Research on Senescent Cells Is Denied N.I.H. Grant

Abstract: The discovery that aging can be delayed in mice is just the kind of experiment one might suppose would be supported by the National Institutes of Health , the government agency that spends $30 billion a year on financing biomedical research. So after Mayo Clinic researchers discovered they could delay degeneration of the tissues in a fast-aging strain of mice by purging senescent cells, they applied to the agency’s National Institute on Aging for financing for the next essential step, that of repeating the test in mice with a normal life span. Under the agency’s peer review system, panels of fellow experts judge each proposal and assign it a score. On paper, it’s hard to think of a better system. But in practice, experts often differ, even on the best proposals, and a single dissenting vote can reduce a proposal’s overall score too low to get financed. . The Mayo proposal got a less than perfect score, and was denied money. “Their peer review process is not promoting innovative, high-risk research,” said Jan M. van Deursen, who with Dr. James L. Kirkland leads the Mayo Clinic team.. They were able to get their research started only because private funds were available from the Ellison Medical Foundation, supported by Larry Ellison of the Oracle software company, and from Robert P. Kogod, a philanthropist in Washington. After publication of the Mayo Clinic team’s paper in Nature this month, they were approached by the Glenn Foundation, set up by the commodities trader Paul F. Glenn, who has a longstanding interest in aging research. The foundation gave them an unsolicited $60,000 and said it would be around to talk later. The economist Milton Friedman once urged that the N.I.H. be abolished because it crowded out the private philanthropists who could support research better. Only if someone could prove to him that the private sector would not step forward, he said, would he countenance extracting research dollars from poor taxpayers. Fairy godmothers and philanthropists may be good to have around, but the N.I.H. argues it is doing the best job it can under difficult circumstances. Felipe Sierra, director of biological research at the National Institute on Aging, said the agency had financed much of the research on senescent cells on which Dr. van Deursen’s proposal was based. But the agency can pay for only the top-scoring proposals that emerge from its peer review process, and novel ideas by their nature are likely to attract skepticism and hence lower scores. “I don’t think this is a failure of the review system but a failure of our acute lack of funds,” Dr. Sierra said. While $30 billion is not small change, four-fifths of the N.I.H. budget is already committed to long-term projects and, of the remaining fifth available for new research projects, much is consumed by expensive clinical trials, Dr. Sierra said. “With funding as it is, we are forced to focus more on safe science than on innovative science,” he said. “It’s not the fault of the administrators — it’s the way science is,” Dr. Kirkland said. “We are trained as physicians and scientists to be highly critical of all we read.” Dr. van Deursen recently submitted a grant proposal to the National Cancer Institute, another component of the N.I.H., to explore why the rate of cancer increases exponentially after age 50 even though mutations in DNA accumulate at a steady state throughout life. Two reviewers gave the proposal a perfect score, but the third said he thought senescent cells were too rare to do much damage — a conjecture that the Mayo team’s new experiment has proved incorrect. Yet the third reviewer’s mark renders Dr. van Deursen’s new proposal ineligible for government research financing, unless the National Cancer Institute’s council steps in to reverse the peer review group’s decision.

Mayo Clinic
National Institute on Aging
National Institutes of Health
Science and Technology
Longevity
Research


Buffett’s Goldman Stake Said to Have Doubled in Value

Abstract: Warren E. Buffett showed again why he is known as one of the world’s best investors, thanks in part to another prominent investor, Goldman Sachs . Mr. Buffett’s stake in Goldman is now worth $9.1 billion, or about $4.1 billion more than what he paid 10 months ago, according to an analysis by Linus Wilson, an assistant professor of finance at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette. According to Mr. Wilson’s calculations, Mr. Buffett would realize an annualized return of 111 percent if he sold his Goldman stake, which is held by his conglomerate Berkshire Hathaway. In comparison, the federal government received a 23 percent annualized return for its Goldman investment. Goldman turned to Mr. Buffett in September, seeking a cash injection. In return, Mr. Buffett negotiated what was considered even then to be very favorable terms. Berkshire Hathaway received perpetual preferred shares in Goldman, which pay a 10 percent annual dividend, or $500 million a year. Berkshire Hathaway also received warrants to buy $5 billion in common stock at a strike price of $115 a share, which could be used at any time within five years of the initial investment. Mr. Wilson ascribed a $5.5 billion valuation to Mr. Buffett’s preferred shares and $3.2 billion to the warrants. He also calculated that Berkshire’s reinvested dividends from the Goldman stake were worth about $400 million. The analysis was based on Goldman’s closing share price of $160.46 on Wednesday.

Buffett Warren E
Goldman Sachs Group
Stocks and Bonds


Holocaust Museum Lets Local Voices Memorialize

Abstract: SKOKIE, Ill. — Barbara Steiner survived life as a child in the Warsaw ghetto and three Nazi death camps, emerging against dreadful odds without family or belongings but with a powerful story to tell. Yet for decades she was quiet about her trauma, concentrating on a new life raising her children in this placid suburb northwest of Chicago. Thirty-two years ago this summer, however, that peace was shattered when a group of American neo-Nazis threatened to march through the village, a destination carefully picked for its psychological punch: at the time, Skokie was home to many thousands of Jews like Ms. Steiner who were Holocaust survivors or their relatives. The threatened march put Skokie at the bull’s-eye of a national debate about free speech and democratic ideals. And although the march never materialized here, it prompted a movement among the death camp survivors that manifested itself in an urge to speak up and teach the lessons of their lives. And so they organized a group and got to work. All those decades of effort came to fruition this weekend in the form of the $45 million Illinois Holocaust Museum and Education Center, in the very village the neo-Nazis had hoped to horrify. The museum was shaped by what may be the last generation of Holocaust survivors to have such influence over their own stories. “It’s a dream come true and more,” Ms. Steiner said, preparing for the public opening on Sunday morning, at which former President Bill Clinton was scheduled to give a keynote address. “Magnificent is the only word for something so beautiful,” she said. The 66,000 square feet of exhibit space asks universal questions about human rights, as many Holocaust memorials do. But unlike similar institutions, the Skokie museum is almost totally anchored in the local, brought to life with the personal pictures, documents, clothing, testimonies and other artifacts of the building’s own neighbors. And several of the Holocaust survivors are working as docents and other staff members, weaving their first-person stories into the history, exploring issues of genocide around the world. They are candid about how their sense of tranquillity was shattered by the threat of having to encounter the swastika on Skokie’s streets, decades after their desperate escapes from the Nazis. “The rightful place for this is here, because of the march,” said Samuel R. Harris, the president of the museum and learning center, whose parents and siblings were killed at the Treblinka death camp. “You must know what fear the swastika brings to a survivor. The fear is immense, more than you can write. I felt, what can I do? Very simple solution: education.” The museum’s co-curator, Yitzchak Mais, former director of the Yad Vashem museum in Jerusalem, explained its significance as filling a largely unexplored niche. “These are your neighbors from the Midwest,” Mr. Mais said. “You’ll realize that you walked on the street with them, shopped with them at the grocery, sat with them at the movie theater.” “You’ve lived with the witnesses,” he went on. “It removes the distance. This didn’t happen a thousand miles away. It’s about right here, and that’s very clear.” Long before the group of survivors, officially called the Holocaust Memorial Foundation of Illinois, had a sparkling new building complete with art galleries and a children’s wing, it did its work out of a modest storefront on Main Street in a residential neighborhood next to a pub. Without large donors or the attention of designers and architects, they cobbled together a modest but poignant exhibit that welcomed busloads of schoolchildren and anyone else who wanted to hear their stories. There were about 20 or 30 members, Ms. Steiner recalls. (Of that original group, she said, only three are alive today.) They worked with little fanfare until an epiphany of sorts. It was time to do some repairs to the storefront. What if they skipped the repair work and instead put their energy into fund-raising for a whole new center? “They began to dream,” said Richard S. Hirschhaut, the museum’s executive director. “And this is an organization that had an annual budget at its high point of $200,000.” But, as Mr. Hirschhaut said, it was a group known for its “luck and pluck.” “They started asking, ‘What if we could do more, reach more people? And how do we do it?’ ” he said. “It was an easy sell for newcomers who have fallen in love with the survivors, who adore and respect them, to go forward.” One such relative newcomer to the group was J. B. Pritzker of Chicago, the philanthropist scion of the Hyatt hotel chain and other investments, who said he had become enchanted by the survivors, adopting their dream as his own. Approached to be the capital campaign chairman about 10 years ago, Mr. Pritzker, the managing partner of a private investment firm, accepted. He brought the group from having essentially nothing in the bank to where it is today, several tens of millions of dollars later. Ms. Steiner, a former bookkeeper at Sears and other department stores, remembers the planning stages. “When they were talking about millions, I said, ‘Wait! You’re talking about millions! You’re kidding, right? How are we able to do that?’ ” she recalled telling Mr. Pritzker in a meeting. “He said, ‘Don’t worry, we’ll have the money.’ Thank God I was wrong. He was right.” Mr. Pritzker, leading a pre-opening tour, said, “The lesson we’re trying to teach is that in small ways in everyday life we can rise and be up-standers. This is the universal message that the museum is all about.” Among the people who will be telling their stories at the museum is Aaron Elster, who moved to Skokie in 1955 by way of New York City. This is where his nightmares of hiding in a Polish family’s attic for two years during the Holocaust began to subside. “Like many people, I didn’t want to speak about my background,” said Mr. Elster, 76, a retired insurance executive. “I didn’t want to be known as a victim. But while we can, I feel that it’s incumbent on every survivor to speak up.” So many are already gone. “I personally believe that their souls are here,” Mr. Elster said. “And it becomes a holy place for people like myself.”

