human rights as pro-rebel propaganda. Independent journalists have been hounded out of the country, jailed on antiterrorism laws and killed. “We have now been able, within a short span of two and half years, to almost completely defeat the cowardly forces of terror that had wrapped our entire nation in fear through several decades,” Mr. Rajapaksa said in national day celebrations this month. Paikiasothy Saravanamuttu, who leads the nonpartisan Center for Policy Alternatives in Colombo, wondered whether the Rajapaksa government would simply impose “a victor’s peace.” He described the government’s challenge this way: “Now that we have nearly ended the war, are we going to end the conflict?”

Sri Lanka
Civil War and Guerrilla Warfare
Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam
Prabhakaran Vellupillai


Iten, a Kenyan Town Made for Marathoners

Abstract: ITEN, Kenya — As Wilson Kipsang crossed the London Marathon finish line on April 22, the roughly 200 people clustered in a ramshackle theater here responded with only lackluster applause. Kipsang had established a virtually unassailable lead, so his win was anticlimactic. For Kenyans in this remote town, widely acclaimed for the marathon talent it produces, a mere victory is insufficient. More than two minutes after Kipsang won , in 2 hours 4 minutes 44 seconds, his compatriot Martin Lel edged Tsegaye Kebede of Ethiopia in a full sprint to secure second place. That sent the crowd into jubilation. “People here feel very proud; the winners are all from this region,” said Mohamed Omar Kipyego, the 28-year-old owner of the theater, called Dreams. “It means a lot to people here, even for me. Those people who participate in the marathon events, I know them very well. They are my friends.” Resting on an escarpment overlooking the Great Rift Valley, Iten is increasingly gaining international recognition as the world’s foremost manufacturer of elite middle- and long-distance running talent. The figures speak for themselves. Male and female Kenyans who train here won marathons last month in London and in Boston. All six marathoners named last week to Kenya’s Olympic team train in Iten or the vicinity. The town of 4,000 people, roughly a quarter of whom are athletes, is also becoming a popular destination for foreigners seeking to hone their skills before races. “Iten is a very nice place to train; the altitude is high,” Kipsang said upon arrival home last week at Eldoret airport, 20 miles from Iten. The town sits 8,000 feet above sea level. “There are so many high-class athletes that train there and perform very well.” Iten does not have the premium facilities common throughout the United States and Europe. Athletes train on a gravel track a few miles outside of town that floods quickly when heavy rain sets in, preventing training. Despite the disadvantages, Kenyans are routinely recording faster marathon times than ever. Kenyans registered 29 of the 30 fastest official times in the marathon last year. Debate surrounds the reasons for Kenyans’ long-distance running success. Analysts cite physical attributes that are conducive for the sport. But running is also ingrained in the local culture. Regardless of such speculation, Iten’s premier athletes anticipate increasing hegemony. “Maybe I can say yes, other countries are strong,” Mary Keitany, this year’s female victor in London, said while noting improved Kenyan female performances because of increased gender equality in the country that enables women to pursue independent careers. “But if we continue to train the way we are, we will continue to dominate.” Kenya boasts a surplus of top-notch long-distance runners, largely unknown elsewhere. Most are from the impoverished countryside and do not receive the chance to run abroad. The successes of local athletes in the Rift Valley region and the financial rewards they reap, however, have galvanized the population. “We are fighting the poverty bwana,” Jackson Biwott, 24, an Iten native, said after a moderate 18-kilometer, hourlong run one recent morning. “We’re just here for money. Nothing else.” Biwott is one of hundreds of Iten residents who in the morning stream onto the labyrinth of dirt roads and paths that feed into town. They brave the rain and relatively cold morning temperatures of April in hopes of capitalizing on the rare chance of competing internationally. “They are motivated now,” Joseph Cheromei, a local coach, said with the heat on full throttle inside his vehicle parked on the side of a road a few miles outside of town. “It has become a job. It is work.” As the pack of runners approached the van, Cheromei pointed out the 2009 10-kilometer women’s world champion Linet Masai, running casually among the others. “They train hard,” Cheromei said. “You see yourself, how they wake up early and run.” Youths in the region are increasingly encouraged to pursue formal training in distance running. Watching their role models train around them daily, then return to large homes and properties, Kenya’s young athletes focus on running as a way to escape the hardship of agrarian life. “I like to run, but I want to be rich one day from running and build a big home,” said Isaac Koech, 13, the winner of a two-kilometer race, sponsored by the London Marathon, that was held in February for schoolchildren in Iten. Surrounded by his parents and grandparents on their property adjacent to bean and maize fields on the outskirts of Iten, Koech said he won the race despite not having shoes. Some of his family members sleep in thatched-roof mud huts on the property. “I want to be a bigger athlete than the ones there now,” he said. International athletes are flocking to Iten in quickly increasing numbers for the high altitude, clean air and cool temperature, and to analyze their performances. In recent months, squads from Germany, England, Greece and other countries have come here to train. Independent runners also come to town throughout the year. “For most people, they come to Kenya to see how the Kenyan athletes train,” said Dan Mulhare, 26, a 3- and 5-kilometer runner from Ireland who is living here temporarily to train for this year’s European championships. International athletes “come to Kenya to find that magic ingredient,” he said. Despite an injury withdrawal from the London Marathon by the world-record holder, Patrick Makau, a performance that cost him a spot on the Olympic team, Kenyans appear poised to accomplish great feats at the London Games. Kipsang said he was ready to bring another record back to his Rift Valley homeland. “For me, as an athlete, I have the potential to beat the world record,” he said. Because of the clout long-distance runners carry in Kenya, the athletes are ripe for potential exploitation. In an increasingly combative political and tribal environment as the country nears nationwide elections, some politicians in the Rift Valley region have sought to use runners for personal gains. William Ruto, an Eldoret North member of Parliament, called in recent weeks for all local runners to boycott the London Olympics in protest of the International Criminal Court’s decision to level charges for crimes against humanity against him and three other Kenyan political and civil leaders. The charges stem from the 2007-8 postelection violence that ravaged the country. Athletes have remained tight-lipped, but prominent members of the community readily dismiss the calls. “Runners are runners and politicians are politicians,” said the chairwoman of the town council and de facto mayor, Mary Cherono Ruto, who is no relation to William Ruto. “There’s no way a politician can stop a runner from running.”

Marathon Running
Kipsang Wilson
Kenya
Keitany Mary
Running
Iten (Kenya)


