Italy’s Treatment of Jews in World War II Is Reconsidered

Abstract: Italians took everything from Ursula Korn Selig’s family during World War II, including a hotel the family owned on the Riviera and the money they carried after fleeing Germany’s persecution of Jews in 1938. Italians also saved her family from almost certain death in Nazi concentration camps, Mrs. Selig said, hiding them in a succession of secret shelters in Italy between 1938 and 1944, often at the risk of the Italians’ own lives. The two faces Italy displayed toward Jewish citizens and refugees just before and during World War II have become the focus of recent historical research that both undermines that country’s wartime image as a nation of benign captors, and rekindles memories of heroic Italian individuals. Mrs. Selig, 85, who has lived in Manhattan since 1950, offered her double-edged testimony after a panel discussion on the new scholarship at the Museum of Jewish Heritage , in Battery Park City, on Wednesday evening — days before Jews commemorate Kristallnacht, the night of deadly attacks by German Nazis in November 1938. The new findings contradict the conventional belief that Italians began to enforce anti-Semitic laws only after German troops occupied the country in 1943, and then reluctantly. In a spate of studies, many of them based on a little-publicized Italian government report commissioned in 1999, researchers have uncovered a vast wartime record detailing a systematic disenfranchisement of Italy’s Jews, beginning in the summer of 1938, shortly before the Kristallnacht attacks in November. That year, Mussolini’s Fascist government forbade Jewish children to attend public or private schools, ordered the dismissal of Jews from professorships in all universities, and banned Jews from the civil service and military as well as the banking and insurance industries. Ilaria Pavan, a scholar at the Scuola Normale Superiore in Pisa, said a series of incrementally more onerous laws in 1939 and 1940 revoked peddlers’ permits and shopkeepers’ licenses, and required Jewish owners of businesses — as well as stock or bond holders — to sell those assets to “Aryans.” Bank accounts were ordered turned over to government authorities, ostensibly to prevent the transfer of money out of the country. There is little record of the sums involved in the confiscations and forced sales of Jewish-held property between 1938 and 1943, said Ms. Pavan, who was a member of the official government commission charged with investigating the anti-Semitic plundering. But between 1943 and 1945, when the Italian government was under the direct supervision of German overseers, the looting of property of Jewish Italian citizens and Jewish refugees who had fled to Italy in hopes of sanctuary, she said, totaled almost $1 billion in today’s values. After the war, encouraged in part by Italy’s American occupiers, Italians embraced a spirit of national reconciliation that “allowed the construction of a sanitized collective memory,” said Alessandro Cassin, the publishing director of the Centro Primo Levi , a research institute in Manhattan that promotes the study of Italian Jewish history, and that organized the panel discussion. The whitewash was possible, in part, because by comparison with the horrors inflicted by Nazi Germany, the Italian government was “not as lethal,” said Guri Schwarz, an adjunct professor at the University of Pisa. It did not sanction physical abuse of Jewish citizens, did not execute anyone in the internment camps established for Jews in southern Italy, and did not begin to send Jews to Nazi concentration camps until the German occupation in 1943, he said. Of the 45,000 Jews counted in Mussolini’s census of 1938, about 8,000 died in Nazi camps. About 7,000 managed to flee. About 30,000 lived in hiding before being liberated by Allied troops, Mr. Schwarz said. One of those hiding was Mrs. Selig, who was among about 100 people in the audience for the discussion on Wednesday. “It is a very complex situation,” she said, when asked afterward about her feelings toward wartime Italy and Italians. Thirteen years old when her family fled Berlin and settled in northern Italy in 1938, she said her experience in Italy over the next eight years ran the spectrum from the despair of destitution to the exhilaration of freedom. “They took everything from us,” she said. “My father and mother were quite wealthy when they arrived in Italy. But when they came to the United States after the war, he had to work as a night watchman, and she had to work in the garment district.” On the other hand, as she said during a question-and-answer period after the presentation, “I would not be here if not for Italians. “An Italian woman hid me, an Italian priest put me in a convent where I wore a nun’s habit, and an Italian boy risked his life to bring us food,” she said. Harry Arlin, 83, an audience member who said his family was interned in an Italian camp for several years, also stood to describe his experiences, saying, “If the Italians hadn’t taken us to their camp, we would have been sent to the German’s camp, and we would have been killed.” Michele Sarfatti, the author of several books on Italian Fascist anti-Semitism, said a higher portion of Italy’s Jews survived the war than their counterparts in most other European countries. But Italian culpability for the persecution of Jews remains relatively unknown, and largely unacknowledged by Italians, Professor Pavan said. “People were made destitute, people were turned into ghostly nonentities in their own country,” she said. “This is also true.”

Jews and Judaism
Holocaust and the Nazi Era
Museum of Jewish Heritage
Italy


A Mission Goes Off Course

Abstract: Whenever the mortgage finance giants, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac , find themselves in a tough spot — and boy, are they in a tough spot now! — they always seem to find a way to blame their problems on “the mission.” “We exist to expand affordable housing,” says Fannie Mae on its Web site, and although it also lists its other mission — providing liquidity for the American housing market — it is the former that has long been the companies’ trump card. That mission of creating affordable housing is the reason that Alan Greenspan, the former Federal Reserve chairman, could testify, year after year, that Fannie and Freddie had become so large, and took so much risk, that they could one day damage the nation’s financial system — only to be utterly ignored by the same members of Congress who otherwise hung on his every word. The mission is why Representative Barney Frank, the powerful, and usually clear-eyed, chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, will defend Fannie and Freddie even now, when their misdeeds are so clear. The mission is why the two companies were able to run roughshod over their regulator for years, and why the Bush administration was unable to rein them in, even after an accounting scandal. The mission is why their two chief executives, Daniel Mudd at Fannie and Richard Syron at Freddie, could take home a combined $30 million last year, while presiding over one of the great financial disasters of all time, posting billions of dollars in losses with no end in sight. Thus it was that a few weeks ago, Mr. Syron gave an interview to The Boston Globe that was at once astonishing and completely predictable. The day before, my colleague, Charles Duhigg, had written a devastating story in The New York Times, describing how Mr. Syron, shortly after becoming the C.E.O. of Freddie Mac in 2004, had been warned by David A. Andrukonis, then the company’s risk officer, that that Freddie Mac was buying loans that “would likely pose an enormous financial and reputational risk to the company and the country.” The article continued: “Mr. Syron was also warned that the firm needed to expand its capital cushion, but instead its safety net shrank. Mr. Syron was told to slow the firm’s mortgage purchases. Instead, they accelerated.” And what was Mr. Syron’s response the next day in The Globe? You guessed it: “If you’re going to take aid to low-income families seriously, then you’re going to make riskier loans,” he said. “We have goals to meet.” As for the claims made by Mr. Andrukonis to The Times, Mr. Syron said that Mr. Andrukonis had “disagreed” with the chief executive’s decision to reorient Freddie Mac “towards the housing mission.” The major source of friction between the two men, he strongly implied, was that Mr. Andrukonis just didn’t care enough about affordable housing. And if you believe that one ...  Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac occupy a complicated place in the nation’s financial system, but the more you understand what they did, the angrier it should make you — especially since it’s likely that you, the taxpayer, will wind up having to pay for their sins. As the two companies continue to post mammoth, multibillion-dollar losses, the Treasury Department is drawing up contingency bailout plans, which will surely include the assumption of hundreds of billions of dollars in potential liabilities. That would be hard enough to swallow if the cause had, in fact, been the companies’ willingness to finance low-interest loans to working-class home buyers. But the real reason was greed. You know that statistic you always hear about how half the nation’s $12 trillion in mortgages is “touched” by Fannie or Freddie? The implication, of course, is that the two companies are the very heart and soul of the nation’s housing market. But the majority of the mortgages in question are ones that are held by Fannie and Freddie as part of their gigantic portfolio of mortgage-backed securities — the same kind of complex derivatives that brought down Bear Stearns and have caused untold pain to most of the big Wall Street firms. Holding those securities has nothing to do with “the mission.” What Fannie and Freddie are supposed to do — their real mission, if you will — is to create liquidity in the housing market. (The affordable housing mission was added to their charters much later.) They do this primarily by buying mortgages from banks, insuring them, and creating mortgage-backed securities that they then sell to Wall Street. With a long-term mortgage, for instance, Wall Street takes on the interest rate risk, but doesn’t have to worry about the risk that homeowners will stop paying their loans. Fannie and Freddie assume that risk. That arrangement gives the banks more capital to make yet more housing loans, and supposedly frees them to continue loaning even when the economy takes a dip. The problem is that while the two companies are still called government-sponsored entities, they are also publicly traded corporations. And for much of the last two decades, they have been hell-bent on growth, the clear goal being to push up their stock prices. “Wrapping” mortgages for banks — you can make money doing that, but you can’t double your earnings every five years, which was the stated goal of the former Fannie Mae chief executive, Franklin Raines. Ah, but if you buy up the mortgage-backed securities yourself, taking on the interest rate risk as well as the credit risk — all the while using your government-sponsored pedigree to borrow at lower rates than your Wall Street competitors — well, then you’ve got a spectacular growth business. And if you’re the C.E.O., with lots of stock options and bonuses based on stock price and profits — as Mr. Raines was — you can put tens of millions of dollars in your pocket, too. The mission? It was little more than a fig leaf that the companies trotted out whenever somebody pointed out the obvious: that its growing portfolio of mortgage-backed securities was dangerous. (Needless to say, Fannie and Freddie insist that affordable housing is their real raison d’être, and object to such characterizations.) Then, in 2003, came the accounting scandal. Fannie Mae had to restate $9 billion in earnings, and Mr. Raines, who had made $90 million during his six years as chief executive, lost his job, replaced by Mr. Mudd, who had been his No. 2. (Mr. Raines never had to give back any of the money, though.) Freddie Mac, its smaller cousin, had to restate about $5 billion in earnings. Its chief was also booted in favor of Mr. Syron, the former executive chairman of the Thermo Electron Corporation. The accounting scandal emboldened their formerly tepid regulator, the Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight, to crack down on the interest rate risk they were taking with their ballooning portfolios. So how did Mr. Mudd and Mr. Syron respond? Did they decide to pull back, take less risk and act as a stabilizing force in the market? Not even close. Like their predecessors, Mr. Mudd and Mr. Syron put their investors — and their bonuses — first, and their mission a distant second. As we are now learning, in 2005 and 2006, the two men plunged their companies headfirst into subprime mortgages — and continued doing so even as the subprime market began to implode. According to Fannie Mae documents obtained by The Washington Post, Mr. Mudd described getting into subprime mortgages as taking a step “towards optimizing our business.” Mr. Syron did the same — as Mr. Duhigg’s article in The Times made clear. The two companies also got heavily into underwriting so-called Alt-A mortgages, which, as the Post article put it, are “often made with no verification of the borrower’s income.” These are the loans that Mr. Syron is now claiming were made to comply with “the mission.” But the mission had nothing to do with it. Fannie and Freddie got involved with subprime mortgages for the same reason as everyone else on Wall Street: they offered higher rates of return than ordinary mortgages. Why? Because they were riskier. As we now all know. You want to know the truth about “the mission?” The country doesn’t even need Fannie and Freddie to help with affordable housing. Several laws mandate that banks reinvest in the communities in which they operate — and that mandate has come to be defined largely as making loans available for affordable housing. Several executives involved in community-based banking told me that Fannie and Freddie actually refused to buy those mortgages — they weren’t profitable enough. (A spokeswoman for Freddie Mac denies this.) With any luck, once we get through this crisis, the country can figure out a better way to provide both liquidity and stability for the housing market without being so reliant on Fannie and Freddie. But for now, given the paralysis in every other sector of the market, the country badly needs Fannie and Freddie to do what they are chartered to do: “wrap” loans so that banks will keep writing mortgages. That’s why Congress recently passed a law that allows Fannie and Freddie to insure mortgages up to nearly $625,500, from the previous limit of $417,000. That’s also why the Treasury is now taking pains to ensure the marketplace that the companies will not go bust, even if it means a government takeover. If Fannie and Freddie were to file for bankruptcy — the fate, frankly, they deserve — the mortgage market (not to mention the entire financial system, just as Mr. Greenspan once predicted) would quite likely freeze up completely. In the midst of the worst housing crisis since the Great Depression, that would be disastrous. All right, so be it, we’ll keep them alive for the greater good of the country, moral hazard be damned. But let’s at least acknowledge that there is something deeply flawed with an arrangement in which the shareholders and executives reap the profits in good times, while the government and the taxpayers absorb the losses when things go awry. At the very least, the companies should stop using the mission as an excuse, and acknowledge they did the wrong things for the wrong reason. Their only mission has been to get rich, and it has hurt us all.