Holocaust and the Nazi Era
Monuments and Memorials
Jews and Judaism
Illinois
Museums


Latest Arkansas Quake Is Its Most Powerful in 35 Years

Abstract: A 4.7-magnitude earthquake that researchers described as the largest in Arkansas in 35 years was recorded late Sunday night near Greenbrier. It was the latest in a swarm of quakes that has bedeviled the region since early last fall. There were no reports of major damage, though some residents spoke of dislodged screen doors and cracked ceilings. Damage or not, some said this was the longest and scariest quake yet. “It felt like a real loud thunder, but like 10 times worse than that,” said Kim Bannister, 34, who lives just outside Greenbrier and who, like most in the region, has become somewhat accustomed to earthquakes. “I have felt some of them, but nothing like last night.” The swarm in central Arkansas has brought dozens of rumblings each week, many of them with magnitudes beyond 2.0. The situation has garnered national attention because of its possible connection to natural-gas drilling operations in the area. Researchers with the Arkansas Geological Survey have pointed out spatial and temporal relationships between the earthquakes and the use of injection wells, which are used to dispose of the wastewater left over from gas drilling. (Researchers see no such correlation between the quakes and the drilling itself, a process called hydraulic fracturing .) While a possible connection is being studied, the Arkansas Oil and Gas Commission has imposed an emergency moratorium on the drilling of new injection wells in the area. Wells that were active before the moratorium, which began in December, remain in use. Determining such a connection is not easy: there have been similar, naturally occurring earthquake swarms in the area in the past. But there is also a growing body of research suggesting that injections wells can induce earthquakes, and there is some circumstantial evidence that this might be happening in Arkansas. Most of the earthquakes in the latest swarm have been too small to be felt. The worst seemed to have passed after some midsize quakes in October and November, but in the past few weeks, several quakes were recorded with measurements over a 3.0 magnitude. Sunday’s quake, which occurred around 11 p.m. and was felt in at least five states, surpassed all others recorded in this or any of the previous swarms, said Scott Ausbrooks, a state geological survey researcher. He said that the fault along which the quakes were occurring could yield an earthquake measuring up to 5.5 magnitude if it were to erupt all at once. But he said that was unlikely.

Earthquakes
Hydraulic Fracturing
Arkansas
Natural Gas


Wine Dealer Sentenced to 10 Years for Defrauding Clients

Abstract: A well-known wine dealer was sentenced on Thursday to 10 years in prison for defrauding wealthy clients out of millions of dollars by selling bottles of purportedly rare wines that were actually old bottles of wine mixed together. The dealer, Rudy Kurniawan, 37, had become a renowned figure in the rare wine scene, spending and making millions of dollars on wine sales every year. At a sentencing hearing on Thursday in United States District Court in Manhattan, Mr. Kurniawan’s lawyer, Jerome H. Mooney said, “Rudy wanted to be accepted and recognized” by an “elite group of Burgundy tasters,” adding that his insecurity about his wealth and status got him caught up in a fraud scheme that went too far. Mr. Kurniawan sold fraudulent wines mixed in his home kitchen complete with fake labels to some of the country’s wealthiest people and leading wine enthusiasts. Mr. Kurniawan was able to make them believe that his bottles were both real and rare because of his reputation for an encyclopedic cellar and a finely tuned palate. “Rudy Kurniawan planned and executed an intricate counterfeit wine scheme,” said Preet Bharara, the United States attorney in Manhattan. “Now, Kurniawan will trade his life of luxury for time behind bars.” In addition to prison time, Mr. Kurniawan was ordered to forfeit $20 million and to pay more than $28 million in restitution to his victims. Mr. Kurniawan, a native of Indonesia who has been living illegally in the United States, faces deportation after the completion of his sentence. Prosecutors made their case using evidence from a raid of Mr. Kurniawan’s home in Arcadia, Calif. His computer contained files with scanned images of old wine labels, and bottles were scattered all around his home. His clients included the billionaire William I. Koch; David Doyle, the founder of Quest Software; Andrew W. Hobson, the chief financial officer of Univision; and others who spent millions on wine over the last several years. Mr. Mooney, in arguing for a reduced sentence, said the impact of Mr. Kurniawan’s crimes was negligible. “Nobody died,” Mr. Mooney said. “Nobody lost their job. Nobody lost their savings.” Judge Richard M. Berman interrupted him to ask, “Is the principle that if you’re rich, then the person who did the defrauding shouldn’t be punished?” Stanley J. Okula Jr., a federal prosecutor, said it was “quite shocking” that Mr. Mooney was arguing for a different standard for those who have defrauded rich people. “Fraud is fraud,” he said. “There is no distinction in the guidelines, or in logic, for treating it differently.” Mr. Kurniawan spoke briefly on his own behalf, saying that he was sorry. The judge also read a letter Mr. Kurniawan had written to the court, accepting responsibility for his actions. But the judge seemed dubious about Mr. Kurniawan’s repentance. “I believe he’s sorry about the position he’s in now,” he said. Other factors that influenced Judge Berman’s decision, he said, were the testimonies of three proprietors of French vineyards, who said that the market no longer had faith in their vintage wines. Mr. Kurniawan’s actions, the judge said, negatively affected trade relations between the United States and France. The defense said it was shocked by the prison sentence and would file an appeal. Wine fraud and counterfeiting are rampant in the market, Mr. Kurniawan’s lawyers said, and they believe he had been singled out. As for all of the expensive wine that investigators found in Mr. Kurniawan’s cellars, the government is still trying to figure out what to do with it. Once the legitimate bottles are separated from the fake ones, they might be sold. Some people have asked if they can buy Mr. Kurniawan’s special blends to see if they can tell the difference. However, in the criminal justice system, taste is irrelevant. Said Mr. Okula: “The defendant approached his victims saying he was selling them a Grand Cru. In reality, he was carrying out a Grand Con.”

Wine
Rudy Kurniawan
Fraud
Criminal Sentence


Baby Boomers Step Up as Health Care Volunteers

Abstract: POLICY makers and pundits warn that the baby boom wave could swamp the nation’s health care system. What if the 77 million boomers, who have just begun to turn 65, could help solve the health care crisis? “There’s a lot of talk about the challenges that boomers will present to health care, but we see them as our country’s greatest natural resource,” said Barbara Raynor, managing director of Boomers Leading Change in Health in Denver. Her 18-month-old program, financed by the Denver-based Rose Community Foundation , trains older adults as volunteer patient navigators, advocates and community health workers assigned to local organizations serving city residents. Some 125 older adults have been trained as navigators or community health workers who help individuals and families master the intricacies of the health care system. Another 300 volunteers are advocates who educate others about health care issues in formal and informal settings. At the Spring Institute for Intercultural Learning , also in Denver, older volunteers help teach health literacy, arrange transportation and accompany Bhutanese and Burmese refugees and immigrants to medical appointments, said Brandy Kramer, the institute’s volunteer coordinator. “Our boomers are wonderful advocates for our community members; they are tenacious and won’t take no for an answer from a health care provider.” Through local providers, volunteers have helped the institute’s clientele acquire free or low-cost hearing aids, eyeglasses and even a new set of teeth. Other volunteers have untangled Medicare bills, advised when (and when not) to call 911 and coached diabetics on healthy diet and exercise. Encouraged by the 2010 health care act’s emphasis on primary care, care coordination and chronic disease management, pilot programs are emerging to try to improve the fragmented medical system. Many programs rely on coaches, navigators and advocates. The paid or unpaid work they do is well suited to older adults seeking encore careers, said Phyllis N. Segal, a vice president of Civic Ventures, a San Francisco-based research group. While there are no firm numbers on new programs, she said, “this area is poised to explode because of expanding needs for health prevention and services.” Entrepreneurs will also find opportunities to start small businesses in consumer-centered care, she added. The federal government’s Center for Medicare and Medicaid Innovation recently dedicated $1 billion in grants to develop new ideas to improve care and lower costs for Medicare, Medicaid and Children’s Health Insurance Program beneficiaries. Here is a look at three ways older adults are working to try to solve the nation’s health care troubles. IM JA CHOI, 63 Jenkintown, Pa. Ten years ago, doctors told Im Ja Choi that nothing more could be done for her 85-year-old mother, who was battling stomach cancer and weighed only 62 pounds. A nursing home was out of the question because the older woman spoke no English and did not eat American food. Ms. Choi, a former financial executive, cared for her mother at home for seven months until she found a Korean-speaking home health aide. That experience prompted Ms. Choi to start Pennsylvania’s first small business providing Korean-speaking home health aides to the immigrant community. Today Penn Asian Senior Services trains and provides aides who speak eight languages. “Asian people need more information to navigate the health care system,” Ms. Choi said. “I have a master’s degree, and it was hard enough for me to wait in line at Social Security , go home and call them back two days later, then be put on hold. If you don’t have the language, you give up.” Nearly two years ago, her mother died at age 93. “No one expected she would live more than 100 days,” said Ms. Choi, who is now caring for her 91-year-old mother-in-law with an aide’s help. JOHN H. ARNOLD, 64 San Jose, Calif. John H. Arnold, a former senior finance executive at Pepsi, Novartis and Levi Strauss, wanted substantive work with lasting social impact in his encore career. “I didn’t want to be a consultant who delivers another report that just gets filed on a shelf,” he said. “And I didn’t want to stuff envelopes at a nonprofit, either.” Today he is devising cash-management procedures for La Clínica de La Raza of Oakland, Calif., a large community-based consortium of clinics. Mr. Arnold is one of 15 former corporate professionals in the Encore Fellows in California Community Clinics program, financed by the California HealthCare Foundation . Fellows, who may have earned six figures in the corporate world, receive a $25,000 stipend for a part-time one-year assignment. Community clinics receive high-level help with marketing, human resources and strategic planning as they struggle to cope with budget shortfalls, branding and compliance measures mandated by changes in health care. The fellowship program, which now operates in the San Francisco Bay Area and California’s Central Valley, is expected to expand to other areas of the state. Mr. Arnold is encouraging friends with financial backgrounds to volunteer with nonprofit organizations. “Financial people are sometimes stereotyped as conservative and perhaps not as imaginative as the marketing people,” he said. “But I tell my peers there are ways to make a good transition from your primary career and still make a difference.” ARLIN RAEDEKE, 72 Denver Arlin Raedeke, a volunteer patient navigator at the Spring Institute for Intercultural Learning, knew many of the organization’s Burmese and Bhutanese refugees. Many immigrants were unfamiliar with preventive medicine. “Some of the elderly may never have seen a dentist before, and they are deathly afraid of the idea,” he said. “A numbed mouth might send them into a panic.” Many elders chew betel nut, which may cause oral cancer. When Mr. Raedeke learned of a local program offering free dental insurance to low-income families, he helped sign up 30 people at the institute, visited dentists to explain language and cultural barriers, then arranged transportation and attended dental appointments. One woman, who used to cover her damaged teeth with her hand when she smiled, received nearly $12,000 of dental work from a sympathetic dentist. “I find it very rewarding to help people who may be totally lost and confused by our health care system,” said Mr. Raedeke, a former manager in the computer industry. “I wish there weren’t so many lawyers writing the paperwork; it confuses me, and I can’t imagine what it’s like for people who don’t speak good English.”

