A Dutrow Filly’s Race Schedule Prompts Concern

Abstract: SARATOGA SPRINGS, N.Y. — The story of Richard Dutrow Jr., already fighting to keep his trainer’s license in New York and Kentucky, took another controversial twist after a filly he trained, Indian Tale, was put on the steward’s list after failing to finish a race on Aug. 18, her fourth in 12 days. There is no rule in New York about how often a horse may run, and Indian Tale walked off the Saratoga track on her own and appeared to be healthy, according to Dutrow and racetrack veterinarians. But horse enthusiasts have expressed their concerns to New York Racing Association officials and vented their outrage on message boards about what they perceived as cruel treatment of the 3-year-old Indian Tale. “She was in very good shape before and she still is,” Dutrow said of Indian Tale, whom he claimed for $35,000 on Aug. 7 for the owner J. W. Singer. Indian Tale finished second in a five-and-a-half-furlong dirt sprint that day, then four days later won at seven furlongs for Dutrow. She finished second again on Aug. 15 after rain forced what was supposed to be a mile race on the turf to seven furlongs on the dirt. “She got bumped at the start and didn’t like the grass,” Dutrow said of her race on Aug. 18 , when she was eased by jockey Ryan Curatolo. “The rider took care of her real good.” Before Indian Tale is allowed to return to the racetrack, she will have to demonstrate that she is sound in a timed workout and be approved by the stewards. “This is a common occurrence when a horse loses by a large distance, as she did in her last race,” said Dan Silver, a spokesman for the New York Racing Association. “The vets did not see anything wrong with her after her most recent race.” A New York State Racing and Wagering Board official said that the agency had been aware of Indian Tale’s multiple-race schedule as it unfolded and that a urine sample, to be tested for drugs or illegal medication, was collected from the filly after the Aug. 18 race, which was one mile on turf. Earlier this summer, Dutrow appeared before the board over three days to show why his license should not be revoked and why he should not be barred from the state’s racetracks. Dutrow, who was once barred from New York racetracks for five years because of his own drug problems, has a long list of transgressions, including multiple medication violations on his horses. In February, Dutrow was suspended for 90 days in New York after hypodermic needles were found in his barn, and after one of his winning horses tested positive for a banned painkiller. His horse Fastus Cactus tested positive for the drug butorphanol — a painkiller — after winning the third race at Aqueduct on Nov. 20, and the three hypodermic needles were discovered in his desk drawer at his barn at Aqueduct two weeks earlier. The syringes were unlabeled but contained a muscle relaxer known as xylazine. Dutrow has denied any knowledge of the drugs or syringes. Last fall, records kept by the Association of Racing Commissioners International established that Dutrow averaged a medication violation for every 343 starts by his horses — the highest among elite trainers. In 2008, Dutrow trained Big Brown to victories in the Kentucky Derby and the Preakness Stakes , and then lost the Triple Crown when the colt, after being taken off his steroid regimen, finished last in the Belmont Stakes . Dutrow said he was not worried about Indian Tale’s drug test and was confident that she would return to the racetrack in fine shape come September or October. He also said it was not unusual for him, or any other trainer, to run a horse that many times on short rest. Last fall in Australia, for example, So You Think — one of the best horses in the world — won the mile-and-a-quarter Cox Plate on Oct. 23, captured the mile-and-a-quarter Mackinnon Stakes seven days later, and finished third in the two-mile Melbourne Cup two days later. “I thought it would work,” Dutrow said of the ambitious racing schedule, “and if you went back and saw her now, you’d see she is fine. We’ll rest her for a couple of weeks and then find a reasonable spot for her in a couple of months.”

Horse Racing
Doping (Sports)
New York Racing Assn
Dutrow Richard E Jr
Jockeys Drivers and Trainers


Spread of Early Voting Is Forging New Habits and Campaign Tactics

Abstract: In 1977, a flood control measure on the ballot in Monterey, Calif., became what historians say was the first modern American election decided by people who voted before Election Day. It was a strange moment even for some who participated; elections had traditionally been a kind of civic gathering, on one day. But the practice caught on with voters, and it eventually spread from the West Coast to 37 states and the District of Columbia. Today, at least 43 million Americans have already voted in the presidential election. And when the ballots are tallied nationwide Tuesday evening, more than one-third of them will have come from people who voted early — a record. Voting before Election Day has become so commonplace that it is reshaping how campaigns are waged, and how Americans see the race in its final, frantic days. “The idea that one wakes up and it’s Election Day in America is actually a rather quaint idea now,” said Russ Schriefer, a Republican consultant who has worked on presidential campaigns for two decades. “It is as much as a monthlong process to draw people in. And so your advertising tactics, your messaging tactics and certainly your ground game have changed completely.” The spread of early balloting is forging new habits that are forcing campaigns to rethink how they allocate their resources. And it tends to favor those campaigns that are more technologically sophisticated and can identify, draw out and measure its support over a longer voting period. In Florida, a battleground state where just a few hundred votes can tip an election and victory can guarantee the White House, new behaviors are rapidly taking hold. Hispanics, who have tended to turn out mostly on Election Day, are voting earlier in much larger numbers this year, after a major Democratic-led effort to mobilize them. This is especially true among young and first-time Hispanic voters, who are just forming their voting habits and are likely to retain the practice of casting ballots early, according to those who study early voting. That will mean that future campaigns will need to further adapt and dedicate more time and money to chasing votes up to six weeks before Election Day. Until relatively recently, early voting was confined mostly to Western states. In 1978, California became the first state to allow anyone to cast an absentee ballot regardless of whether they were actually going to be absent on Election Day or not. Oregon held its first statewide vote-by-mail election in 1993. Washington State started allowing all its voters to apply for permanent absentee status around the same time. The idea of a rolling election actually dates back to frontier times, when it would sometimes take days for people to reach their polling places. Then in 1845, Congress established one national Election Day. The reason, said Michael McDonald, an associate professor of political science at the University of Florida, should sound familiar: suspicion of fraud. Image Early voting at a polling station in Charlotte, N.C., last month. Credit Logan R. Cyrus for The New York Times “People were concerned that you could vote in more than one location — basically the same reasons that are made against convenience voting today,” he said. Early voting has been expanding despite the political tensions that tend to infuse any debate over voting. Republicans often resist making voting more accessible — whether by opening more polling locations in the weeks before an election or allowing voters to mail in ballots — saying that the process could invite fraud. Republican-led legislatures in Ohio and North Carolina were successful in reducing early voting compared with 2012. Democrats, who generally favor fewer barriers and greater access, have sued to block those restrictions. For campaigns today, the availability of real-time data on who has voted and when allows a nimble operation to determine whether those likely to support the candidate have turned out and redirect resources accordingly. Hillary Clinton’s campaign has been particularly deft, scheduling concerts with Jennifer Lopez in Miami and Beyoncé in Cleveland, where Democrats have been focusing intensely on early turnout. The artists used the occasion not just to perform but to plead with fans to vote for Mrs. Clinton. For the voter, that early turnout data is now ubiquitously covered in the news media, adding a new dynamic to the campaign horse race punditry. Of course, the data is not exact: It can show how many registered Republicans, Democrats and unaffiliated voters have cast ballots from a particular area, allowing political analysts to deduce which candidate is probably ahead. Campaigns have long had access to similar data. But with much of the information now available on secretary of state websites all over the country, the tally of who is up and who is down in the early vote is breathlessly followed. “This information has gone from the war room into the newsroom,” said Paul Gronke, director of the early voter information center at Reed College. “We’ve gotten over the tipping point here in terms of the amount of coverage and attention dedicated to these numbers.” The availability of the information has led some prognosticators to declare races won or lost. Over the weekend in Nevada, one of the state’s top political commentators said it would be all but impossible for Donald J. Trump to beat Mrs. Clinton there given how many more registered Democrats had already cast ballots than Republicans. The rush to call a race before it is over raises difficult questions about whether having so much public information on early voting could interfere with elections. “We don’t know what that could do to depress turnout,” Mr. Schriefer said. So far, however, turnout has been robust. The reasons extend beyond the effectiveness of the methods that the campaigns are using to drive people to the polls. One factor appears to be the concern that many voters have of being stuck for hours if they wait until the last minute on Election Day. “They have been told — rightly — that they can expect some long lines,” said Allegra Chapman, director of voting and elections for Common Cause, which advocates more access to voting. “And they are being urged to take advantage of early voting as much as possible.” And there are other, less practical factors. Many voters just seem to want this election — one of the most divisive, bitter and strangest spectacles in recent political history — to be over. “I thought that perhaps the ambivalence about the two major candidates might lead people to hold their ballots this year,” Mr. Gronke said. “But the opposite seems to be happening. Voters are sick and tired of this election, the negative campaigning and the mudslinging, and are casting their ballots as soon as they can.”