Mortgages
Banks and Banking
Fannie Mae
Freddie Mac


For Panetta, a Crisis in the Home Stretch

Abstract: LONDON — Leon E. Panetta’s final weeklong trip to the old capitals of Europe initially had the feel of a valedictory lap, one that would nurture the trans-Atlantic alliance and give him the chance to dine in the Italy of his heritage. His staff had to insist it was not a junket. But by the time Mr. Panetta, the defense secretary, arrived in Rome on Wednesday, news had broken about the hostage-taking in Algeria as Pentagon officials, frustrated and alarmed, scrambled to get basic information out of Algiers. Mr. Panetta learned of the seizure of the Algerian gas facility after a meeting on Wednesday afternoon with Prime Minister Mario Monti of Italy. He declared it a “terrorist act,” cut short a dinner that night with the Italian defense minister and was up until midnight in his hotel room in briefings. By Thursday, he was overseeing plans to deploy American military cargo planes to ferry French troops and equipment to Mali, where the government of neighboring Algeria said France’s armed intervention was the cause of the abductions. On Friday, he trundled into a hastily scheduled meeting with Prime Minister David Cameron of Britain as snow fell outside 10 Downing Street. “Let’s start with Algeria,” Mr. Cameron said. Earlier, Mr. Panetta inserted language into a set-piece speech on the United States’ relationship with Europe, telling students at King’s College London that “terrorists should be on notice that they will find no sanctuary, no refuge, not in Algeria, not in North Africa, not anywhere.” But the reality is that pursuing those terrorists and any others is now to be the job of the next defense secretary. Chuck Hagel, President Obama’s nominee for the post, is encamped down the corridor from Mr. Panetta’s Pentagon office, preparing for his Jan. 31 confirmation hearings. If Mr. Hagel, 66, is confirmed, Mr. Panetta is likely to exit in mid-February, leaving a NATO meeting later that month in Brussels to his successor. “The time has come for me to go home,” Mr. Panetta told the students in London. Mr. Panetta’s aides say that after nearly a half-century in public service, starting as a first lieutenant in the Army in 1964, Mr. Panetta, 74, is more than ready to retire to his walnut farm in Carmel Valley, Calif. There, he will help his wife, Sylvia , run the Panetta Institute , a public policy organization they founded nearby that works to draw students into public service. He is also likely to make money: in 2008, the year before he became director of the C.I.A., government disclosure forms show that he made more than $1 million speaking, consulting and serving on corporate boards. Despite a mostly sunny disposition and a perch near the top of the Obama administration, Mr. Panetta has lived something of a lonely-guy life in Washington. Image Leon E. Panetta, right, with Philip Hammond, Britain's Secretary of State for Defense, at a news conference in London on Saturday. Credit Jacquelyn Martin/Associated Press Aides say that if he does not have an evening event, he returns to an attic walk-up apartment, heats a can of soup or has chicken picked up from Popeye’s, and watches sports or old movies. (Mr. Panetta could have lived in a larger house on a compound near the State Department, but aides say he did not want to pay the several thousand dollars a month in rent.) Since becoming C.I.A. director in 2009 and then starting as defense secretary in July 2011, Mr. Panetta has commuted nearly every weekend to his home in California. Aides say he would have preferred to retire after his time at the spy agency and to have had the C.I.A.-run raid that killed Osama bin Laden be the final act of a long career. But the White House persuaded him to take over the Pentagon after Robert M. Gates retired as defense secretary in June 2011. In the past 18 months, Mr. Panetta has largely presided over policies set in place before he arrived: the end of the war in Iraq, the drawdown in Afghanistan and the cutting of the defense budget by nearly $500 billion, possibly more, over the next 10 years. He has quietly attended funerals at Arlington National Cemetery for troops killed in war, and on this trip he intends to write about 10 notes by hand to families of the dead. But at the C.I.A., he oversaw a vast expansion of a drone program that killed militants in Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia. Gregarious and profane, Mr. Panetta has become more disciplined in public since his first freewheeling trip as defense secretary to Iraq and Afghanistan in the summer of 2011, when his aides were cleaning up misstatements at nearly every stop. But he returned to his old unleashed ways on Thursday during a talk to soldiers of the 173rd Airborne Brigade Combat Team at the United States Army Garrison Vicenza in northern Italy. “Who the hell needs armor-piercing bullets except you guys in battle?” he said during an off-the-cuff discourse into gun control. Mr. Panetta had saltier words for members of Congress — he served in the House from 1977 to 1993 — who have not reached a budget deal. “People just got to suck it up, and take on some of the risks, and take on some of the challenges,” Mr. Panetta told the troops. “You take the worst risk of all, which is that somebody may shoot you, and you may die. It’s a hell of a risk. All we’re asking our elected leaders is to take a small part of the risk that maybe” they will anger some constituents, he said, “but the fact is, that they’ll be doing what is right for the country.” Mr. Panetta met Saturday with the British defense secretary, Philip Hammond. The crisis will continue, even as he prepares to head home to California. “As I retire from my own career in public service, I recognize that there’s a generational shift under way,” he told the students in London. He called the trans-Atlantic alliance of the United States and Europe “the rock upon which we will build our future security and our prosperity,” then concluded, “The baton now passes to a new generation.”

Leon E Panetta
International relations
Italy
Hostage
Algeria
London


Biden Cancels Campaign Events After His Mother-in-Law Dies

Abstract: Bonny Jean Jacobs, 78, the mother-in-law of Senator Joseph R. Biden Jr. , the Democratic vice-presidential nominee, died Sunday after a long illness, a spokesman for Mr. Biden said. Mr. Biden, of Delaware, has canceled all campaign appearances Monday and Tuesday to be with his wife, Jill Jacobs Biden, and their families. Mrs. Jacobs had been in hospice care in the Philadelphia suburbs, not far from the Bidens’ home in Wilmington, Del. Mrs. Jacobs was the widow of Donald C. Jacobs, a savings and loan executive from Willow Grove, Pa., who died in 1999. Mrs. Jacobs stayed home to raise Jill and her four younger sisters. The couple was married for 50 years. Mr. Biden’s spokesman, David Wade, said a memorial service would be held Tuesday in Abington, Pa. Mr. Biden has not appeared in public since Friday, when he spoke briefly at the deployment ceremony for his son, Beau, a member of the Delaware National Guard who is preparing for a yearlong tour in Iraq. Beau Biden, 39, is the attorney general of Delaware. Mr. Biden was to have appeared on Saturday at a Human Rights Campaign dinner and a fund-raiser in Washington and on Sunday at campaign rallies in Virginia.

