European Officials Agree on Framework for Outlawing Online Terror Recruiting

Abstract: PARIS — European Union justice ministers agreed Friday to toughen laws across their 27-nation bloc to punish those who promote violence and recruit people for terrorist attacks. Reflecting mounting anxiety that the Internet has become a crucial tool for would-be terrorists, the agreement will make it a crime to disseminate terrorist propaganda through the Internet for recruiting, training and bomb-making purposes. European Union officials described the agreement as a framework that member countries would have to incorporate into their own laws. Countries that already have strong antiterrorism laws, like Spain and Britain, which have suffered terrorist attacks and give sweeping powers to the police and investigators in terrorism cases, will not need to make significant changes. But countries with more lenient rules, like Sweden and Denmark, may need to adopt new, tougher legislation. The new rules, aimed at codifying terrorist crimes among countries with very different histories and experiences with terrorism, underscore a growing consensus that in the campaign against terrorism, the mere transmission of information and ideas could be considered a criminal act. The agreement is intended to help the police find and arrest suspects in cross-border investigations, but also to prevent radicalization. “The Internet is used to inspire and mobilize local terrorist networks and individuals in Europe,” thus “functioning as a ‘virtual training camp,’ ” the ministers said in their agreement. In a separate move, the ministers agreed on a plan for tighter controls on the sale of explosives and other bomb-making materials. In an interview in Brussels on Tuesday, Gilles de Kerchove, the European Union’s counterterrorism coordinator, acknowledged that the Internet was becoming an even more dangerous tool for radicalization, and that member states had to develop a revolutionary joint strategy to counter its message. He said that preventing radicalization was one of the major challenges facing member states, and one of the toughest subjects on which to forge agreement. “It’s a real challenge because most of the policies are in the hands of the member states,” Mr. de Kerchove said. While the European Union as a whole has improved cooperation among its members in investigations and border control, he called prevention of radicalization an area “where we may do better.” The new initiative “important because the Internet plays a huge role — in incitement, in communication, in providing information on how to mount an attack,” he said. The agreement updates antiterrorism laws passed by the European Union after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. The laws were aimed at preventing potential terrorists from exploiting loopholes in various legal systems across the continent. It could make it easier for authorities to shut down Web sites disseminating terrorist propaganda and bomb-making instructions, and to identify and pursue proselytizers and recruiters. It could also help courts and administrative authorities demand that Internet service providers remove information considered dangerous. Friso Roscam Abbing, European Commission spokesman on justice and interior issues, said it was not known how many nations would have to change their laws. It was now up to member nations to analyze whether their legislation matches the goals laid down, he said. Each member country will decide the severity of prison sentences. The agreement is likely to face opposition in countries where the preservation of civil liberties and freedom of expression can outweigh security concerns. The ministers defended their initiative as a balanced approach to a widening problem. “We have been able to strike a very sensitive balance between two important goals,” said Lovro Sturm, justice minister of Slovenia, after the meeting on Friday. “We have to make sure that we respect the human rights and fundamental freedom of the citizens. On the other hand this enables us to lead a more effective fight against terrorism. This improves the capability of the E.U. to prevent terrorist offenses.” In a separate initiative, the ministers agreed to create a European database to give member governments permanent access to information on incidents and attacks involving explosive devices. The database, which will be run by Europol, the European police agency, will monitor the sale of bomb-making materials and include an early warning system on stolen explosives and other equipment. Earlier this month, Europol said that the number of arrests connected to terrorism doubled in the European Union in 2007 compared with the year before. Most of the attacks carried out within the bloc, it said, were linked to separatist movements, rather than militant Islam.

Terrorism
Computers and the Internet
European Union
European Commission
Law and Legislation
Freedom and Human Rights