2016 Presidential Election
Voting
Absentee ballot
Voter registration


Rabbi Herschel Schacter, Who Carried Word of Freedom to Buchenwald, Dies at 95

Abstract: The smoke was still rising as Rabbi Herschel Schacter rode through the gates of Buchenwald. It was April 11, 1945, and Gen. George S. Patton’s Third Army had liberated the concentration camp scarcely an hour before. Rabbi Schacter, who was attached to the Third Army’s VIII Corps, was the first Jewish chaplain to enter in its wake. That morning, after learning that Patton’s forward tanks had arrived at the camp, Rabbi Schacter, who died in the Riverdale section of the Bronx on Thursday at 95 after a career as one of the most prominent Modern Orthodox rabbis in the United States, commandeered a jeep and driver. He left headquarters and sped toward Buchenwald. By late afternoon, when the rabbi drove through the gates, Allied tanks had breached the camp. He remembered, he later said, the sting of smoke in his eyes, the smell of burning flesh and the hundreds of bodies strewn everywhere. He would remain at Buchenwald for months, tending to survivors, leading religious services in a former Nazi recreation hall and eventually helping to resettle thousands of Jews. For his work, Rabbi Schacter was singled out by name on Friday by Yisrael Meir Lau, the former Ashkenazi chief rabbi of Israel, in a meeting with President Obama at Yad Vashem, Israel’s Holocaust memorial. In Buchenwald that April day, Rabbi Schacter said afterward, it seemed as though there was no one left alive. In the camp, he encountered a young American lieutenant who knew his way around. “Are there any Jews alive here?” the rabbi asked him. He was led to the Kleine Lager, or Little Camp, a smaller camp within the larger one. There, in filthy barracks, men lay on raw wooden planks stacked from floor to ceiling. They stared down at the rabbi, in his unfamiliar military uniform, with unmistakable fright. “Shalom Aleichem, Yidden,” Rabbi Schacter cried in Yiddish, “ihr zint frei!” — “Peace be upon you, Jews, you are free!” He ran from barracks to barracks, repeating those words. He was joined by those Jews who could walk, until a stream of people swelled behind him. As he passed a mound of corpses, Rabbi Schacter spied a flicker of movement. Drawing closer, he saw a small boy, Prisoner 17030, hiding in terror behind the mound. Image Rabbi Herschel Schacter in 1999. Credit Librado Romero/The New York Times “I was afraid of him,” the child would recall long afterward in an interview with The New York Times. “I knew all the uniforms of SS and Gestapo and Wehrmacht, and all of a sudden, a new kind of uniform. I thought, ‘A new kind of enemy.’ ” With tears streaming down his face, Rabbi Schacter picked the boy up. “What’s your name, my child?” he asked in Yiddish. “Lulek,” the child replied. “How old are you?” the rabbi asked. “What difference does it make?” Lulek, who was 7, said. “I’m older than you, anyway.” “Why do you think you’re older?” Rabbi Schacter asked, smiling. “Because you cry and laugh like a child,” Lulek replied. “I haven’t laughed in a long time, and I don’t even cry anymore. So which one of us is older?” Rabbi Schacter discovered nearly a thousand orphaned children in Buchenwald. He and a colleague, Rabbi Robert Marcus, helped arrange for their transport to France — a convoy that included Lulek and the teenage Elie Wiesel — as well as to Switzerland, a group personally conveyed by Rabbi Schacter, and to Palestine. For decades afterward, Rabbi Schacter said, he remained haunted by his time in Buchenwald, and by the question survivors put to him as he raced through the camp that first day. “They were asking me, over and over, ‘Does the world know what happened to us?’ ” Rabbi Schacter told The Associated Press in 1981. “And I was thinking, ‘If my own father had not caught the boat on time, I would have been there, too.’ ” Herschel Schacter was born in the Brownsville section of Brooklyn on Oct. 10, 1917, the youngest of 10 children of parents who had come from Poland. His father, Pincus, was a seventh-generation shochet, or ritual slaughterer; his mother, the former Miriam Schimmelman, was a real estate manager. Mr. Schacter earned a bachelor’s degree from Yeshiva University in New York in 1938; in 1941, he received ordination at Yeshiva from Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik, a founder of the Modern Orthodox movement. He spent about a year as a pulpit rabbi in Stamford, Conn., before enlisting in the Army as a chaplain in 1942. Buchenwald’s Liberation, as Seen by Louis Nemeth 6 Photos View Slide Show › Image Louis Nemeth/United States Army Signal Corps After Buchenwald was liberated, he spent every day there distributing matzo (liberation had come just a week after Passover); leading services for Shavuot, which celebrates the revelation of the Torah to Moses at Mount Sinai, and which fell that year in May; and conducting Friday night services. At one of those services, Lulek and his older brother, Naftali, were able to say Kaddish for their parents, Polish Jews who had been killed by the Nazis. Discharged from the Army with the rank of captain, Rabbi Schacter became the spiritual leader of the Mosholu Jewish Center, an Orthodox synagogue on Hull Avenue in the north Bronx. He presided there from 1947 until it closed in 1999. He was a leader of many national Jewish groups, including the Conference of Presidents of Major Jewish Organizations, of which he was a past chairman. He was most recently the director of rabbinic services at Yeshiva. Rabbi Schacter, who in 1956 went to the Soviet Union with an American rabbinic delegation, was an outspoken advocate for the rights of Soviet Jews and an adviser on the subject to President Richard M. Nixon. A resident of the Riverdale section of the Bronx, Rabbi Schacter is survived by his wife, the former Pnina Gewirtz, whom he married in 1948; a son, Rabbi Jacob J. Schacter, who confirmed his father’s death; a daughter, Miriam Schacter; four grandchildren; and eight great-grandchildren. And what of Lulek, the orphan Rabbi Schacter rescued from Buchenwald that day? Lulek, who eventually settled in Palestine, grew up to be Rabbi Yisrael Meir Lau. Rabbi Lau, who recounted his childhood exchange with Rabbi Schacter in a memoir, published in English in 2011 as “Out of the Depths,” was the Ashkenazi chief rabbi of Israel from 1993 to 2003 and is now the chief rabbi of Tel Aviv. On Friday, when Rabbi Lau told Mr. Obama of his rescue by Rabbi Schacter — he thanked the American people for delivering Buchenwald survivors “not from slavery to freedom, but from death to life” — he had not yet learned of Rabbi Schacter’s death the day before. “For me, he was alive,” Rabbi Lau said in an interview with The Times on Monday. “I speak about him with tears in my eyes.”

Herschel Schacter
Nazi concentration camps
Holocaust and Nazis
Judaism
Rabbi
Obituary


Double Murderer Executed by Firing Squad in Utah

Abstract: A double murderer in Utah was executed by firing squad early Friday after last-minute court appeals failed. The convicted killer, Ronnie Lee Gardner, who had spent almost 25 years on death row, was pronounced dead after four bullets — there were five rifles in the firing squad, but one was loaded with blanks — ripped through the target pinned to his chest. Mr. Gardner, 49, was hooded and strapped to the execution chair inside the Utah State Prison near Salt Lake City, and had spent his final hours of life watching “The Lord of the Rings” movies in the observation cell, according to the Utah Department of Corrections . It was the third firing squad execution in the United States — all of them in Utah, the only state actively practicing that form of punishment — since 1976, when the death penalty was restored by the United States Supreme Court . Mr. Gardner was convicted in 1985 of murdering a lawyer, Michael J. Burdell, in a botched escape attempt during a court appearance for an earlier murder. His lawyers, in their appeals, argued that jurors did not hear adequate testimony about the years of abuse he had suffered as a child. His will probably be one of the last firing squad executions in the nation . The Utah Legislature in 2004 mandated that all executions thereafter be by lethal injection. A person who received a death sentence before the change, however, can still choose between lethal injection and the firing squad. Four other death-row inmates, grandfathered under the old system, have said they may choose death by the gun as well.

Capital Punishment
Gardner Ronnie Lee
Murders and Attempted Murders
Utah


Scrutiny of Suit Rises as World Records Fall

Abstract: A man wandered onto the deck at the Spieker Aquatics Complex in Berkeley, Calif., on Tuesday while the California women’s swim team was practicing. He was giving his four towheaded children a tour of the campus. “When does your season start?” he said to the Bears’ coach, Teri McKeever, who told him the season was over. He fell silent for a moment, then said, “How about those Laser suits?” The Speedo LZR Racer swimsuit, designed with input from NASA, has made a huge splash, cannon-balling into the consciousness of people who do not know a flip turn from Flipper. Since the swimsuit was introduced in February, swimmers wearing it have sped to 22 of the 23 world records set. “It’s exceeded our expectations,” said Stu Isaac, a senior vice president for sales and marketing at Speedo. Dara Torres, a sprinter who will try to make her fifth Olympic team at the United States trials in Omaha this summer, said the suit helped her to move through the water “like a knife through butter.” Torres is a spokeswoman for Speedo. The record-setting spree and the glowing testimonials that have followed in the suit’s wake have created controversy. The ultra-lightweight technology of today’s swimsuits agitates purists who do not want to see swimming become equipment-driven like golf or tennis. Some have suggested that the corsetlike fit of the LZR suit not only streamlines the body but also engages the central nervous system in ways that previous suits did not. Others say privately that this new wave of swimwear is enhancing a swimmer’s buoyancy to a degree that could be considered performance-enhancing. A coach who has worked with several Olympic gold medalists described the suit as “drugs on a hanger.” The coach did not want to be identified because some of the swimmers are sponsored by Speedo. The Italian national team coach Alberto Castagnetti recently told The Associated Press that wearing Speedo’s LZR suit was “technological doping.” Jason Rance, the head of Speedo’s global research and development division, said the suit met the guidelines set by FINA, the sport’s international governing body. The difference between this suit and previous models, he said, is that the LZR Racer creates less drag. He stressed that the LZR racer was designed neither to camouflage the hard work of the swimmers nor compensate for a lack of hard work. Credit should be heaped on the swimmers for breaking the records, Rance said, not on their suits. “The last time I dropped a suit into the pool, it didn’t get very far,” he said. Speedo is not the only swimwear manufacturer stitching together sport and science. TYR Sport, which is run by the 1972 United States Olympic bronze medalist Steve Furniss, has poured millions of dollars into perfecting its top-of-the-line racing suit, the Tracer Light. The American Mary DeScenza wore it at the FINA short-course world championships in Manchester, England, where she broke Mary T. Meagher’s 27-year-old American record in the 200 butterfly on Wednesday. At the same meet, Doug Van Wie also wore the TYR suit when he helped the United States’ 4X100 freestyle relay team to a world record. The other members of the relay — Ryan Lochte, Bryan Lundquist and Nathan Adrian — were wearing the LZR Racer. In an Olympic year, fast times come in waves. Furniss pointed out that in 1972, a year before Lycra skinsuits replaced nylon-skirted suits to spark the first swimwear revolution of the modern era, there were 53 world records set. Four years later, 61 world records were broken. The FINA president Mustapha Larfaoui said this week that he was pleased so many world records have fallen. Swimwear’s cutting-edge technology does not concern him. What does is that the manufacturers make their suits available to all competitors, as required by FINA rules. This was a problem at New Zealand’s recent Olympic trials, in which only a few of the country’s elite swimmers had access to the LZR Racer suits because of sponsorship deals and the limited supply of suits. Canada, whose team is sponsored by Speedo, avoided a similar predicament at its trials by not allowing anyone to wear the controversial suit. “It bothers me that somebody at an Olympic trials would be at a disadvantage because they didn’t have the suit,” Isaac said. Isaac said he planned to make 3,000 suits available to the estimated 1,300 competitors at the United States trials. That clearly pleases Kicker Vencill, who has qualified for the trials in the 50 and 100 freestyles. Vencill does not have a swimwear sponsor; his coach, Dave Salo, is affiliated with Speedo. He competed in a LZR Racer suit that was loaned to him at a meet last weekend. “I didn’t even know the name of it,” said Vencill in Los Angeles, where he trains with Trojan Aquatics. “I just know I wanted to try it out.” He added: “I think people are feeling panicked. I’ve heard people say they’re willing to break their contracts with other companies to wear the Speedo suit.” In an Olympic year, when swimming is thrust into the spotlight, competition is as fierce among merchandisers as it is among athletes. “Swimming’s great skin suit debate is escalating into a high-powered merchandising war,” wrote one journalist. His name was Leo Zainea, and his words appeared in The Chicago Tribune in May 1974, proving that the more suits change, the more the conversation remains the same.