Calendar of Events

Abstract: Comedy TARRYTOWN Tarrytown Music Hall Battle of the Sexes. Featuring comedians from HBO’s Def Comedy Jam and BET’s Comic View. Oct. 14 at 8 p.m. $23 to $35. Tarrytown Music Hall, 13 Main Street. (877) 840-0457; www.tarrytownmusichall.org Film PLEASANTVILLE Jacob Burns Film Center Baseball at the Burns: “Rookie of the Year,” directed by Daniel Stern. Through Oct. 21. $6 to $10. “Lust, Caution,” directed by Ang Lee, in Mandarin with subtitles. Through Oct. 18. $6 to $10. “Kokoyaku: High School Baseball,” documentary. Directed by Kenneth Eng. In Japanese with subtitles. Thursday at 7:15 p.m. $6.50 to $13. “Lake of Fire.” Documentary about America’s divide over abortion, directed by Tony Kaye. Oct. 19 through Oct. 25. $6 to $10. Jacob Burns Film Center, 364 Manville Road. (914) 747-5555; www.burnsfilmcenter.org . For Children CHAPPAQUA Chappaqua Library Ogden Nash’s “Tales of Custard the Dragon,” musical. All ages. Oct. 21 at 1 p.m. $7. Chappaqua Library, 195 South Greeley Avenue. (914) 238-4779; www.chappaqualibrary.org . RYE Playland Park Scared by the Sound: Haunted Attraction. Ages 8 and up. Through Oct. 31. $5 to $14. Playland Park, (914) 813-7010; www.ryeplayland.org . SUFFERN Cultural Arts Theater “Ferdinand the Bull,” performed by the Hudson Vagabond Puppets. Ages 6 and up. Oct. 14 at 2:30 p.m. $10 and $12. Cultural Arts Theater, 145 College Road. (845) 732-8186. Museums and Galleries BRONX New York Botanical Garden Kiku: The Art of the Japanese Chrysanthemum. Oct. 20 through Nov. 18. $5 to $20. New York Botanical Garden, Bronx River Parkway and Fordham Road. (718) 817-8616; www.nybg.org . BRONX Wave Hill Group show inspired by Edgar Allen Poe and Mark Twain. Through Dec. 16. Margie Neuhaus, art inspired by plant biology. Through Oct. 14. “ForestBot,” exhibition of sound installations by Jeff Federsen. Through Oct. 14. Joianne Bittle Knight, displaying her fourth painting in a series on the Royal Family. Oct. 19 through Dec. 2. Reception: Oct. 21. Admission for all: $2 to $4; members and under 6, free; free for everyone on Tuesdays; free for everyone Saturdays, 9 a.m. to noon. Hours: Tuesdays through Sundays, 10 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. Wave Hill, 675 West 252nd Street. (718) 549-3200; www.wavehill.org . BRONXVILLE OSilas Gallery Body & Soul: “From Exploration to Expression,” paintings, sculptures, and photography. Through Oct. 27. Hours: Mondays through Thursdays, 11:30 a.m. to 7 p.m.; Fridays and Saturdays, noon to 5 p.m.; Sundays, 2 p.m. to 5 p.m. OSilas Gallery, 171 White Plains Road. (914) 337-9300.no website DOBBS FERRY Upstream Gallery Recent work from artists Paul Greco and Luis Perelman. Through Nov. 4. Hours: Thursdays through Sundays, 12:30 to 5:30 p.m. Upstream Gallery, 26 Main Street. (914) 674-8548; www.upstreamgallery.com . GREENBURGH Greenburgh Town Hall “Art From the Heart,” sketches by Merle Sternberg. Through Oct. 30. Greenburgh Town Hall, 177 Hillside Avenue. (914) 993-1649; www.greenburghny.com . HARRISON Harrison Public Library “Things Natural and UnNatural” paintings by Elaine Gaines. Through Nov. 2. Hours: Mondays and Wednesdays, 9:30 a.m. to 9 p.m.; Tuesdays, Thursdays and Fridays, to 5:30 p.m.; Saturdays, to 12:30 p.m. Harrison Public Library, Bruce Avenue. (914) 835-0324. HUDSON Hudson Opera House “Artists Look at HOH.” Abstract photography exhibition of historic spaces awaiting restoration at the Hudson Opera House. Various artists. Through Oct. 27. Hours: Mondays through Saturdays, noon to 5 p.m. Hudson Opera House, 327 Warren Street. (518) 822-1438; www.hudsonoperahouse.org . KATONAH Candace Dwan Gallery Ladakh: “The Spiritual Journey,” photographs by Prabir Purkayastha. Through Oct. 31. Hours: Tuesdays through Saturdays, 10 a.m. to 6 p.m.; Sundays, 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. Candace Dwan Gallery, 27 Katonah Avenue. (914) 232-3966; www.candacedwan.com . KATONAH Katonah Museum of Art “Horizons,” sculpture installation by Steinunn Thorarinsdottir. Through Mar. 16. “Children Should Be Seen: The Image of the Child in American Picture Book Art,” illustrations. Through Oct. 21. “Star Illustrators: Ten Years on Parade,” works by picture-book illustrators. Through Oct. 21. “On the South Lawn: Acrobats,” works by Keith Haring. Through Nov. 15. Admission for all: $3 and $5. Hours: Tuesdays through Saturdays, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.; Sundays, noon to 5 p.m. Katonah Museum of Art, Route 22 at Jay Street. (914) 232-9555; www.katonah - museum.org . NEW PALTZ Unframed Artists Gallery “Sacred Spaces.” Exhibition includes video, painting, photography, ceramics, mobiles, fiber art and sculpture. Through Nov. 24. Hours: Saturdays and Sundays, from 1 p.m. to 5 p.m., or by appointment. Unframed Artists Gallery, 173 Huguenot Street. (845) 255-5482. NEW ROCHELLE The Brother Kenneth Chapman Gallery, Iona College Arts Center “Face to Face: Two Approaches,” various artists. Monday through Dec. 6. The Brother Kenneth Chapman Gallery, Iona College Arts Center , Iona College. (914) 637-7796; www.iona.edu . PEEKSKILL Gallery 25N Paintings and sculptures by Dyan Rosenberg. Through Nov. 3. Hours: Thursdays through Saturdays, 1 to 5 p.m., or by appointment. Gallery 25N, 25 North Division Street. (914) 293-0811; www.gallery25N.com . PEEKSKILL Hudson Valley Center for Contemporary Art “Size Matters: XS,” small-scale paintings. Through Nov. 10.$5, adults; $1, children; members. Hours: Saturdays, noon to 6 p.m., and by appointment. Hudson Valley Center for Contemporary Art, 1701 Main Street. (914) 788-0100; www.hvcca.com . PELHAM Pelham Art Center Twist & Shout: “A Contemporary Perspective of the Needle Arts,” fiber works. Through Nov. 2. Hours: Tuesdays through Fridays, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.; Saturdays, 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Pelham Art Center, 155 Fifth Avenue. (914) 738-2525; www.pel-hamartcenter.org . PURCHASE Brownson Gallery Anecdotes: Collage and Digital Montage, works by Leonard Stokes. Through Oct. 24. Hours: Mondays through Fridays, 9:30 a.m. to 5 p.m. and by appointment. Brownson Gallery, 2900 Purchase Street. (914) 323-5331. PURCHASE Maass Gallery David Schwartz Project 7: Highlighting the work of Tobias Putrih from the Neuberger exhibition. Through Dec. 1. Hours: Mondays through Fridays, 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Maass Gallery, (914) 251-6750; www.purchase.edu . WEST NYACK Rockland Center for the Arts “Upon Further Review: Looking at Sports in Contemporary Art.” Oct. 14 through Nov. 28. The TransHudson Project: “State of the Art.” Monday through Dec. 3. Hours: Mondays through Fridays, 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Rockland Center for the Arts, 27 South Greenbush Road. (845) 358-0877; www.rocklandartcenter.org . WHITE PLAINS Arts Exchange Tzedakah: A Path to Righteousness five collections of charity boxes. Through Oct. 27. Arts Exchange, 31 Mamaroneck Avenue. (914) 428-4220, extension 223; www.westarts.com . WOODBOURNE The Old Stone House “Images: A Lifetime of Photography,” by Robert Garret and Ursula Waldmeyer-Garrett. Through Oct. 28. The Old Stone House, 282 Hasbrouck Road. (845) 436-7720. Music and Dance IRVINGTON Irvington Town Hall DiMauro Dance presents, “Community.” Friday at 8 p.m. $15 and $17. Irvington Town Hall, 85 Main Street. (914) 591-6602; www.irvingtontheater.com . POUGHKEEPSIE Bardavon 1869 Opera House Martha Graham Dance Company. Friday at 8 p.m. $33.50 to $38.50. Bardavon Opera House, 35 Market Street. (845) 473-2072; www.bardavon.org . BEACON Howland Cultural Center Chamber Music Circle: Soovin Kim, violin and Jeremy Denk, piano, perform the three Brahms violin sonatas. Oct. 14 at 4 p.m. $10 and $30. Howland Cultural Center, 477 Main Street. (845) 831-4988; www.howlandculturalcenter.org . CHAPPAQUA Chappaqua Library Scarborough Singers: Choral renditions starting with a cappella madrigals and ending with 1950s rock and roll. Conducted by Catherine Campbell Nesbit. Oct. 14 at 3 p.m. Free. Chappaqua Library, 195 South Greeley Avenue. (914) 238-4779; www.chappaqualibrary.org. KATONAH Caramoor Center for Music and the Arts Great Artists in the Music Room: Pieces from Beethoven, Schumann and Shostakovich performed by Vladimir Feltsman, piano; Paul Neubauer, viola; William Sharp, baritone. Oct. 20 at 8 p.m. $40. Caramoor Center for Music and the Arts, 149 Girdle Ridge Road. (914) 232-1252; www.caramoor.com . PEEKSKILL Paramount Center for the Arts Tuck and Patti, jazz. Friday at 8 p.m. $30 to $35. Susan Werner, folk. Oct. 21 at 3 p.m. $25. Paramount Center for the Arts, 1008 Brown Street. (914) 739-2333; www.paramountcenter.org . PURCHASE PepsiCo Theater at Purchase College KT Sullivan, a tribute to the ladies of the silver screen. Oct. 14 at 3 p.m. $39. PepsiCo Theater at Purchase College, 735 Anderson Hill Road. (914) 251-6166; www.purchase.edu. WHITE PLAINS Grace Church Downtown Music at Grace: The Downtown Sinfonietta with Timothy Lewis. Oct. 21 at 4 p.m. $20 and $25. Grace Church, Mamaroneck Avenue. (914) 949-0384. Outdoors CROSS RIVER Ward Pound Ridge Reservation “Forest of Possibilities,” works sculptured or constructed in wood. Through Oct. 31. Free; parking, $4 to $8. Hours: daily, 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. Ward Pound Ridge Reservation, Routes 35 and 121 South. (914) 864-7317. CROTON-ON-HUDSON Van Cortlandt Manor The Great Jack-O’-Lantern Blaze. Through Oct. 31. Van Cortlandt Manor, 525 South Riverside Avenue. (914) 631-8200; www.hudsonvalley.org/vancortlandt . MOUNT VERNON St. Paul’s Church National Historic Site Tour of Revolutionary War battlefield at Pell’s Point. Reservations required. Tuesday at 10 a.m. Free. St. Paul’s Church National Historic Site, 897 South Columbus Avenue. (914) 667-4116; www.nps.gov/sapa . Spoken Word PURCHASE Art and Design Building, Purchase College The abstract artist Wendy White. Wednesday at 6:30 p.m. Free. Art and Design Building, Purchase College, (914) 251-6750; www.pur - chase.edu . SLEEPY HOLLOW Hudson Valley Writers’ Center Open mike night for poets, fiction writers and essayists. The third Friday of each month through Dec. 21. $3. Hudson Valley Writers’ Center, 300 Riverside Drive. (914) 332-5953; writers- center.org . Theater CROTON FALLS Schoolhouse Theater “Locked and Loaded,” dramatic comedy by Todd Susman. Through Oct. 14. $25 to $29. Schoolhouse Theater, 3 Owens Road. (914) 277-8477. STONY POINT Penguin Repertory Company “2 Pianos, 4 Hands,” musical by Richard Greenblatt & Ted Dykstra. Oct. 19 through Nov. 11. $15 and $30. Penguin Repertory Company, 7 Crickettown Road. (845) 786-2873; www.penguinrep.org . VALHALLA Westchester Community College, Academic Arts Theater Shakespeare Unplugged: “The Complete Works of Shakespeare (Abridged).” Oct. 21 at 3 p.m. $12 to $20. Westchester Community College, Academic Arts Theater, 75 Grasslands Road. (914) 606- 6700; www.sunywcc.edu .