Keeping Adrian Gonzalez’s Torrid Start in Perspective

Abstract: Adrian Gonzalez of the Los Angeles Dodgers had a home run in each of his first two games this season, then added three on Wednesday night to become the first player in major league history with five home runs in his first three games, according to Elias Sports Bureau. Projected over 162 games, that means he is on a pace to hit 270 homers this year. Gonzalez will probably not hit 270, or 150, or even 73, but that does not make it any less fun to look at early season statistics, and dream a little. Gonzalez’s five homers lead the majors through Wednesday, of course. No other player has more than two so far. Oddly enough, all five of those homers were solo shots, so he has only seven runs batted in, still enough to tie Jake Lamb of the Arizona Diamondbacks for the lead. He is also on target for the National League triple crown, batting a robust, though probably unsustainable, .769. In the American League, Tigers shortstop Jose Iglesias has that beaten, hitting 6 for 7, or .857. Gonzalez’s slugging percentage is a credulity-straining 2.077. The record is only .863, set by Barry Bonds in his amazing 2001 season. Other players making their real and fantasy managers ecstatic in the early going are Dustin Pedroia of the Boston Red Sox (3 for 7 with 2 homers), Adam Lind of the Milwaukee Brewers (6 for 10 with a homer and 3 walks) and Bryce Harper of the Washington Nationals (4 for 7 with a homer). Image Tuffy Rhodes had three home runs in his first three at-bats of 1994. He finished the strike-shortened season with eight homers. Credit Jonathan Daniel/Getty Images But before you get too carried away with these early eye-popping numbers, consider Tuffy Rhodes. A 25-year-old minor league journeyman, Rhodes was given a shot at the leadoff spot for the Chicago Cubs on opening day in 1994 against Dwight Gooden and the Mets at Wrigley Field. He responded with a memorable game. Rhodes hit home runs in his first three times up, becoming the first player to do that on opening day. Gooden admitted after the game that he was glad to be pulled rather than face Rhodes again. Rhodes added a single to finish the day 4 for 4. “We made him a legend,” Mets Manager Dallas Green joked. The next day Rhodes was 2 for 4, and in Game 3 he was 1 for 3. He was hitting .636, with a 1.455 slugging average. Then Rhodes came back to earth. When a strike ended the season in August, he was hitting .234 with only eight homers. The next season he was traded to Boston, and his seasonal batting average in brief playing time was .098. That was his last year in the majors. The story ended happily for Rhodes; he went on to a long and successful career in Japan, where he won a Most Valuable Player Award and was an All-Star as late as 2008. The fantasy league owners who rushed to sign him after opening day may not be so comforted. Gonzalez is not Tuffy Rhodes. But he is 33, and over the last three seasons he has averaged 21 home runs with a .461 slugging average. Those are good, realistic benchmarks for how he will end up performing this year. But if you are a Dodgers fan, or were shrewd enough to draft Gonzalez on your fantasy team, it is certainly acceptable to take a few minutes to savor his success and yearn for a world without reversion to the mean.

Baseball
Dodgers
Tuffy Rhodes
Dustin Pedroia
Adam Lind
Bryce Harper
Adrian Gonzalez


BetOnSports, After Indictment, Folds Its Hand and Shifts Focus to Asia

Abstract: BetOnSports, the sports gambling Web site indicted by United States prosecutors last month for taking bets from hundreds of thousands of Americans, told employees yesterday that it planned to shut down most of its operations, a spokesman said. The spokesman, Kevin Smith, said BetOnSports told 800 employees in Costa Rica and Antigua, where the virtual casino has its operations, that they would be losing their jobs. He said the company planned to refocus its business on other parts of the world, notably Asia. The development provides the first definitive indication of how BetOnSports, whose shares have been publicly traded in Britain, would respond to what has been an aggressive and unusual cross-jurisdictional move by United