Swimming
Speedo
Records and Achievements


Barcelona Routs Villarreal

Abstract: Lionel Messi and Thiago Alcantara led Barcelona to a 5-0 victory over Villarreal on Monday to open the defending champion’s campaign for a fourth straight Spanish league title. Despite having a makeshift defense and coming off a European Super Cup victory just three days before, Barcelona responded to Real Madrid’s 6-0 rout of Zaragoza over the weekend with another display of its own prowess. Barcelona has now gone undefeated in all competitions at Camp Nou since last season’s home opener.

Soccer
Villarreal CF
FC Barcelona
Villarreal (Soccer Team)
Barcelona (Soccer Team)


Mickelson and Watney Share Lead at Doral

Abstract: DORAL, Fla. — After three rounds, the leader board at the World Golf Championships-CA Championship has the makings of a Miami Beach nightclub V.I.P. list. In a tie at the top, at 16-under par after 54 holes, is Phil Mickelson , the three-time major winner who shares the same regular-guy appeal as the actor Vince Vaughn. Camilo Villegas, after a third-round score of 69, is up there, too, in a tie for third. He is a Colombian fashion plate with a stylish game to match a fervent following among Miami’s Latin community. Then there is Northern Ireland’s Rory McIlroy, an affable, unflappable 19-year-old with Harpo Marx hair and a cellophane-wrapped freshness. McIlroy, tied for 10th after an even-par 72, has a game so good he received an endorsement Saturday from Tiger Woods, who said there was “no doubt” McIlroy would one day be the No. 1 golfer. Woods, the current No. 1, cracked the top 20 after a third-round 68 on Doral’s Blue Monster. But the American who perhaps most bears watching is Nick Watney, who would be easy to overlook if not for his glittering game. Playing in the final twosome Saturday with Mickelson, Watney was the better player by two strokes. He carded a five-under 67 to share the 54-hole lead with Mickelson at 16-under 200. “Being in a situation like this is where I want to be,” Watney said. “I think this is really fun, and I wouldn’t have it any other way.” Watney, a two-time winner on the PGA Tour, has the pleasant unpretentiousness of a grocery store bagger. He does not wear flashy clothes like Villegas. He is not precocious like McIlroy or pedigreed like Mickelson, in whose shadow he played all day. Watney, 27, said he was fine with his relative anonymity. “I think good play will take care of a lot of that,” he said. Nobody played a better third round than Soren Hansen, whose eight-under 64 catapulted him up the leader board, 39 spots, into a tie for 13th. “I played fantastic today,” Hansen, a 34-year-old Dane, said, “and that’s all it is really.” From tee to green, Woods produced one of his best rounds in recent memory. “I hit it the best I’ve hit it in a long time,” he said. “Granted, I haven’t played in a long time, but still.” But as has been the case all week, his putts did not roll true. Woods, competing in his first stroke-play event since undergoing reconstructive surgery on his left knee in June, said his round of 68 included seven lip-outs. On the back nine, Woods’s caddy, Stevie Williams, threatened to walk off the course if Woods did not sink a putt. “My speed has been good,” Woods said. “It’s just they are either hanging on the high side or just drifting across the front edge of the hole. It’s just that close to being some pretty good scores.” As well as Watney has negotiated the greens this week — he has no three-putts — it is hard to believe his putting was what held him back in 2008. After earning his first PGA Tour victory in 2007, in New Orleans, Watney had one top-10 finish last year. He ranked No. 127 in putting. At home in Las Vegas, he practiced his short game during the few weeks that pass for golf’s off-season. His efforts paid off last month when he came from three strokes down with five holes to play to win the Buick Invitational in San Diego. Mickelson’s short game is so sublime he has made an instructional DVD to share his secrets. But on Saturday, Watney was his equal around the greens. On No. 13, a par 3 that was playing 230 yards, Watney’s tee shot landed in a bunker. Hitting his second shot with one foot in the sand and one foot out of it, Watney got up and down for par to avert a two-shot swing. Mickelson birdied the hole after his tee shot stopped 2 feet from the pin. “That was big for me,” Watney said. “I thought I really needed to keep him in touch.” His play gave Watney a chance Sunday to achieve separation from the star-studded field and write his own name in lights. NOTES The Australian Aaron Baddeley, who started the day at even par after carding a second-round 69, was disqualified midway through his round Saturday for having signed an incorrect scorecard after his second round. After hitting his tee shot into the hazard on No. 3, he called for a rules official to find out if he could move a stone that was under his foot in his stance and was told he could not. A few holes later, Baddeley realized he had moved a stone that was under his foot in his stance on No. 3 the previous day. He explained what he had done to a rules official, then called a penalty on himself, resulting in his disqualification.

Golf
Mickelson Phil
Villegas Camilo
McIlroy Rory
Watney Nick


Union Grows, but Leader Faces Criticism

Abstract: Andy Stern has been hailed in some quarters as the nation’s top labor leader largely because his union, the Service Employees International Union , has added members faster than any other, 800,000 over the last decade. But the president of one of the union’s biggest locals has begun a public war with Mr. Stern, accusing him of having a “growth at any cost” mentality that has shortchanged union members. That official, Sal Rosselli, whose local represents 140,000 health care workers in California , says Mr. Stern has made too many concessions on benefits and working conditions in persuading employers to agree not to fight unionization drives. The union has organized hundreds of facilities and grown membership to 1.9 million. “An overly zealous focus on growth — growth at any cost, apparently — has eclipsed S.E.I.U.’s commitment to its members,” Mr. Rosselli wrote in a letter to Mr. Stern. Mr. Rosselli complained that Mr. Stern had had top officials negotiate deals with national health care corporations, depriving rank-and-file workers of adequate say in their contracts. In December, Mr. Rosselli quit as president of the union’s 600,000-member state council in California after he grew convinced that Mr. Stern wanted to push him out. Mr. Rosselli is vowing a major fight at the union’s convention in June in Puerto Rico, saying he wants to end what he calls Mr. Stern’s top-down style. He resigned from the union’s executive board this month to protest what he said were Mr. Stern’s heavy-handed, undemocratic methods, including the merger of several union locals in California. Mr. Stern’s allies argue that Mr. Rosselli, who heads United Healthcare Workers West, is betraying union solidarity at an inopportune time, when the union is seeking to rally members behind the nomination and election of Senator Barack Obama as president. They accuse Mr. Rosselli of seeking to win extra benefits for his local’s members while undercutting efforts to organize millions of lower-paid, nonunion workers. Mr. Stern declined to be interviewed. An ally, Dave Regan, president of a local representing 35,000 health care workers in Ohio, Kentucky and West Virginia, denounced Mr. Rosselli, saying, “This is a smoke screen for a local that is now operating on a self-interested agenda, which is about them, to the detriment of the rest of the organization.” Mr. Rosselli said he was only seeking to do what was right for the rank and file. “Andy is leading an effort for more centralization of power,” he said. “We believe it’s fundamentally important to empower workers. The more power workers have, the stronger the union is.” In a decade when most unions have lost members — just 7.5 percent of private-sector workers belong to unions — the service employees’ is in a feverish debate about how best to grow and help union and nonunion workers. Mr. Rosselli said rank-and-file workers should be given maximum say in determining contracts, which often results in their calling for maximum increases in pay and benefits. That, he said, would attract new members. But the Stern camp said it was important to give up some short-term gains in exchange for employer concessions that make it easier to organize nonunion workers. “There is no denying that the S.E.I.U. is the most innovative union in the nation and has figured out how to organize in a very inhospitable climate,” said Janice Fine, a professor of labor relations at Rutgers. “This debate shows that the union is honestly wrestling with how to move forward. The union knows that standards for workers can’t be defended without growth, and growth without attention to standards is also a problem.” In some ways, Mr. Stern’s approach resembles that of a corporate chief executive who is willing to accept modest, short-term profits in order to invest in achieving greater size and strength for the long term. Michael Torres, a respiratory therapist at U.S.C. University Hospital in Los Angeles, part of the Tenet Healthcare Corporation, said Mr. Stern’s approach had hurt Tenet employees. He complained that union leaders had sought to make a deal that called for not pushing for pensions or retiree health coverage; in exchange Tenet would not fight unionization of 11 facilities in Florida. “We were handicapped from the get-go in our negotiations,” Mr. Torres said. “We were fighting not only the employer but the international union. I think we need a major correction within the union if we are going to build a sustainable organization.” Mr. Stern’s defenders say the union’s health care council, made up of the leaders of many locals, and not Mr. Stern, determines negotiating policy. Tom DeBruin, an ally of Mr. Stern’s who is president of a health care workers’ local in Pennsylvania, said, “This comes down to, are we just going to focus on helping workers in one or two places in the country where our union is strong and let the vast majority of workers in the country go down the tubes?”