Presidential Election of 2008
Biden Joseph R Jr
Deaths (Obituaries)
Jacobs Bonny Jean


With a Pinpoint Sinker, Zach Britton Raises His Cy Young Award Chances

Abstract: Zach Britton visits Yankee Stadium this weekend with the Baltimore Orioles. He will sit in the left-field bullpen and wait for his chance to close out a victory, and no fans will think about Mariano Rivera. But they should. Britton is a left-handed visitor who has never closed out a World Series, so he is unlike Rivera in the obvious ways. Yet in his manner of dominating the late innings, Britton is probably the closest thing to Rivera since Rivera retired in 2013. He does it all with one devastating pitch. For Britton, the pitch is the sinker, a 96-mile-per-hour anvil that hitters simply cannot lift. According to Fangraphs, Britton’s ground-ball rate (79.7 percent) is by far the best in the majors — a full 15 percentage points better than the next-closest pitcher with at least 50 innings, Boston’s Brad Ziegler. Britton throws the sinker almost all the time. Like Rivera, the master of the cutter, he stymies opponents with a pitch they know is coming but simply cannot handle. “The fact that it’s one pitch is incredible, but also that he can command it as well as he can,” said C. J. Nitkowski, an analyst for Fox Sports and MLB Network Radio. Nitkowski added: “You watch guys take these swings at 96, 97, and the swings almost look like they’re swinging at a breaking ball, because of the movement. You’re just not expecting that movement at that velocity, even though you know it’s coming. You’re sitting there going, ‘All right, it’s coming in hard, there’s no way that ball’s going to drop a foot’ — and then it does.” Two years ago, Nitkowski had Britton as a guest on the radio. Britton explained the origins of his sinker, and Nitkowski, a former major league reliever, was struck by the happy accident that had produced such a powerful weapon. Britton was pitching in the low minors in 2007, his first full year as a professional, when his coach, Calvin Maduro, tried to teach him a cutter. Maduro, a former Orioles pitcher, showed Britton an unconventional curveball-like grip that sometimes works for the cutter. Britton tried it and the pitch moved hard and down — but away from a right-hander, not in, the way his cutter should move. Maduro was dumbfounded, but he told Britton not to change a thing. Over time, Britton learned to manipulate the grip and make the ball cut when he wants to. But he still throws his power sinker the wrong way. “Pitching’s so weird, because everyone’s arm action is different,” Britton said, retelling the story by his locker at Camden Yards last summer. “Even though it may look the same, it’s different. Their bodies are different. The way they put pressure on the ball is different. That grip is a good sinker for me. If I gripped it like a two-seamer, it probably wouldn’t even move.” Britton spent parts of three seasons as a starter, from 2011 to 2013. He was mediocre (a 4.86 earned run average) and too wild. He needed to command the sinker, and during spring training in 2014, he learned to do it by throwing to a strike zone constructed with strings. The pitching coach Dave Wallace — who knew of the device from his days with the Dodgers — moved the knots within the strings to an area about six inches on each side, low and away. If a pitcher can get the ball there consistently, Wallace believes, everything else will be easy by comparison. He has another name for his tiny zone: a quality major league strike. “We usually give a guy 20 throws, and a lot of guys don’t get 10,” Wallace said. “But what you find out is if they get eight, there’s another five or six that are real close, because of the level of concentration.” Image Mariano Rivera, who retired from the Yankees in 2013, had a skill in common with Zach Britton: his domination of late innings. Credit Rob Carr/Getty Images For Britton, it was a revelation. Visualization, he found, was everything. Soon enough, he was threading his sinker through the strings on about seven out of 10 tries. He took the pitch into games, and hitters used to getting ahead of him were suddenly behind in the count. That made them vulnerable to his sinker off the plate, and Britton knew how to get it there. If Britton wanted to throw the sinker for a strike, he would aim it at the Under Armour symbol on his catcher’s chest protector, just below the neck, and the movement would take it into the zone. If he wanted to throw the pitch for a ball, he would aim it at the catcher’s shin guards and the movement would carry it to the dirt. The strings had taught him how his sinker should behave. “That drill really helped me understand what my pitch is actually doing,” Britton said. Britton allowed an earned run on Wednesday for the first time since April 30. But he still finished up an Orioles victory and has converted all 38 save opportunities this season — plus one in the All-Star Game, when he got the Colorado slugger Nolan Arenado to beat a sinker into the ground for a game-ending double play. Before Britton, no major league left-hander had converted 38 saves in a row. No reliever has won the Cy Young Award since Eric Gagne of the Los Angeles Dodgers, in 2003, but Britton is building a case. Several American League starters have pitched very well this season — Texas’ Cole Hamels, Cleveland’s Corey Kluber, Chicago’s Chris Sale, Toronto’s J. A. Happ — but none has separated himself the way Britton has among relievers. The workload between starters and relievers is hardly comparable. While Britton pitches almost exclusively in high-leverage situations, he has faced about 500 fewer hitters than Hamels. But it is hard to argue that anyone has done his job better than Britton, whose E.R.A. is 0.69. None of the nine relievers to win the Cy Young had an E.R.A. that low. Rivera never won the Cy Young Award, but he also never had a regular season quite like Britton’s. Few, if any, relievers ever have.

Baseball
Orioles
Zach Britton
Cy Young Award
Mariano Rivera


Third and Atlantic Avenues Are Most Dangerous for Pedestrians

Abstract: From 2006 to 2008, the deadliest roads for pedestrians in the city were Third Avenue in Manhattan and Atlantic Avenue in Brooklyn, which each had nine fatalities, according to data from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. Along Third Avenue, which is six-and-a-half miles long and runs from Cooper Square to 129th Street, East Harlem and Yorkville were relatively safe, and pedestrian strikes were evenly distributed on the rest of the road. On Atlantic Avenue, which is seven miles long and spans Brooklyn, there were clusters of deaths in Bedford-Stuyvesant and the congested downtown area. The section of Atlantic Avenue in Queens was not included. Citywide, 445 pedestrians were killed during the three-year period, with Friday being the deadliest day and Sunday the safest. Except for Halloween , holidays had few fatalities. Children made up just 6 percent of those killed. In Brooklyn — which had the most deaths, 151 — there were clusters of fatalities in Brighton Beach, Sunset Park and East New York. In Manhattan, which had 120 deaths during the period, the heaviest concentration of deaths, 16, was on the Lower East Side, just south of the Williamsburg Bridge. Staten Island, the least-populous borough, had the fewest deaths, 23. The most dangerous roads in the Bronx were East Gun Hill Road and the Grand Concourse, with five fatalities each. And on Queens Boulevard, which once earned notoriety as the “Boulevard of Death” because of its heavy traffic and forbidding medians, there were also five deaths over the period studied.

Deaths (Fatalities)
Roads and Traffic
New York City


Cheers and Jeers For Citi Field and Yankee Stadium

Abstract: You got something to say about the more than $2 billion worth of new ballparks in Queens and the Bronx? Get in line. New Yorkers, rarely shy about sharing their wisdom, have yet to boo an umpire’s call in Citi Field or the new Yankee Stadium. But in interviews across the city this week, they were vocal about their early impressions, pro and con, of the fancier new stadiums, which were in the making for years but are opening during a period of austerity and belt-cinching in much of New York and the nation. “The Colosseum lasted, what, 2,000 years?” said Luis Miranda, a retired Queens school psychologist. So why, he asked, replace Yankee Stadium after a mere 86 years and Shea Stadium after only 45? “It was not necessary,” said Miranda, 65, shopping this week at a Modell’s Sporting Goods in Flushing. “New York is going stadium crazy.” But try telling that to Luis Ortiz, a Yankees fan from Yonkers who has never been to a ballgame. Ortiz, 30, who has used a wheelchair since a childhood accident, braved public transportation with a nursing aide this week to visit the new home of the Bronx Bombers — across 161st Street from the ghostly and yet-to-be-demolished 1923 prototype — in quest of $14 bleacher seats after fruitless efforts to buy them over the phone. He gazed up at the towering pylons with Yankee Stadium engraved in gold. “It’s beautiful,” he said. Many New Yorkers echoed Ortiz’s sentiments, praising the appearance of the new ballparks. But some questioned the price of such elegance, both to the taxpayers who subsidized them and to the fans who are being asked to pay more to enjoy them. Callers to the sports-talk radio station WFAN are mainly complaining about “the affordability level,” said Mike Francesa , a 21-year fixture on the dial. “They want to know if they’ll be locked out,” he said. In the dim recesses of Kelly’s Pub on 41st Avenue in Flushing, one subway stop from Citi Field, Obie Vasquez hailed the Mets ’ new home. “It looks gorgeous, impressive and accessible,” said Vasquez, 63, an Avis employee. “It feels like a home field, fans feel part of the game. Somebody hits a hit and they can feel it.” His bar buddy, Henry Logan, 67, a retired corrections officer, was quick to agree. “You can see the game better,” he said, noting that Citi Field , with 42,000 seats, has more than 14,000 fewer seats than Shea. ( Yankee Stadium reduced its seating less, to 52,325 seats from nearly 57,000.) “The consensus is breathtaking,” said Kevin Crossan, 39, a manager at Modell’s in Flushing, who added that as exciting as a new field was for the Mets, winning might also be nice. Marc Cohen, 56, a Queens electrician, was less upbeat. “I’m going to go to fewer games,” he said, complaining that “prices are getting ridiculous.” He said he could no longer afford football at the Meadowlands and now felt baseball was leaving him behind as well. A similar polarity could be found among the members of a City College of New York alumni group that meets regularly over lunch to debate issues of the day. They shared their opinions in e-mail interviews. “I fear that I’m an old curmudgeon (the truth is I always have been) when it comes to using public money to underwrite private, profit-making enterprises,” wrote Stanley Feingold, 82, a retired political science professor who anchors the group. “I would have thought that the ease with which the Brooklyn Dodgers and New York Giants gave up their franchises in the hope of financial gain elsewhere might have disillusioned those sentimentalists who talk about hometown teams.” Joseph Forstadt, 69, a lawyer, took issue. “These are the best new infrastructure investments that New York could make,” he wrote back. “We now have brand new stadiums built with substantial private funds and which will generate significant business for New York — and without any federal funds. Now, all our teams have to do is win.” Bronx high school students and teachers on a class trip who stopped outside Yankee Stadium this week to take pictures for their yearbook were wowed by the grandeur, but also puzzled. “It seems like kind of a waste,” said Amelia Frank, 29, an outreach coordinator, gazing across the street at the old Stadium. “Why not make that one better?” Their school, Banana Kelly High School, named in part for the shape of its street, lacks a gymnasium, auditorium and library and could have used some of the roughly $1.5 billion spent to build the stadium, said Jamaey Dunigan, 18, a senior. “At least it could have been spread around,” she said. Others took a broader view, not begrudging Yankees splendor. “It’s part of my enjoyment, how to get out of my financial reality,” said Peter Stafford, 44, a Manhattan substitute teacher who lined up at the main gate of the stadium this week to see about rearranging his season-ticket plan. Some left empty-handed. “This is a whole racket,” fumed Eric Pellis, 55, a New Jersey accountant who said he was told that there was no pair of upper-deck seats for under $30 available this season. But Ortiz, from Yonkers, had better luck. He emerged with four tickets each to home games on April 17 against Cleveland and April 22 against Oakland, at $20.50 each, for a total of $164. “I’m ready to go,” he said, beaming.