Westchester County (NY)
Dutchess County (NY)


N.F.L. Tempts Fate With Outdoor Super Bowl in Northeast

Abstract: Of course, the N.F.L. was right in postponing the Eagles-Vikings game from Sunday until Tuesday evening because of the blizzard on the East Coast. That was a no-brainer given the danger to fans and the strain on public services the game would have created. But the prudent decision by the N.F.L. was merely a preseason exhibition compared with the moment of truth the league could face in February 2014 if another big storm comes rolling in, dumping a large amount of snow in northeastern New Jersey. Putting a Super Bowl outdoors in the Northeast was always a bad idea — just as foolish as putting a college bowl game in the Bronx on Dec. 30. The impending Pinstripe Bowl , matching Syracuse and Kansas State in Yankee Stadium on Thursday night, had to call off a clinic for children and postpone an outdoor rally in Times Square from Monday to Tuesday. Imagine the nightmare of jamming cars into the normal tangle around Yankee Stadium, now gorged with the snow that swerved up the East Coast on Sunday. With Philadelphia and the Bronx as examples, the 2014 Super Bowl now becomes a nightmare waiting to happen. The odds were always great that the N.F.L. would kick off a blizzard by the sheer arrogance of tempting Mother Nature. The N.F.L. keeps expanding into forbidding climatic territory. The league recently approved a game outdoors in Minnesota in a college stadium that had been shut down for the season after the roof of the Vikings’ domed stadium in Minneapolis was damaged by a heavy snowfall. The N.F.L. is making noise about expanding to an 18-game regular season from a 16-game one to make more money to pay those demanding players. The threat of two extra games — never mind the injuries they may produce — could merely be posturing for negotiations when the labor contract runs out after this season. But the question remains: Does the N.F.L. play the two extra games in late August, in high humidity and high temperatures, or in January, in potentially stormy weather like the kind that forced the postponement of the game in Philadelphia? Some Eagles fans — including the outgoing Pennsylvania governor, Ed Rendell — are sneering because the N.F.L. postponed the game. It is always instructive to observe football fans beating their chests and proclaiming their hardiness — while volunteering traffic cops and vendors and ushers and other fans to get to a stadium under dangerous conditions. Things really were better when the N.F.L. held its championship game in mid-December and got everybody home safely before the holidays and the arrival of actual winter. With all this money-lust expansion into brutal weather, there is one event the N.F.L. can control with a little common sense. The league cannot choose its top-seeded teams, so the Patriots and the Falcons have earned the avenue to two home games in January, with all the home-field advantages that may accrue. In the past, cold-weather teams like the Packers, the Bears and the Giants, and the Vikings when they thrived outdoors, staged outdoor championship games. But the Super Bowl is different. The N.F.L. really should be able to control its spectacle event, now shown round the world. The Super Bowl is the league’s showcase, and deservedly so, whether or not the game turns out to be exciting. The commercials and the entertainment (the commercials are usually better than the acts) and the enthusiasm of the fans are all part of the show. There was no better example of how foul weather could depress the ambience than soccer’s World Cup in South Africa, held in June and July, which is fall and winter in the Southern Hemisphere. A few night games were miserable, but the real impact was on the layers of clothing worn by Brazilian fans, who normally dress as if they were at the beach at Ipanema. And some skimpily clad female fans have a time-honored way of celebrating a Brazil goal. Hard to do that when the temperature is freezing. The Super Bowl owes it to fans in wretched corners of the Northern Hemisphere to put on a show — not steamy breath emitting from slits in stocking caps. The league also owes it to fans, who have paid thousands of dollars to get to the game, to be able to enjoy the parties and sight-seeing and golf outings that are part of Super Bowl week. The committee to bring the Super Bowl to New Meadowlands Stadium, a bid backed by the Giants and the Jets, sold a bill of goods to league owners that temperatures can reach the 40s in New Jersey in early February. At the moment, that swath of New Jersey is digging out from as much as two feet of snow. The N.F.L. has previously dabbled in this defiance of nature and common sense. In 1982 it held the Super Bowl in snow-covered Pontiac, Mich., in a dome. But when Vice President George H. W. Bush chose to arrive close to game time, security measures forced bus drivers to disgorge thousands of fans who had to scramble through icy fields to get to the dome. Just one entitled politician can snarl up the works. The N.F.L. won its warm-up contest by postponing the Eagles-Vikings game. But the league has set in motion the reward for arrogance: the impending blizzard of February 2014.

Super Bowl
New Meadowlands Stadium
Weather


Man's Shoes Set Off Alarm at La Guardia

Abstract: Security officials evacuated a terminal at La Guardia Airport for about two hours yesterday afternoon after a traveler walked away from a checkpoint wearing shoes that had set off an alarm. Police officers and dogs searched in vain through the terminal and several planes for the traveler, a man who was not identified, said Ann Davis, a spokeswoman for the federal Transportation Security Administration. The man, who she said appeared to be in his 50's, apparently thought his screening was complete when he left the checkpoint about 2:50 p.m., she said. Ms. Davis said that during a thorough screening, his shoes initially tested positive for traces of explosives. "We don't suspect any ill intent," she said. The screeners at La Guardia believed the alarm was false and may have been triggered by a benign substance, like fertilizer. The terminal, which houses Delta Air Lines' domestic operations at La Guardia, was cleared and all of its occupants were screened again before flights resumed about 5 p.m., Ms. Davis said. During the search, eight outbound flights were held on the ground and incoming planes were unloaded at another terminal.

TRANSPORTATION SECURITY ADMINISTRATION
AIRLINES AND AIRPLANES
AIRPORTS
SECURITY AND WARNING SYSTEMS
LAGUARDIA AIRPORT (NYC)


Ego Unleashed, or Everyman of the Market?

Abstract: THE Dow Jones industrial average continues to crab sideways, but the bull market in James J. Cramer has no end in sight. Mr. Cramer, the money manager-turned-media star, writes a flurry of Web columns on TheStreet.com, is the host of a daily radio show and, of course, is the star of "Mad Money," a daily maypole for the market-obsessed, on CNBC. Last Wednesday night, he took his maniacal act on the road to Harvard Law School -- his alma mater as he frequently points out -- and received a rock-star reception. And he may get another Trump-size portion of adulation: there is serious talk about a reality show next year. For a non-acolyte, the cult is tough to figure out. "Mad Money" is essentially televised talk radio, replete with a screaming, self-involved host; cheesy sound effects; and a call-in format that is not exactly visually engaging. Still, it is the top-rated program on CNBC with an average of 155,000 viewers for his 6 p.m. show in January, more than three times what the cable channel generally pulls in. At a time when people will not pick up finance magazines with a set of tongs and too much of business is a dark, indictment-filled narrative, Mr. Cramer is mining a rich vein of the American psyche, a need to know that there are ways to get ahead. As the News Corporation contemplates starting its own financial channel this year, Time Warner pushes a megasite called CNN/Money and Condé Nast develops a business magazine to come out in 2007, Mr. Cramer's appeal is worth considering. These businesses, along with the rest of the business press, seem to be waiting for the return of the bull market. Does Mr. Cramer's success mean that there are better days to come? THE outraged gale from the host of CNBC's "Mad Money" blew through the receiver after I suggested as much about someone who joyously squeezes toy bulls and bites the heads off of bears. "I completely disagree with that suggestion," he thundered. "The U.S. market is one of the least attractive to investors there is right now. I don't even like the U.S. market. To be compared to the mindless bulls of the 1990's is painful for me." Mr. Cramer points out that he has been spending a lot of time schooling his regular-guy audience in opportunities in exotic and foreign markets as a way of beating the house. Mr. Cramer can be and has been spectacularly wrong. As the keynote speaker at the Internet and Electronic Conference in February 2000, just before the crash, he ticked off a string of beloved stocks that would soon be losers, including a number of digital companies that went away or were acquired at fire sale prices like Inktomi, Exodus and Digital Island. "Most of these companies don't have earnings per share," he said, "so we won't have to be constrained by that methodology for quarters to come." We all know how that kind of reasoning turned out. But he left the field at precisely the right moment -- retiring after 14 years of running Cramer, Berkowitz & Company -- so he lived to fight another day. His current exuberance, irrational or not, is tough to miss. Mr. Cramer is the broadcast id of the trader, a funhouse mix of fear, anxiety, bravado and certainty. There is abundant, throbbing need in the presentation, a barnyard rooster need to be noticed, while the bonhomie of the calls -- "booyah!" in the aphoristic nomenclature of the show -- affirms a we're-all-in-this-togetherness. Mr. Cramer has often been accused of providing bullets for people who do not know which end of the gun they are looking through. But by his estimation, he is a force for democratization of wealth. After throwing chairs, hitting the keyboard like a mad Beethoven and giving shout-outs to all the acolytes who call in, Mr. Cramer comes straight off the dome during the so-called Lightning Round, burping up recommendations and analysis about whatever stock symbols the caller happens to toss out. LifeCell, which markets artificial skin? Buy! Italian oil company versus Austrian oil company? Italian. Gold or silver? Bimetallism, by George! It is quite a spectacle to behold, but does it have value? Michael McGown, who retired last year after a career that he said included securities analyst and broker jobs at Oppenheimer, Merrill Lynch and Lehman Brothers, tracks Mr. Cramer's myriad recommendations on "Mad Money." A Web site of his, YourMoneyWatch.com, concludes that Mr. Cramer's portfolio is up 6.39 percent since July 28, a period in which the Dow is up only 0.82 percent. Even discounting for the so-called Cramer effect, the bump in stock performance that happens after he gives a stock a positive recommendation on the program, he has done pretty well by Mr. McGown's measurements. Attorney General Eliot Spitzer, no fan of market hype, seems to have little problem with Mr. Cramer, with whom he went to law school. "He believes what he says, and that's what is important," Mr. Spitzer said. "People have gotten into trouble because they were intentionally misstating what they knew." John C. Bogle, the author and founder of Vanguard, likes Mr. Cramer personally but finds little value in his activist approach to investing -- Mr. Cramer blurbed his last book even though their investing philosophies couldn't be more different. "What you are seeing when you watch that show is both a parlor game and real brilliance," Mr. Bogle said. "But I think that when the final score is written, his return is very average, and below average when you factor in the costs of making the trades. We know that when you own the stock market and never trade, you will capture the market's return. The more we trade, the greater the costs and the greater the loss. These are relentless truths that cannot be avoided." That may be true of the broad market, but Mr. Cramer, the media whirlwind, is trading on something else. It is not greed so much as a post-bust fear that wears the uniform of optimism. Mr. Cramer is a wonk -- what he is selling is less "Seven Easy Steps to Wealth" than the notion that the average Joe can think and trade his way past the market. That doesn't generally happen, but a guy can dream, right? The show is called "Mad Money" for a reason, tapping into a resentment that holds that it is always the other guy who is making out. Everyone knows that the boom was a fraud but gosh, wouldn't it be swell if there were another one? And wouldn't it be awful to miss out this time? "I hated myself at the end of my professional career for making rich people richer, which is a terrible epitaph," Mr. Cramer said. "I can use the same skill set to help more people by telling them how the market really works." Class warfare makes for good television, enrolling the audience in the belief that the only thing that separates them from the swells is a couple of good tips and a few zeroes after their net worth. "I just want to make you some money!" he shouted at the start of his program on Friday, a down day on Wall Street. Mr. Cramer is a very rich man who does not need to work, but he has a common man's visceral need to go after the big guys. In that sense, he is no less a cult figure than Bill O'Reilly or Al Franken. It is us against them, and the nice thing about markets is that they provide an easy way to keep score.