Service Employees International Union
Organized Labor
Leaders and Leadership
Building Service Employees
Obama Barack
United Healthcare Insurance Co
California


Helen Chavez, Farm Activist’s Widow and Union Partner, Dies at 88

Abstract: Helen Chavez, the widow of the civil rights and farm labor leader Cesar Chavez, died on Monday in Bakersfield, Calif. She was 88. Her family announced her death in a statement released through the United Farm Workers , the union her husband founded. No cause was given. Though Ms. Chavez preferred to be out of the spotlight, she was active in the union, serving as its bookkeeper and the head of its credit union. She was arrested in 1978 for demonstrating at a farm where the Teamsters represented workers picking cantaloupes. President Obama issued a statement on Tuesday calling Ms. Chavez “a force of quiet strength” who “left a legacy that will echo for generations.’’ Born on Jan. 21, 1928, in Brawley, in the California desert near the Mexico border, Helen Fabela met Mr. Chavez in the mid-1940s and married him in 1948, after he left the Navy. In the early 1960s, the couple left a comfortable middle-class existence in East Los Angeles to organize farm workers in California’s Central Valley. There, Mr. Chavez, along with Dolores Huerta, founded the National Farm Workers Association, which later became the United Farm Workers. His work made him deeply revered by Mexican-Americans and his fellow activists. Mr. Chavez died in 1993 . The couple had eight children, and Helen Chavez had to care for them alone for long stretches while her husband, whose speaking and organizing skills were in great demand, was traveling. They lived in Delano, Calif., where she often did farm field work herself while he was gone, sometimes with her children working alongside her. “While Cesar was organizing, I was picking grapes or doing whatever field work was available,” she was quoted in “Cesar Chavez: Autobiography of La Causa” by Jacques E. Levy. “I’d work 10 hours a day, five days a week, for 85 cents an hour, I think.” All while caring for her children, cooking meals and keeping house. “I think the beginning of the union was the roughest time we had.” She is survived by seven children , 31 grandchildren and 16 great-grandchildren. Last year, Ms. Chavez appeared at her husband’s graveside and accepted a folded flag as he received the military honors that he had not been given at his death.

Obituary
Cesar Chavez
United Farm Workers of America
Labor Unions
Helen Chavez


First Death for Washington Assisted-Suicide Law

Abstract: SEATTLE — A woman with pancreatic cancer has become the first person to die under a law passed last year allowing doctor-assisted suicide in Washington, according to an advocacy group that pushed for the law. The woman, Linda Fleming, 66, of Sequim, Wash., died Thursday evening after taking lethal medication prescribed by a doctor under the law, according to a news release by the group, Compassion and Choices of Washington . The release said Ms. Fleming received a diagnosis of Stage 4 pancreatic cancer a month ago, and “she was told she was actively dying.” Ms. Fleming was quoted in the release as saying: “I am a very spiritual person, and it was very important to me to be conscious, clear-minded and alert at the time of my death. The powerful pain medications were making it difficult to maintain the state of mind I wanted to have at my death.” In November, voters approved the Death with Dignity Act , 58 percent to 42 percent, making Washington the second state — after Oregon — to allow assisted suicide. The laws in both states have been deeply controversial, particularly among religious groups. Washington passed its law after the United States Supreme Court in 2006 rejected an effort by the Justice Department to block Oregon’s law, which took effect in 1998. In Montana, a state judge ruled in December that doctor-assisted suicide was legal under the state’s Constitution, but the state is appealing that decision. Steve Hopcraft, a spokesman for Compassion and Choices, said the group was “not leading a campaign in any other state right now.” The Washington and Oregon laws allow terminally ill patients who are at least 18 and have been found mentally competent to self-administer lethal drugs under the prescription of a doctor. In Oregon, 401 people used the law through 2008. Since the law took effect in Washington in March, six prescriptions for lethal medication have been dispensed, but a spokesman for the State Department of Health, Donn Moyer, said it had not received any forms saying a patient had used the medication. Under the law, doctors who write such a prescription have 30 days to report that it had been used. Mr. Moyer, saying privacy laws prevented the state from providing information about a specific death, said he could not confirm Ms. Fleming’s death. In Oregon, not everyone who received a prescription has taken the drugs. Some critics fear that physician-assisted suicide will pressure people with terminal illnesses who have low incomes or are disabled to end their lives to avoid becoming a financial burden to loved ones. Supporters cite studies that they say have refuted that idea. Ms. Fleming, who was divorced, filed for bankruptcy in 2007 with $5,800 in credit card debt, according to court records and a lawyer who had represented her, Hugh Haffner. Mr. Haffner said that when she filed for bankruptcy, Ms. Fleming, a former social worker, had been unable to work because of a disability and lived in subsidized housing on $643 in monthly disability checks. Virginia Peterhansen, who said she had befriended Ms. Fleming about six months ago through a book group, said Ms. Fleming bought a 1982 Oldsmobile station wagon days before she was told she had cancer and that she had hoped to learn to contra dance. Robb Miller, the executive director of Compassion and Choices of Washington, said that he had spoken to Ms. Fleming and that, although he was unaware of her bankruptcy filing, her situation presented “none of the red flags” that might have given his group pause in supporting her. He said Ms. Fleming’s two children and her former husband “were involved and supported her choice.” The family could not be reached for comment.

Euthanasia
Washington (State)
Medicine and Health


Chrysler to Announce Plan to Repay Government Loans

Abstract: DETROIT — Of the three Detroit carmakers, Chrysler was in the worst condition when the recession hit. And even with a taxpayer bailout, it has been slower to recover than its rivals. But on Thursday, the company will announce a milestone in its comeback effort, declaring its intention to repay its $7.5 billion in high-interest loans — $5.8 billion to the United States government and $1.7 billion to Canada’s — as soon as next month by selling new bonds to investors. Once it pays back the loans, Chrysler can strengthen its ties to Fiat , its Italian partner, and begin adding more fuel-efficient cars to its truck-heavy lineup. Sergio Marchionne, the chief executive of both Chrysler and Fiat, is expected to announce the debt plan Thursday when he welcomes the Treasury secretary, Timothy F. Geithner, for a tour of the company’s Jeep plant on Detroit’s east side. Although details of the debt offering, to be led by Goldman Sachs, are still being negotiated, Chrysler intends to use the proceeds of the sale to help it pay off all of the government loans, according to people familiar with Chrysler’s plans. Both Chrysler and the Treasury Department declined to comment on the announcement. The loans have been a psychological and financial drag on Chrysler’s efforts to revamp its operations and gain market share since emerging from its government-sponsored bankruptcy in 2009. “They started in a very deep hole after the bankruptcy,” said Dennis Virag, president of the Automotive Consulting Group in Ann Arbor, Mich. “Now they are making progress both in the product area and the financial area.” Mr. Marchionne has said that interest payments on its government loans were the only obstacle keeping Chrysler from being profitable in 2010, when the company lost $652 million. Paying off the loans would also free Fiat to raise its ownership stake in Chrysler. Fiat currently owns 30 percent of Chrysler, a stake it received in stages as part in the United States government’s rescue of the smallest of Detroit’s Big Three. In exchange for the ownership interest, Fiat agreed to provide engines and technology to make Chrysler’s lineup more diverse and fuel-efficient. Once the government loans are retired, Fiat plans to pay $1.3 billion for newly issued Chrysler shares, raising its ownership stake to 46 percent. That deal will most likely accelerate the integration of Fiat and Chrysler and speed the arrival of new Fiat-based models for Chrysler to sell in the American market. The refinancing is also expected to save money overall for Chrysler, which is paying high interest rates on the $5.8 billion it owes to the American government and the $1.7 billion it owes the Canadians. “It’s great they are tuning up their balance sheet by reducing debt,” said Rebecca Lindland, an analyst with the research firm IHS Global Insight. “That will help them direct more money towards product development.” Under Mr. Marchionne’s leadership, Chrysler has methodically improved its core products since coming out of Chapter 11. In the last year, Chrysler has introduced new, well-received versions of its Jeep Grand Cherokee sport utility vehicle and the Chrysler 300 flagship sedan. The company has also benefited from positive reaction to its “Imported from Detroit” ad campaign that promotes its corporate resilience and improved product quality. So far this year, Chrysler’s sales are up 22 percent — slightly higher than the 20 percent increase in sales for the overall industry. The increase, however, is almost entirely attributable to improved sales of its Jeep models and Dodge trucks. The company’s domestic market share has remained flat at 9 percent. But the Fiat influence will be felt soon. Chrysler has just started to sell the Fiat 500 minicar in its American dealerships, and more new passenger-car models are in the pipeline. Chrysler needs a more balanced portfolio to take advantage of the steady rise in popularity of smaller cars. The Ford Motor Company reported a sparkling $2.5 billion first-quarter profit on Tuesday, largely because of the success of its new Fiesta and Focus cars. “Chrysler is in a better position now than a year ago, but they are still reliant on trucks versus cars,” said Ms. Lindland. Paying back the government loans will leave the federal government’s ownership stake in Chrysler unchanged at 8 percent. But the new debt structure is considered a vital step toward a public stock offering by the company this year or in early 2012. The majority owner of Chrysler is the health care trust for retired members of the United Auto Workers union, which has a 55 percent stake. Chrysler has not suffered the same consumer disapproval that General Motors experienced from its government bailout. That was mostly because of G.M. came out of bankruptcy with the American taxpayer as its majority owner. But G.M. has mostly shed its dreaded image as “Government Motors” since the federal government cut its stake to 26 percent from 60 percent in G.M.’s stock offering last November. In Chrysler’s case, its biggest problem was a weak lineup of vehicles and tight constraints on product spending. But it now appears to be gaining momentum with new Fiat models. Analysts who had written off Chrysler after bankruptcy are now applauding Mr. Marchionne’s slow, steady rebuilding of its product portfolio. “It’s sort of like the cat with 17 lives,” said Mr. Virag. “They used up their nine, and they apparently still have more.”