New York City
Stadiums and Arenas
Citi Field (NYC)
Yankee Stadium (NYC)
Baseball
New York Yankees
New York Mets


Magic Johnson Leaving ESPN

Abstract: Magic Johnson will not return to ESPN as an N.B.A. studio analyst, citing a busy schedule. Johnson is part of the ownership group that agreed to buy the Los Angeles Dodgers in March 2012. ■ James Harden scored 21 points as the Houston Rockets defeated the Indiana Pacers, 116-96, in the first N.B.A. preseason game in the Philippines.


How Far Afield Are Job Seekers Willing to Go?

Abstract: When assessing the health of the economy, economists normally look at such markers as spending, growth and unemployment. They might also want to look at what could be called the “career complacency” index. According to a survey by the outplacement firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas, the percentage of job seekers who switched industries last year was 39.8 percent, compared with 43 percent the year before. The percentage could rise as the housing slump and credit collapse begin to affect the job market. John A. Challenger, chief executive of Challenger, said in a statement: “We could see an escalation in industry switching as job seekers attempt to improve their odds of success by casting a wider net.” But people working in education, energy, health care and security may not need to worry about scrambling to learn a new field. Challenger has included these among the industries that will be most resistant to a recession.

Economic Conditions and Trends
Hiring and Promotion
Recession and Depression


New York Fire Dept. Ordered to Hire Hundreds of Minority Applicants

Abstract: A federal judge on Thursday ordered the City of New York to remedy years of discriminatory hiring in the Fire Department by giving hundreds of black and Latino applicants jobs, along with years of retroactive pay, and offering thousands of others some damages. The judge, Nicholas G. Garaufis of Federal District Court in Brooklyn, said the city needed to compensate minority applicants who took discriminatory entrance exams, which were used from 1999 to 2002. He also said the city must overhaul how it hires new firefighters. Judge Garaufis said that the roughly 7,400 minority applicants who took the tests in question should be able to apply for compensation from the city. Of that group, 293 applicants would be given priority hiring status and retroactive seniority. The judge said the city should take immediate action, but the city, which has denied discriminating against minority applicants, has said it plans to appeal the order. That makes it unclear just how soon the minority candidates might be hired. The judge said that out of every five entry-level hires, the Fire Department must agree to reserve two hires for black priority applicants and one for a Hispanic priority applicant until 293 qualifying minority candidates have been offered a position. The ruling also called for the city to show that its current test is not discriminatory, and to develop a new method of determining how to rank applicants who pass the exam. City officials would not say how much the city could be forced to pay as a result of the ruling. But Anjana Samant, a lawyer for the Center for Constitutional Rights, which represented the plaintiffs, estimated the city could have to pay “tens of millions of dollars, just for back compensation.” Judge Garaufis also indicated that he could appoint a special master or monitor to help oversee putting the remedies into effect. The judge’s order came a week after he ruled that the city had intentionally discriminated against black applicants by continuing to use an entrance exam that it had been told put them at a disadvantage. Last week’s decision, which was made in favor of the Vulcan Society, a fraternal organization of black firefighters, was believed to be the first time the court had found that the city had intentionally discriminated against a large class of people. In pointed language, Judge Garaufis said the city looked the other way in regard to the discrimination and that it had “uniquely disabling effects.” Thursday’s ruling also applied to Hispanic applicants in connection with claims brought by the Department of Justice. The 293 number represents what the plaintiffs’ lawyers said was the total of additional blacks and Latinos who would have been selected during the time in question had those groups scored the same as whites on the exams. Georgia Pestana, the chief of the labor and employment law division of the city’s Law Department, said in a statement on Thursday that “an initial examination suggests that today’s opinion does not fully address the complex constitutional issues presented — nor does it give proper weight to developments in this area of law.” Ms. Pestana added, “The city is reviewing its options but will always place in the forefront not only the need to obey the rule of law, but the need to ensure that only qualified individuals become New York City firefighters to properly protect New York City’s inhabitants.” Judge Garaufis said in his order that “these forms of relief are simple in concept, but will be complex in execution.” He added, “Achieving these basic aims will require ongoing oversight, attention to myriad details and resolution of disputes among the parties.” Although the judge set a hiring standard to ensure that 293 blacks and Hispanics would be offered jobs as firefighters, he declined a request to put into effect hiring quotas for new applicants. He said that over the long term, the elimination of discriminatory testing practices would be a more effective remedy. Suzanne B. Goldberg, a law professor at Columbia University and an expert on employment discrimination, said Judge Garaufis’s rejection of quotas was only a minor setback for the Vulcan Society. “The court says that hiring quotas are appropriate, but only in limited circumstances, and that they would provide only short-term relief here,” Ms. Goldberg said in a telephone interview. “The judge clearly outlined a serious response to the decades of discrimination, but it appears that he wants the city to remedy the problem without using quotas. This decision is not surprising, because quotas have a hot-button history.” The judge said that many of the finer points can be resolved “by the parties cooperating in good faith.” “The hope is that the city understands as of now that this is a valid ruling and there is nothing problematic about it and has to complete this process in good faith or risk contempt findings by the court until it can appeal the decision,” said Ms. Samant, the lawyer for the plaintiffs.

Fire Department (NYC)
Discrimination
Fires and Firefighters
Decisions and Verdicts
New York State
Vulcan Society
Garaufis Nicholas G


Gift of GQ Magazine Prompts Outcry From Lands’ End Customers

Abstract: The free magazine was meant as a gift from Lands’ End — the retailer known for its conservative, sturdy clothing — to its most valued customers. But when the July issue of GQ landed in mailboxes across the country, the cover model was not wearing a monogrammed oxford or polar fleece. Instead, she was topless except for a strategically placed white flower lei. And some of the company’s shoppers were none too pleased. “My 14-year-old son brought in the mail today & was quite disturbed & fascinated by a ‘gift’ Lands’ End sent us — a copy of GQ magazine with an absolutely OBSCENE cover!!!,” wrote one mother on the company’s Facebook page , which filled up with dozens of complaints. “I am appalled that Lands’ End — which I have always thought of as a ‘wholesome,’ family-oriented company — would be the one to expose my son to pornography!” Another said: “We received your ‘Lands’ End Bonus’ of GQ magazine this weekend, and we are absolutely horrified. How can buying something as family friendly as school uniforms lead to soft porn in the mailbox? I’m thankful my son did not bring in the mail.” Snapped another, “I ordered Christian private school children’s uniforms from your company and you sold my home address to a magazine company that peddles in soft porn for men???.” Image GQ’s racy cover of the model and actress Emily Ratajkowski offended some of Lands’ End’s customers. The GQ promotion was part of a yearlong deal that Lands’ End, based in Dodgeville, Wis., had struck with the magazine’s New York publisher, Condé Nast. The idea was to reward its best customers with magazines “highlighting fashion and lifestyle topics.” Previously, as part of the arrangement, the company had sent readers copies of other popular magazines like Self, Vogue and Glamour. Such partnerships between retailers and magazines are hardly new, but have grown in recent years as magazines have been increasingly eager to find new distribution channels for their product in hopes of gaining new subscribers as fewer people buy print magazines. But in this case, the promotion backfired, with GQ’s racy cover of the model and actress Emily Ratajkowski offending some of Lands’ End’s customers. By Wednesday, the negative reaction had grown so strong that the retailer issued a mea culpa to its shoppers. “I would like to start by extending my most sincere apologies,” Edgar Huber, the chief executive of Lands’ End, wrote in an email. “We are aware that you have received or will be receiving shortly the July issue of GQ magazine with a suggestive cover.” Mr. Huber explained that GQ, a men’s magazine, was included as part of the subscription offer “since we did not want to exclude our male customers.” He also wrote, in bold letters, “There are simply no excuses; this was a mistake.” Condé Nast has had a long relationship with advertisers who want to give their consumers gift subscriptions. “Condé Nast has partnerships with many retailers that involve the gift of a subscription with purchase of their product,” said Patricia Rockenwagner, a Condé Nast spokeswoman. “How the programs are carried out and which of their customers receive subscriptions is entirely determined by them.” To make amends, Lands’ End said in its apology that it had switched its customers’ names from the GQ subscription list to subscriptions to Condé Nast Traveler. (The most recent cover of Traveler features a staircase in San Pietro on the Aeolian island of Panarea.) Image By Wednesday, the negative reaction had grown so strong that Edgar Huber, the chief of Lands’ End, apologized to shoppers. Credit Brendan McDermid/Reuters A giveaway gone awry is the least of the magazine industry’s problems. Circulation and newsstand sales have declined precipitously over the last decade. And to offset those declines, magazines are pushing into numerous new initiatives and partnerships. For decades, Hearst Corporation has had ventures with television networks like HGTV Magazine and Food Network Magazine. Just this week, Condé Nast announced that it would work with an e-commerce platform called BeachMint to run Lucky Magazine and with Bravo on a new television series called “Best New Restaurant.” While many of these partnerships exploit magazines’ brands to sell products — Better Homes and Gardens has a line of curtains and cookware at Walmart, for example — some are an attempt to get their magazines into the hands of new customers and potential subscribers. Lands’ End’s botched promotion comes months after Sears spun off the retailer into an independent publicly traded company. (Sears acquired Lands’ End in 2002 for $1.9 billion.) As part of an effort to keep its brand fresh, Lands’ End has added a touch more stylishness to its more traditional merchandise in hopes of attracting younger shoppers. Glossy fashion magazines would seem to align with that ambition. And while GQ is a long-respected voice on men’s fashion and home to narrative journalism, the magazine’s image has evolved in recent years — especially its covers. Until recently, the covers rarely featured women, instead opting for portraits of celebrities like Muhammad Ali or Sean Connery. But now, scantily clad women — Jennifer Aniston, Kate Upton, Rihanna — are routinely featured on its covers. Ms. Ratajkowski first gained notice in the music video for Robin Thicke’s hit song “Blurred Lines”; in October, she will appear in the film adaptation of the novel “Gone Girl.” Many angry customers wondered why Lands’ End was not aware of GQ’s risqué photos and provocative content. “In the future, we will work more closely to assess content to make sure it is aligned with our well-known, long-held company values and those of our customers,” said Michele Casper, a company spokeswoman. Several customers were dissatisfied with Lands’ End’s apology. “I think I was even more appalled at the excuse in the form of an apology that I was sent,” one woman wrote on the Facebook page. “That they meant it to be a gift to their male customers. That is absolutely disgusting and a major disrespect to your female customers. Those types of magazines are degrading and make women out to be objects. If that is the type of mind-set your marketing has on women, then I think that person needs to be fired.”