States prosecutors. On July 17, the United States attorney for the Eastern District of Missouri unsealed a 22-count indictment against BetOnSports and several executives, accusing them of running an illegal Internet gambling operation. Prosecutors said they would seek a $4.5 billion penalty against the company and its executives. At the time, federal agents arrested David Carruthers, the chief executive of BetOnSports, who was at the Dallas-Fort Worth airport on a flight layover. Mr. Carruthers, since let go from his position at the company, remains in custody in St. Louis. A federal judge also granted prosecutors a temporary restraining order prohibiting BetOnSports from taking bets from United States residents. The question was whether BetOnSports would ignore that order, fight it or capitulate, as it now appears to have done. “It worked; it shut them down,” I. Nelson Rose, a professor and expert in gambling law at Whittier Law School, said of the indictment. Mr. Rose said the decision by BetOnSports to stop taking bets from the United States appeared in part to stem from a desire to right itself with the investment community. He said he had been consulting in London with major investors that had either sold their shares in BetOnSports or were considering doing so. “They don’t want to be involved in an illegal business,” Mr. Rose said. Mr. Smith, the BetOnSports spokesman, said the company indeed wanted to signal to investors that it is a responsible operation. But the development is a painful one for BetOnSports, which takes 70 to 80 percent of its bets from United States residents. The development represents a considerable victory for opponents of Internet gambling and one that comes as surprise to some industry analysts. It is the first time that a publicly traded offshore casino has shut down its operations under pressure from United States prosecutors. Tens of millions of Americans place bets annually over the Internet, using home computers to wager on sporting events, poker and table games. And the industry has largely been considered outside the reach of American legislators and prosecutors, who do not have jurisdiction over the offshore operations. United States prosecutors assert that offshore Internet casinos violate the Federal Wire Act of 1961. Legal experts, noting that the position is untested, say the law seems reasonably construed to cover sports betting but is less clearly applicable to casino games, like blackjack and poker. The House of Representatives recently passed legislation to strengthen the laws against operating Internet casinos but the Senate has not yet passed the legislation. Mr. Carruthers has pleaded not guilty to the federal charges, and people briefed on his situation said his lawyers were negotiating with prosecutors about a bail arrangement that would confine him to St. Louis, or even one residence or hotel. He and other industry executives had traveled frequently to the United States, showing up at industry conventions, talking to financiers and even debating politicians about whether the activity should be legalized, taxed and regulated. The growth in the industry has prompted major investment houses to invest their mutual funds in the virtual casinos. But as they have done so, they have acknowledged that the investment is a high risk given the unresolved legal issues. BetOnSports went public in July 2004, raising $101 million, and ending with a first-day market capitalization of $209 million. When trading was halted on July 17, the shares were worth about $234 million. In its first quarter, ending May 6, it took in wagers of $735 million and had 50,000 active players. According to Bloomberg data, some of its largest institutional shareholders are funds controlled by major American investment houses, like Goldman Sachs, Merrill Lynch and Morgan Stanley, and their domestic and overseas subsidiaries. Mr. Rose, the law professor, said he had counseled investors and potential investors that association with offshore casinos could put them in civil and even criminal jeopardy. “I’d told them that if this is truly illegal, if it is racketeering, then people who finance the operations could be criminally liable,” he said.