Automobiles
Credit and Debt
Chrysler LLC
Fiat SpA
Treasury Department


Pratt Institute’s Main Building Damaged by Fire

Abstract: Maria De Los Angeles, a 24-year-old student at the Pratt Institute, has an admissions interview at Yale University’s graduate art school next month and was planning to show the officers there some of her 100 paintings and 300 prints. But in Friday’s early hours, a fast-moving fire ravaged the top two floors of the historic main building at the private art, design and architecture college in Brooklyn, destroying dozens of art studios and the precious student works they contained. “My studio’s gone, everything I’ve made at Pratt is gone,” Ms. De Los Angeles said, sobbing as she stood outside the student union near the site of the fire. “I don’t even think I have a pencil.” The aggressive fire and the water needed to extinguish it caused significant damage to the landmark six-story building, a sturdy Romanesque Revival brick fortress that opened in 1887. Known as Main Building, it houses administrative offices as well as studios and classrooms and has been a keystone of the district of 36 Pratt buildings listed on the National Register of Historic Places. The cause of the fire, which resulted in minor injuries to three firefighters and one other unidentified person, is under investigation. Firefighters battled the flames for two hours after the fire was reported at 2:13 a.m., propelling ladders up to the fifth and sixth floors so they could shoot water through the windows, even as parts of the roof caved in. The blaze grew to four alarms, and eventually 39 fire trucks and 168 firefighters were summoned to the scene, on Willoughby Avenue in Clinton Hill. “It’s a very old building with very high ceilings on the top floor,” said James Esposito, chief of fire operations. “So the fire had a large amount of area to consume and it was a very difficult fire to extinguish.” “Inside there’s quite a bit of destruction,” he told reporters. “It’s all wood inside and the roof did collapse on the left side of the building on the top floor. There’s a lot of damage up there, and we have a lot of water damage.” Image The top of the Main Building after the fire. Credit Piotr Redlinski for The New York Times Some students at the school, founded by Charles Pratt, a pioneer of the American oil industry, were awakened by the commotion and gathered on the street to watch. By 6:30 a.m., Madeline Mikolon, a 22-year-old senior studying painting, rushed to the building, where the paintings for her thesis show — scheduled for next month — were stored and saw firefighters still dousing the blaze. She realized it had destroyed her works, and the works of dozens of her peers. “Now we’ve got no work, no supplies, nowhere to meet, nothing,” said Ms. Mikolon, staring blankly at her studio’s charred interior. Another tearful student soon learned that she had caught a lucky break. From a building across the street, Rebecca Warwick, 21, saw some of her paintings through a smashed window at Main Building. They had been twisted and bent by the heat but they had not been destroyed. She let out a cry of relief. “I feel bad even being happy because all my friends lost their work,” she said. The school canceled classes through Saturday at the building and at nearby South Hall, Amy Aronoff, a spokeswoman, said. She said the sixth floor, which contained 42 senior painting studios, was completely gutted by the fire; the fifth floor, containing two large classrooms for painting majors and one painting seminar room, was badly scorched; and there was water damage to all the lower floors. Designed by Lamb & Rich Architects, Main Building is part of a complex that has been designated a New York City landmark as well as a national treasure. In 2011, the school was chosen by Architectural Digest as one of the 10 most architecturally significant campuses in the country. Michael Madison, a Fire Department spokesman, said he knew of no immediate reason to consider the fire’s cause suspicious and Chief Esposito told reporters that he doubted there were large amounts of “combustibles stored up there.” Nevertheless, some students speculated that the fire might have started among the chemical-soaked rags, paper, canvas and oil paint kept in the studios. “It’s a tinderbox,” said Brad Isnard, 22, an architecture student who said he visited the studios often. Whatever the cause, said Dennis Masback, a painting instructor, the fire was devastating. “It all goes up in flames; it’s completely numbing,” he said, as he and Ms. Mikolon gazed up at the blue sky visible through the windows of the art studios. “I’m here to tell my students that even though all the work no longer exists, all the time, and the effort, and what they learned making the works still exists, and nothing, not even a fire, can take that away.”

Pratt Institute
Fires
Clinton Hill Brooklyn
College
Historic preservation


25 Inmates Killed in Brazil Jail Fire

Abstract: SÃO PAULO, Brazil , Aug. 23 (AP) — Rioting inmates rounded up rivals in a Brazilian jail cell and set it on fire on Thursday, killing 25 prisoners in the latest episode of gang violence in Brazil’s lockups. The inmates took control of the jail before dawn in Ponte Nova in Minas Gerais State in south-central Brazil, said Andrea Amara Lopes, a police lieutenant. He said the group was apparently settling scores when it locked members of an opposing faction in a cell and ignited mattresses. The authorities who had been trying to negotiate an end to the rebellion sprayed water to stop the fire. Then they found burned bodies in the smoky cell, the state’s public safety department said. Autopsies were being conducted. Brutal violence and rebellions are common in Brazil’s crowded lockups, where gangs often rule. The authorities found a gun in the lockup on Thursday, the newspaper Estado de Minas reported. The fire occurred three days after President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva announced that Brazil would invest nearly $3.3 billion to build 160 prisons and for social programs over five years to try to reduce prison-based violence, which often leads to more violence on the streets. The initiative will also focus on battling corruption and other sources of crime.

Brazil
Prisons and Prisoners
Gangs
Demonstrations and Riots


Adding to Albany’s Sense of Scandal, Senator Says She Will Be Arrested

Abstract: Adding to the long list of Albany lawmakers accused of misusing their offices, a Democratic state senator from Queens said on Saturday that she expected to be arrested as part of an ongoing corruption investigation. The senator, Shirley L. Huntley, said she would surrender to the authorities on Monday. She said she did not know the charges, but her announcement came months after one of her aides and three others were charged with stealing taxpayer money that had been directed to a nonprofit group that Ms. Huntley founded. Ms. Huntley spoke to reporters on the street in front of her home in Jamaica, Queens, surrounded by several dozen supporters, some of them holding campaign signs. The senator’s spokeswoman had e-mailed reporters late Friday, urging them to attend “an emergency news conference.” “I want my day in court,” Ms. Huntley said. “I don’t know the charges. I have no idea what this is about.” Ms. Huntley’s announcement, which comes after the censure of Assemblyman Vito J. Lopez on Friday because of allegations of sexual harassment, suggests that Albany’s string of corruption and ethics scandals has not ended. Already this year, one former State Senate majority leader, Pedro Espada Jr., a Democrat, was convicted of stealing hundreds of thousands of dollars from the nonprofit health care network he founded; another former majority leader, Joseph L. Bruno, a Republican, was charged by federal prosecutors with taking bribes, and a former Democratic chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, Carl Kruger, was sentenced to seven years in prison for taking bribes. Multiple elected officials, including Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo, as well several law enforcement agencies and ethics panels, have vowed to reform the capital. The investigation into the nonprofit formed by Ms. Huntley is the product of one such effort — a new partnership between the state attorney general, Eric T. Schneiderman, and the state comptroller, Thomas P. DiNapoli, who have vowed to crack down on public corruption. James Freedland, a spokesman for Mr. Schneiderman, said the attorney general’s office would not respond on Saturday to Ms. Huntley’s comments. “The appropriate forum in which to respond to the senator is a court of law, where the attorney general will prove all facts according to the rules of evidence,” Mr. Freedland said. “Those facts will speak for themselves.” Ms. Huntley, 74, was first elected to the Senate in 2006. She had previously served as the president of a community school board. She was one of three Democrats who opposed the legalization of same-sex marriage in 2009 but switched positions to support it last year, contributing to its passage. She has not, however, been a particularly visible presence in Albany; she missed more votes during this year’s legislative session than any other senator, according to an analysis by the New York Public Interest Research Group . Ms. Huntley said she called the news conference for a notification that she acknowledged was “strange,” because she did not want her supporters “to wake up in the morning or tonight or tomorrow and see it on the news” that she had been charged. “We’re going to be fine,” Ms. Huntley said. “I’m not unaccustomed to being arrested. In the ’60s and ’70s, I was always dragged into precincts, so it’s not a new thing for me.” Some of Ms. Huntley’s supporters accused Mr. Schneiderman, who served in the Senate with Ms. Huntley, of acting with political motivations. Ms. Huntley faces two challengers in next month’s legislative primary, including City Councilman James Sanders Jr. “The timing is a little suspect,” Ms. Huntley’s lawyer, Sally Butler, said.

State Legislatures
Huntley Shirley L
Corruption (Institutional)
Queens (NYC)


Dakar Event Reaches Final Stage

Abstract: Carlos Sainz of Spain maintained his overall lead at the Dakar Rally by finishing fourth in the 229-mile penultimate stage. Sainz leads his Volkswagen teammate Nasser Al-Attiyah by 2 minutes 48 seconds going into Saturday’s final leg, which ends in Buenos Aires. In the motorbike race, France’s Cyril Despres leads the rest of the field by more than an hour.