THESTREET.COM INC
CRAMER JAMES J
FINANCES


Clippers Top Grizzlies

Abstract: The reserves Darren Collison and Jamal Crawford each scored 15 points, and the Los Angeles Clippers used a strong second half to beat the host Memphis Grizzlies, 101-81.


Learning to Savor a Full Life, Love Life Included

Abstract: Mary Kate Graham's boyfriend, Gary Ruvolo, is fond of recounting every detail of their first date 13 years ago and each candlelight anniversary dinner since. "God help me," Ms. Graham said, rolling her eyes with affectionate indulgence. Ms. Graham and Mr. Ruvolo, both 32, accept each other's foibles with tenderness. The one time their romance was in trouble — a girl "was spending too much time at Gary's house, and I didn't like it," Ms. Graham said — they went to couples' counseling and worked it out. Their next hurdle will be moving from their family homes, both in Brooklyn, to a group residence. There, for the first time, Ms. Graham, who is mentally retarded, and Mr. Ruvolo, who has Down syndrome, will be permitted to spend time together in private. The pair were coached in dating, romance and physical intimacy by a social service agency at the cutting edge of a new movement to promote healthy sexuality for the seven million Americans with mental retardation and related disabilities. In what experts say is the latest frontier in disability rights, a small but growing number of psychologists, educators and researchers are promoting social opportunities and teaching the skills to enjoy them. A generation ago, young adults like Ms. Graham and Mr. Ruvolo were generally confined to institutions, with no expectation of a normal life. All that changed in 1975, when a court order closed the notorious Willowbrook State School on Staten Island and moved its residents, and others like them across the country, into community settings to live as fully as their limitations allowed. That could include attending neighborhood schools and holding salaried jobs. Now many men and women in their 20's and 30's, encouraged from childhood to be independent, expect the same when it comes to expressing their romantic and sexual needs. The prospect of their children being sexually active often alarms protective parents mindful of the high rates of molesting among the mentally retarded. And agencies, whose programs are at least partly paid for by the government, have been more likely to emphasize the prevention of abuse, disease and pregnancy than to prepare clients for intimacy. "Plenty of people still believe that the answer to this is abstinence," said Philip H. Levy, president of the Young Adult Institute, a 50-year-old agency for the developmentally disabled that has been a trailblazer in offering sexuality workshops and social activities like the ones Ms. Graham and Mr. Ruvolo attend. "But if you hide from this issue, it will come back to haunt you," added Mr. Levy, whose agency serves more than 20,000 people of all ages in the metropolitan area. "Plus, once you train people to think for themselves and give them a sense of promise, to not follow through is really cruel." Virtually all agencies endorse the right of a consenting adult to have a sex life, but formal classes in dating and sexuality, like the institute offers, are rare. "Informed choice is a major theme in the field, but actual programs to support a sexual life aren't out there," said Charlie Lakin, director of research at the Institute on Community Integration at the University of Minnesota, who says that other agencies are buying the Young Adult Institute's staff training materials and inviting their professionals to speak. Recently, for instance, Perry Samowitz, the agency's director of education, lectured in North Carolina. From the back of a hall, a disabled young man asked how old he had to be to have sex. "How old are you?" Mr. Samowitz inquired. The answer was 35. "Sounds old enough to me," Mr. Samowitz said, expecting an argument from the young man's father, a Baptist minister. The father surprised him. "I'm here to learn," he said. Indeed, Maureen Graham's first reaction was fear when her daughter Mary Kate's social workers asked permission to teach her about dating and sex. "My eyes got wide when they said this could happen," Mrs. Graham said. But more quickly than most she saw the logic: "I always wanted Mary Kate to have as close to a normal life as possible. So how could I not want this for her, too?" "This" includes the ring Ms. Graham wears, two hearts intertwined, a gift from Mr. Ruvolo. The couple talk on the telephone several times a day; and go bowling, to the movies or to a restaurant most weekends, usually with their mothers in tow. "They are so good to each other, so supportive," Mrs. Graham said. "I don't know if they've already had sex, but they've been pretty intimate with each other, and that's O.K." Her blessing aside, Mr. Ruvolo and Ms. Graham say they intend wait until marriage. "Before that, it'd be no good," Mr. Ruvolo said. Marriage rarely comes up in the institute's workshops. Many are led by Bobra Fyne, a sex educator who welcomed a group of 30 first-timers one recent evening, ranging in age from 20-something to past 60. Ms. Fyne urged them to pose one sex question they had always wanted to ask. Questions included "How can you get a girl to wear sexy lingerie?" and "How do you stop somebody from being in such a hurry?" The second drew a quick reply. "The short answer is, 'You go first,' " Ms. Fyne said, to waves of laughter. The six-month curriculum includes birth control and prevention of sexually transmitted diseases and abuse. But it also includes masturbation and what the syllabus calls "pleasuring your partner," topics avoided by even the few other agencies experimenting with basic social skills training, often because of parental objections. The parents' fears are understandable, given an array of studies that found 50 percent to 85 percent of women with mental retardation were sexually assaulted before the age of 18, and 25 percent to 50 percent of men. Of those assaulted, 49 percent had been abused 10 times or more. Some experts think safe opportunities for sexual relations can prevent abuse, although there is no research on the subject. Dr. Levy described an incident involving a client at a group home before the institute's current policies evolved. The 25-year-old resident was arrested in a public bathroom having group sex with several men he did not know. When Dr. Levy went to bail him out of jail, the young man was in tears. "Where am I supposed to go to get my needs met?" he asked. Far safer, Dr. Levy said, is allowing such needs to be met in the group home, after a consent evaluation by a psychologist. That evaluation tests knowledge of birth control and disease prevention, the need to limit sexual activity to private locations, the difference between legal and illegal sexual acts and how to avoid exploitive situations. At the institute, despite freewheeling talk, the goal of staff members and clients alike seems to be fostering loving and lasting relationships. "We talk about loneliness," Mr. Samowitz said. "We use soft, easy words like 'sweetheart.' " Indeed, Ms. Fyne and others have learned that social isolation is a more pressing issue than sexuality. At an early class, Ms. Fyne asked students whether it was "O.K. to have one partner in the afternoon and another in the evening?" The response was a wake-up call. "I don't know how to get a date, Bobra," one student called out. "So the rest of this is just garbage." Now the dating lessons often come in a casual aside from a social worker during a recreational activity. That is how Ms. Graham and Mr. Ruvolo wound up in couples therapy, with a gentle nudge from Karuna Heisler, who supervises weekly dances as well as a theater group. The theater group is where Nicole Figueroa, 26, and Jeffrey Resnick, 25, met. An on-again-off-again couple, they are now inseparable, under the watchful eye of Ms. Heisler. Again, their issue has been jealousy, since Mr. Resnick is very sociable and Ms. Figueroa has difficulty accepting his friendships with other women in their circle. "We're all trying to teach her that even if Jeffrey talks to someone else, he still loves her," said Marion Resnick, his mother, who was tickled to find the pair waltzing in her son's bedroom one day. Ms. Figueroa and Mr. Resnick are more physical with each other than Ms. Graham and Mr. Ruvolo. Ms. Heisler said that was more a matter of personal style than a predictor of sexual activity. Mrs. Resnick said, "We don't have the nerve to ask" what they are doing. The couple themselves get giggly when asked about their sex lives. "If she wants to sleep with me when we move to the group home, I'm O.K. with that," Mr. Resnick said. "And if not, I'm O.K. with that, too, because what I feel is happy."