How Samuel Palmisano of I.B.M. Stayed a Step Ahead - Unboxed

Abstract: BECAUSE it has become so consistently successful, I.B.M. is almost boring. This is a company so predictable that its financial forecast is packaged as a “five-year road map,” as if it were some sort of state planning exercise. Yet behind I.B.M.’s relentless progress over the last decade is a game plan that has been anything but conservative. The company shed multibillion-dollar businesses. It chose higher profit margins over corporate size, and expanded aggressively overseas, seeking sales, low-cost engineering talent and quicker organizational reflexes. Investors, however, haven’t been bored. The company’s stock price has surged. In November, Warren E. Buffett, who typically shuns technology stocks, announced he had accumulated $10 billion of I.B.M. shares , a stake of more than 5 percent. All of that didn’t just happen. A large portion of the credit goes to Samuel J. Palmisano , who steps down on Sunday after nearly a decade as chief executive. During his tenure, I.B.M. has been a textbook case of how to drive change in a big company — when so much of the study of business innovation focuses on start-ups and entrepreneurs. This column is a glimpse of the thinking behind some of the major steps I.B.M. has taken under Mr. Palmisano’s leadership, based on two recent interviews with him. He says his guiding framework boils down to four questions:  “Why would someone spend their money with you — so what is unique about you?”  “Why would somebody work for you?”  “Why would society allow you to operate in their defined geography — their country?”  “And why would somebody invest their money with you?” Mr. Palmisano formulated those questions in the months after he became C.E.O. in March 2002 His predecessor, Louis V. Gerstner Jr., recruited to I.B.M. in 1993, had already pulled the company out of a financial tailspin, first reducing the size of the work force and cutting costs, and then leading a remarkable recovery. In meetings after he took over, Mr. Palmisano told colleagues that I.B.M. was still good, but that it wasn’t the standard-setting corporation that it had been when he joined in 1973. (A history major at Johns Hopkins and a star offensive lineman on the football team, he turned down a tryout with the Oakland Raiders of the N.F.L. for a sales job at the company.) The four questions, he explains, were a way to focus thinking and prod the company beyond its comfort zone and to make I.B.M. pre-eminent again. He presented the four-question framework to the company’s top 300 managers at a meeting in early 2003 in Boca Raton, Fla. “This needs to be our mission and goal, to make I.B.M. a great company,” he said, according to executives who attended the gathering. THE pursuit of excellence in those four dimensions shaped the strategy. To focus on doing unique work, with its higher profits, meant getting out of low-margin businesses that were fading. I.B.M.’s long-range technology assessment in 2002 concluded that the personal computer business would no longer present much opportunity for innovation, at least not in the corporate market. The hub of innovation would shift to services and software, often delivered over the Internet from data centers, connecting to all kinds of devices, including PCs. Today, that is called cloud computing; when I.B.M. started promoting the concept several years ago the company called it on-demand computing. So Mr. Palmisano led a lengthy strategic review of the PC business, deciding to sell while it was still profitable. Internal arguments against a sell-off were intense: PCs pulled in sales of other I.B.M. products in corporate accounts, the cost of electronic parts for its larger computers would jump without the purchasing power of its big PC division, and the corporate brand and its reputation would suffer without PCs, the one I.B.M. product touched by millions of people. Lately, Hewlett-Packard has engaged in a similar debate, first declaring that it was looking to sell its PC business, then backing off. “I’ve heard every one of the arguments, every one of them,” Mr. Palmisano says. “But if you decide you’re going to move to a different space, where there’s innovation and therefore you can do unique things and get some premium for that, the PC business wasn’t going to be it.” In 2004, I.B.M. sold its PC business to Lenovo of China. Mr. Palmisano says he deflected overtures from Dell and private equity firms, preferring the sale to a company in China for strategic reasons: the Chinese government wants its corporations to expand globally, and by aiding that national goal, I.B.M. enhanced its stature in the lucrative Chinese market, where the government still steers business. In total, the PC, disk drive and other hardware businesses that Mr. Palmisano sold off generated nearly $20 billion a year in sales, if not a lot of profits. The divestitures meant that I.B.M. was no longer the world’s largest information technology company. Hewlett-Packard took that title and took a different strategic path as well, doubling its bet on PCs by acquiring Compaq in 2001. “You see the choice that was made, and how the economics worked out,” Mr. Palmisano observes. Today, I.B.M.’s stock market value, at $217 billion, is more than four times that of the struggling H.P. I.B.M. invested heavily elsewhere, buying the business consulting firm PricewaterhouseCoopers Consulting, for $3.5 billion in 2002, for its expertise in specific industries. For I.B.M., the emphasis was to move up from selling customers computers and software to helping them use technology to solve business challenges in marketing, procurement and manufacturing. Corporations and governments are drowning in a flood of data from internal systems and the Web, struggling to make sense of it. To get ahead of that challenge, I.B.M. has spent more than $14 billion since 2005 buying 25 software companies that specialize in data mining and analytics, looking for useful patterns in data in fields as varied as disease treatment, traffic management and crime detection. And it has increased its research and development budget by 20 percent under Mr. Palmisano, to about $6 billion a year. Combining research, specialized skills and sophisticated technology is the recipe behind I.B.M.’s Smarter Planet initiative , begun in 2008. It now has more than 2,000 projects worldwide, applying computer intelligence to create more efficient systems for utility grids, traffic management, food distribution, water conservation and health care. The idea, Mr. Palmisano explains, is to “go to a space where you’re uniquely positioned and use the value of I.B.M.’s integration.” For him, the Smarter Planet effort is a return to I.B.M.’s roots. Shortly before he became chief executive, he dipped into corporate archives, reading speeches and memos from the founder, Thomas Watson Sr. When Mr. Palmisano was an executive assistant to John F. Akers, then the chairman, in 1989 and 1990, he had lunch with Thomas J. Watson Jr., a former chairman, once a month. The Watsons, he says, always defined I.B.M. as a company that did more than sell computers; they believed that it had an important role to play in solving societal challenges. “It’s old-fashioned, but it’s motivational,” he says. And it resonates with the young people I.B.M. is recruiting these days, he says. A couple of times a year, Mr. Palmisano speaks to groups of elite students whom I.B.M. is trying to woo to its research labs. The pitch, he says, is that I.B.M. is a place where you can make a difference and do deep science. “You can change the world, and you can compete for a Nobel prize ,” he says, referring to I.B.M.’s five Nobel winners. (Eighty-seven percent of the candidates who were offered jobs by I.B.M. Research this year joined the company.) Mr. Palmisano’s appeal to young technologists is just one example of an answer to one of his four questions. All four, he says, must be addressed. That challenge is now passed to Virginia M. Rometty, who this week becomes the ninth chief executive in the company’s 100-year history. “The hardest thing is answering those four questions,” Mr. Palmisano says. “You’ve got to answer all four and work at answering all four to really execute with excellence.”