Volunteers and Community Service
Baby Boomers
Elderly
Health Insurance and Managed Care


Why Bad Directors Aren’t Thrown Out

Abstract: In the annals of shareholder democracy, it’s hard to imagine a more compelling case against a company’s directors than those who presided over the serial management calamities that have plagued the computer giant Hewlett-Packard in recent years. Imagine having to run on this track record: ¶ After ousting Mark Hurd as chief executive in 2010 amid messy accusations of sexual harassment, the board hired Léo Apotheker to replace him, even though Mr. Apotheker had been fired as chief of the European software giant SAP after just seven rocky months. Most of the board didn’t bother to meet Mr. Apotheker, let alone ask him any probing questions about his tenure at SAP, before rubber-stamping the choice of the board’s four-member search committee. ¶ In 2011, H.P.’s directors unanimously approved the acquisition of the British software maker Autonomy for $11.1 billion, a deal that was considered wildly overpriced even at the time. Less than a year later, H.P. wrote off $8.8 billion of that and claimed it had been defrauded. (Autonomy officials have denied the allegations, which are being investigated by authorities in both the United States and Britain.) Some consider Autonomy to be the worst corporate acquisition in business history. In the 2012 fiscal year, H.P. wrote off a total of $18 billion related to failed acquisitions and other missteps. ¶ With Mr. Apotheker at the helm and the board backing his strategic initiatives, H.P. announced that it was considering abandoning its giant personal computer business, then changed its mind. After Mr. Apotheker had been on the job a disastrous 11 months, the board demanded his resignation, and then paid him more than $13 million in termination benefits. Shareholders might have forgiven what Fortune magazine called a “tawdry reality show” if the stock had performed well. But from the time Mr. Apotheker was hired in September 2010 until he left in 2011, the stock went from more than $45 a share to a little more than $22. Despite a recent rally, shares are still below $24, even as the Dow Jones and Standard & Poor’s 500-stock indexes are hitting new highs. “You really couldn’t have a stronger case for removing directors,” Michael Garland, executive director for corporate governance in the New York City comptroller’s office, told me this week. “There’s been a long series of boardroom failures that have harmed the reputation of the company and repeatedly destroyed shareholder value over an extended period of time.” Yet all 11 H.P. directors were re-elected on March 20. H.P. is hardly an isolated case. According to Patrick McGurn, special counsel for one of the major shareholder advisory services, Institutional Shareholder Services, shareholder efforts to remove directors in uncontested elections rarely succeed or come close, even in egregious circumstances. Last year, there were elections for 17,081 director nominees at United States corporations, according to the service. Only 61 of those nominees, or 0.36 percent, failed to get majority support. More than 86 percent of directors received 90 percent or more of the votes. Of the 61 directors who failed to get majority approval, only six actually stepped down or were asked to resign. Fifty-one are still in place, as of the most recent proxy filings. “People are calling them zombie directors,” Mr. McGurn said. But that hasn’t stopped them from serving on boards for what is typically lucrative compensation for relatively little work. (H.P.’s directors received a mix of cash and stock payments ranging from $292,000 to $380,000 in 2012. While the H.P. board has been largely reconstituted since the Apotheker debacle, all but one (Ralph Whitworth, a well-known value investor who joined in November 2011) approved the disastrous Autonomy deal. Raymond Lane, seen as an ally and supporter, at least initially, of Mr. Apotheker, was named chairman at the same time Mr. Apotheker took the helm. Working closely with Mr. Apotheker, Mr. Lane proposed five new directors. John Hammergren, chief of the McKesson Corporation, has been on the board for eight years, and G. Kennedy Thompson, chief of Wachovia before it was forced into a merger with Wells Fargo during the financial crisis, has been a board member for seven years. Mr. Hammergren was on the search committee that recommended Mr. Apotheker’s appointment. In its proxy materials, H.P. didn’t address the company’s record under these directors, but nonetheless recommended that shareholders vote for the entire slate, citing the risk of “destabilizing” the company by changing directors in an “abrupt and disorderly manner.” As to Mr. Lane, Mr. Hammergren and Mr. Thompson, it repeatedly cited their “experience” in running global companies, but said nothing about their roles in selecting Mr. Apotheker or other directors, the Autonomy acquisition, other failed strategic initiatives or, indeed, anything at all about their tenures at H.P. Both Institutional Shareholder Services and the other big shareholder advisory service, Glass, Lewis & Company, recommended that shareholders vote against Mr. Hammergren and Mr. Thompson, citing their long tenures and extensive involvement in serious failures of oversight, especially the Autonomy deal. Institutional Shareholders also took aim at Mr. Lane, citing his role in championing the Autonomy acquisition without adequate due diligence and allowing the “direct participation” of Mr. Apotheker in the selection of directors. In deference to H.P.’s concerns about stability, the advisory services targeted only the directors they thought most culpable. New York City’s pension fund, which manages $133.7 billion and owns 5.5 million H.P. shares, announced that it would vote against Mr. Hammergren and Mr. Thompson, but would support Mr. Lane. “We didn’t want to be disruptive,” Mr. Garland said, “but the H.P. board needs some new blood.” Yet even that modest effort failed. While paying lip service to principles of shareholder democracy, companies have fought for decades to insulate directors from shareholder disapproval. Under the plurality voting systems still prevalent at many companies, the nominees who receive the highest number of affirmative votes cast are elected no matter how few votes they get out of the total cast. Since the board decides the number of nominees, and most nominate only as many as there are open seats, they’ll all be elected, even with a single yes vote (which may be their own). An early version of the Dodd-Frank reform legislation would have eliminated plurality voting, but the provision attracted fierce lobbying from business interests and was quietly scrapped even before the bill emerged from committee. Still, many companies, especially larger ones, have moved to majority voting under pressure from shareholders. Mary L. Schapiro, the former Securities and Exchange Commission chairwoman, championed a proxy access rule that would have allowed shareholders to nominate their own candidates and required companies to put them on the ballot, making it easier to remove incumbent directors. The commission passed the rule in 2010, but the Business Roundtable and United States Chamber of Commerce filed suit, and last year a federal appeals court blocked the rule, saying that S.E.C. hadn’t engaged in an adequate cost-benefit analysis. The S.E.C. hasn’t revived it. But H.P. has majority voting, and shareholders approved a proxy access rule similar to the one passed by the S.E.C., and shareholders still couldn’t muster a majority against even a single board candidate. That may be because the largest shareholders have little incentive to defy management recommendations. These days, the largest shareholders are almost always big asset management firms, and in many cases, managers of index funds. Shareholder activists have long complained that mutual fund and asset management companies have an inherent conflict of interest, since they may be managing company retirement plans, or hoping to gain access to them. H.P.’s 401(k) plan holds more than $14 billion, and participants can choose from more than 30 asset managers. H.P. declined to identify them. In theory, asset managers are required to maintain a Chinese wall between their funds and their advisory services. H.P.’s two largest shareholders are Dodge & Cox, a large mutual fund company in San Francisco, and Vanguard, one of the largest asset managers, which offers a range of mutual funds and index funds. Index funds have no choice but to own H.P. shares, since the funds mirror indexes and H.P. makes up a significant part of the Dow Jones industrial average and the S.& P. 500. Vanguard wouldn’t say how it voted its H.P. shares, and Dodge & Cox didn’t respond to my inquiries. But a source with knowledge of the voting, who asked not to be identified because he isn’t authorized to disclose the results, said both Dodge & Cox and Vanguard voted in favor of the full H.P. slate of directors. (Both companies will eventually have to disclose their votes, but not until September.) According to disclosure forms covering the period from January 2009 through June 2012, Dodge & Cox supported management’s recommendations on the directors 100 percent of the time. At Vanguard, it was 97 percent. A Vanguard spokesman wouldn’t say whether Vanguard provided services to H.P., but said: “Whether or not H.P. is a client is not relevant. We vote proxies with a singular focus and with a singular constituency in mind — to maximize value for the funds’ shareholders.” Even with the funds’ support, Mr. Lane, Mr. Hammergren and Mr. Thompson didn’t exactly get a ringing endorsement from shareholders, with just 59 percent for Mr. Lane, 54 percent for Mr. Hammergren and 55 percent for Mr. Thompson. By the admittedly low standards of shareholder democracy, that’s considered repudiation. (By comparison, the company’s current chief executive, Meg Whitman, who has brought some much-needed stability to the company, received 98 percent, the highest number.) New York City’s comptroller, John Liu, who oversees the city’s pension fund, seized on the results to press for change. “The onus is on the board to install new, independent directors, or it will face an even greater loss of investor confidence,” he said. “We expect the board to quickly overhaul its membership.” An H.P. spokesman responded: “The shareholder vote speaks for itself. The board will evaluate the results and determine what steps to take. Everyone on the board is interested in doing what’s best for H.P. and its continuing turnaround.” But the reality is that H.P. can do whatever it wants, regardless of what the shareholders say. Mr. McGurn said that the Council of Institutional Investors, a trade group for large public pension funds and other investors, often follows up with letter-writing campaigns at companies where shareholders have voted their strong disapproval of directors. Most of the time, he said, it doesn’t even get a response.