Mental Retardation
Sex
Mental Health and Disorders


Keds Starts Campaign to Introduce Its Brand to a New Generation

Abstract: DRIVERS who see a 32-foot shoebox rolling down the highway over the next few weeks should not be alarmed. The large white box is part of a new national marketing campaign for the sneaker company Keds. The campaign, called “How Do You Do?,” is intended to reach millennials, who are generally in their 20s, by taking the shoebox on wheels on a cross-country tour of college campuses. The campaign is also part of an effort to reposition the Keds brand, which has existed since 1916, said Kristin Kohler Burrows, president of Keds Group, which is part of Collective Brands. “As people go through identity crises, so do the brands,” Ms. Kohler said, adding that one of the goals of the campaign was to “awaken people to the fact that it is an iconic brand.” Since 2009, the company has been laying the foundation for that awakening by revamping the Keds Web site and participating in partnerships with designers and outlets like Alice and Olivia, Jeffrey New York and Richard Chai. Keds has also joined with the Whitney Museum of American Art on the Keds Whitney Collection, where artists like Jenny Holzer, Laura Owens and Sarah Crowner created limited-edition designs of the canvas sneakers, which were sold in Bloomingdale’s in New York City. The company also created the online Keds Collective, where artists and designers could create their own versions of Keds to be sold on the company Web site. Users can also design their own Keds sneakers by customizing each of the 15 parts of the shoe, including details like the tongue binding, eyelets and laces. A print campaign that began in 2010 was the next step in reintroducing the brand to the millennial demographic, which Ms. Kohler defined as optimistic, collaborative, open and diverse. The ads featured groups of people doing things like building a sustainable garden on a rooftop. “What’s critical to the consumer today is giving back to the community,” Ms. Kohler said. The buildup of artist collaboration and partnerships culminates in the 2011 “How Do You Do?” campaign, which will encourage the target audience to create and collaborate, and emphasizes the idea of Keds sneakers being a canvas used to express that creativity, Ms. Kohler said. Beginning in March, the mobile shoebox will stop at college campuses in nine cities across the nation, including the University of Texas at Austin during the South by Southwest music festival and the Fashion Institute of Technology and Pace University in New York. The schools are representative of colleges with strong arts or fashion-based programs, Ms. Kohler said. Inside the shoebox, visitors will find two touch-screen maps of the tour where they can watch videos about the local artists, retail outlets and charity organizations that Keds is working with in each city. On another wall, users can see a gallery of Keds shoes inspired by each city on the tour schedule. “We really feel that what’s important to this consumer is to engage with a brand and experience firsthand a brand,” said Ms. Kohler. Outside the shoebox, visitors will see activities that expand on the “How Do You Do?” campaign slogan. For a section called “How Do You Do Keds?” students will be able to customize their own sneakers using a touch-screen kiosk, and can purchase the sneakers from the shoebox. The kiosks will also promote a shoe-design competition called “How Do You Do Your City?” which will run through the month of March. The winner of the competition will get a $1,000 prize and a $5,000 donation to an arts-based charity. Keds is also sponsoring a segment called “How Do You Do Charity?,” where users will be asked to post messages on Twitter, using the symbol #HDYD, describing what inspires them about their city. The company will donate $1 per post to a local arts-based charity in each city, up to a predetermined maximum. For each city in the tour, Keds has teamed up with local artists who will use the sneakers as a canvas. The slogans for each of the city stops will reflect the city name, as in “How Do You Do Austin?” and “How Do You Do New York?” For a concurrent promotion — “How Do You Do Art?” — local artists will create a mural on an eight-foot canvas inspired by the postings on Twitter using the tag #HDYD. A fashion show hosted on a blue Keds carpet, called “How Do You Do Fashion?,” will feature local models wearing Keds shoes and clothing from designers in each city. A segment called “How Do You Do Music?” will feature performances from local bands and disk jockeys. To help find local talent and generate interest on each campus, Keds joined with Mr Youth, a company that creates experiential and interactive marketing campaigns focused on young people. The company provided two student “ambassadors” for each stop on the Keds tour and worked with Keds on the execution of the mobile tour. “Students have access on campus that local companies don’t,” said Matthew Britton, the company’s founder and chief executive. “All the local elements are basically going to be curated by those local ambassadors.” The students were chosen from a database of 125,000 students on RepNation.com and will be paid $500 to $2,500 for a semester of work in addition to other incentives. According to Kantar Media, a unit of WPP, Keds spent $1.68 million on advertising from January through September 2010 and $450,000 during the same period in 2009. The company used its internal agency for other elements in the “How Do You Do?” campaign, including print ads featuring young artists from around the country. The Keds Web site will have an overview of all of the campaign elements and video biographies of the participating artists.

Sneakers
Online Advertising
Advertising and Marketing
Design
Keds Corp
Chai Richard
Holzer Jenny
Owens Laura


Icing Field-Goal Kickers — Some Are Shaken, Others Are Stirred

Abstract: EAST RUTHERFORD, N.J. — It is anticlimactic, drama-draining and a killer of rhythm. It is, from a statistical perspective, debatably effective. And it is, in the words of Giants kicker Lawrence Tynes, “the most ridiculously talked-about and overanalyzed issue in the game.” Despite all that, a coach’s signaling a timeout just before the opposing team attempts an important field goal — the so-called icing-the-kicker routine — does not appear to be going away anytime soon, even as many players say it has become so common that the real surprise would be if a coach actually kept his hands in his pockets. So could there be a day when not calling a timeout becomes the new calling a timeout? “I honestly think it’s going to come around to people letting them kick,” Zak DeOssie, the Giants’ long snapper on punts and field goals, said recently. “At this point, you know it is coming. You’re expecting the timeout now. Everyone’s come to expect it at any level.” Punter Steve Weatherford, who is the holder on Giants kicks, agreed but added: “I could see that, but I don’t think it will happen. Coaches like to feel like they’re doing something or trying something, and with field goals, that’s what they can do.” The strategy is continually on display. This season, the Giants and the Jets featured it prominently. In Week 3, the Jets were granted a reprieve after Nick Folk missed a game-winning kick because Miami Coach Joe Philbin had called a timeout. (Folk converted the second attempt.) Then last week, in the final seconds of the Giants’ loss to Philadelphia, Tynes hooked a hurried 54-yard attempt wide left but had another try because Philadelphia Coach Andy Reid had used the same tactic. Given a few moments to gather himself, Tynes’s second effort was far better, flying straight and pure but coming up a yard or two short. To Tynes, that situation — in which the Giants’ unit rushed onto the field and “we didn’t know what we were doing” — was an example of how icing can actually help a kicker, not hurt him. “If I was a coach, I wouldn’t call it,” he said. “We got to slow down, and do it again better. Plus, why would you ever want to give someone a practice rep on anything? Would you want to practice an 8-foot pressure putt before you had to do it for real? Of course. It’s the same thing.” The modern form of icing the kicker — that is, a coach waiting until just before the snap to do it as opposed to having a player on the field make the call — can be traced to 2007, which was the first year coaches were given the authority to call timeouts. Mike Shanahan, then with the Denver Broncos, is given credit for being the first to use the tactic, as he called a timeout just before Oakland Raiders kicker Sebastian Janikowski tried a potential game-winning kick. Janikowski made his first (voided) attempt but missed the second, giving rise to a trend that has mushroomed ever since. “I didn’t know it was going to turn into that,” Janikowski said. “I think it’s better for the kicker because it gives you the opportunity to get warm. It gives you extra kicks.” Statistically, it is difficult to say definitively which side benefits from the practice. A 2010 study by a University of San Diego professor who reviewed data from 2002 to 2008 found that icing reduced effectiveness on high-pressure field goals about 14 percent. A study in the 2011 book “Scorecasting,” however, concluded that percentages for kickers who were iced and not iced were roughly the same. Some factors are even harder to quantify, like whether a second kick hurts or helps the defensive players trying for a block. Some say a retake is harmful because the opposing team has seen the rush; others say it is beneficial because a defender can adjust his path based on the blocking he saw on the first attempt. Eric Mangini, the former coach of the Jets and the Cleveland Browns, said he believed that the icing tactic may have run its course because “special-teams coaches and kickers have adjusted to it to where it’s almost like de-icing the kicker.” “Maybe it should be called that, de-icing,” Mangini added. Whatever its label, the strategy remains in the nebulous sphere occupied by other debatable sports tactics, like whether it is best for a basketball coach to call a timeout to set up a final play or to simply allow play to continue. The difference with icing the kicker, though, is the timing. In no other sport is there a situation in which someone off the field can stop play just milliseconds before a player begins his move. Even in basketball, where icing a free-throw shooter is popular, the timeout call must come before the player puts his hands on the ball. In football, the timeout strategy essentially breaks up a dramatic moment into two parts. John Mara, who is a Giants co-owner and a member of the N.F.L.’s competition committee, said the committee discussed possibly altering the timeout rule after the 2007 season but had not had much debate about it since. “Nobody likes the way it looks, but we could not come up with any practical way of curtailing it,” Mara said. “It was discussed a few years back, but we came to the conclusion that there is not much we can do about it.”