Lands' End
GQ
Conde Nast Publications
Magazine


Supreme Court Offers Little Guidance in State Secrets Case

Abstract: WASHINGTON — It has been almost 60 years since the Supreme Court last had a hard look at the state secrets privilege , which can allow the government to shut down litigation by invoking national security. In the years since the attacks on Sept. 11, 2001, the government has invoked the privilege frequently to scuttle cases, saying they would frustrate its efforts to combat terrorism. The privilege was at the center of an argument at the court on Tuesday. But the justices did not seem inclined to use the opportunity to give the lower courts guidance about its contours. The case arose from a 1988 contract between the Navy and two companies, General Dynamics and McDonnell Douglas, to develop a stealth aircraft called the A-12 Avenger. Three years later, dissatisfied with the contractors’ progress, the Navy declared them in default and demanded the return of $1.35 billion. The contractors sued, asking to keep the money and seeking $1.2 billion more. They said their work had been frustrated by the government’s failure to share classified technology. The government disputed that, but would not explain why, invoking the state secrets privilege. An appeals court repeatedly ruled against the companies, saying at one point that national security interests trumped the companies’ rights under the Constitution’s due-process clause. There was no dispute during the argument on Tuesday that the government was entitled to invoke the privilege. The question was what should have happened when it did. The two sides also seemed to agree that the answer to that question could be found in a passage in the leading state-secrets decision, United States v. Reynolds . That decision, from 1953, dismissed a case brought by the widows of men who died when a B-29 bomber crashed in Waycross, Ga., during a secret mission. But the court in Reynolds said the case might have turned out differently if the government had been using the privilege as a litigation shield rather than as a sword. Writing for the majority, Chief Justice Fred M. Vinson said that in criminal cases, for instance, it would be unconscionable to allow the government “to undertake prosecution and then invoke its governmental privileges to deprive the accused of anything which might be material to his defense.” “Such rationale,” Justice Vinson continued, “has no application in a civil forum where the government is not the moving party.” At the argument on Tuesday, Neal K. Katyal, the acting United States solicitor general, said the government was not the moving party referred to in Reynolds here because of the way the contract was designed and the way claims against the government must be litigated. Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. told Mr. Katyal that the government’s proposed approach “is a pretty convenient rule for you.” Justice Elena Kagan agreed, saying “that really does sound like a tails you win, heads you win.” Carter G. Phillips, a lawyer for the contractors, said the passage in Reynolds meant that the government was not free both to demand money from his clients and to invoke the privilege when they sought to present a defense. But Justice Stephen G. Breyer said the statement in Reynolds did not fit the circumstances of the new case particularly well. “If we accept as a principle of law what was said in Reynolds, a criminal case or whatever, and apply it to government contracting, where sophisticated contractors are perfectly capable of negotiating their own contract, we are not just throwing a monkey wrench into the gears of government contracting,” Justice Breyer said. “We’re throwing the whole monkey.” Justice Antonin Scalia proposed to resolve the case based on what he called “the ‘go away’ principle of our jurisprudence.” That principle means, he explained, that the courts should do nothing when they cannot determine which side is right because of the state-secrets privilege. “So to say ‘go away’ means everybody keeps the money he has,” Justice Scalia said. Mr. Phillips, representing the contractors, seemed open to Justice Scalia’s approach. “Maybe to some extent you could say we’re sort of being a little greedy,” he said, in asking for $1.2 billion on top of the $1.35 billion his clients hope to keep. Justice Sonia Sotomayor seemed both intrigued by Justice Scalia’s proposal and uncertain about whether it represented a principled way to resolve the two consolidated cases, General Dynamics v. United States, No. 09-1298, and the Boeing Company v. United States, No. 09-1302. (Boeing has merged with and is the corporate successor to McDonnell Douglas.) “Mr. Phillips,” Justice Sotomayor said, “give us a way, a reasoned way, to reach the result Justice Scalia is suggesting, because you are being greedy. You admitted it.” He did not respond directly, but Justice Kagan expressed doubts about having multibillion-dollar disputes turn on the happenstance of which side was holding the other’s money.

Classified Information and State Secrets


Family Sees TV Talent Scout Where Israeli Authorities See Jihadist Spy

Abstract: JERUSALEM — The young man was on his way out of Gaza on an innocent-seeming mission: to scout potential contestants for his embryonic “ Palestinians Got Talent” television show and meet the show’s West Bank staff in Ramallah. He had an Israeli permit for the journey. But the Israeli authorities say the would-be impresario — Majd Oweida, 22 — had been doing something sinister: spying for Iranian-backed extremists. They arrested Mr. Oweida at the Erez checkpoint last month, and on Wednesday they charged him in an Israeli court with, among other things, hacking into computers at Israel ’s international airport and intercepting transmissions from the country’s military drones. The charge sheet says he was recruited by the Palestinian Islamic Jihad group about five years ago. He soon became the group’s cyber expert, the Israeli authorities said, and developed software that allowed Islamic Jihad to monitor road traffic and the movement of security forces in Israel; to view video images from Israeli air force drones in real time as they flew over Gaza; and to track flights in and out of Ben Gurion Airport near Tel Aviv and see lists of the passengers on board. According to Israel’s Shin Bet security agency, Mr. Oweida has confessed to developing the hacking programs and showing his Islamic Jihad handler how to use them. Dawood Shehab, a spokesman for Islamic Jihad in Gaza, said the group knew nothing about Mr. Oweida or anybody else mentioned in the case. “I believe there is exaggeration about his arrest,” Mr. Shehab said on Wednesday in a telephone interview. “All I can say is that Israel always uses cheap techniques and ways to use our young men and pressure them and create frustration among Gazans.” Shin Bet, he added, “wants to prove to their people that they can do something, and the victim is usually our young people.” Mr. Oweida’s brother, Amjad Oweida, 23, the executive director of “ Palestinians Got Talent ,” said his family was shocked by the charges and denied that Majd, the show’s general supervisor, had ties to Islamic Jihad or any other Palestinian faction. “He is just a talented young man who can use and work on computers in a brilliant way,” Amjad Oweida said of his younger brother. “He cannot hack or do cyberattacks.” He added: “Majd did not work for Islamic Jihad or any other political party. He used to work for Palestine’s Talent Club to help talented people leave Gaza for TV programs outside.” According to the charge sheet, Mr. Oweida met his Islamic Jihad handler, Ismail Dahdouh, by chance sometime in 2011 at Mr. Oweida’s father’s electrical appliance store, and told Mr. Dahdouh that he was looking for work. The charge sheet said Islamic Jihad started Mr. Oweida off as a sound engineer and host at a radio station affiliated with the group’s student union, and was soon asking him to develop hacking programs as well. The first cybertarget, the charge sheet said, was a computer system that keeps track of movement on Israel’s roads; hacking that system allowed Islamic Jihad to spot where in Israel the rockets fired from Gaza had landed. About a year later it was the drones. The authorities said Mr. Oweida told Mr. Dahdouh that he needed a frequency reader, a satellite dish with an Amos Satellite lens and a laptop computer for the project. Mr. Dahdouh obtained the equipment from the United States and smuggled it into Gaza through tunnels from Egypt, according to the court documents. Israel said that the frequency reader stopped being able to penetrate the drone systems’ transmissions sometime in 2014. The authorities say Mr. Oweida is suspected of having broken into the airport system in part by stealing the identity of an American man who had access to the data. Mr. Oweida is also accused of hacking into the Hamas-run Interior Ministry in Gaza to obtain the Palestinian population registry for Islamic Jihad’s use. Hamas, the Islamic militant group that controls Gaza, said on Wednesday that it had no information about the case. Mr. Oweida was traveling with a group of other young Gazans working for the talent show when he arrived at the Erez checkpoint on Feb. 23. Two Israeli soldiers arrived and took him into custody.