Board of directors
Hewlett-Packard
Shareholder Rights
Leo Apotheker
Autonomy


Prosecution of Uighur Students Underscores Perils of Chinese Clampdown

Abstract: BEIJING — Ambitious and fluent in Mandarin, the young Uighur strivers from the Xinjiang region of northwest China had earned coveted slots at the nation’s top university for ethnic minorities. Most were the first in their families to attend college. But since last January, at least five men and women who attended Minzu University in Beijing have been incommunicado after they were swept up by Chinese security forces alongside their mentor, Ilham Tohti, a prominent Uighur professor who in September was convicted of separatism and sentenced to life in prison . Among those in detention are a young Uighur couple who fell in love while studying at Minzu University, a web designer from the Yi minority of China’s mountainous southwest and a sociology student whose mother is a Communist Party member. “No one will tell us what is happening to him,” one relative of the sociology student said. “We have nowhere else to turn.” The White House and international rights advocates have condemned Mr. Tohti’s conviction as politically motivated, noting his reputation as a proponent of nonviolence and ethnic reconciliation. On Friday, Xinjiang’s highest court rejected his appeal. On Tuesday, at least three of the students are expected to stand trial on charges that their volunteer work for the news website Mr. Tohti ran constituted “splittism” or involved “revealing state secrets,” presumably because some of the articles they translated or posted were critical of government policies in Xinjiang, the turbulent homeland of China’s Turkic-speaking Uighur minority. Human rights advocates have few illusions that the students will escape serious punishment. “This is potentially one of the biggest tragedies of China’s human rights of the past years,” said William Nee, a China researcher at Amnesty International in Hong Kong. “These students are scapegoats being used in the prosecution of Tohti, but the evidence that they were part of a network that sought to subvert the state isn’t very compelling.” Their prosecution, cloaked in intense secrecy, underscores the perils facing Uighurs amid a harsh clampdown on intellectual and religious life in Xinjiang, the vast borderlands that have become a geopolitical linchpin of China’s plans to expand its influence in Central Asia. In recent months, hundreds of young men across the region have been detained by Chinese security forces in a campaign that is ostensibly aimed at stanching jihadist activity but which critics say is often arbitrary and abusive. In the days after Mr. Tohti’s conviction, three of his students , dressed in orange prison vests, appeared on state-run television to confess that they had exaggerated ethnic tensions on Uighur Online, the website run by Mr. Tohti. In his confession, Perhat Halmurat, the sociology student and a former editor of the website, blamed his teacher for an article he posted about a fight between a Han and Uighur student that had taken place on campus. “His unspeakable goal is to split the country,” he said. Those who know Mr. Halmurat say he was popular among his classmates and proud of his Uighur heritage. “His bedroom is filled with awards that attest to his academic achievements,” a relative said. Among the best-known detainees are Mutellip Imin, another sociology student, and his girlfriend, Atikem Rozi, a spirited young woman from the northern city of Hami. In 2012, Ms. Rozi caused a stir after she published an essay about the government’s refusal to issue her a passport, thwarting her plans to study abroad. In the piece, first published by Uighur Online and later picked up by a Chinese newspaper , Ms. Rozi, 23, said she was likely being punished for an earlier social media post she had written about the frustrations of living in a Han-dominated world. “There is nothing to believe,” she wrote, “nothing to rely on, nowhere to go — pushed to the road of ruin.” For Uighur academics and students, the sliver of space once available to discuss politics and matters of ethnic identity has all but disappeared. Many Uighur websites are blocked in China, and those that remain are scoured of the day’s most trenchant topics: the endemic poverty of southern Xinjiang, the economic disparity between Uighurs and Han, and the intrusive religious restrictions that many analysts say are stoking antigovernment violence. Henryk Szadziewski, a senior researcher at the Uyghur Human Rights Project in Washington, said the Internet had become a perilous place for Uighurs. “Even getting caught with a VPN on your computer is viewed as highly suspicious,” he said, referring to the software millions of Chinese use to circumvent government censors. In a measure of the fear that pervades Uighur society, all the parents and students interviewed for this article asked that their names be withheld. “We know anything we say that sounds critical of the government can get us arrested,” said one second-year student at Minzu University who audited one of Mr. Tohti’s popular classes on Xinjiang. Family members have not been allowed to see the detainees, nor have they been given information about the charges against them. Several said they were simply told to show up Tuesday at the same courthouse in Xinjiang’s regional capital, Urumqi, where Mr. Tohti was convicted in a closed trial. Wei Chunxia, a court spokesperson, refused to discuss when the trials might take place and referred a reporter to a phone number that was answered by a fax machine. Administrators at Minzu University declined to comment on the plight of their students. Like Ms. Rozi, her boyfriend, Mr. Imin, was unafraid to publicly express his frustration over perceived injustices. Last year, Mr. Imin, 25, wrote a searing account of how the Chinese police stopped him at Beijing International Airport and prevented him from continuing his graduate studies at Istanbul University in Turkey. Hauled back to Xinjiang, he spent the next 79 days shuttling between hotel rooms and being interrogated about his relationship with Mr. Tohti. He said he was made to hand over the passwords for his cellphone, email and Facebook accounts, and with the police listening in, forced to tell friends and relatives he was either in Turkey, or back in his hometown, Hotan, taking care of his mother. Although most people assumed he was in police custody, he was told to insist the news articles they read about his detention were “fabrications by Xinjiang separatists,” he later said. Eager to return to school and threatened with up to two years in jail, he said he signed a confession claiming he had been “blinded by Ilham Tohti,” and he acknowledged that his work as a volunteer for Uighur Online during his undergraduate days at Minzu had threatened ethnic harmony. Once free, however, the police refused to give back his passport and national identification card, forcing him to remain in Hotan, an isolated city on the edge of the Taklimakan Desert. “In Xinjiang, if you don’t have an ID card, you can’t do anything, you can’t go anywhere,” he told Radio Free Asia last November. “I feel like I’ve been left high and dry.” Furious, Mr. Imin in December published the account of his extralegal odyssey and included photographs of himself holding placards protesting what he called his enforced disappearance. Less than six weeks later, he would vanish again, this time along with his girlfriend and his former professor.

Human Rights
Communist Party of China
Censorship
Ilham Tohti
Beijing
Urumqi China
Uyghur


Elite Runners Serve as Muses for Shoe Design

Abstract: LEXINGTON, Mass. — On a $100,000 two-lane treadmill surrounded by cameras in a studio near Boston, the elite runner Michelle Lilienthal easily pounded out seven-minute miles, her stride widening as she approached her marathon race speed and dipped below a six-minute pace. Lilienthal, 32, was covered in tiny lights as her gait was tested last month at the Saucony Human Performance and Innovation Lab. That is where product specialists for Saucony, a manufacturer of running gear, adjust and match their shoes to their customers’ range of running styles. With their heavy mileage and efficient strides, top runners like Lilienthal are ideal guinea pigs, even if their habits sometimes diverge from those of the average jogger. One Saucony athlete, Ben True, ran 4-minute-20-second miles on the treadmill until he grew bored and asked to be taken “down to race pace.” The technicians politely declined. At the lab, Saucony’s shoe designers convert the data from their treadmill test runs into shoes that work for large groups of people like heel strikers or overpronators, whose feet tend to roll inward as they run. The job is based on subtlety and intuition. Patrick O’Malley, the senior vice president for global products at Saucony, said: “When we recently lowered the heel lift in our shoe, we found it made a big difference, but of course few runners said, ‘Wow, this lower heel makes me more efficient and yields more energy from my Achilles’.’ They said, ‘This feels good.’ ” Watching Lilienthal’s easy gait, Spencer White, the head of the lab, squinted at monitors, examining the data being captured and animatedly contextualizing it through vocabulary like “loading rates,” “peak load” and “contact time.” “We’re reviewing the angles of her knee joint, and how her lower leg rotates at the knee,” he said. “This gives us a picture of how she runs. We’re looking for potential concerns, figuring out what shoe to get her so she can perform best.” Lilienthal, who finished Sunday’s New York City Marathon in 2 hours 49 minutes 16 seconds (a 6:28 pace), frequently tests prototypes, helping shape the shoes that make it to market. Her experiences contributing to Saucony’s shoes are drastically different from those of the early days of the distance running movement. Rod Dixon, who won the New York City Marathon in 1983, recalled designing shoes with Saucony. In 1981, the company employed Pennsylvania Dutch cobblers in Kutztown, Pa., who made the shoes by hand. The shoemakers made a cast of his foot and structured 12 shoe forms tailored to it, incorporating his favorite elements from the Adidas shoes he had been running in. “I got a shoe that was so perfectly made for my foot, I never had to break it in,” Dixon said. “I could put it on and just run. A lot of people thought I was too fussy, but they changed their mind after I beat them by a half a mile.” Today, Saucony invites runners to its Innovation Lab. “For all the runners we bring in here, we analyze them, but really, we’re learning from them,” White said. “It’s easier to change a shoe than a stride.”