Football
Tynes Lawrence
Janikowski Sebastian
DeOssie Zak


After a Strong Recovery, China’s Economy Unexpectedly Stumbles Again

Abstract: HONG KONG — Brightly hued men’s underwear in a rainbow of colors is no longer selling well in Europe for the Zhongtian Garments Company in Xiamen, China. Exports are down 30 percent in the last year. Children’s guitars with bodies resembling cats and cartoon characters are losing their charm for Yuesen Musical Instrument Factory in Huainan, China. And at the Yuzhongniao Outdoor Products Company in Jinjiang, domestic sales and exports alike are declining this year. The Canton Fair, China’s biggest export event, ended on Sunday with few new orders. “We are not even getting many people browsing this time,” said Alice Hong, Yuzhongniao’s sales manager. After a powerful recovery through the autumn and winter from a V-shaped downturn last summer, China’s economy is unexpectedly faltering once again. Exports are weak. The country’s domestic economy is still growing mostly because of huge increases in lending by state-controlled banks and a surge in off-balance sheet lending. Consumer spending is rising, but not fast enough to offset weakness in other sectors. That combination has prompted growing concerns among economists and business executives about the sustainability of even 7.5 percent growth in China in the coming years, the government’s current goal after three decades of double-digit growth with only a few interruptions. The latest sign of trouble came on Wednesday, when China’s General Administration of Customs announced export and import figures for April. On the surface, they looked fairly respectable: exports were up 14.7 percent from a year earlier, and imports were up 16.8 percent. But April 2012 was an exceptionally bad month for Chinese exports and imports — indeed, dismal trade statistics for that month were the first sign that economic weakness during the preceding winter was turning into a precipitous decline. This April’s trade figures appeared even weaker when economists looked closer and found that the export growth had been largely propelled by growth in exports to Hong Kong, up 57 percent, and to special customs zones in China for export later, up even faster. Since Hong Kong’s own data has not been showing large increases in imports from China so far this year, the Chinese government has already opened an investigation into whether exporters are overinvoicing for shipments. Overstating exports can allow companies to evade currency controls and move money into China to profit from the gradual appreciation of the renminbi against the dollar. Louis Kuijs, an economist in the Hong Kong office of the Royal Bank of Scotland, estimated that with the exclusion of overinvoicing, export growth came to only 5.7 percent. Over the last few years, economists have tended to pay less attention to China’s exports because they were declining as a share of the country’s total economic output, because of weak overseas demand. But newer research suggests that China may still be dependent on exports. The reason is that multinationals have been rapidly localizing their purchases of various items like computer chips and auto parts in China instead of importing them from other Asian neighbors. So while total exports may not have been rising quickly in recent years in China, the Chinese content in each dollar of exports has been increasing. Mr. Kuijs estimated that 20.7 percent of China’s economic output came from exports last year, a figure that had bottomed out in 2009 at 19.7 percent. In a bad sign for exports in the months ahead, the Canton Fair announced this week that export orders placed at this year’s spring session had fallen 1.4 percent from a year ago. It was the latest sign that steeply rising blue-collar wages in China and a gradually appreciating currency are starting to erode the country’s international competitiveness; foreign investment in China has also begun to level off, while surging in lower-wage countries in the region, like Cambodia and Vietnam. Li Yong, the general manager at Yuesen Musical, said that many Japanese, Taiwanese and Korean companies in his industry had recently moved to Indonesia as costs climbed in China. What has kept the economy running is the huge volume of cash being pumped into it. Total social financing — a measure of all nongovernment borrowing from banks, bond markets, trusts and other sources — surged 58 percent in the first quarter of this year from the same period last year. Off-balance-sheet financing from the so-called shadow banking sector has been particularly active. Local and regional governments have also been borrowing heavily, as have special financing units that many of them have set up. The central government is now trying to rein in this borrowing, said Terry Gao, an associate director of international public finance at Fitch. It downgraded China’s local currency debt on April 9 by a notch. Borrowing — by a range of local, regional and national government agencies as well as many state-owned enterprises and some private businesses — is increasingly a concern. While total government and private sector credit in China as a share of economic output is still lower than the United States or Japan, it is rising steeply. It has already climbed to roughly 200 percent now from 120 percent in 2007. The efficiency of heavy lending across the entire Chinese economy has plummeted, raising worries about the sustainability of Chinese credit-fueled growth. Through 2007, each dollar of additional credit set off an extra dollar of economic output. But now $3 to $4 of extra credit is extended before the same increase in output takes place, an indication that less economically viable roads, rail lines, business expansions and other investments are being financed. China’s current economic model, with its swift buildup of debt to stave off a steeper decline in economic growth rates, “can probably go on for a while, certainly through this year and into 2014, but the potential financial stress in this is clearly going to rise,” said George Magnus, a senior economic adviser to UBS. China is borrowing almost entirely in its own currency. It also has virtually no foreign debt and a high savings rate. The country’s growing ranks of skeptics are unconvinced by these arguments. “You could have this same conversation about Japan in 1989,” Mr. Magnus said. “The fact Japan was a creditor country with a lot of savings did not stop a major bust from taking place.”

Economy
China
International trade
Consumer behaviour


Two-Pound Dinosaur Holds North American Record

Abstract: Small dinosaurs are big these days. Researchers recently announced the discovery of a tiny prototype of a Tyrannosaurus from China. Now paleontologists are reporting the smallest dinosaur ever found in North America. The animal, Fruitadens haagarorum, had a body length of about 30 inches and weighed an estimated 2 pounds. Fossils dating from the late Jurassic period were excavated in Colorado in the 1970s and kept at the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County, where they have now been studied and described by Richard J. Butler, of the Bavarian State Collection for Paleontology in Germany, and colleagues. Fruitadens is also the smallest ornithischian dinosaur ever found. Ornithischians, one of the two main groups of dinosaurs, generally ate plants, and “plant eaters require a fairly large gut,” said Luis M. Chiappe, director of the museum’s Dinosaur Institute and a co-author of a paper describing the finding in The Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences. The small size of Fruitadens and an absence of grinding wear on its teeth, Dr. Chiappe added, suggest it probably supplemented its diet with small animals and insects. Fruitadens is one of a subgroup of ornithischians that survived for more than 100 million years. Dr. Chiappe said that dinosaur species became morphologically more specialized in evolution but that Fruitadens was “conventional and unspecialized.” That, he said, may be why the subgroup survived for so long: species like it were better able to adapt.

Dinosaurs
Paleontology
Science and Technology


N.J. Population Shifts in Ethnic Makeup and Location

Abstract: In the last decade, the number of white people in New Jersey declined as the number of Asians and Hispanics soared, and the population shifted southward — some of the many shifts with broad cultural and political implications that were revealed in 2010 census figures released on Thursday . Newark, the state’s largest city, grew 1.3 percent, to more than 277,000 people, reversing five decades of contraction, and the second-largest, Jersey City, grew 3.1 percent, to more than 247,000. But populations declined in several of the largest and most heavily minority cities and towns, including Paterson, Trenton, Camden, Union City, East Orange, and Irvington. In particular, the state’s most crowded areas saw something of a black exodus from 2000 to 2010; the total population dropped 11.2 percent in Irvington and 8 percent in East Orange, both places that are predominantly black. At the same time, the cities became much more heavily Hispanic. Over all, the population of New Jersey grew 4.5 percent, to nearly 8.8 million people, but that was far behind the 9.7 percent national growth rate. Growth was slowest in the state’s densely packed northeast, where most of the population resides. Essex County, which includes East Orange, Irvington and Newark, shrank 1.2 percent, to about 784,000 people, well below its peak of more than 932,000 in 1970. The state’s most populous county as recently as the 1980s, Essex slipped to third in 2010, behind Middlesex, which grew to almost 810,000 people. Bergen County, the most populous, grew 2.4 percent, to 905,000, and Passaic and Union Counties also grew by less than 3 percent. The southern half of the state boomed by comparison — the populations of Gloucester and Ocean Counties each grew by 13 percent. Lakewood Township in Ocean County, with an expanding Orthodox Jewish population, had the fastest growth of any large municipality, soaring almost 54 percent in the decade, to nearly 93,000 people. “In some of the more developed areas, you have towns that are pretty much built out, and a lot of empty-nesters,” said James W. Hughes, dean of the Edward J. Bloustein School of Planning and Public Policy at Rutgers University. Factors drawing people to South Jersey, he said, were more-affordable housing and construction of highways providing access to job centers. The number of non-Hispanic white people living in the state fell by more than 300,000, to about 5.2 million, dropping from 66 percent of the population to 59.3 percent. The shift was even more pronounced among whites under 18, who by 2010 were just 51.6 percent of the state’s children. “Those are pretty astounding changes,” said Tim Evans, research director at New Jersey Future, a research group. “It’s another sign that New Jersey is on a similar path to California, in terms of becoming majority-minority.” The Asian population jumped 51 percent, to more than 700,000, or 8.2 percent of the total, while the number of Hispanics climbed 39 percent, to more than 1.5 million, or 17.7 percent. The black population changed little, at 1.1 million, or 12.8 percent. The ethnic shifts could presage altered economic and political patterns, though financial and voting power can lag decades behind a rise in raw numbers. In the United States House of Representatives, New Jersey has seven Democrats, representing mostly terrain in the northeast corner of the state, and six Republicans. But the state will lose one seat based on the census. The census shows heavily Democratic and minority areas losing sway as the state embarks on the once-a-decade task of redrawing district lines for the Legislature and Congress, based on the numbers released on Thursday. Even before the figures were published, Republicans had high hopes of making gains in that process. But the census also shows traditionally Republican and swing areas becoming more ethnically diverse, with fast-rising numbers of Hispanics, Asians and blacks. In Sussex and Warren Counties, in the northwest corner of the state, the minority population, while still small, nearly doubled. “A lot of what we’re seeing is the continuing suburbanization of New Jersey, including significant minority suburbanization,” Mr. Hughes said. One indicator of that suburbanization is that towns that had 20,000 to 50,000 people in 2000 had the fastest growth rate, 6.4 percent. Those with over 75,000 grew just 1.5 percent. Asian population growth was heaviest in suburban Middlesex County, particularly in Edison, Piscataway, Woodbridge and East Brunswick. The number of Asians in the county jumped more than 50 percent, and by 2010 accounted for 21.3 percent of the population. In Edison, Asians reached 43.1 percent of the population, surpassing whites as the largest group. In places that were already majority Hispanic in 2000, like Perth Amboy, Passaic, North Bergen and Paterson, their predominance increased markedly. Hispanics became a majority in Elizabeth and nearly did in New Brunswick; they overtook blacks as the largest group in Camden; and they passed whites as the largest group in Hackensack.

New Jersey
Census Bureau
Population
Minorities


Michigan: E.P.A. Investigation Is Sought Over Flint Water

Abstract: Officials are asking the federal Environmental Protection Agency to answer questions about its oversight of state environmental regulators after elevated blood-lead levels were found in children whose Flint homes received river water. Representative Dan Kildee and the State Senate minority leader, Jim Ananich, both Democrats from the Flint area, said Wednesday that they had sent letters to the agency. Flint reconnected to Detroit’s water system last week in hopes of resolving the health emergency. “It has become clear to me that unacceptable lead levels were a failure of government at every level,” Mr. Kildee wrote in a letter to the E.P.A. administrator, Gina McCarthy. He said the agency needed to conduct an investigation “to restore confidence and to ensure that these failures never happen again.” The agency said it was reviewing the request. Dan Wyant, director of the State Department of Environmental Quality, has said that federal drinking water rules were not followed properly when Flint switched from Detroit’s water system.