International Business Machines Corporation


Boating With Friends, Girl, 16, Dies in Accident on Long Island Sound

Abstract: GREENWICH, Conn. — A 16-year-old girl from here was killed and another was seriously injured in a boating accident on Wednesday afternoon on Long Island Sound, the police said. The accident occurred after 2 p.m. near Greenwich Point Park, when the girls, who were riding in an inner tube being pulled by a boat that two friends were in, somehow became entangled in its propeller, said Lt. Kraig Gray, a spokesman for the Greenwich Police Department. It appeared that the two girls fell out of the inner tube and into the water before the accident, said Ian Macmillan, the harbor master for the town of Greenwich. The propeller struck them when the boat circled back to pick them up, he said. The girls who were operating the boat pulled the injured girls on board and docked it at the Old Greenwich Yacht Club, where emergency workers met them, Mr. Macmillan said. “This is a shock and a surprise to all of us,” he said. “It was a beautiful day — perfect conditions. Then out of the blue, something horrific happened.” As of late Wednesday, the police had not released the name of the girl who was killed. The girl who was injured was taken to Stamford Hospital for surgery on an injured leg and appeared to be “doing well,” Lieutenant Gray said. The girl who died would have been a junior this fall at Greenwich High School, which the other three girls also attend. The school district will provide counseling to students affected by the tragedy, the district’s superintendent, William McKersie, said in a statement. The father of an uninjured girl who was riding in the boat, Gordon Thurber, said his daughter Sabrina, 15, was in shock after the accident. “Sabrina had to pull her friend’s dead body out of the water,” he said. “This would’ve been tough for a combat soldier, you know? These are teenaged girls. I am just on my knees, thanking God, that she didn’t die.” Mr. Thurber said he would take his daughter to trauma therapy on Thursday. “My heart is just breaking for these girls and their family, their friends,” he said. The police are investigating the accident with the Connecticut Department of Energy and Environmental Protection, which oversees boating certification in the state, Lieutenant Gray said. The Greenwich waterfront is a popular place for teenagers to ride in boats and inner tubes during the summer, the harbor master said. Teenagers are allowed to operate a boat without parents onboard as long as they have a safe boating certificate issued by the state, he said. Boating is central to the community, and the town has a junior sailing program for children as well, he said. “I can’t remember the last time we’ve had a fatal accident or anything close to it here in Greenwich, and I’ve been here 45 years,” he said. “It’s rare, and it’s been my worst nightmare.” Residents must take an eight-hour boating course and pass an exam to obtain a safe-boating certificate, according to the website for the Department of Energy and Environmental Protection. The certificate is required to operate a recreational boat in the state. As one family left the beach on Wednesday, they said they were saddened to hear of the tragedy. “It was beautiful watching some boats, some tubing, people having fun on the water,” said Rong Chen, of Rye, N.Y., who was with his wife and children. “Then all of a sudden, we hear about this. You can’t imagine something like this could happen at such a peaceful place.”

Greenwich Connecticut
Boat Accidents
Long Island Sound


Top Chechen Ordered Abduction, Austria Says

Abstract: Chechnya ’s president, Ramzan A. Kadyrov , ordered the kidnapping of a Chechen whistle-blower in Vienna last year, in which the man was fatally shot, Austria ’s counterterrorism department concluded after a yearlong investigation. The nation’s public prosecutor’s office released the news on Tuesday. Mr. Kadyrov, who is supported by the Kremlin and Prime Minister Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, has denied any role in the killing of the whistle-blower, Umar S. Israilov, who was living in exile when he was fatally shot last year. But the Austrian government’s investigators concluded that Mr. Kadyrov ordered that Mr. Israilov be kidnapped, and that the group of Chechens who tried to snatch Mr. Israilov from a Viennese street botched the job. One of them shot Mr. Israilov after he broke free and tried to escape, the investigators found. Their conclusions, pointed and direct but based largely on circumstantial evidence, shift the focus now to Austria’s federal prosecutors’ office, which has been preparing indictments. Three Chechen exiles are in custody in the case : Otto Kaltenbrunner, who is accused of being the local organizer of the crime; Muslim Dadayev, who is accused of monitoring Mr. Israilov’s movements before the crime and driving the getaway car; and Turpal Ali Yesherkayev, who is accused, with a fourth man, of confronting Mr. Israilov as he stepped from a grocery store and then chasing him as he fled. The fourth suspect, Lecha Bogatirov, left Austria and returned to Russia after the killing, investigators found; he is suspected of shooting Mr. Israilov three times with a pistol. Mr. Israilov, who was 27, was a former bodyguard and midlevel official in the paramilitary forces under Mr. Kadyrov’s command. In 2006, after leaving Russia for asylum in Europe, he filed a complaint in the European Court of Human Rights in which he accused Mr. Kadyrov of participating in abductions, torture and murder as part of a Kremlin-backed counterinsurgency effort against separatists in Chechnya, a Russian republic. Before he was killed Mr. Israilov said he had been threatened by an emissary from Mr. Kadyrov, and he asked for police protection, which was denied. In interviews with The New York Times while in hiding, he said that Mr. Kadyrov had “promised a bounty for me.” Among the evidence the Austrian investigators found, said Gerhard Jarosch, a spokesman for the Vienna prosecutor’s office, was a digital picture in Mr. Kaltenbrunner’s cellphone that showed him sitting on a couch with Mr. Kadyrov. The investigators also determined that Mr. Kaltenbrunner had been in Chechnya shortly before the killing, which is when, Mr. Israilov’s supporters say, Mr. Kaltenbrunner received the final instructions from Mr. Kadyrov to kidnap or kill the whistle-blower. The authorities also determined that a close aide to Mr. Kadyrov met with two of the suspects in the killing — Mr. Kaltenbrunner and Mr. Bogatirov — before Mr. Israilov was shot and that Mr. Kaltenbrunner placed a call to the aide’s cellphone number immediately after the shooting, while the group fled. The aide, Shaa Turlayev, is a former rebel who has been accused in Russia of organizing political killings for the Chechen president. A copy of Mr. Turlayev’s Russian passport and an electronic airline ticket used by Mr. Turlayev were found in the getaway car.