In Vermont, Bronx Players Help Team, but Stir Outcry

Abstract: RUTLAND, Vt. — The basketball team at Mount St. Joseph Academy, a small Catholic high school here, was flailing through its 2009-10 season when its coach got a call from a stranger in New York. Mugsy Leggett, a youth coach and entertainment basketball player, was on the line. He was trying to help a group of talented teenagers he had been coaching who were growing up in and around the notorious Edenwald housing project in the Bronx. He had a proposal: could they come to Vermont and play for Mount St. Joseph, getting a good education along the way? Mark Benetatos, the Rutland coach, was delighted. “We knew that we had to attract kids who wanted to play,” he said. “We didn’t care where they were from.” And so four boys from the Bronx arrived in September 2010 and a fifth a few months later, moving in with host families in this faded city of 16,500 and enrolling at a school that, with only 95 students, was barely afloat. Quickly, the basketball team was transformed, notching a record of 16-7 for the 2010-11 season, a stunning turnaround from the previous year’s 2-18. This season, the Mounties, as the team is known, are 15-1 and sailing toward the state playoffs. But the story of the Bronx boys in Rutland is not a uniformly happy one. Some students and parents are livid about their presence on the team, saying it deprives local players of court time and is an underhanded tactic by Mount St. Joseph to improve its team. This month they beat their archrival, Rutland High School, for the first time in five years, a 62-49 game that drew more fans to Mount St. Joseph’s small gym than it had seen in years. “I’ve never seen that kind of school pride since I’ve been here,” said Matt Sanborn, a junior from Rutland who is captain of the Division 2 team. Though the atmosphere that night was electric, nasty comments have flown on Facebook, at basketball games and elsewhere in town, directed not only at the players, but also at Mr. Benetatos and Cam Gilligan, a local woman who agreed to host four of the boys in a modest brick home here. Racial epithets have been directed at the boys, all five of whom are black, as well as taunts like “Go back to New York.” One hometown player has transferred to Rutland High, and other students have threatened to leave. On the Web site of the state’s largest newspaper, The Burlington Free Press, anonymous comments on a sports blog underscore the tensions, with heated debates over whether the Bronx players deserve to be there or are “imports” who have “pushed aside” local boys. “You could say they feel the team is cheating,” Shannon Murray, one of the Bronx players, said the morning after the team’s victory against Rutland. “They don’t understand that it’s all 10 of us that make the team win,” said Jaskin Melendez, a quiet senior also from the Bronx. Matt Sanborn’s older brother, Tyler, who played on the team and is now at Georgetown University, wrote a letter to The Rutland Herald last month taking the critics to task. “Are there good people that will come to the side of these young men and recognize their record of good citizenship?” he wrote. “Or will those that bark about ‘local kids’ and ‘imports’ be the only ones heard in this city?” The team members say they are all exceedingly close — “We started as strangers and ended up family,” Shannon said — and are countering the attacks with actions instead of words. “We get back at them playing on the court and performing on the court,” Matt said. “We’ve kind of held each other accountable to that.” To Paolo Zancanaro, the school principal, admitting the boys from the Bronx was about fulfilling the school’s mission, not giving its basketball team a star turn. Alumni and other donors agreed to contribute a portion of the $5,000-a-year tuition for them, plus room and board. “The last line in our mission statement is to create a just world, and we do that through providing opportunity,” Mr. Zancanaro said. “The guys who have come from away, they’ve experienced a lot of stuff in their life; they’ve seen a lot of stuff.” The school, amid the foothills of the Green Mountains, admits students from around the world, Mr. Zancanaro said, including China, Germany, South Korea and Spain this year. Pointing out that Vermont was one of the whitest states in the nation, he added, “The more open the hearts and minds of our students become, the more likely they’ll be catalysts for good.” Ms. Gilligan, a mail carrier whose three grown children attended Mount St. Joseph, said she thought the attacks were especially unfair considering that by coming to Rutland, the boys were escaping a desolate neighborhood and improving their chances in life. The home she shares with four of them is on a rural road across from pastures where sheep and horses graze. “They’re here to be safe,” she said. “It’s not like they purposely came up here to take time away from local kids.” Ms. Gilligan said her own son had lost playing time on the school football team years ago when two skilled players from other Vermont towns enrolled at the school and joined the team. “I told my kid, ‘Just work harder!’ ” she said. “When you get out of Rutland or out of Vermont, this little force field that’s around you, there’s going to be people like this all the time. So you’re not doing your kid a favor by making sure they’ll be the biggest fish in a little pond.” Mr. Leggett, who said he had placed more than 60 boys in high schools outside New York over 25 years of coaching, had assumed that northern New England might be a good place for some of them — quiet, safe and with good schools. He said he was angry about the tensions in Rutland, the likes of which he had not seen in other towns where he had placed players. “I got to the point where I said, ‘I’m not sending no more kids there,’ ” he said. “But I caught myself. I said, ‘That’s what they want me to do.’ ” He added: “Society needs to know that we’re all the same. And they’re not going to stop me from doing that. I’m going to keep sending them there and keep sending them there.” Robert Cassell, who has been accepted at two colleges in New England and is waiting to hear from more, said he did not regret coming to Rutland. “I got away from just a bad environment,” he said. “I was so motivated, and my motivation was just to get out. So I’m happy that I came and everything turned out good and I’m graduating and going to college.” For now, he and the others are focused on Monday night, when they will face Rutland High in a rematch. They will compete in the playoffs after their regular season ends on Feb. 24 and, they hope, capture the state championship for their division. “Everybody just had a goal when they joined the team,” Shannon said. “We made sure we all had the same goal, and that was to win a championship, and that’s why we’re here right now.”

Basketball
Education (K-12)
Bronx (NYC)
Rutland (Vt)
Interscholastic Athletics


Security Forces Show Restraint As Syrian Protests Spread

Abstract: BEIRUT, Lebanon — Thousands of Syrians took to the streets again on Friday in virtually every region of the country, but in some locales, Syrian security forces showed restraint in not firing on the demonstrations in a possible bid to keep down a death toll that has brought growing international pressure and strained relations with Syria ’s few allies. For weeks, Fridays have been the bloodiest day in the 10-week uprising against the rule of President Bashar al-Assad , as security forces, seemingly unaccountable in some parts of the country, have killed, wounded and beaten demonstrators. The death toll on Friday was seven: three protesters were killed in the central city of Homs, another three in the Damascus suburb of Qatana and one in the town of Zabadani, and though activists said the number would likely rise, it paled before the dozens killed in past weeks. Whether the degree of restraint was a shift in official policy was unclear. Syrian officials have banned most foreign journalists from operating in the country. But it suggested that Syrian officials were aware of the international pressure that had isolated the government; even Turkey, once one of Syria’s closest allies, has called on it to institute reforms. Turkey’s foreign minister, Ahmet Davutoglu, warned of “a vicious cycle of violence” in an interview this week. “Unfortunately, we are seeing every week, every Friday more people being killed,” he said. Syrian state news media said Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey, who had established a deep personal relationship with Mr. Assad, called him Friday. Group of 8 leaders meeting in Deauville, France, called on Mr. Assad to immediately halt the use of force and intimidation against the protesters and to release all political prisoners. “Only the path of dialogue and fundamental reforms will lead to democracy, and thus to long-term security and prosperity in Syria, they said in a communiqué. “Should the Syrian authorities not heed this call, we will consider further measures.” The leaders discussed the conflict in Syria at length behind closed doors. A European diplomat present at the meetings said there was a general feeling that Mr. Assad’s initial promises of concessions and reform were nothing more than a bid to gain time for him to impose a crackdown on protesters. “We’ve done everything we can to bring Syria back into the international community,” President Nicolas Sarkozy of France said Friday. “But they have taken a big step back, and we no longer have confidence” in Mr. Assad. After erupting spontaneously on March 18 in the southern city of Dara’a, the protests have spread, and activists have sought to improve their organization through local coordinating committees and their tactics, most notably shifting to protests at night, when they believe security forces are more reluctant to fire and may find it harder to identity demonstrators. Activists say their very resilience has demonstrated that the government’s ferocious crackdown — with at least 1,000 dead and more than 10,000 people arrested — will not succeed in quelling the dissent. On Friday, the protests also appeared to spread to upscale neighborhoods in several cities for the first time. Throughout the uprising, the Syrian government has seen the country’s religious minorities, the educated middle class and the business elite as the constituencies that are crucial to prolonging the four decades of rule by the Assad family. Activists reported demonstrations in the capital, Damascus, and its suburb; in Homs and Hama, in central Syria; in Aleppo and Idlib to the northwest; Qamishli and Hasaka to the northeast; Deir al Zour to the east; and villages and towns in the southern steppe of Houran; and the coastal cities of Latakia, Banias and Jableh. Though the numbers still pale before the mass demonstrations in Egypt, Tunisia and Yemen, the locales represent the breadth of the country. The protests in Damascus and Aleppo were reportedly small, and both cities — Syria’s largest — have remained relatively quiet during the uprising. “We will keep our demonstrations until we get our rights,” said one protester in Medan, a neighborhood in Damascus that has seen small demonstrations in past weeks. Like others, he refused to give his name, fearing reprisals. “We want freedom and democracy. No dialogue with Assad’s regime. He should leave or change completely his regime.” The Local Coordination Committees for Syria, an umbrella group that helps organize protests and documents them online, said that the government cut Internet service in the suburbs of Damascus and other cities in central Syria and in the north. In Homs, Syria’s third largest city, activists said that several thousand people demonstrated, chanting “Leave, Bashar, we are free without you,” and “The army and the people are one hand.” They said that for the first time in weeks, security forces did not open fire at the protesters there. Activists said that demonstrations in Homs spread to the upscale neighborhood of Inshaat. “The movement is growing and becoming bigger with wider participation,” said Abdel Hakeem Bashar, an opposition figure in the coastal city of Latakia. “The regime is in a very narrow corner, and people have broken the barrier of fear for good.” Though demonstrators have sought to maintain a message of national unity, the protests have erupted along sectarian fault lines in the country — sometimes in cities with a Sunni majority and an Alawite minority or in regions with Sunni cities and an Alawite countryside. The specter of sectarian strife has worried many Syrians in a country that remains as diverse as neighboring Iraq and Lebanon, both victims of civil war. Some of the anger in the protests has been directed at Iran, a predominantly Shiite country and Syria’s closest ally. In Albu Kamal, a town near the Iraqi border, protesters burned portraits of Hassan Nasrallah, the leader of Hezbollah, a Shiite Muslim movement in Lebanon that is allied with Iran and Syria. This week, Mr. Nasrallah delivered a speech urging Syrians to support their government, angering many activists there. Syrian security forces killed four antigovernment protesters during a demonstration on Thursday night in the southern village of Dael, residents and activists said. Last Friday at least 67 people died, according to the Local Coordination Committees. It was the third highest number of casualties on a single day since the uprising began.