Dakar Rally
Sainz Carlos
Automobile Racing


Raymond Kelly Voices Concern on Fatal Police Shooting in Bronx

Abstract: A police officer who shot and killed an unarmed 18-year-old in the bathroom of the teenager’s Bronx apartment has been stripped of his gun and badge, the police commissioner said Friday, and both the commissioner and the mayor expressed concern about the circumstances of the shooting. The commissioner, Raymond W. Kelly , stopped short of declaring the shooting unjustified but said at a news conference: “At this juncture, we see an unarmed person being shot. That always concerns us.” Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg made a similar comment, telling reporters outside a pre-Super Bowl event on the Upper East Side, “We obviously have some real concerns, and until we know what really happened there’s not a lot else I can say.” The commissioner’s remarks, coming less than 24 hours after the teenager, Ramarley Graham, was killed by a plainclothes narcotics officer, were a stark departure for Mr. Kelly, who rarely makes public an early assessment of a shooting. The fatal shot came shortly after 3 p.m. Thursday. Members of the Street Narcotics Enforcement Unit, who had pursued Mr. Graham based on a report that he was armed, broke open the door to the second-floor apartment where he lived with his family on East 229th Street, Mr. Kelly said. As the first officer came through, Mr. Graham emerged from the back of the apartment running toward them, then veered into the bathroom, the police said. “Show me your hands! Show me your hands!” the officer yelled, said Mr. Kelly, who cited the account of a second officer who trailed the first officer into the apartment. The police did not release the names of any of the officers. Mr. Graham was black; the officer who shot him is white. Inside the apartment, Mr. Kelly said, the first officer, who was in the hallway outside the bathroom, yelled, “Gun! Gun!” suggesting to the officers behind him that Mr. Graham was armed. “The partner said he then heard a shot,” Mr. Kelly said. “It is at that point we believe the shooting officer fired once from his 9-millimeter service firearm.” The bullet hit Mr. Graham in the upper chest, striking a lung and his aorta, killing him, said Ellen Borakove, a spokeswoman for the medical examiner. Mr. Kelly added that investigators had yet to find evidence that Mr. Graham was armed. “No gun was recovered,” the commissioner said. Rather, the police said, a bag of marijuana was found in the toilet, raising the possibility that Mr. Graham bolted to the bathroom to try to dispose of it. The shooting will be investigated by the Bronx district attorney, Robert T. Johnson, and is likely to be presented to a grand jury. A key factor will be the officers’ state of mind, and whether they had reason to believe that Mr. Graham was armed. The officer who fired the shot — a 30-year-old who has been on the force since 2008 — has not yet been interviewed by the police because of the pending criminal investigation. The officer’s sergeant was also stripped of his gun and badge; both are now on “modified duty,” off the streets, for the time being. “We are still evaluating the actions here,” Mr. Kelly said. The scene outside Mr. Graham’s home on Friday was tense at times. As the police re-entered the three-family house to execute a search warrant, one bystander on the street yelled, “You killed him because he smoked weed!” Later, dozens of people began shouting toward the officers inside. “Murderers!” many yelled. Mr. Graham’s family did not speak to reporters, but they retained a lawyer, Jeffrey L. Emdin , who said the police should never have entered the home on Thursday. “When the police are above the law, nobody is safe,” Mr. Emdin said. Mr. Kelly, recounting Thursday’s events, said the narcotics team had been staking out a bodega at East 228th Street and White Plains Road, after the police had received reports of drug sales out front. With two friends, Mr. Graham went into the bodega. But they left quickly, and as they did, team members who were observing the bodega radioed their colleagues that they believed one of the three — who they later learned was Mr. Graham — “was armed,” Mr. Kelly said. The impression that Mr. Graham had a gun was reinforced as officers tracked the three men. The group next went to a home at 728 East 229th Street, where Mr. Graham was spotted leaving with what appeared to be the butt of a gun in his waistband, according to another set of radio transmissions among the narcotics team members. Two officers wearing raid jackets and bullet-resistant vests emerged from a van and yelled, “Police! Stop! Don’t move!” said Mr. Kelly, citing the account of a civilian witness. But Mr. Graham made it to his home at 749 East 229th Street, and the front door locked, stymieing officers who were pursuing him with their guns drawn. Another tenant, Gene Davis, 60, said he saw the officers rushing through the outside gate before they reached the door. They yelled at him: “Don’t move! Get back!” Eventually, a man alerted by the commotion let the sergeant in a back door and told him that Mr. Graham lived on the second floor. The officers then spread out: One stayed on the ground floor; the sergeant stayed on the stairs; and two lead officers went to the apartment and knocked. When no one answered, they “broke open” the door, Mr. Kelly said. Precisely what happened in the bathroom seconds later is not clear. On Thursday night, the police said Mr. Graham had tussled with an officer, but on Friday, Mr. Kelly said there did not appear to be any evidence of a struggle. “We don’t believe there was contact,” he said. The officer yelled, “Gun! Gun!” and then fired, Mr. Kelly said. The teenager’s grandmother Patricia Hartley was in the hallway. Paulet Minzie, the landlady, who lives on the third floor, said she heard the grandmother shouting at the police: “Why you hitting me? Why you hitting me?” Mr. Graham’s 6-year-old brother was also screaming, Ms. Minzie said. “He said, ‘They killed my brother!’ ” she related. Mr. Kelly repeatedly sought to solace Mr. Graham’s mother and grandmother. “Any mother, any parent is going to be terribly affected,” he said. “It is the worst thing that can happen to a parent, is to lose a child, and we certainly sympathize with the family.” The fatal shooting comes amid an unusually violent period for the police. Officer Peter J. Figoski was fatally shot on Dec. 12 while responding to a report of a robbery in Cypress Hills, Brooklyn. Last month, the police in Brooklyn fatally shot an armed man who they mistakenly believed was a robber but was a resident of a house where a home invasion was occurring, and, two weeks later, a carjacking suspect . And this week, Officer Kevin Brennan was seriously wounded when he was shot in the head after chasing an armed man into a building in Brooklyn. “These things seem to come in clumps sometimes,” Mr. Kelly said. “Sometimes you see a cluster of them. Generally speaking, I’d say there’s no connectivity.”

Police Department (NYC)
Kelly Raymond W
Graham Ramarley
Bronx (NYC)
Police
Murders and Attempted Murders
Police Brutality and Misconduct
New York City


Ex-Wall St. Executives Go to Bat to Help Nonprofits

Abstract: An organization founded by two former Goldman Sachs partners is using Wall Street methods to help charities raise money to finance expansion. “Our goal,” said Charles T. Harris III, “is to create a nationwide donor network of wealthy individuals and family foundations that we can mobilize with other existing sources of funds to provide growth capital for entrepreneurial organizations.” Mr. Harris and Robert K. Steel formed SeaChange Capital Partners, which sounds like a hedge fund but is a nonprofit financing firm. Mr. Steel recently left SeaChange, after being named the Treasury Department’s under secretary for domestic finance. Attracting financing to support growth is one of the biggest challenges nonprofits face. A study by the Bridgespan Group, a nonprofit consulting firm, found that only 144 of the more than 200,000 nonprofits established since 1970 had grown to $50 million or more in revenue by 2003. Two organizations, Teach for America and College Summit, have tested the SeaChange concept, and Goldman Sachs has agreed to put up $5 million toward a total goal of $40 million to support SeaChange. “When we think about corporate engagement, it’s not just writing a check but somehow making use of the resources and know-how of Goldman Sachs,” said Mark R. Tercek, the managing director who oversees the firm’s corporate responsibility efforts. “If we could help fuel the growth of the nonprofit sector with that know-how, that would be putting both our money and capabilities to good use.” With the help of SeaChange, Teach for America, a nonprofit that recruits recent college graduates to teach in public schools, raised $60 million in $5 million and $10 million increments from about a dozen donors, said Wendy Kopp, its founder and chief executive. “What we are trying to do is get much bigger and much better,” Ms. Kopp said. “In the for-profit world, companies raise capital to do that, but it’s not as easy in the nonprofit world.” Donors, whether institutional or individual, typically want to support specific programs rather than the expansion of the charities offering those programs, said Doug White, an independent consultant and author of “Charity on Trial: What You Need to Know Before You Contribute.” “Donors haven’t been taught to put money into the infrastructure of an organization, which should be a legitimate fund-raising goal,” Mr. White said. “You can’t have the programs without the organization and its infrastructure.” Mr. Harris got a better sense of how donors behave when he stepped in as interim fund-raising director at College Summit, which works to increase the number of public school students who enroll in college. The organization needed to raise $15 million to expand its program to four new communities but worried that raising the money in a traditional way would take too long and hobble it in various ways. “Imagine an investor saying, ‘I want to buy 1,000 shares of FedEx but I want my money only to go into vans because I think they are the key to success,’ ” said J. B. Schramm, College Summit’s founder and chief executive. “That’s what foundations and donors do to nonprofits; they give out money but with restrictions, like you have to work in Topeka because that’s where one of their trustees lives, or you can only use their money for a particular type of teacher training.” Facing that challenge, Mr. Harris recommended experimenting with the approach, which is similar to a private placement in which selected donors are invited to help underwrite an organization. That is the system that SeaChange is using to raise money for nonprofits. Nine months later, 10 donors had agreed to supply $15 million — and all on the same terms. “We did not make a single, special restriction for any donor,” Mr. Schramm said. “It was the most efficient money we’ve ever raised.” SeaChange initially will raise money for youth education and youth development organizations like College Summit because Mr. Harris and other members of the management team have the most experience in those areas. But it intends to extend its financing to other areas of the nonprofit sector and to provide additional services. Mr. Harris himself is a beneficiary of philanthropy, having gone to Phillips Exeter Academy, one of the nation’s most expensive prep schools, on a full scholarship. “Everything I am is a result of that experience,” he said, “and I’d like to think there’s some opportunity like that for every kid in the world.”