Israilov Umar S
Kadyrov Ramzan
Austria
Chechnya (Russia)
Murders and Attempted Murders
Kidnapping
Whistle-Blowers


Q. & A. on Democrats and Disputed Delegates

Abstract: A potentially fierce political showdown is in the offing on Saturday as Democratic Party officials meet to try to resolve one of the most contentious issues of their presidential primary process: whether to seat the delegations from Florida and Michigan at the party’s August convention, and if so, how. The campaign of Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton wants the party’s rules committee to seat the full delegations and give all delegates full voting power; the campaign of Senator Barack Obama will argue for something less, although it is not clear exactly what. Highlighting the stakes and passions involved, demonstrations are expected as the committee, meeting at a Washington hotel, considers the matter. On Friday, the Clinton campaign escalated the battle, arguing that Mr. Obama, of Illinois, should get no delegates from Michigan because he took his name off the ballot, even though many voters backing him voted for “uncommitted,” a ballot line that received 40 percent of the vote. Later Mrs. Clinton, of New York, who trails Mr. Obama in delegates, said she expected the race would be decided next week after undecided superdelegates started declaring their preferences. Here are questions and answers about the meeting this weekend. Some are based on reader submissions. Q. Will the meeting have an influence on the outcome of the nominating fight? A. Yes, since by adding any delegates from these two states, the committee would essentially be raising the number of delegates needed to win the nomination. Right now, Mr. Obama needs nearly 40 more delegates to win. If half the delegates from the two states are seated, that would increase the gap and he would have to coax perhaps as many as two dozen additional superdelegates to his side. It would also raise the number of delegates Mrs. Clinton would need, but she is already behind Mr. Obama in pledged delegates and even under the best-case scenario has virtually no chance of catching him on that score. Q. Is the membership of the committee weighted toward Mrs. Clinton or Mr. Obama? A. Not clear. Among the 30 panel members, 13 have declared support for Mrs. Clinton and 8 for Mr. Obama. Seven others are neutral or have not declared, although some of their fellow members perceive at least four as leaning toward Mr. Obama. Even so, panel members’ preference for a candidate may not necessarily determine how they vote on the rules. The co-chairmen have not endorsed anyone. Q. Mrs. Clinton may have “won” Michigan, but Mr. Obama’s name was not even on the ballot. How can the committee divide up those delegates? A. That is a can of worms. One compromise proposal would give Mr. Obama about 40 percent of the delegates because that’s how many voted for “uncommitted,” and his supporters were campaigning for voters to cast their ballots for “uncommitted.” But Harold Ickes, Mrs. Clinton’s chief delegate counter, said on Friday that Mr. Obama should get none of them. “It’s impossible to discern the mind of each of the 238,000 people who voted for ‘uncommitted,’ ” Mr. Ickes said. Q. Why can’t the committee just seat the full delegations? A. The two states broke party rules by moving their primaries up before Democratic guidelines allowed, resulting in the loss of their delegates as a penalty. Some argue that even by giving the states half their delegates, the party would be sending a bad signal that would encourage others to move up their primaries in the future. Q. Why, then, should the committee reconsider the matter at all? A. The Clinton campaign, which backed the earlier decision to strip the states of their delegates when Mrs. Clinton was ahead in the polls, now wants these states to count. Mr. Obama now agrees that the delegations should be seated but has not specified in what proportion. Adding to the pressure to restore the delegates is that the Democratic Party does not want to alienate voters in these two important battlegrounds, particularly when the voters themselves did nothing wrong. Q. Does the popular vote matter at all here? A. No. This is just about delegates. Mrs. Clinton has been arguing that she leads in the overall popular vote, although that is only if you include Michigan and Florida, and few counts do. Thomas E. Mann at the Brookings Institution explains why: “Votes cast outside the rule of law and in the absence of contested elections lack moral standing and by themselves have no legitimate claim on the selection of delegates to the national party convention.” But the Clinton campaign hopes that by seating delegates from the renegade states, the committee will in effect legitimize the popular votes she received in them and in turn bolster her argument to superdelegates that she collected more votes than Mr. Obama. Her candidacy hangs on convincing them that she would be a stronger candidate in the fall than Mr. Obama against Senator John McCain, Republican of Arizona. Q. If a compromise is reached this weekend, will that end this battle? A. Not necessarily. Mrs. Clinton is expected to do well in Puerto Rico’s contest on Sunday. And she is competing in the primaries in Montana and South Dakota on Tuesday. After that, she is likely to reassess the fate of her candidacy. Q. What are the chances that the battle over the two delegations will drag on beyond the weekend? A. The committee is expected to decide the issue by Sunday. But should the Clinton campaign not like the outcome, it could appeal to the Democratic Party’s credentials committee, which might meet in July, or it could appeal to the full convention in August. That is considered the so-called nuclear option, since it would prolong the nominating fight, and, some believe, irreparably divide the party.