Middle East and North Africa Unrest (2010- )


Kerry’s Blunt Words for Israel Denounced by Lawmakers in Both Parties

Abstract: Secretary of State John Kerry’s rebuke of the Israeli government on Wednesday set off a wave of criticism from lawmakers in both parties. Republicans denounced what they said was the Obama administration’s harsh treatment of a steadfast ally and Democrats signaled that they were uneasy with Mr. Kerry’s pressure on Israel, even as they praised the effort to promote Middle East peace. In Europe, however, Mr. Kerry’s speech was greeted warmly, with officials calling it a courageous and thoughtful effort to salvage the idea of a two-state solution for the Israelis and Palestinians. Still, across the Arab world, his harsh words for Israel were met with a collective shrug, coming at the end of eight years of Obama administration policies that left many in the Middle East frustrated. On Capitol Hill, hours after Mr. Kerry used what may be his last major address to bluntly inform the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, that “friends need to tell each other the hard truths,” he received a reminder of the deep support Israel enjoys in an otherwise sharply divided Congress. “While he may not have intended it, I fear Secretary Kerry, in his speech and action at the U.N., has emboldened extremists on both sides,” said Senator Chuck Schumer, the incoming Senate Democratic leader. A bipartisan chorus of lawmakers, upset with President Obama’s decision last week to allow the passage of a United Nations resolution condemning Israel’s construction of settlements in disputed territory, made clear that they were looking past the departing administration. Senator Benjamin L. Cardin of Maryland, the top Democrat on the Foreign Relations Committee, said he shared Mr. Kerry’s concerns “with the lack of forward progress on a two-state solution.” But Mr. Cardin also said he was unhappy that Mr. Obama had not vetoed the United Nations resolution, instead abstaining from the vote. He pledged to “explore congressional action that can mitigate the negative implications” of it. The most ardent supporters of Israel in Congress seemed just as liberated as Mr. Kerry was to let loose. “Secretary Kerry’s speech today was at best a pointless tirade in the waning days of an outgoing administration,” said Senator John McCain, Republican of Arizona. “At worst, it was another dangerous outburst that will further Israel’s diplomatic isolation and embolden its enemies.” Representative Eliot L. Engel of New York, the top Democrat on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, called Mr. Kerry’s speech “gratuitous” and “wrong.” “There doesn’t seem any purpose to this other than to embarrass Israel,” Mr. Engel said. “It just pained me to watch it.” Democratic members of Congress who are closer to Mr. Kerry, a former senator, and the Obama administration were more measured. Many had been angered by Mr. Netanyahu’s decision last year to accept an invitation from the Republican-led House to deliver a speech in the Capitol, where he confronted the president over the Iran nuclear accord. Yet even these Democrats — eyeing the arrival of a Republican administration-in-waiting that has vowed strong support for Israel — left little doubt that they were parting ways with Mr. Obama on the substance of the United Nations resolution. Senator Bill Nelson of Florida, who is facing re-election in 2018, said he knew why Mr. Kerry was frustrated over the settlements, which he called an “impediment toward a negotiated two-state solution.” But he was quick to note that he was among the 88 senators who signed a letter months ago opposing the sort of United Nations resolution on Israel that the Security Council approved last week. In France, Britain and Germany, Mr. Kerry’s speech was greeted with more full-throated support. Senator Nathalie Goulet, vice president of the Foreign Affairs Committee in the French Senate, said Mr. Kerry “is right, he is absolutely right.” “The more there are settlements,” she said, “the less it is likely there will be a two-state solution. But nobody ever dares condemn Israel. There is a double standard that nourishes the propaganda of the terrorists.” In a statement, the German foreign minister, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, praised Mr. Kerry’s speech as a “passionate and deeply convincing” defense of “the only credible way” to solve the issue: a two-state solution. British officials said they regarded Mr. Kerry’s speech as a thoughtful summary of longstanding British and European concerns about the direction of Israeli politics. Britain and France, both members of the Security Council, voted for the resolution on settlements, and France has been extremely active in pressing for a kind of peace conference, to which the Israelis have objected. In the Arab world, analysts said the Obama administration should have spoken out sooner. “At the last five minutes of the hour, apparently Kerry and Obama are showing some courage to stand up to Israel, but it is coming too late in the game,” said Abdulkhaleq Abdulla, a professor of political science in the United Arab Emirates. “It is after the fact. They should have shown this amount of political courage four years ago, if not eight years ago.” But the Palestinian issue today is not as central as it once was in the wider Arab consciousness. “Arab countries have sociopolitical problems that trump the Palestinian cause,” said Ziad A. Akl, a senior researcher at the Ahram Center for Political and Strategic Studies in Cairo.

US Foreign Policy
UN
Palestinians
Israeli settlement
John Kerry
Benjamin Netanyahu
US Politics
Israel


Ambassador Crocker Sees Fraught Foreign Landscape Ahead

Abstract: KABUL, Afghanistan — The American diplomat most associated with the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan says that American policy makers need to learn the lessons of the recent past as they weigh military options for the future, including for Syria and Iran: ¶ Remember the law of unintended consequences. ¶ Recognize the limits of the United States’ actual capabilities. ¶ Understand that getting out of a conflict once you are in can often be dangerous and as destructive for the country as the original conflict. “You better do some cold calculating, you know, about how do you really think you are going to influence things for the better,” said Ryan C. Crocker , 63, the departing ambassador to Afghanistan and one of the pre-eminent American diplomats of the past 40 years. Even as he retires fighting an exhausting illness, Mr. Crocker cannot help keeping his mind at work on the crisis spots that have defined his career — in Pakistan and Afghanistan, Iran and Syria, Iraq and Lebanon. Mr. Crocker, a wiry, intense man who for years was a dedicated distance runner, is retiring at the end of July after a career that began as the last American troops were leaving Vietnam and is ending as the curtain closes on an era of American state-building that has mostly fallen short of the results policy makers had hoped for. In Iraq, the dream of a peaceful and democratic ally in the Arab world is giving way to a renewal of violence and an authoritarian government that lists toward Iran. In Afghanistan, the future is uncertain and hangs on dozens of “ifs” — if the elections are fair enough, if the Afghan security forces can fight off insurgents, if the government can become self-sufficient. In the years ahead, Mr. Crocker sees, if anything, an increasingly fraught foreign landscape in a world set afire by war and revolution, a chapter bound to frustrate the best intentions and most sophisticated strategies of the United States. Although he speaks Arabic and has spent a lifetime immersed in the Arab world and Afghanistan, Mr. Crocker is deeply skeptical that Americans on foreign soil can be anything other than strangers in a strange land. “We’re a superpower, we don’t fight on our territory, but that means you are in somebody else’s stadium, playing by somebody else’s ground rules, and you have to understand the environment, the history, the politics of the country you wish to intervene in,” he said. Although publicly Mr. Crocker has sometimes presented the glass as half-full when assessing the situation in foreign countries, fellow diplomats say that his private analyses tend to be stark and unromantic — a vision shaped by his 38 years of experience in which he confronted over and over the limits of American power and the hostility of many in the world to what the United States stands for. In 1983, while a political attaché in Lebanon, he was in his office when a delivery truck loaded with explosives slammed into the American Embassy in Beirut, killing 63 people, including 17 Americans. He was one of the first on the scene to walk through the smoldering wreckage looking for his colleagues. A year earlier, in Lebanon, he was the American diplomat who walked through the Sabra and Shatila camps after 800 mostly Muslim refugees were slaughtered there by Christian militias. He used a transmitter to tell his colleagues back in Washington about the carnage around him. In 1998, his residence was attacked while he was ambassador to Syria. Though he was away, his wife, Christine, was inside the house. She has almost always traveled with him, even to war zones, and accompanied him to Baghdad despite the dangers. But she has not been with him in Afghanistan. Most recently in Kabul, Mr. Crocker was in the embassy when it came under siege by suicide bombers armed with rockets who positioned themselves in an unfinished apartment building and shot at the embassy in an attack that lasted 19 hours. With all that in mind, Mr. Crocker, who has a wry sense of humor, is generally leery of predictions in chaotic situations. “You know my hackneyed line — that an extreme-long-range prediction is a week from Thursday,” he said. Mr. Crocker, the child of an Air Force family, was born in Spokane, Wash., but spent time growing up in Morocco and Turkey as well as Canada. After obtaining a degree in English literature from Whitman College, he joined the State Department, and the next decade set the pattern of the rest of his life, toggling between service in the Arab world and work in Afghanistan and Pakistan. He started with Persian language training and was sent to Iran, and he then pursued Arabic training, joining the elite ranks of the State Department’s Arabists. He was one of the Arab world specialists in the State Department who expressed deep worry at the Bush administration’s march into Iraq. He and William J. Burns, then special assistant to the secretary of state, prepared a secret memorandum in 2002 examining the risks associated with an American invasion. Titled “The Perfect Storm,” it reportedly outlined a possible situation in which ousting Saddam Hussein would unleash long-suppressed sectarian and ethnic anger and draw the regional players — Saudi Arabia, Syria and Iran — into the violent brew. The analysis described with striking accuracy the disintegration of Iraqi society that came to pass. In 2007, Mr. Crocker was nominated as ambassador to Iraq to fix the deadly and chaotic situation. He worked hand in hand with the new American military commander, Gen. David H. Petraeus, in what became a remarkable partnership of two men with deeply different backgrounds. They were both sold on the need for a surge of American troops there, and convinced that the United States had a responsibility after entering Iraq not to abandon it to a worsening whirlwind of sectarian violence. In Iraq, and later in Afghanistan, Mr. Crocker managed to build trust with difficult political leaders with precarious holds on power. When Mr. Crocker arrived in Afghanistan a year ago, President Hamid Karzai was angry and alienated about what he felt was disrespect by American and other international officials over his troubled 2009 re-election, among other things. Mr. Crocker, who had known him since 2002, was able to persuade him of the benefits of a strategic partnership agreement with the United States, a vital step for the Americans toward an eventual military withdrawal, despite extensive lobbying against the deal from neighboring Iran and Pakistan. He noted how struck he was by reports that even though many members of the Afghan grand council meeting to decide on the strategic partnership had been paid off to vote against it, primarily by Iran, the council decided to approve it anyway. “What basically happened is they pocketed the money and voted the way they wanted to,” he said, with a touch of admiration. “Intimidation doesn’t really work terribly well with most Afghans.” Beneath Mr. Crocker’s rigorous analysis is a feeling for those who are vulnerable, including ordinary people who in fiery parts of the world are too often collateral damage. As he contemplated the widening violence in Syria he sounded sober, even bleak. “I worry greatly that the minorities, the Alawis and the Christians, are going to be in for a very awful time,” he said, adding that he fears as well that if Muslim hard-liners take over, “the repercussions for Syria, for Lebanon and Iraq, I think, can be pretty serious.” As for the United States’ ability to sway the situation, he was again reflective. “We’ve been writing memos to policy makers with the subject line ‘Levers on Syria’ for decades,” he said. “Well, you know, the reality was those levers didn’t exist.” Now, he added: “I’m not sure we can do much to influence it.”