Philanthropy
Finances
Goldman Sachs Group Incorporated


California Supreme Court Overturns Gay Marriage Ban

Abstract: The California Supreme Court, striking down two state laws that had limited marriages to unions between a man and a woman, ruled on Thursday that same-sex couples have a constitutional right to marry. The 4-to-3 decision, drawing on a ruling 60 years ago that struck down a state ban on interracial marriage, would make California the second state, after Massachusetts , to allow same-sex marriages. The decision, which becomes effective in 30 days unless the court grants a stay, was greeted with celebrations at San Francisco City Hall, where thousands of same-sex marriages were thrown out by the courts four years ago. It was denounced by religious and conservative groups that promised to support an initiative proposed for the November ballot that would amend the California Constitution to ban same-sex marriages and overturn the decision. Same-sex marriage has been a highly contentious issue in presidential and Congressional elections, but it was not immediately clear what role the ruling would have this year. The Democratic and Republican candidates for president have all said they believe marriage should be between a man and a woman, but Republicans could use a surge in same-sex marriages in the most populous state to invigorate conservative voters. Given the historic, cultural, symbolic and constitutional significance of marriage, Chief Justice Ronald M. George wrote for the majority, the state cannot limit its availability to opposite-sex couples. “In view of the substance and significance of the fundamental constitutional right to form a family relationship,” Chief Justice George wrote, “the California Constitution properly must be interpreted to guarantee this basic civil right to all Californians, whether gay or heterosexual, and to same-sex couples as well as to opposite-sex couples.” Supporters of same-sex marriage called the ruling a milestone. “This decision will give Americans the lived experience that ending exclusion from marriage helps families and harms no one,” said Evan Wolfson, executive director of Freedom to Marry, who noted that same-sex marriages were legal in Belgium , Canada , the Netherlands , South Africa and Spain . Opponents said they expected the proposed ballot initiative, which has been submitted to election officials with more than one million signatures, to pass in November. “The court was wrong from top to bottom on this one,” said Maggie Gallagher, president of the National Organization for Marriage. “The court brushed aside the entire history and meaning of marriage in our tradition.” About 110,000 same-sex couples live in California, according to census data. The state has a strong domestic partnership law that gives couples who register nearly all of the benefits and burdens of heterosexual marriage. A majority of the justices said that was not enough. The court left open the possibility that the Legislature could use a term other than “marriage” to denote state-sanctioned unions, so long as that term was used across the board for opposite-sex and same-sex couples. The ban on same-sex marriage was based on a law enacted in 1977 and a statewide initiative approved by the voters in 2000, both defining marriage as limited to unions between a man and a woman. The question before the court was whether those laws violated provisions of the state’s Constitution protecting equality and fundamental rights. Mathew D. Staver, a lawyer with Liberty Counsel, a public interest firm that defends traditional marriage, said it would ask the court to stay its decision until the November election, meaning that the decision could be overturned before becoming effective. “It would only be logical” to grant a stay, Mr. Staver said, given the confusion that would arise if same-sex marriages were available for a few months. Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger , a Republican, said in a statement that he respected the ruling and did not support a constitutional amendment to overturn it. In a dissent, Justice Marvin R. Baxter said the majority should have deferred to the Legislature on whether to allow same-sex marriage, particularly given the increased legal protections for same-sex couples enacted in recent years. “But a bare majority of this court,” Justice Baxter wrote, “not satisfied with the pace of democratic change, now abruptly forestalls that process and substitutes, by judicial fiat, its own social policy views for those expressed by the People themselves.” Also dissenting, Justice Carol A. Corrigan wrote that her personal sympathies were with the plaintiffs challenging the bans on same-sex marriage. But Justice Corrigan said the courts should allow the political process to address the question. “We should allow the significant achievements embodied in the domestic partnership statutes to continue to take root,” she wrote. “If there is to be a new understanding of the meaning of marriage in California, it should develop among the people of our state and find its expression at the ballot box.” The Supreme Court was the first state high court to strike down a law barring interracial marriage, in a 1948 decision called Perez v. Sharp. The vote in Perez, like the one in Thursday’s decision, was 4 to 3. The United States Supreme Court did not follow suit until 1967. At present, six of the seven justices on the California court, including all the dissenters, were appointed by Republican governors. The decision was rooted in two rationales, and both drew on the Perez case. The first was that marriage is a fundamental constitutional right. “The right to marry,” Chief Justice George wrote, “represents the right of an individual to establish a legally recognized family with a person of one’s choice and, as such, is of fundamental significance both to society and to the individual.” Chief Justice George conceded that “as an historical matter in this state marriage has always been restricted to a union between a man and a woman.” But “tradition alone,” he continued, does not justify the denial of a fundamental constitutional right. Bans on interracial marriage were, he wrote, sanctioned by the state for many years. In a second rationale from the interracial case, the court struck down the laws banning same-sex marriage on equal protection grounds, also adopting a new standard of review in the process. When courts weigh whether distinctions among people or groups violate the right to equal protection they generally require just a rational basis for the distinction, a relatively easy standard to meet. But when the discrimination is based on race, sex or religion, the courts generally require a more substantial justification. Discrimination based on sexual orientation, the majority ruled on Thursday, also requires that sort of more rigorous justification. The court acknowledged that it was the first state high court to adopt the standard, strict scrutiny, in sexual orientation cases. Lawyers for the state identified two interests to justify reserving the term marriage for heterosexual unions — tradition and the will of the majority. Chief Justice George said neither was sufficient. Still, Chief Justice George took pains to emphasize the limits of the ruling. It does not require ministers, priests or rabbis to perform same-sex marriages, he said. He added that the decision did “not affect the constitutional validity of the existing prohibitions against polygamy and the marriage of close relatives.” Other state high courts to consider the question of same-sex marriage in recent years, including those in New York, New Jersey and Washington , have been closely divided but stopped short of striking down state laws forbidding it. A decision from the Connecticut Supreme Court is expected shortly.

Homosexuality
Marriage
California
Decisions and Verdicts


Looking to 2012, Republicans Vie for Big Donors

Abstract: Mitt Romney is not running for president, yet. But a handful of big donors have each contributed in the realm of $100,000, or more, to Mr. Romney this year through a network of state political action committees he has set up that enable him to avoid federal campaign finance limits. Through a similar arrangement, the Minnesota governor and a potential 2012 contender, Tim Pawlenty , collected $60,000 in late September from a Texas home builder, Bob J. Perry , one of the Republican Party’s largest donors, and his wife, Doylene, and has taken sizable contributions from a slew of others. The money, which has gone to the politicians’ “leadership PACs,” is not allowed to be used to fuel a presidential run, but it often acts as seed money to help raise a potential candidate’s national profile and provide financing to other politicians who can help him later. The contributions can also build an infrastructure of staff, offices and donors that can be later transformed into a full-fledged campaign, but this kind of spending also carries the potential of tripping over campaign finance laws. The outsize contributions are possible because while donations to federal PACs are limited to $5,000, many state-based entities have no such limits. Some can also take donations from corporations and unions, which federal PACs cannot directly do. The generous giving to the state PACs is just one aspect of the 2012 money race, which is well under way. In recent months, many of the candidates-in-waiting have been actively cultivating the kinds of major donors needed to finance expensive presidential bids. Mr. Romney has been by far the most assertive, according to interviews with a half-dozen top Republican fund-raisers, already pushing for commitments from major donors should he formally decide to run. Over the summer, Mr. Romney, the former Massachusetts governor, invited top bundlers of campaign checks from key states to his vacation home in New Hampshire on several occasions to help firm up their commitments. Mr. Romney has already lined up an array of prominent supporters, including a billionaire, David Koch, who has donated heavily to conservative causes over the years, and Robert Wood Johnson IV , the billionaire owner of the New York Jets and one of the party’s most coveted fund-raisers. Mr. Pawlenty has also been putting together a financial apparatus. On Monday and Tuesday evening, for instance, he met with top fund-raisers who flew to Minneapolis to listen to a briefing on his record as governor. Those were the latest in a series of such meetings that began in September, according to William Strong, a vice chairman at Morgan Stanley who has spearheaded fund-raising for Mr. Pawlenty’s political action committee, Freedom First. Over the last year, Mr. Pawlenty has been methodically courting fund-raisers in get-acquainted, “friend-raiser” sessions and is now moving to deepen those relationships with a potential eye on 2012, Mr. Strong said. Noticeably absent from the wooing for the most part has been the former Gov. Sarah Palin of Alaska, Republican fund-raisers said. She has raised large sums for her federal political action committee, Sarah PAC, this year — exceeded only by Mr. Romney — but largely through small-dollar contributions. There have been some notable occasions where Ms. Palin has also engaged in the kind of glad-handing with major donors that typically precedes a presidential run. In early October, for example, she had dinner with a contingent of prominent Republican donors, political figures and others in West Palm Beach, Fla., for an event organized by Christopher Ruddy, head of the conservative magazine and Web site Newsmax . “I saw it as a combination of conservative opinion leaders and some of the leading fund-raisers in Florida and some others across the country and having Governor Palin give sort of a dress rehearsal for what it would be like if she got in the race,” said Brian Ballard, a lobbyist who was the Florida finance chairman for the presidential campaign of Senator John McCain of Arizona and was among the attendees. Even with all of the jockeying, Republican fund-raisers and operatives said that commitments for 2012 seem to be unfolding at a slower pace than the last presidential cycle, because so much uncertainty remained over who would actually run. “People are shopping,” said Kirk Blalock, a partner at the Washington lobbying firm, Fierce, Isakowitz & Blalock, who was a top fund-raiser for the McCain campaign. “People aren’t buying yet.” Many donors are awaiting decisions by potential 2012 candidates like Gov. Haley Barbour of Mississippi, who has been collecting giant checks in his capacity as chairman of the Republican Governors Association, which raised record amounts this year. The relationships he forged with deep-pocketed donors could double as useful building blocks for a presidential run. There is also Gov. Mitch Daniels of Indiana. He has said he will wait until the end of his state’s legislative session in April to make a decision, but he has held fund-raisers in recent months for his state-based leadership PAC, Aiming Higher, in Chicago, Washington and New York. He did four fund-raising events in New York alone. Senator John Thune of South Dakota, who is also contemplating entering the 2012 fray, has been sounding out top fund-raisers as well. Newt Gingrich, the former House speaker, is one of the biggest variables. Mr. Gingrich has not been openly buttonholing major donors for a presidential bid, fund-raisers said. Nevertheless, all the work he has been doing for his policy center, American Solutions, generating large contributions (the group is permitted to take in donations of unlimited size) and building donor lists, could form a strong financial foundation for a run. Top fund-raisers said they had observed relatively little effort so far on the part of former Gov. Mike Huckabee of Arkansas, whose leadership PAC fund-raising has trailed that of Mr. Romney, Ms. Palin and Mr. Pawlenty, to cozy up to major donors. His supporters, however, point out that his strength has always been more at the grass-roots level. Even with all of the uncertainty, some large donors have already made sizable investments with those who could wind up as presidential candidates. Mr. Barbour has banked several $25,000 contributions in recent months from Mississippi corporations, like Anderson Companies, a construction firm, and Ergon, which is involved in petroleum products, through Haley’s Leadership PAC, a committee he set up in Georgia, where there are few campaign finance restrictions. Richard Marriott, the hotel executive, and his wife, Donna, have together given Mr. Romney $225,000 this year mainly through the state-based affiliates of his federal PAC, Free and Strong America, in Alabama, Iowa, Michigan, New Hampshire and South Carolina. Other major Romney contributors include Edward Conard, a former executive with Mr. Romney at Bain Capital, who donated $100,000, and Hushang Ansary, a Texas oil -and-gas investor and former Iran finance minister, who contributed $95,000. The network of state PACs Mr. Romney has set up seems intended to give him leverage in some important early-voting states but also to take advantage of permissive campaign finance rules. Alabama, Iowa, and Michigan, for example, do not cap contributions to these kinds of PACs.