Presidential Election of 2008
Conventions National (US)
Democratic Party
Florida
Michigan


U.S. Starts First Major Pullout From Iraq, Beginning With Brigade Members

Abstract: BAGHDAD, Nov. 24 — The first substantive drawdown of American troops in Iraq has begun, as the first members of a brigade in Diyala Province have started to leave, American military officials in Baghdad said Saturday. Col. David W. Sutherland of the Third Brigade Combat Team, First Cavalry Division, whose soldiers have been working in Diyala since last November, said all 5,000 of his troops would be gone by mid-December. However, because of continuing violence in Diyala, another brigade that is already in the country will take the place of the Third Brigade Combat Team. The replacement soldiers are already in Diyala and are taking over their new jobs, Colonel Sutherland said. The replacement brigade, which had worked in Salahuddin Province, which is to the north and west of Diyala, will leave quieter areas of that province to the Iraqi Army and concerned local citizen groups, said Rear Adm. Gregory Smith, spokesman for the multinational division forces in Baghdad. “There is a 5,000-troop net decrease in theater,” Admiral Smith said. “The redeployment without replacement reflects the overall improved security situation in Iraq.” But he cautioned against painting too optimistic a picture. “We do not assess we are in a trend of peace; we are in a trend of decreasing violence,” he said. When this initial drawdown is completed, the number of troops will drop to about 157,000 from 162,000 in June, when the American troop level was at its peak. Gen. David H. Petraeus, the top commander in Iraq, has said repeatedly that there will not be another troop increase and has pledged to bring home a total of five brigades by July 2008. The military began increasing troops in Baghdad and surrounding areas in February in an effort to stop the cycle of violence in the capital. Between February and June, an additional five brigades were added to the roughly 130,000 troops already in Iraq. Military officials underscored that although there had been gains in Diyala, they wanted to be sure that their departure did not result in lost ground and for that reason were holding steady the number of battalions there. Diyala has been among the most dangerous provinces for American troops and Iraqi civilians in the past year. “The province swirled into a cycle of violence,” Colonel Sutherland said. Among the militants active in the province are Baathist insurgents, Kurds who want to expand their territory, Shiite militias, Iranian-backed militias and extremist Sunni groups linked to Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia, a homegrown militant group whose leaders are foreigners, according to American intelligence sources. In May, before a major operation intended to dislodge the extremists, the American military recorded 1,051 significant acts of violence; in October, the number had dropped to 464, Colonel Sutherland said. Military officials announced Saturday that a bomb made of ball bearings and placed in a bird box that blew up at a popular animal market in central Baghdad a day earlier was the work of a cell of Iranian-backed Shiite militias that military officials refer to as “special groups.” “The group’s purpose was to make it appear Al Qaeda in Iraq was responsible for the attack,” Admiral Smith said, using the military’s name for Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia. “The special groups’ aim was to demonstrate to Baghdadis the need for militia groups to continue providing for their security.” As the military has been increasingly successful in forcing Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia to abandon Baghdad, the justification for the existence of Shiite militias has diminished. Admiral Smith said that the military had captured four of the people responsible for the bombing and that, based on their confessions and forensics, it had concluded that the bomb was similar to explosives used in previous attacks by special groups. He emphasized that there was “no evidence Iran ordered the attack.” Also in Baghdad on Saturday, Iraqi dignitaries and families gathered on a riverbank for the ceremonial reopening of a famed boulevard: Abu Nawas Street, on the east side of the Tigris once famous for its fish restaurants. It is a showcase project by Iraq’s government to reassure Iraqis of the success of its nine-month security crackdown.