Diplomatic Service Embassies and Consulates

United States Defense and Military Forces


Saving College Park Prairie, and Planting New Ones

Abstract: HOUSTON — Just south of here, past the oil refineries and wedged between two housing subdivisions, is one of the most endangered ecosystems on the planet — a coastal prairie. At the College Park Prairie, Jaime González, community education director of the Katy Prairie Conservancy , clips the withering blossoms from rough coneflowers, now rich with seeds. All around him, prairie plants are thriving. Bright purple prairie blazing stars and spiny white rattlesnake masters mix with tall grasses and yellow black-eyed Susans across the 53-acre prairie. Mr. González’s mission — and that of a group of other conservators — is to transplant the seeds to the heart of Houston, into “pocket prairies,” or gardens of native foliage that range from a few square feet to several acres. Pocket prairies have popped up all over Houston as part of an initiative to beautify the city while also preserving the native plants that thrived in Harris County before it became a sprawling, concrete landscape. “What we try to do is replicate some of the structure and function of a native prairie,” Mr. González said. “We’re trying to create something to scale in an urban environment with the right collection of flowers and grasses to give butterflies and birds a place to lay their eggs and get food.” The pocket prairies have grown in popularity since Texas’ devastating drought. Mr. González said Houstonians were looking for ways to beautify the landscape without much watering. The low watering requirement is just one reason Hermann Park intends to install its third pocket prairie. “Prairies are one of our most endangered ecosystems,” said Diane Kerr, the manager of volunteer programs at Hermann Park. “The grasses are significant to a lot of habitats. Putting in native grasses benefits the area by bringing in color and wildlife.” The pocket prairies are financed by landowners, not the city, but officials have supported the program. Ed Gonzalez, a Houston city councilman, has also asked business owners to incorporate “parklets” — similar to pocket prairies — at storefronts and office buildings. Not everyone is excited about planting tall grasses in the city. Many view prairie plants as weeds or fear the tall grasses could hide snakes. Jaime González said some police officials had expressed concerns that criminals could use the prairies to hide bodies. “We have to do some myth busting,” he said. “We have to be very upfront with these efforts to lead public tours of these grasslands and demystify them for people.” But perhaps the biggest hurdle is preserving the few large biodiverse prairies that act as seed banks for the others, like College Park Prairie, which could soon be mowed down and replaced with a housing subdivision. To save it, advocates must raise an initial payment of $250,000 by Nov. 1. “When it’s gone, we can’t replace it,” said Marc Reid, the coordinator of Save College Park Prairie . “And if we don’t have those genetics, we can’t restore or reconstruct other prairies.”

Texas
Flowers and Plants
Gardens and Gardening
Grass


After Clunkers Program, Auto Sales Are Slow Again

Abstract: DETROIT — After two frenzied months during the government’s cash-for-clunkers program, new-vehicle sales in the United States retreated in September to levels seen earlier this year, automakers said Thursday. General Motors said its sales declined 45 percent, and Chrysler reported a 42 percent drop from September 2008. September was the second-worst month of the year for the auto industry, with a seasonally adjusted selling rate only slightly higher than February. “Floor traffic was lousy all month,” Mark LaNeve, G.M.’s vice president of United States sales, said in a conference call with reporters and analysts. “Every brand, every region of the country — it was a real post-clunker hangover. It was disappointing. I expected the month to be a bit stronger, but it just wasn’t.” Sales were down 20 percent at Honda , 13 percent at Toyota and 7 percent at Nissan. The Ford Motor Company , which has been gaining market share both from new models and by surviving without a government rescue or bankruptcy, said its sales declined just 5 percent last month. For the entire third quarter, sales by Ford ’s three domestic brands rose 5 percent, the company’s first quarterly increase in four years. “I’ve never seen a roller coaster like this,” said Ken Czubay, Ford’s vice president of United States sales, service and marketing. “It was a breathtaking quarter, and it really put the Ford plan to the test. But instead of leaving us vulnerable to the peaks and valleys of the third quarter, our broad, balanced product line delivered sales and share gains from all corners.” The best news for the month came from Hyundai, which has been gaining momentum throughout the recession . Hyundai said its sales rose 27 percent in September. Total industry sales fell 23 percent from a year ago and 41 percent from August, when the cash-for-clunkers program was halted after it ran out of money. “We believe the remainder of 2009 will continue to be a challenge for the U.S. automotive market,” said Peter Fong, the head of Chrysler’s sales organization. “Credit markets have thawed slightly but still remain tight, and consumer confidence, as we saw in September, is tenuous.” The good news for automakers is that the market is no longer deteriorating, though it is not improving very quickly. Also, the clunkers program cleared out inventories at many dealerships, leading G.M., Ford and other manufacturers to increase production at some plants and call back thousands of laid-off workers to their assembly lines. The depleted stocks hindered sales at many dealers in September but left the automakers in a better position to compete and make profitable sales in the months ahead. “Where we are at now is pretty much where we were before clunkers,” said Jesse Toprak, the vice president of industry trends and insights at TrueCar.com , a Web site that tracks automotive sales and pricing. “We hit the bottom — now we can safely say because it’s been a while — back in February. But now we’re struggling to jump-start the industry.” The surprisingly popular clunkers program resulted in nearly 700,000 sales in July and August, a welcome respite for dealers whose showrooms were nearly empty all winter and spring. The program gave credits of up to $4,500 to consumers who traded in an older, inefficient vehicle and bought a new one with a higher fuel-economy rating. Some of those purchases most likely would have been made in future months even without the clunkers program, but automakers say many of those who took part in the program typically buy used cars instead of new ones. Analysts expect sales to improve for the rest of the year, and the drastic declines at the end of 2008 mean the industry will probably begin posting positive numbers in year-over-year comparisons. A slowly improving economy suggests that demand for new vehicles will rise in the months ahead, though 2010 is not expected to be significantly better. “While it’s going to be a tough road here over the next 12 or 18 months, we’re certainly moving in the right direction,” said George Magliano, director of auto industry research at IHS Global Insight. At G.M., which is eliminating four of its eight brands as part of its postbankruptcy restructuring, sales for the four brands that will remain — Buick, Cadillac, Chevrolet and GMC — were down 41 percent in September. Sales for the four brands being cut — Hummer, Pontiac, Saab and Saturn — were down 67 percent. On Wednesday, G.M.’s deal to sell Saturn to Penske Automotive fell apart when the company from which Penske planned to buy future Saturn models rejected the plan. G.M. said it planned to stop building Saturn vehicles and to wind down the brand and its 350 dealerships. G.M. said Saturn stores had about 12,000 vehicles in inventory, roughly enough to last four more months.


Jockey Club Has Plan to Attract New Fans to Horse Racing

Abstract: SARATOGA SPRINGS, N.Y. — The Jockey Club, acknowledging that the audience for horse racing is in steep decline, announced Sunday a multimillion dollar campaign to increase television coverage and create a racing series to be accompanied by a free-to-play Web site for picking races as well as a social-network game. The campaign will cost $10 million over five years, and the Jockey Club is in discussions with NBC to create a series around next spring’s Triple Crown prep races, according to a person with knowledge of the discussions who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not approved to speak publicly. The television component, announced at the annual Jockey Club Round Table, is among a wide-ranging list of recommendations offered in a report by the management consulting firm McKinsey & Company. The report’s findings were withering: over the past decade, betting is down 37 percent, attendance is down 30 percent, and starts per horse and race days are each down 14 percent. “Distribution is too limited — particularly for reaching new fans — and in our view, no other major sport has lost control of its distribution to the extent that racing has,” said Dan Singer, a director in media and entertainment at McKinsey. “The exposure of racing on television is at a low point: there are 43 hours of horse racing on national TV in 2011, compared with 175 hours in 2003. Poker, by contrast, built up to over 150 hours of first-run coverage per year, and even pro bowling will have 92 hours of coverage in 2011.” Ten years ago, Singer said, 9 percent of new racing fans said they discovered the sport on TV. “In contrast, virtually no recent fans that we surveyed identified television as the source of their interest in racing,” he said. The report also called for an industrywide streamlining of racing, with fewer and higher-quality races, more innovative wagering platforms, and more stringent medication rules and severe punishment for those who violate them. Only 46 percent of racing fans would recommend the sport to others, according to the report, compared with 82 percent for baseball fans, 81 percent for football fans and 55 percent for poker players. Horse racing fans are almost twice as likely to recommend baseball (81 percent), football (73 percent) or basketball (77 percent) to others. “Perceptions among core fans that rule violators are not sanctioned quickly, uniformly, or severely enough create cynicism and contribute to their reluctance to recommend the sport to others,” the report concluded. James L. Gagliano, the Jockey Club’s president and chief operating officer, said: “We now have in our possession a comprehensive and clearly defined strategy for growth. When the initiatives you heard about today have progressed from recommendation to reality, you will see sustainable growth for thoroughbred racing and breeding.”

Horse Racing
Jockey Club Incorporated (The)
National Broadcasting Co
Triple Crown (Horse Racing)
Television
McKinsey & Co


2 Koreas Agree on Aid to North and Trains Across Border

Abstract: SEOUL, South Korea , Nov. 17 — The prime ministers of North and South Korea have announced a significant package of economic projects to help rebuild the North’s broken economy and ease military tension on the divided peninsula by increasing traffic across the demilitarized zone. At the end of three days of talks here on Friday, North Korea ’s prime minister, Kim Yong-il, and his South Korean counterpart, Han Duck-soo, agreed to start cross-border freight-train service for the first time in more than half a century, scheduling the first, highly symbolic crossing a week before South Korea holds presidential elections on Dec. 19. Then, starting in the first half of 2008, fishing boats from the two Koreas will work together, the prime ministers said, in the same frontier waters where their navies engaged in a bloody skirmish in 2002. Also, the North will relocate its warships from Haeju, a naval base near the border, to make room for South Korean cargo ships and a new industrial complex to be built there by South Korean investors. Construction is to begin as early as next year. “These projects will chip away at the DMZ,” said Koh Yu-hwan, an expert on North Korea at Dongguk University in Seoul. “They are steppingstones toward what we hope will become a confederation of the two Koreas before eventual reunification.” The economic projects will cost South Korea $11.1 billion to $15.8 billion, according to Kim Young-yoon, a researcher at the government-run Korea Institute for National Unification. The two government leaders have huddled in Seoul since Wednesday to advance the rapprochement generated by a summit meeting in early October and the North’s decision to disable its nuclear weapons facilities. At the October meeting, President Roh Moo-hyun and the North Korean leader, Kim Jong-il , called for negotiations on a peace treaty that would formally end the state of war between their countries. The meeting this week was free of the kind of haggling common in Korean negotiations. Analysts said the two sides were bonded by a common desire to influence the December presidential election by strengthening South Korean liberals, who favor reconciliation and investment for the impoverished North. For North Korea, the talks provided a last opportunity to win major investment commitments from the South before Mr. Roh’s liberal government steps down in February. Some analysts noted that the meeting was significant for avoiding direct discussion of North Korea’s nuclear weapons, the focus of international sanctions. “It is really disappointing to the international community that the prime ministers of the two Koreas meet for the first time in 15 years, but their agreements didn’t raise a peep about North Korea’s nuclear weapons programs, a major international security threat,” said Nam Joo-hong, a North Korea expert at Kyonggi University.