Israel
Majd Oweida
Hacker (computer security)
Palestinians
Gaza Strip
TV
Shin Bet
Palestinian Islamic Jihad
Iran
Spying and Intelligence Agencies


Memorials Removed at Bankrupt Crystal Cathedral

Abstract: GARDEN GROVE, Calif. — The inscribed granite stones that form the Walk of Faith outside the Crystal Cathedral here were supposed to last forever, sustained in perpetuity by the thousands of dollars churchgoers paid for them. Or so parishioners were told. But like so much else at the Crystal Cathedral, the stones, many of them memorials to dead loved ones, have become expendable since the church, founded by the Rev. Robert H. Schuller, filed for bankruptcy protection three years ago. The Roman Catholic Diocese of Orange, which bought the enormous glass and steel church last year, has begun ripping out the memorial stones as it begins major renovations to modernize the campus and convert the nondenominational megachurch to a Catholic place of worship. Over the next several years, most of the 1,800 stones will be removed, diocese officials said, and there are no plans to reinstall them. Instead, digital photos of the stones are now on display at a diocese-sponsored Web site . Once a source of pride and a place to commemorate departed relatives, the Walk of Faith has now become yet another indignity for former Crystal Cathedral parishioners who devoted time and money to a church campus that is no longer theirs. Image The Roman Catholic Diocese bought the Crystal Cathedral, a bankrupt megachurch in Garden Grove, Calif., and its renovations include pulling out most memorial stones. Credit Monica Almeida/The New York Times Twice, Judy De Clercq paid more than $2,000 to have a personalized stone installed on the walk, first in 1996 after her husband died, and again in 2010 after the death of her son. Her family advised her not to buy the second stone for her son, because she lives on Social Security benefits. But she still visits the stone regularly, even though, at 88, she walks with a cane. “The thought of them being dug up just sends me into tears,” Ms. De Clercq said, crying as she spoke. “I don’t even know if I’m going to live through this. I’ve just been so devastated.” The cathedral was the creation of Dr. Schuller, the founder of the Sunday “Hour of Power,” which for more than a decade was the most-watched religious television broadcast. But by the time his organization filed for bankruptcy protection, the church had become overburdened by debt from vanity building projects, changes in the religious broadcasting industry and a deep rift in the church leadership over the line of succession. Just a few years ago, before the church’s financial woes became public, few members might have imagined that the memorial stones would have such a short life. Image Outside the Crystal Cathedral, 1,800 inscribed granite stones form the Walk of Faith. Credit Monica Almeida/The New York Times A Crystal Cathedral brochure urging churchgoers to buy the stones promised that most of the money from their purchase would go into a “perpetual endowment fund” that would “keep the gardens blooming, the Cathedral glass sparkling and the waters flowing. The principal will never be depleted.” The Walk of Faith “silently speaks through the centuries,” the brochure said. But the money dried up long before a century had passed. Crystal Cathedral filed for bankruptcy protection in October 2010, the church’s 10,664 windows went unwashed , and ultimately the campus was sold. The diocese has worked to reassure former Crystal Cathedral churchgoers that they will continue to be welcome on the grounds, which many of them consider sacrosanct. Church officials have pledged that a cemetery on the campus will remain nondenominational. “We have tried to honor the legacy of those who donated to the building of the campus,” said the Rev. Christopher H. Smith, who oversees that campus for the diocese and has held several events in conjunction with Crystal Cathedral Ministries. But he added, “Perhaps their legacy won’t be preserved in exactly the way it was originally there, in the case of the stones.” Image Changes to the church, renamed the Christ Cathedral, have devastated some former members. Credit Monica Almeida/The New York Times When the sale was announced, Donna Atkins and others who had purchased stones were glad to learn that the cathedral would remain a place of worship. (The other major bidder for the property was a nearby university.) But then they received letters informing them that their stones could soon be removed. The next day, the diocese’s voice mail filled with calls from former Crystal Cathedral members. “I think they’re disgraceful for doing what they’re doing,” said Ms. Atkins, who paid $2,500 for a memorial stone for her husband’s parents, who are not buried in the area. “We were happy to have a place to go,” she said last week. “We often took relatives to see it. It was very meaningful to us.” Other longtime Crystal Cathedral churchgoers consider the loss of the stones as a lesson in letting go of the past. “It’s a betrayal,” said Marni Reed, 64, who bought a Walk of Faith stone two decades ago. “It’s a really crummy feeling. But it’s in the past and we have to move forward.” Image Credit The New York Times Still, Ms. Reed put most of the blame on the leaders of Crystal Cathedral who led the congregation into bankruptcy, not with the Catholic diocese. “Like, wow, where did all that money go?” she said. “The bottom line is that somebody really screwed up big time dealing with Crystal Cathedral’s finances, and that is what has led to all the upheaval.” The diocese has announced that those who purchased stones would be able to come and claim them. But at 100 pounds each, they will not be easy for someone like Ms. De Clercq to take home. She now questions whether the cemetery where her husband and son are buried will indeed remain ecumenical, despite the diocese’s assurances. The balloons and artificial flowers that she used to occasionally leave on their graves have been banned — only fresh flowers are permitted now. Even the American flag she put there on Independence Day was removed, she said. Ms. Atkins called the Web site an insult. “How dare they think that would just thrill me to pieces?” she said. She and Ms. De Clercq both said they would be satisfied if their stones were simply moved elsewhere on campus, after the construction was completed — an option diocese officials said they would consider, but would not commit to. “We were told it would be forever,” Ms. De Clercq said. “I’m just so heartbroken about it. What else can I say?”

Crystal Cathedral
church,churches
Catholic Church
Robert H Schuller
Monuments and Memorials
Christopher H Smith
Orange County CA


JPMorgan Chase Vows to Fix Payday Loan Practices

Abstract: Jamie Dimon, the chief executive of JPMorgan Chase, vowed on Tuesday to change how the bank deals with Internet-based payday lenders that automatically withdraw payments from borrowers’ checking accounts. At an investor meeting on Tuesday, Mr. Dimon called the practice, which was the subject of an article in The New York Times on Sunday, “terrible.” He said JPMorgan was examining the issue and would make changes. While JPMorgan Chase does not make the loans directly, the bank, along with other giants like Bank of America and Wells Fargo, enable the online payday lenders to deduct payments from customers’ checking accounts, even in the 15 states where the loans are banned entirely. The withdrawals sometimes continue even after customers have pleaded with the banks to prevent the lenders from tapping their accounts. The banks are a critical link for payday lenders, which are increasingly moving online, to evade statewide caps on interest rates. The loans can carry annual interest rates above 500 percent. Without access to customers’ checking accounts, the lenders, according to state and federal authorities, would not be as easily able to make loans to residents in states where high-interest payday loans are banned. Lawmakers have taken aim at the issue, too. In July, Senator Jeff Merkley, Democrat of Oregon, introduced a bill that would restrict the payday lenders by forcing them to follow laws in states where the borrower is located, rather than where the lender is. Another crucial aspect of the bill, which is pending in Congress, is a provision allowing borrowers to more easily stop the automatic withdrawals. For payday loan customers, many of whom are shouldering a glut of overdue bills, the automatic withdrawals sometimes cause a wave of fees. Image Credit Pascal Lauener/Reuters According to a report released this month by the Pew Charitable Trusts, an estimated 27 percent of payday loan borrowers say the loans caused them to overdraw their accounts. In the Times article on Sunday, two JPMorgan Chase customers explained their travails in trying to persuade the bank to halt automatic withdrawals. Ivy Brodsky, one customer in Brooklyn, was charged $1,523 in fees by Chase, after six Internet payday lenders tried to take money from her account 55 times in a single month. Ms. Brodsky thought the withdrawals would stop after she visited her Chase branch in March to close the account. Subrina Baptiste, an educational assistant in Brooklyn, said the overdraft fees charged by Chase ate into her child-support income. Ms. Baptiste said she begged Chase to stop automatic withdrawals on loans she got in 2011. Under New York law, the loans, which came with interest rates of more than 500 percent, are illegal. Both Ms. Baptiste and Ms. Brodsky sued Chase in federal court in New York last year. JPMorgan Chase said in a statement on Tuesday that it was “in discussions with these customers to resolve their issues” and added that the bank apologized “to them for the problems they had.” JPMorgan officials are “taking a thorough look at all of our policies related to these issues and plan to make meaningful changes,” the statement said. A spokeswoman for the American Bankers Association did not have an immediate comment.

Payday loan
Banking and Finance
JPMorgan Chase
Jamie Dimon
Debt


Changes in Environmental Reviews Are Sought

Abstract: WASHINGTON (AP) — The Bush administration is proposing to let federal agencies decide for themselves whether highways, dams, mines and other construction projects might harm endangered animals and plants, according to a draft of planned rule changes obtained by The Associated Press. The proposed regulations, which do not require the approval of Congress, would reduce the mandatory, independent reviews that government scientists have been performing for 35 years. Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne said late Monday that the changes were needed to ensure that the Endangered Species Act not be used as a “back door” to regulate the heat-trapping gases linked to global warming . The draft rules would bar federal agencies from assessing the emissions from projects that contribute to global warming and its effect on species and habitats. “We need to focus our efforts where they will do the most good,” Mr. Kempthorne said in a news conference organized quickly after The A.P. reported details of the proposal. “It is important to use our time and resources to protect the most vulnerable species,” he added. “It is not possible to draw a link between greenhouse-gas emissions and distant observations of impacts on species.” If approved, the changes would represent the biggest overhaul of endangered species regulations since 1986. They would accomplish through rules what conservative Republicans have been unable to achieve in Congress: ending some environmental reviews that developers and other federal agencies blame for delays and cost increases on many projects. Senator Barbara Boxer, Democrat of California and chairwoman of the Environment and Public Works Committee, called the proposed changes illegal. The new rules were expected to be formally proposed immediately, officials said. They would be subject to a 30-day public comment period before being made final by the Interior Department. A new administration could freeze any pending regulations or reverse them, a process that could take months. Congress could also overturn the rules through legislation, but that could take even longer.