Presidential Election of 2012
Political Action Committees
Campaign Finance
Elections
Romney Mitt
Pawlenty Tim
Palin Sarah


Against Knicks, Steve Kerr Sees What Might Have Been. It Isn’t Pretty.

Abstract: Steve Kerr hesitated for a split-second and smiled as he walked out of the visitors’ locker room at Madison Square Garden late Saturday afternoon and noticed a pack of reporters, several rows deep, waiting to speak to him before his Golden State Warriors played the Knicks. “This is what it would have been like,” a reporter covering the Warriors said to Kerr, making him laugh. Almost nine months have passed since Kerr turned down an opportunity to coach the Knicks, deciding to take a far more appealing offer from Golden State. On the West Coast, Kerr has been closer to his family; has inherited an immensely skilled team; and has, presumably, had far fewer reporters trailing him than if he had chosen New York. It has been plain to see that Kerr made the right choice. He has not needed to look back. Still, because the Knicks — who ended up hiring Derek Fisher after Kerr’s rebuff — have been so disastrous this season, a certain amount of retroactive analysis and hypothetical thinking about his decision has felt natural. So as the Warriors rolled over the Knicks, 106-92, it was as if Kerr’s current path and a conjectural one were intersecting. It was the Warriors’ 40th win. It was the Knicks’ 41st loss. The Warriors have established such a high standard this season that a 14-point win was insufficient to satisfy Kerr, who thought his players looked unfocused and fatigued. “Man, that was tough to watch,” he said after the game. “We were horrible.” Hours earlier, when Kerr was asked whether anything around the Warriors had gone wrong this season, he struggled to offer an example. “It’s been fun,” he said. Fisher, on the other hand, could not credibly use the same adjective to describe his own experience. The things that have gone wrong within his club form a long list — and he has needed to talk about them almost every day. Before the game on Saturday, for instance, Fisher insisted that any suggestion that the triangle offense — which he has installed with guidance from the Knicks’ president, Phil Jackson — was to blame for the team’s record was “patently ridiculous.” He said far too much focus was placed on the systems that teams chose to run, and he invited reporters to watch the Warriors and observe the simple reasons they had been, and would continue to be, so successful. Image The Knicks’ Cole Aldrich, left, trying to corral the ball as the Knicks fell to their 41st loss. The Warriors earned their 40th win. Credit Elsa/Getty Images “There won’t be a lot of fancy things they’re running offensively,” Fisher said of the Warriors. “It’ll be because Steph Curry is pretty good, Klay Thompson is pretty good, Harrison Barnes is pretty good, and on down the line.” Against such firepower, the lowly Knicks had no chance. It did not help that Carmelo Anthony, who will represent the team at the All-Star Game next Sunday at Madison Square Garden, sat out to recuperate after playing almost 37 minutes against the Nets on Friday night. Fisher said the Knicks would show extra care with Anthony, who missed six straight games last month while trying to recover from a sore left knee, whenever they had two games scheduled in two nights. The Warriors, therefore, were on cruise control throughout the game — and almost to their detriment. Curry and Thompson, Golden State’s two All-Star guards, shot a combined 4 for 16 from the field through the first two quarters, and the team still had a 64-48 lead at halftime. But the Knicks kept fighting, and they cut the Warriors’ lead to 5 points with a little more than four minutes remaining in the game. That stirred Curry to life, and he sank two 3-pointers in a 26-second stretch to pull his team away. “We hold ourselves to a high standard and high expectations, and we’re kind of disappointed with the way we played,” said Curry, who had a team-high 22 points. Thompson finished with 16 points, shooting just 5 for 22 from the field, and Draymond Green contributed 20 points and 13 rebounds. Langston Galloway led the Knicks with 15 points, but he went only 5 for 19 from the field. Kerr has been reluctant to look back to last year, but he was happy on Saturday to have a chance to see Jackson, with whom he regularly exchanges emails. Kerr said the hardest thing about picking Golden State had been turning down Jackson, who was his coach on the Chicago Bulls and whom he considers a mentor. Still, Kerr emphasized that he had moved on. He was asked before the game how he thought Jackson was handling the tough season, with all the losing. The interview session at that point was entering its ninth minute. Betraying only the slightest impatience, Kerr shrugged. “Honestly, I don’t even know how to answer that question,” he said. “We’re kind of busy doing our stuff.” And then his Warriors, doing their stuff, whizzed past the Knicks, hardly breaking a sweat.

Basketball
Madison Square Garden
Steve Kerr
Derek Fisher
Carmelo Anthony
Knicks
Golden State Warriors


Rejected Seat on U.N. Panel Is Considered by Jordan

Abstract: UNITED NATIONS — Jordan is considering seeking the nonpermanent United Nations Security Council seat that Saudi Arabia rejected last month in a pique of anger at the United States, diplomats said Thursday. The diplomats, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said Jordan’s United Nations ambassador, Prince Zeid al-Hussein, was en route to Amman on Thursday night to confer with the country’s top officials about possibly replacing Saudi Arabia on the 15-member Council — the most powerful and prestigious body in the United Nations. “There are internal discussions taking place” among Arab states about who might replace the Saudis, one diplomat said. The Saudis have yet to officially notify Secretary General Ban Ki-moon in writing that they have declined membership. It was unclear whether countries may have to compete for the seat, which was abruptly rejected by Saudi Arabia on Oct. 18, an action that stunned the United Nations and even some Saudi diplomats. The seat was one of five that had to be filled for two-year terms starting in January. The Saudis had been elected a day earlier, along with Chad, Chile, Lithuania and Nigeria. It was the first time that any country had rejected one of the 10 nonpermanent Council seats. The five permanent seats are held by Britain, China, France, Russia and the United States. The Saudi decision, which could only have been ordered by King Abdullah, reflected his unhappiness over American policy in the Middle East, most notably the embrace of diplomacy in the Syrian conflict and the move toward rapprochement with Iran, Saudi Arabia’s rival. King Abdullah also was said to be upset over American criticism of the Egyptian military takeover in July that toppled Mohamed Morsi, the Islamist who was that country’s first freely elected president; and with faltering American efforts to advance the Israeli-Palestinian peace process. Secretary of State John Kerry visited Saudi Arabia on Monday, seeking to assure the king that the Obama administration and the Saudis shared common objectives in the Middle East.

International relations
UN Security Council
Jordan
Middle East
Saudi Arabia
UN


Alabama Teenager Charged in Plot to Stage Mass Attack

Abstract: ATLANTA — An Alabama teenager was charged on Monday with plotting to set off dozens of homemade bombs and grenades in an attack that the police said might have been inspired by the massacre last month in Newtown, Conn. The authorities in eastern Alabama said that Derek Shrout, 17, made explosives using chewing-tobacco cans and metal pellets and planned to detonate them at his high school in the small town of Seale. A journal found by a teacher last week contained handwritten plans to target teachers and students, especially African-Americans. The first entry was dated Dec. 17, three days after the mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown. In interviews with the police, Mr. Shrout described himself as a white supremacist, the authorities said. Sheriff Heath Taylor of Russell County said Mr. Shrout had been “just a couple steps away from having usable grenades.” The police searched his house and discovered tobacco cans filled with explosives and two larger cans with the words “Fat Boy” and “Little Man,” an apparent reference to Fat Man and Little Boy, the code names for the atomic bombs dropped on Japan. The teacher who found Mr. Shrout’s journal turned it over to the police, who interviewed Mr. Shrout and a friend and searched his parents’ house. The friend was not charged. The authorities said they found many of the weapons the teenager had apparently planned to use in the attack, including shotguns and rifles owned by his father. Other materials described in the journal, including gun powder, butane and fuses, were not located. “He was extremely close to something very dangerous,” Sheriff Taylor said. “It could have easily happened tomorrow had we not found this journal.” A lawyer for Mr. Shrout declined to comment. Judge David Johnson of Russell County Circuit Court set bail at $75,000.

Bombs
School shooting
Sandy Hook Elementary Shooting
Youth
Derek Shrout
Seale AL