South Korea
North Korea
Kim Yong Il
Han Duck-soo
Kim Jong Il
Roh Moo Hyun
Economic Conditions and Trends
International Relations


Too Risqué for New York City’s Subways? Some Ads Test Limits

Abstract: One image depicts a woman moaning in a passionate embrace. Another shows the eye-catching results of a breast enhancement. A third promotes extra-large condoms. Advertisers have long pushed boundaries with provocative ads to capture the attention of riders in New York’s subway system. But not long ago, one went too far. The company that sells subway ads recently objected to a picture of a pantsless woman with her legs wrapped around a shirtless man. The moving company behind the proposed ad promoted its efforts to protect personal property with the tagline, “Always have protection.” “I’m sorry, but it’s too suggestive,” a representative of the company, Outfront Media, wrote in an email last month rejecting the ad. It is no easy task keeping New York’s trains free of the racy images found elsewhere in the city. With scantily clad bodies lurking around every corner on billboards and magazines, the subway might be one of the last bastions of modesty in public. The advertiser, Dumbo Moving and Storage, hoped the ad would make riders do a double take. The image hints at an intimate encounter without showing it and even promotes a positive message about safe sex, said Lior Rachmany, the company’s chief executive. Image An ad for Dumbo Moving and Storage was deemed too risque to appear in the subways. Credit Dumbo Moving and Storage “Obviously it’s kind of intriguing to the eye,” Mr. Rachmany said, “but it’s not too suggestive, if you ask me.” Dean Crutchfield, a senior vice president at Sterling Brands, a brand consulting firm, said the moving company ad clearly depicted sexual activity and had nothing to do with the business. “Sex does sell, but does it sell a moving service?” Mr. Crutchfield said. “I would have to question whether that is appropriate.” The state-run Metropolitan Transportation Authority says it is trying to maintain a family-friendly environment for passengers young and old. The authority’s ad space has long been a battleground for clashes over decency. The governor’s office complained last year about the breast enhancement ad, citing a report in The Daily News that compared it to a strip club billboard, and asked the agency to review its standards. In 2010, the authority removed a Georgi Vodka ad showing a woman’s bikini-clad bottom from some city buses after Hasidic leaders in Brooklyn complained. And it created new rules for ads in the 1990s because of a Calvin Klein underwear campaign that appeared to show under-age models in sultry poses. The transportation authority has also faced broader challenges over its ads and criticism about limiting free speech. One group, the American Freedom Defense Initiative, sued the agency when it declined to run a controversial ad about jihad and when its advertising partner rejected an ad about a proposed mosque near the World Trade Center site. Image An ad for breast augmentation surgery. Credit Michael Appleton for The New York Times Among the authority’s list of banned items: violent images that could scare children, material that could “incite or provoke violence,” and ads for escort services and tobacco products. Then there is the provision about depicting sexual activities in an offensive manner, which leaves room for interpretation. An ad on the F train has an image of a movie poster depicting the face of a woman in the throes of ecstasy next to the caption, “The heart wants, the flesh takes.” At least one rider sitting near the ad on a recent morning said it seemed inappropriate for children. “I glanced at it from the side of my eye, but I didn’t really care to read it,” said the passenger, Tara Griffiths, 21, a student at St. John’s University in Queens. “It reminds me of ‘Fifty Shades of Grey.’ ” Another rider, Adrienne Wolfe, 40, of Brooklyn, said she had seen more explicit ads on television. “That’s not very racy,” she said. “You see it all the time.” Steward Johnson, 25, a consultant who lives in Midtown Manhattan, was more concerned with the name appearing alongside the image: “Bill de Blasio, Mayor.” The ad promoted the city’s “Made in NY” effort supporting local film production. “It probably isn’t smart for the mayor to have his name plastered on an advertisement such as this,” Mr. Johnson said with a laugh. In another car, there were ads in English and Spanish for free “Kyng” size condoms from the city’s health department, part of a continuing public service campaign to promote safe sex. Mr. Rachmany of Dumbo Moving argues that those ads are more explicit than his because they refer directly to sex. Image An image with the caption “The heart wants, the flesh takes” appears in an ad for the city’s “Made in NY” effort supporting local film production. Credit Sam Hodgson for The New York Times His company submitted three ads as part of its protection-themed campaign: the couple touching amid moving boxes, a father clad in industrial goggles changing a diaper, and a man pleading for help from the Mafia. He moved forward with the other two. The authority reviewed its standards after the request by Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo’s office last year. While it did not result in a formal policy change, officials have worked with advertisers to “come up with a compelling advertising message in a somewhat less explicit way,” Adam Lisberg, a spokesman for the agency, said, adding a comment over the cleavage controversy The News brought about. “The irony, of course, is that the newspaper which first raised the alarm about the breast augmentation ads runs far more explicit advertisements in their own pages,” said Mr. Lisberg, a former City Hall bureau chief for The News. “So trying to keep a family-friendly public environment in New York City can be challenging.” Some think the authority may be too cautious. Jason Dorsey, the chief strategy officer at the Center for Generational Kinetics, which studies marketing to young people, said the message was not harmful. “We think it’s always good for millennials to be reminded about being safe, even if it’s under the guise of a moving company trying to stand out,” he said. Mr. Rachmany readily admits he was seeking to drive sales. He still wanted to use the image, so he has splashed it on the side of a few moving trucks. “We’re always going to push the envelope,” he said.


China’s Currency Didn’t Really Drop, Despite Jitters Over Trump

Abstract: HONG KONG — Donald J. Trump has irritated China even before taking office as president, with criticism of the country’s trade and currency practices and an unexpected phone call with the president of Taiwan. For a few hours on Tuesday, it looked to some as if China had struck back. Data services widely available to the public showed that the country’s currency, the renminbi, had been sharply devalued as China slept. Such a move would roil global markets and drastically escalate economic tensions between Beijing and the incoming administration. And because China tightly controls the value of its currency, such a sharp and sudden move would be no accident. But no deliberate devaluation took place. Instead, the culprit was a technical problem. Concerns are already high that slowing economic growth and persistent capital outflows are putting pressure on Beijing to let its currency weaken. The renminbi mainly trades onshore in China during normal business hours — and it does not trade overnight, when the supposedly big devaluation took place. A basic Google search — and data published by XE.com, one of the world’s most popular currency websites — appeared to show early Tuesday that the renminbi had suddenly fallen more than 8 percent. The data quickly drew attention from the news media. At a published value of around 7.48 per dollar, China’s currency looked to have retreated in a flash to its weakest level since 2007. Both Google Finance and XE appear to have used erroneous data. It was unclear what pricing sources were in play, but on Monday, ICAP, a foreign currency broker based in London, published errant quotes for renminbi-to-dollar exchange rates. Detailed price data carried by Bloomberg and Reuters showed ICAP on Tuesday morning as quoting the renminbi at higher than 7.4 per dollar. The actual market rate at the time was about 6.86 per dollar. What the Renminbi Chart Should Look Like A sudden drop in the Chinese currency’s value seems to have been caused by a technical issue, not manipulation. “Not a tradable price,” said Stephen Innes, a senior currency trader at Oanda in Singapore, said of the conspicuously weak renminbi rate. “It looks like little more than an error.” XE updated its data after several hours to remove the anomalous quotes, and by late afternoon in Asia, Google had, too . “We have a wide array of upstream data sources, several of which provided rates which our algorithms interpreted as a genuine movement” in the renminbi, XE said in a statement. “We have confirmed with our upstream providers that these were inaccurate and have adjusted our rates accordingly.” Google declined to comment, and ICAP did not respond to requests for comment. The related rates for offshore renminbi, which trades around the clock, were unfazed on Tuesday. Errant price quotes are not unheard-of in financial markets. A snag last month caused Google and XE to sharply overvalue the Bahraini dinar to the dollar, prompting corrections and an apology from XE. Slowing economic growth is adding to expectations that the renminbi will weaken, prompting Beijing to clamp down on persistent capital outflows . And Mr. Trump’s frequent criticisms of China’s currency policies — despite being outdated or sometimes incorrect — have heightened concerns about the value of the renminbi. Over the weekend, Mr. Trump departed from American policy by taking a phone call from Taiwan’s president, a measure that could signal he intends to broadly redefine his nation’s relationship with China. Mr. Trump took to Twitter on Sunday to reiterate his criticism of Beijing’s currency policy, saying: “Did China ask us if it was OK to devalue their currency?” Hours later, the seemingly sudden drop in the renminbi appeared to some like a direct retaliation. “What is interesting is how plausible the world found this scenario, like just waiting for the shoe to drop,” said Christopher Balding , an associate professor of finance at the Peking University HSBC School of Business in Shenzhen, China. Mr. Balding cited the downward pressures that have been building on the Chinese currency in the face of outflows, as citizens and companies rush to get their renminbi offshore and convert it into more international currencies, like the dollar. “Trump just exacerbates all these things, raising the nervousness of an already jittery situation,” he said.

Protectionism
Currency
China
Donald Trump
Renminbi,Yuan