Law and Legislation
Environment
Endangered and Extinct Species
Bush George W


Foreign Tourists, on the Road to Another Record

Abstract: As dollar-poor Americans cut back on their travel abroad, the stampede in the other direction shows no signs of abating. Even as oil prices rose and temperatures fell in January and February, more foreigners than ever made their way to the United States for those months, according to new data from the Commerce Department. Almost 18 percent more Canadians traveled to the United States in January and February this year than in the period a year earlier. It’s a sign of how much the currency tables have turned. (Until recently, one hardly ever saw the word “strong” next to the word “loonie.”) Other countries that came through with double-digit increases included Germany, France, Brazil, China and Italy. Among the top 20 travel-generating countries, the overall increase was 13.2 percent for the two-month period. At that rate, foreign tourism is on track to set yet another record for 2008, as it did in 2007, and serve as a much-needed economic bright spot. PHYLLIS KORKKI

Travel and Vacations
United States Economy
Oil (Petroleum) and Gasoline


Entrepreneurs From China Flourish in Africa

Abstract: LILONGWE, Malawi — When Yang Jie left home at 18, he was doing what people from China’s hardscrabble Fujian Province have done for generations: emigrating in search of a better living overseas. What set him apart was his destination. Instead of the traditional adopted homelands like the United States and Europe, where Fujian people have settled by the hundreds of thousands, he chose this small, landlocked country in southern Africa. “Before I left China,” said Mr. Yang, now 25, “I thought Africa was all one big desert.” So he figured that ice cream would be in high demand, and with money pooled from relatives and friends, he created his own factory at the edge of Lilongwe, Malawi’s capital. The climate is in fact subtropical, but that has not stopped his ice cream company from becoming the country’s biggest. Stories like this have become legion across Africa in the past five years or so, as hundreds of thousands of Chinese have discovered the continent, setting off to do business in a part of the world that had been terra incognita. The Xinhua News Agency recently estimated that at least 750,000 Chinese were working or living for extended periods on the continent, a reflection of deepening economic ties between China and Africa that reached $55 billion in trade in 2006, compared with less than $10 million a generation earlier. Even when Mr. Yang arrived here in 2001, he said, he could go weeks without encountering another traveler from his homeland. But as surely as his investments in the country have prospered, he said, an increasingly large community of Chinese migrants has taken root, and now runs everything from small factories to health care clinics and trading companies. During the previous wave of Chinese interest in Africa in the 1960s and ’70s, an era of radical socialism and proclaimed third-world solidarity, European and American companies held sway over economies in most of the continent. Here and there, though, the Chinese made their presence felt, often in drably dressed, state-run work brigades that built stadiums, railroads and highways, crushing rocks and doing other labor by hand. Today, in many of the countries where the new Chinese emigrants have settled, like Chad, Chinese-owned pharmacies, massage parlors and restaurants serving a variety of regional Chinese cuisines can be found; the Western presence, once dominant, has steadily dwindled, and essentially consists nowadays of relief experts working international agencies or oil workers, living behind high walls in heavily guarded enclaves. At first, this new Chinese exodus was driven largely by word of mouth, as pioneers like Mr. Yang relayed news back home of abundant opportunities in a part of the world where many economies lie undeveloped or in ruins, and where even in the richer countries many things taken for granted in the developed world await builders and investors. Conditions like these often deter Western investors, but for many budding Chinese entrepreneurs, Africa’s emerging economies are inviting precisely because they seem small and accessible. Competition is often weak or nonexistent, and for African customers, the low price of many Chinese goods and services make them more affordable than their Western counterparts. Chinese Expansion You Xianwen sold his pipe-laying business in Chengdu, in southwest China, this year to move to Addis Ababa, Ethiopia’s capital, to join a startup company with a Chinese partner he had met only online. “Back where I come from we are pretty independent people,” Mr. You, 55, said. “My brothers and sisters all supported my decision to come here. In fact, they say that if things really work out for me, they would like to move to Africa, too.” Mr. You said he had considered other African countries before settling on Ethiopia, including Zambia. “Luckily I didn’t decide to go there,” he said, explaining that he had been frightened by the recent anti-Chinese protests in that country. His new business, ABC Bioenergy, builds devices that generate combustible gas from ordinary refuse, providing what Mr. You said would be an affordable alternative source of energy in a country where electricity supplies are erratic and prices high. Mr. You’s partner here, Mei Haijun, first came to Ethiopia a decade ago to work at a Chinese-built textile factory and has since married an Ethiopian woman, with whom he has a child. “When I first came here you could go two months without seeing another Chinese person,” he said. “But it is a different era now. There’s a flight to China every day.” The pickup in air traffic between China and countries like Ethiopia now has Chinese companies scrambling to add new routes, as the Chinese government and big Chinese companies increase their stake in Africa. Much of that activity reflects an intense appetite for African oil and mineral resources needed to fuel China’s manufacturing sector, but big Chinese companies have quickly become formidable competitors in other sectors as well, particularly for big-ticket public works contracts. China is building major new railroad lines in Nigeria and Angola, large dams in Sudan, airports in several countries and new roads, it seems, almost everywhere. One of the largest road builders, China Road and Bridge Construction, has picked up where the solidarity brigades of an earlier generation left off. The company, which is owned by the Chinese government, has 29 projects in Africa, many financed by the World Bank or other lenders, and it maintains offices in 22 African countries. On a recent Ethiopian Airlines flight from Addis Ababa to Beijing brimming with Chinese contractors, workers from Road and Bridge and other companies swapped notes on the grab bag of countries they work in, and debated about the difficulties of learning Portuguese and French in places like Mozambique and Ivory Coast. Africans view the influx of Chinese with a mix of anticipation and dread. Business leaders in Chad, a central African nation with deepening oil ties to China, are bracing for what they suspect will be an army of Chinese workers and investors. “We expect a large influx of at least 40,000 Chinese in the coming years,” said Renaud Dinguemnaial, director of Chad’s Chamber of Commerce. “This massive arrival could be a plus for the economy, but we are also worried. When they arrive, will they bring their own workers, stay in their own houses, send all their money home?” In Zambia, where anti-Chinese sentiment has been building for several years, merchants at the central market in Lusaka, the capital, said that if Chinese people wanted to come to Africa, they should come as investors, building factories, not as petty traders who compete for already scarce customers for bottom-dollar items like flip-flops and T-shirts. “The Chinese claim to come here as investors, but they are trading just like us,” said Dorothy Mainga, who sells knockoff Puma sneakers and Harley Davidson T-shirts in the Kamwala Market in Lusaka. “They are selling the same things we are selling at cheap prices. We pay duty and tax, but they use their connections to avoid paying tax.” Although Chinese oil workers have been kidnapped in Nigeria and in Ethiopia, where nine were killed by an armed separatist movement in May, the growing Chinese presence around the continent has produced few serious incidents. Misunderstandings are common, however, and resentments inevitably arise. Africans in many countries complain that Chinese workers occupy jobs that locals are either qualified for or could be easily trained to do. “We are happy to have the Chinese here,” said Dennis Phiri, 21, a Malawian university student who is studying to become an engineer. “The problem with the Chinese companies is that they reserve all the good jobs for their own people. Africans are only hired in menial roles.” Another frequent criticism is that the Chinese are clannish, sticking among themselves day and night. In Addis Ababa, in what is a typical arrangement for most large companies, the 200 Chinese workers for the Road and Bridge Corporation live in a communal compound, eating food prepared by cooks brought from China and receiving basic health care from a Chinese doctor. “After a day off you wonder what you’re doing here, so we like to keep working,” said Cheng Qian, the country manager for the road-building company in Ethiopia. He added that his family had never visited him during several years of work here. African Ambivalence Sometimes, the Chinese approach has created serious frictions with African workers. At a leading hotel here in Lilongwe, breakfast guests stared as an agitated Chinese traveling salesman, sweating profusely, screamed at his staff minutes before his pitch on nutritional supplements was set to begin. “You say it is not your fault, but the way you are doing things is just stupid, stupid,” the man sputtered before a clutch of African assistants, who looked humiliated. “You people are unbelievable.” When the salesman finally left the room, members of the restaurant staff gathered near the door and vented their disgust. “We don’t need people like that to come here and colonize us again,” one said. After nearly seven years in Malawi, Yang Jie, the ice cream maker, seems to have learned better. Greeting his workers at the ice cream factory, he begins the day by asking, “How did you sleep last night?” One quickly replied, “Very well,” sounding a bit formal. “Don’t tell me a lie,” Mr. Yang answered with a sly, friendly smile. “It’s O.K. to tell me your worries.”

Africa
China
Immigration and Refugees
Entrepreneurship
Economic Conditions and Trends


France Begins New Anti-Islamist Sweep in Mali

Abstract: PARIS — French soldiers in Mali have begun a major anti-insurgent sweep with Malian forces and United Nations peacekeepers, the Defense Ministry said on Thursday, calling it the largest operation to counteract a revival of Islamist militant activity since France intervened early this year. Col. Gilles Jaron, a French military spokesman, said the operation, named Hydra, had long been planned and was intended to thwart “a resurgence of terrorist movements.” He did not specify precisely when the operation had begun. The United Nations emphasized that while it was coordinating with the French and Malian forces in a complementary effort, the role of its peacekeepers in Mali, which currently number about 6,000 uniformed soldiers and police officers , was to deter threats to civilians. In a statement on the United Nations Web site, the Department of Peacekeeping Operations advised that its peacekeepers in Mali were “not taking part in the offensive operations.” Image A French soldier north of Gao in April. Credit Joel Saget/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images The large number of French troops now actively fighting the insurgents in Mali has raised questions about whether France, the former colonial power, would be able to reduce the number of soldiers there from 3,000 to 1,200 by the end of the year as planned. The contested area, known as the Niger Loop, is in the northeast part of the country and includes the cities of Gao and Timbuktu. Islamist militants have been struggling to regain control in that area since French forces scattered them last winter. France sent troops to Mali in January after the Islamists started advancing south toward the capital, Bamako. The operation was announced a day after insurgents carried out a suicide bombing at a military checkpoint that killed at least two Chadian members of the United Nations peacekeeping force, which was authorized by the Security Council in April and is composed of soldiers largely from other African states. United Nations officials said the attack underscored the fragile stability in the country. Also on Thursday, French news services reported that a team that included a former French military official went to the Sahel region of Mali to try to accelerate negotiations to release six French hostages, who are believed to have been captured by militants tied to Al Qaeda in 2010. The Foreign Ministry refused to comment on any hostage negotiations.