Water pollution
Flint Michigan
EPA
Lead
Children
Daniel T Kildee
Gina McCarthy


Fear That Debate Could Hurt G.O.P. in Women’s Eyes

Abstract: After Senator Marco Rubio of Florida insisted at the Republican presidential debate that rape and incest victims should carry pregnancies to term, aides to Hillary Rodham Clinton could barely contain their delight at his unyielding stance, rushing to tell reporters at her headquarters that those remarks would hurt Mr. Rubio with female voters. When Donald J. Trump chose on Friday to stand by his slights against women during the debate, saying the Fox News journalist Megyn Kelly “behaved very badly” as a moderator — and then promoting a Twitter message calling her a “bimbo” — feminists were not the only ones outraged: the chairwoman of the New Hampshire Republican Party accused Mr. Trump of chauvinism. And in response to multiple male candidates saying they would shut down the federal government over financing for Planned Parenthood , the Democratic National Committee emailed talking points to allies within an hour saying that among the losers at the debate were “American women, who were attacked at every turn.” Republican Party leaders, whose presidential nominees have not won a majority of female voters since 1988, are setting their sights on making electoral gains among women in the 2016 presidential race and trying to close the gender gap in swing states like Florida and Colorado. But the remarks and tone about women at Thursday’s debate — and the sight of 10 male candidates owning the stage — may have only damaged the party’s standing among female voters in the 2016 general election, according to pollsters and some Republican leaders. “So much of the debate was all about appealing to male voters and other parts of the Republican base, rather than doing anything to help the party’s general election goal of trying to be more inclusive,” said Lee M. Miringoff, director of the Marist College Institute for Public Opinion. “By being callous or showing disregard toward women, and then laughing it off with a charge of political correctness or simply saying they’re taking conservative stands, the Republicans could win over some of the older male Republican voters out there. But what about female voters?” Democrats were gleeful at the tone of the debate, already imagining future campaign advertisements featuring debate cutaways with Mr. Rubio saying that future Americans will “call us barbarians for murdering millions of babies.” How the Republican Candidates Fared in the First Debate The rambunctious presidential debate Thursday night left some Republican candidates shining and others stung. Here are some highlights and low lights from the prime-time showdown. In the short term, however, the political peril for the Republican candidates may not be so grave. They are largely focused now on winning over likely Republican voters who will decide the party’s nomination — an electorate that tends to skew male and older in many key states. Recent polls of Republican voters indicate that Mr. Trump is performing strongly among men and to a slightly lesser extent among women, though sizable numbers of women also say they would not support him. It remains an open question whether Mr. Trump offended his supporters, or many other likely primary voters, by refusing to renounce his past descriptions of women as “fat pigs” during the debate; indeed, pollsters say he may have struck a chord with some voters by saying he doesn’t “have time for political correctness” when he was asked about his remarks. With the possibility that a woman could be the nominee of a major political party for the first time, Republicans are facing the likelihood of an even more complicated environment than they have had in recent presidential elections. Gallup polls show that female voters have been favoring the Democratic presidential nominees since the 1990s, often by increasingly large numbers. The 2012 election was a case in point: Even though Mitt Romney, the Republican nominee, won white women with 56 percent of their votes, he lost over all with female voters. A Republican nominee would be hard-pressed to improve that if the 2016 Democratic nominee is a woman, many Republican pollsters believe. Several prominent Republican women said they were worried that the candidates would only hurt themselves, and the party, if they did not change the substance and style of their remarks at future debates, which will be held monthly this fall and winter. Thursday’s debate attracted an enormous audience of 24 million viewers; the next debate will be Sept. 16 and broadcast on CNN. “Not one candidate attempted to persuade women voters,” said Margaret Hoover, a Republican consultant and author. “The G.O.P. needs to fight for women votes because it believes our policies are better for women. There’s a difference between pandering and vote-courting: Thursday night, G.O.P. candidates did neither for women weary of the Republican brand.” Who Is Running for President? Donald J. Trump officially accepted the Republican party's nomination on July 22. Hillary Clinton was officially nominated on July 26 at the Democratic Convention. On abortion, Mr. Rubio, Jeb Bush and Gov. Scott Walker of Wisconsin all gave no ground, unlike the remarks by some Republicans on other social issues like same-sex marriage. Mr. Walker’s fiercely stated opposition to an abortion ban exception to protect the life of the woman, for instance, prompted a tweet from the Clinton campaign — “Problem for Scott Walker: 24 million people heard how out of touch he is on women’s health” — but also teeth-gnashing from some female Republicans. “For Walker, the question of not sparing a mother’s life if endangered by a pregnancy seeds an extremist view that would be quite unpopular in a general election,” Ms. Hoover said. Jennifer Horn, the Republican chairwoman in New Hampshire, focused her frustrations on Mr. Trump, who leads recent opinion polls for that state’s first-in-the-nation primary. “Megyn Kelly is an intelligent, successful, educated, professional woman, and the comments and tweets from Donald Trump were demeaning and chauvinistic,” Ms. Horn said. “There’s a big difference between being politically correct and being respectful, and Thursday night Donald Trump was not respectful to women.” Whit Ayers, a veteran Republican pollster who is advising Mr. Rubio’s campaign, said that “Trump only hurts Republicans among women if he becomes the nominee, which he won’t.” He added, “The Republican image and the Republican brand will be defined by the Republican nominees for president and vice president, not what a losing candidate said in a debate 15 months before the election.” Carly Fiorina, the only female Republican candidate in the presidential race, who was relegated to an earlier debate on Thursday because of her low poll numbers, was circumspect about whether she would have challenged Mr. Trump had she been onstage with him. When asked if she would have denounced his comments, she insisted that she had, but then proceeded to do so only in generic, gender-agnostic terms about civility in politics. “It’s not helpful to call people names, it’s not helpful to paint with a broad brush, it’s not helpful to engage in personal insult,” Ms. Fiorina said. “Some Republicans do that. Some Democrats do that. And I’ve called both of them out.” Many Republicans had worried that Ms. Fiorina’s exclusion from the prime-time debate would expose the party to criticism that it was giving second-class treatment to its only female candidate. While onstage, she nonetheless had to endure some awkward moments with her male colleagues. When Rick Perry was answering a question about Iran, he said that he would prefer to have “Carly Fiorina over there doing our negotiation than John Kerry,” apparently an insinuation that she would be subordinate to a president. It was not the first time Ms. Fiorina has been the subject of that kind of backhanded compliment. When asked what woman should be on the $10 bill at a candidates’ forum on Monday, Rick Santorum answered, “Carly is a pretty good choice.” As for Mr. Trump, as he made the rounds to the morning talk shows, he seemed to show some signs of, if not quite contrition, at least regret that people could be left with the impression that he said something offensive to women. “I don’t recognize those words,” he said on the MSNBC program “Morning Joe.” “Not that I’m an angel, by the way. But I don’t recognize those words.” Any regret was fleeting. He also insisted that his “fat pigs” disparagement of Rosie O’Donnell during the debate was “the biggest event in terms of sound, and in terms of combustion in the room. It was the biggest event of the evening.”

2016 Presidential Election
Political Debates
Women and Girls
Republicans
Marco Rubio
Donald Trump
Scott Walker
Carleton Fiorina,Carly Fiorina


VW, Setting Aside $18 Billion for Diesel Scandal Costs, Reports Record Loss

Abstract: FRANKFURT — Volkswagen reported a record loss for 2015 on Friday as it set aside more than $18 billion to cover the cost of fines, legal claims and recalls in the United States and other countries related to diesel emissions cheating. The figures show that the scandal will cost the company more than it previously acknowledged. But the sum was also less than some estimates for the cost of the United States settlement, which ranged as high as $30 billion. Volkswagen said it lost 5.5 billion euros, or more than $6.2 billion, last year, compared with a profit of €2.5 billion in 2014. The company increased the amount of money it was setting aside for the scandal to €16.2 billion. That was up from €6.7 billion previously. The crisis “is having a huge impact on Volkswagen’s financial position,” Matthias Müller, the chief executive, said in a statement. The company warned that sales this year could fall 5 percent, from €213 billion in 2015, because of declining global demand for cars and the emissions scandal. There were also indications on Friday that controversy about diesel engines was spreading to other carmakers. The German Transport Ministry said it was ordering the recall of 630,000 diesel cars because they were programmed to turn down emissions controls in cold weather. However, the ministry said that except for Volkswagen, none of the companies had illegal software designed to produce artificially low emissions under test conditions. The brands whose vehicles are subject to recall include Mercedes-Benz, General Motors’ Opel unit, Volkswagen, Audi and Porsche. Daimler, the maker of Mercedes vehicles, disclosed early Friday that it was under investigation by the United States Justice Department in connection with emissions testing. On Thursday, French authorities investigating potential auto emissions anomalies gathered documents from the offices of the PSA Group, the parent of Peugeot and Citroën. PSA said it was cooperating with the investigation. Video Matthias Mueller, Volkswagen's chief executive, said the company had set aside $18.2 billion to cover fines, legal claims and recalls related to diesel emissions cheating. Credit Credit Hannibal Hanschke/Reuters Volkswagen, after a meeting on Friday of its supervisory board in Wolfsburg, Germany, where the company has its headquarters, also said it would delay the publication of a widely anticipated internal investigation of how the diesel cheating came about. Instead of releasing the information in April as promised, the company will wait at least until it works out a settlement with the Justice Department. Volkswagen said it was acting on the advice of its lawyers. A disclosure would “significantly impair Volkswagen’s cooperation with the Department of Justice and weaken Volkswagen’s position in any remaining proceedings,” the company said in a statement. Volkswagen has admitted that its employees programmed 11 million cars so that pollution controls operated at full capacity only when the vehicles were being tested. But seven months after the illegal emissions manipulation came to light, the company has not clarified who was responsible for the wrongdoing and whether top managers were involved. The law firm Jones Day has been poring through documents and computer files and interviewing employees, but it has not issued its conclusions. The law firm declined to comment. Volkswagen’s financial disclosure on Friday, in a preliminary earnings report, came a day after the company agreed on the outlines of a plan to settle some legal claims in the United States, which would include giving owners of about 500,000 affected vehicles the option of selling the cars back to the company or having them repaired. Volkswagen is still negotiating the size of the fines it will pay to the United States government for violations of clean-air laws, as well as how much additional compensation it will provide to owners. The money set aside by the company on Friday provides an indication of what Volkswagen expects the total global costs of the scandal to be, although the figure could rise further. Volkswagen had delayed reporting its annual earnings because of uncertainty about the size of the financial damage. The wrongdoing by Volkswagen has also led to increased scrutiny of other carmakers. The recall announced on Friday in Berlin is one result of an investigation carried out by the German Transportation Ministry after American authorities found Volkswagen to be cheating on emissions tests in the United States. Alexander Dobrindt, Germany’s minister of transport, said Friday that the investigation did not reveal any vehicles equipped with illegal software, other than some of the Volkswagens in the group that were already known to have the ability to cheat on emissions tests. How Volkswagen’s ‘Defeat Devices’ Worked Volkswagen admitted that 11 million of its vehicles were equipped with software that was used to cheat on emissions tests. This is how the technology works and what it now means for vehicle owners. Scaling back the emissions controls was allowed under certain conditions, he said, to protect, for example, the motor from damage. But investigators were not convinced the switches in the cars being recalled met the legal requirements to be permissible, Mr. Dobrindt said. The automakers will be required to improve the emissions performance of the vehicles. Automakers have an incentive to avoid running the emissions equipment at full power, to minimize wear or to minimize consumption of the urea solution used in some models to neutralize nitrogen oxides. Daimler, based in Stuttgart, disclosed early Friday that it was conducting an internal investigation at the request of the United States Justice Department into the procedures it uses to certify exhaust emissions. Jörg Howe, a spokesman for Daimler, said the company was cooperating with American authorities but declined to comment further. The potential for Daimler’s Mercedes unit to become embroiled in a scandal of the same scope as Volkswagen is probably limited because it sells relatively few diesel vehicles in the United States. Cars with diesel engines accounted for less than 3 percent of the 340,000 passenger vehicles that Mercedes sold in the United States last year. Volkswagen, though, promoted so-called clean diesel heavily in an attempt to win environmentally conscious buyers. Vehicles with diesel engines accounted for more than 23 percent of the Volkswagen brand cars sold in the United States in August 2015, a month before the emissions cheating came to light. Until last year, the biggest annual loss reported by Volkswagen was 1.9 billion deutsche marks in 1993, or about $1.2 billion at the time. A sales crisis caused by a recession in Europe paved the way for Ferdinand Piëch to become chief executive of Volkswagen, which was founded by his grandfather, Ferdinand Porsche. Mr. Pïëch, who was chairman of the Volkswagen supervisory board until last year, revived the company and helped make it the dominant carmaker in Europe. But he has also been accused of creating a climate of fear that prevented subordinates from openly discussing problems, which may have led them to cheat on emissions.

Volkswagen
Automobile safety
Air pollution
Diesel engine
Vehicle Emissions
Earnings Reports
Cars
Fraud


Military Contractors Brace for Cutbacks

Abstract: As the Pentagon Thursday announced changes in its programs, military contractors were bracing for cancellations or cutbacks of several programs. In its latest round of budget tightening, the agency has said that it would stretch out purchases, cancel a high-flying spy drone and delay work on a new missile submarine. The defense secretary, Leon E. Panetta, disclosed the cuts as part of a broader reorganization of the military meant to save $487 billion over a decade. One of the biggest decisions will stretch out the purchase of 179 of the F-35 fighters that the Pentagon had planned to buy from Lockheed Martin over the next five years. Mr. Panetta said the Pentagon remained committed to the plane, a stealth fighter that can attack ground targets. Different versions are being built for the Air Force, the Navy and the Marines. The services plan to spend up to $380 billion for 2,440 of the planes, making it by far the Pentagon’s largest program. The other cuts were spread out among the major military contractors, though some reductions would be offset by spending increases on computer security, other unmanned planes and equipment for the special forces. The plan to cut the size of the ground forces by 92,000 and eliminate older ships and planes came in response to political pressure to lower the federal budget deficit. It will eliminate most of spending increases that were above inflation, thereby limiting the Pentagon’s budget increases to approximately the rate of inflation after a big surge during the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. Pentagon officials said that they had tried to limit the reductions to weapons programs and would focus on continuing efforts to modernize the armed forces. Many of the most costly and contentious programs — like the radar-evading F-22 fighter and a high-tech destroyer — had already been canceled or trimmed over the last three years, leaving few big-ticket items. Mr. Panetta said he had decided to slow the purchases of the F-35 fighters “to complete more testing and allow for developmental changes before buying significant quantities.” “We wanted to make sure before we go into full production that we are ready,” he said. The plane was originally described as an affordable and dependable design. But changes in the requirements, faulty parts and software difficulties caused several years of delay and turned the program into the Pentagon’s biggest budget-buster. Last year, Mr. Panetta’s predecessor, Robert M. Gates, threatened to cancel the Marine version of the plane, which can take off and land almost vertically, if Lockheed could not solve some of the problems. Mr. Panetta recently lifted that probation, saying the company had made substantial progress. Pentagon officials also announced that the Air Force was canceling one version of Northrop Grumman’s Global Hawk surveillance drone. It flies at 60,000 feet and was intended to replace the piloted U-2 spy plane, which gained fame for flying over the Soviet Union during the cold war. After an extensive review, the Air Force had decided last July to go ahead with the switch even though the Global Hawk’s costs had soared and Pentagon testing officials had questioned whether it was reliable. The Air Force had said then that the unmanned plane, which took photographs and was also supposed to intercept communications, would be cheaper to operate than the U-2. But Pentagon officials said Thursday that it now looked as if the costs would be higher over the next five years for the Global Hawk than the U-2. They said they still planned to build other versions of the drone that could survey large areas, though those costs could rise if fewer total planes are built. Mr. Panetta said the Navy would delay its long-range plans to build a new nuclear-powered missile submarine by two years to ease the current budget pressures and help start the program on a more solid footing. Pentagon officials have said that the new missile submarines would eventually replace the aging Ohio-class subs, which carry nuclear missiles and could cost $5 billion each. Pentagon officials said they also would delay construction of one Virginia-class attack submarine, two coastal combat ships and a large amphibious ship to reduce short-term costs. Most of the ship construction is done by General Dynamics and Huntington Ingalls Industries, which was spun off by Northrop Grumman last year. Lockheed and a unit of an Australian company build the coastal ships. Still, the Pentagon said it also planned to redesign the Virginia-class subs, which are smaller than the Ohio-class subs and protect other warships, to carry more cruise missiles and upgrade radars on both airplanes and ships. It will also design a new long-range bomber to replace the B-2. Military contractors have laid off workers and consolidated plants in recognition that the boom times were ending. But Mr. Panetta said some of the cuts would be offset by increased spending on special forces, other surveillance planes and protections against attacks by computer hackers.

United States Defense and Military Forces


Syrian Government Blamed for Ballistic Missile Attack

Abstract: BEIRUT, Lebanon — A missile attack by government forces on the city of Aleppo in northern Syria killed at least 29 people, including 19 children, Syrian monitors said Saturday. According to the monitors at the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, the Friday night attack struck the Bab al-Neirab neighborhood in the city’s southwest, home to the headquarters of a number of rebel brigades, including the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, which is linked to Al Qaeda. It was unclear how many of the dead were civilians, but the Syrian Observatory, which monitors the conflict from Britain through a network of contacts in Syria and which sympathizes with the opposition, said four women were among the dead. The forces of President Bashar al-Assad have stepped up the use of such missiles, which often reduce city blocks to rubble, a strategy that analysts say suggests that the military lacks sufficient infantry to accomplish its goals. In central Syria, government forces struck a powerful, if symbolic, blow against rebel forces by seizing the historic Khalid bin al-Waleed mosque in the city of Homs, which rebel forces had held since last year. Homs, Syria’s third-largest city, was one of the principal launching sites of the anti-Assad uprising that turned into a civil war. The government has been eroding the rebels’ grip on parts of the city since it seized the town of Qusayr near the border with Lebanon last month, cutting a key rebel supply line into Homs Province. The state news service, Sana, quoted an unnamed military official as saying government forces had seized the mosque and the area nearby, killing a number of fighters and defusing explosives planted in the area. The Syrian Observatory confirmed the mosque’s capture, saying fighters from Hezbollah and Syrian militias had fought alongside the military. Also on Saturday, Syrian state news media reported that talks between government officials and a delegation from the United Nations over allowing access for investigators to the sites of suspected chemical weapons attacks during the war had resulted in “an agreement on the ways to move forward.” The report gave no further details. Reports of small-scale attacks involving chemical weapons have surfaced a number of times in the past year, and the war’s continued escalation has raised fears that Mr. Assad’s forces could deploy chemical weapons on a wide scale or that those weapons could fall into the hands of extremists. Syria has yet to let the full team of United Nations investigators enter the country, and the delegation’s visit last week sought to negotiate access. The government has wanted to limit the places the investigators can visit. One site the investigators hoped to visit was Khan al-Assal, a town west of Aleppo where both the government and the rebels reported a deadly chemical weapons attack in March, with each side accusing the other. Visiting the site could prove difficult because rebel fighters took it over on Friday, reportedly killing about 150 soldiers. The Syrian Observatory said about one-third of them had been executed by an extremist rebel brigade after surrendering. The Syrian state news agency said on Saturday that 123 people had been killed “in cold blood” in Khan al-Assal, some of them soldiers but most of them civilians. It accused “armed terrorist groups” — the government’s blanket term for the rebels — for the killing and said it showed that “the only way to save all Syrians is to get rid of them, wherever they are.” Neither version of the events in the town could be verified.

Syria
Arab Spring
Military
Missiles and Missile Defense