Mali
Paris France
UN
UN Security Council
Africa


Ohio State Looms, but Doesn’t Scare U.S.C. Freshman Quarterback Barkley

Abstract: LOS ANGELES — So, Matt Barkley was asked after making his debut last Saturday as the University of Southern California ’s starting quarterback in a 56-3 trouncing of San Jose State, what did you learn about yourself today? “This is fun, this is easy, this is what I was made to do,” Barkley said. “I really think God put me here for a reason. I’m just happy to be here.” And the toughest part of the day? “The run up the tunnel at halftime,” he said. Barkley laughed at that one. Though he was days away from his 19th birthday and had become the first true freshman quarterback to start a season opener for the Trojans, he appeared perfectly at ease in the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum. Barkley expects to feel just as much at home on Saturday at Ohio State, even amid 105,000 fans and the eighth-ranked Buckeyes, who are eager to avenge last year’s 35-3 loss to U.S.C. , which is ranked third. “I don’t think so,” he said when asked if his second assignment would be more difficult. “Nothing will change except the environment. It doesn’t matter — the more energy the better.” Barkley’s words may read like conceit, but there is sincerity in their sound. Why should playing in the Coliseum be a big deal, he wondered, when he had been there many times as a spectator? Why is starting as a college freshman, he reasoned, any different from starting as a freshman in high school? And why should Ohio State be any different from San Jose State? In some corners, this is the expected world view of a freshman. At U.S.C., it is a sign of providence. Nobody has scattered more rose petals at Barkley’s feet than Coach Pete Carroll. Remarkable, extraordinary and special are adjectives that pepper Carroll’s comments about his quarterback. “I’ve said it repeatedly,” Carroll said. “We’ve had great football players and great kids play quarterback here, and nobody’s been able to do it like he’s been able to do it.” At 6 feet 2 inches and a sturdy 230 pounds, Barkley certainly looks the part. He is another promising quarterback from the O. C., following Carson Palmer, Matt Leinart and Mark Sanchez from the suburbs of Orange County. With his blond hair, blue eyes, dimpled grin and Newport Beach roots, Barkley is as much a U.S.C. cliché as the white horse and the cheerleaders. He left high school a semester early, enrolling at U.S.C. in January. When Sanchez left early for the N.F.L., Barkley competed for the starting job in spring practice with the junior Mitch Mustain, who was 8-0 as a freshman starter at Arkansas, and the sophomore Aaron Corp. At first it seemed a courtesy, but Barkley passed Mustain in the spring. And when Corp — who won the starting job — cracked his left fibula last month, Carroll stunned some of his own players by naming Barkley the starter even though Corp would be well before the opener. The most surprising aspect of the decision was that it cast aside Carroll’s most abiding principle: do not turn the ball over. In spring and summer scrimmages, Barkley threw 17 interceptions, while Corp threw two. This did not seem to be growing pains as much as it was a habit. In his senior season at Santa Ana Mater Dei, which has produced two Heisman Trophy-winning quarterbacks — John Huarte and Leinart — Barkley was intercepted 18 times. Four of those came in his last playoff game, including two that were returned for touchdowns. “The interceptions, I think, were him trying to do a little too much on his own,” said Scott Meyer, the coach at Jordan High School in Long Beach, which lost to Mater Dei in the playoffs. Those urges were neatly suppressed against San Jose State. On his first third-down play, Barkley threw the ball into the Trojans’ bench. On his next, he took a sack. “I was kind of bumming at first, but that happens sometimes,” Barkley said. “Here, a check down is a great play, a throwaway is a great play, if we’re not turning the ball over.” The impulse he could not contain was a smile. When Barkley was sacked or knocked down, it was still there, just as it was after a big play. When U.S.C. did not score on its first five possessions, there was no panic. When the touchdowns poured in, his celebrations were in line with his teammates’. “We watched him in high school because their games were always on TV, and he was the star child,” Alex Parsons, a senior guard, said Saturday. “I was struggling as a freshman, and I didn’t even play. I didn’t even know he was a freshman.” For all the superlatives thrown at Barkley, the game plan Carroll threw at him was nonfat vanilla. He completed 15 of 19 passes for 233 yards and a touchdown. The play calls were almost exclusively bootlegs, bubble screens and rollouts. Barkley often had maximum protection, and he threw only one pass from the pocket and none to a target between the hash marks. “They asked him to do some real simple things,” said Kent Baer, the San Jose State linebackers coach. “They didn’t give him a lot.” The question now is whether that will change. Starting a true freshman at quarterback is one thing. Trying to win a national championship with one is rarer still . The last true freshman to start the opener for a top-five team was Rick Leach for Michigan in 1976, and the only true freshman to quarterback a major-college team to a national title was Oklahoma’s Jamelle Holieway in 1985. San Jose State Coach Dick Tomey, the former Arizona coach, called the Trojans’ veteran offensive line the best he had seen. And its best member, center Kris O’Dowd, did not play. The best run of the day, a weaving 63-yarder, belonged to tailback Marc Tyler, who is fifth on the depth chart. With such an embarrassment of riches, the Trojans might find that having a quarterback like Barkley is a luxury they can afford.

College Athletics
Football
Barkley Matt
University of Southern California


Bubba From Bagdad: Small Town Yields Big Hitter

Abstract: LA JOLLA, Calif., Jan. 26 - The future of the PGA Tour hails from a village called Bagdad, a small town on the Florida panhandle that produced a golfer named Bubba. Bubba is 6-foot-3, swings left-handed and hits the ball so far that drives by Tiger Woods, John Daly and Phil Mickelson may be considered puny in comparison. "I can't even come close to the unsightly distances that Bubba Watson hits it," Mickelson said at the Buick Invitational, which began Thursday with Thomas Levet and Brandt Jobe each shooting seven-under-par 65 for a one-stroke lead over nine players at Torrey Pines. Watson, 27, who shot 72, says he does not know exactly how he smacked a golf ball a record 422 yards during a Nationwide Tour event in 2004, but he is among a group of players stretching the limits of distance on the PGA Tour. A confluence of fitness, equipment and old-fashioned swing speed have rendered the PGA Tour a slamfest in recent years, and Watson is at the forefront of that push -- at least in swing speed. "My dad gave me a 9-iron at age 6 and said, 'Hit it as hard as you can,' " said Watson, who weighs 180 pounds. "It's about hitting the ball in the center of the club face and hitting it hard. "If it ever comes down to where I need a lesson, I'm retiring," Watson added. "People say, 'Quiet your hips, do your elbow.' I don't have a clue what that means. I just hit it." As for hitting the gym? "I just like to sleep," he said. "I think Tiger and his caddie went out running yesterday, and I was like, 'You won't see me doing that, and my caddie won't be running, either.' "My wife has tried a few times to get me to work out, and she yells at me about that, but I don't see myself doing that," Watson added. "There will be no yoga, you won't see me lift up any weights over 100 pounds." That Watson comes from Bagdad, population 1,490 according to the 2000 census, only adds to the intrigue surrounding him. The Santa Rosa Historical Society and the Bagdad Elementary School say the village was named for Baghdad, Iraq, which is located between the Tigris and the Euphrates Rivers. Bagdad is between the Blackwater and the Escambia Rivers. The locals say you can walk across Bagdad in minutes. "Probably about 10 minutes if you walk at a fast clip," Nathan Woolsey, a member of Santa Rosa County's historical society, said in a telephone interview from Milton, Fla. Known for its logging history, Bagdad also gave the world Mark Everett, a three-time Olympian in track and field, and now Watson. On the first tee Thursday, Watson hit a wild hook that never came close to the fairway. He picked up his tee, nodded to the crowd and said, "I'll be here for two days and then I'll go home." Even if Watson misses the cut, his peers say he will be a factor on the PGA Tour as architects continue to make the courses longer. Woods, who opened with a 71 on Thursday, once saw Watson play at the Dunlop Phoenix tournament in Miyazaki, Japan. On a par-4 short enough for a tee shot to hit the green, Woods said the best he could do was choose between a driver and a 3-wood. Watson pulled out a hybrid club that was the equivalent of a 1-iron. "We heard he's long, but come on," Woods said. "All of a sudden, you hear this huge roar. He pumped it on the green. I don't have that shot." Said Mickelson, who has played in the same group with Watson: "We played one round, and he used to throw it in my face a little bit. He said, 'Did you get all of that one?' Just little things like that. But well warranted. I couldn't hang with him." Watson averaged 334 yards in driving distance last year on the Nationwide Tour -- Woods averaged 316.1, second on the PGA Tour -- but he said he would like his name to be synonymous with more than long drives and a Southern upbringing. He wants to be a winner. "I'd say 10 seconds after I was born, my dad said I was fat and ugly, so let's call him Bubba," he said. "It's the same name as his, my real name." He considered the marketing possibilities. "It's sad," he said. "A guy named Bubba, the future of the Tour." NOTES John Daly shot 69 on Thursday, a day after his fourth wife, Sherrie Miller Daly, was taken to the county jail in Lexington, Ky., to serve a five-month sentence in a federal money-laundering case involving a drug ring and an illegal gambling operation. "It was very tacky on the prosecuting attorney," Daly said after his round. "Usually, you get two or three weeks to get prepared. He must not have kids. He's not a very nice guy anyway." Tiger Woods hit one fairway in 14 tries with his new Nike Sasquatch driver, but he did not blame the club. "The driver is fine," he said. "It's the dude holding it."

PGA TOUR INC
JOBE BRANDT
LEVET THOMAS
BUICK INVITATIONAL (GOLF)
GOLF


Chief Is Selected at TIAA-CREF

Abstract: BOSTON (Reuters) — TIAA-CREF, the 90-year-old pension fund giant, said Thursday that it had named Roger W. Ferguson Jr., the former Federal Reserve vice chairman, to succeed Herbert M. Allison Jr. as its chief executive and president. Mr. Ferguson, 56, will take over April 14 when Mr. Allison, 64, retires, the company said. The company also promoted Ronald L. Thompson, who has served on its board since 1995, to chairman. TIAA-CREF is trying to expand beyond its core clientele of teachers and doctors by overhauling itself and introducing new products. Mr. Ferguson left the Fed in April 2006. He then became chairman of the Swiss Re America Holding Corporation and was responsible for Swiss Re’s proprietary asset management unit.

Tiaa-Cref
Appointments and Executive Changes
Executives and Management
Pensions and Retirement Plans