Iraq
United States Armament and Defense
United States Army
Military Personnel


India Finds Domestic Tourism Isn't Always a Good Thing

Abstract: PANAJI, Goa — He travels a great distance from the grim hinterlands of the nation to the state of Goa on the southwest coast to see her as though she were a monument. He walks behind her, saying several times, “Excuse me, a picture?” He wants a selfie with her. If she consents, there is much handshaking. Then he goes through the photos with a sudden serious expression. Some days, as he lies on the beach with a beer bottle in hand and observes the foreign white woman, there is the animal melancholy in his eyes of watching something unattainable. And he says things about her body to her that he and his like-minded friends, of whom there are usually many, find hilarious. In the tourism department they call him “the cheap domestic tourist.” Economically worthless because he spends so little, often living in buses and cars, he has begun to travel for leisure more often than a person of his means used to. The tourism industry regards him as an adversary of the high-value tourist, but he is much more — a mascot of the fact that India makes the simplest joys of street life difficult for women. There was a time when the sheer hardships of India contributed to its charms as a tourist destination for the West. But the recent increase in reports of rapes in India has, more than the nation’s many other horrors, diminished its attraction. The government, however, refuses to see the heart of the problem. Over the past few years, there has been a decline in the number of foreign tourists in Goa. This high season, too, has been dismal. Tourism officials are still working on the numbers, but they told me that their guess was that there had been a drop of 20 to 30 percent in the number of foreign tourists. Because Russians form the largest contingent among foreign visitors, the officials blame the situation on the fall of the ruble. Every year in the recent past, officials have blamed one global event or the other. But now there is also a growing fear in the hospitality industry that the decline in high-spending tourists might be more than a temporary trend. And that India might be the adversary of its own tourism. Apart from the sex crimes, there are other law-and-order problems, poor infrastructure, terrifying traffic and pollution. Since 2012, the Taj Mahal, in the northern city of Agra, has witnessed a decline in the number of foreign tourists. In 2014, the drop was 6.8 percent from the previous year. The tourism sector of Agra has blamed the rising crime rate in the region. Even though the number of international tourists to many other locations in India has shown modest growth, for India’s size and extraordinary attractions, the nation continues to be a tourism dwarf. According to a government report, in 2013 India received just under seven million tourists, representing 0.64 percent of the world’s international tourists, who spent 1.59 percent of what the world’s international tourists spent that year. I asked the tourism minister of Goa, Dilip Parulekar, how he planned to solve the problem of harassment of women on the beaches. He said nothing. As a politician he could not afford to speak ill of the poor. An executive with the five-star hotel Vivanta By Taj said that this year, as has been the case the past few years, the resort has been saved by somewhat affluent Indians. “They are demanding, they don’t go out much, they spend most of the time in the resort and make us run around, they bargain for everything,” he said, “but we need them now.” Until about a decade ago, the middle-class Indian tourist felt discriminated against by Goa’s hotels and restaurants, which preferred to serve foreigners because they spoke pleasantly to waiters, spent more and tipped more. Now the middle-class Indian is precious. But the fact is that she is probably even more repulsed than the foreigners by “the cheap domestic tourist,” because she understands his every word. Follow Manu Joseph, author of the novel “The Illicit Happiness of Other People,” on Facebook .


African Union Calls for Settlement in Zimbabwe

Abstract: SHARM EL SHEIK, Egypt — The African Union on Tuesday urged the creation of a government of national unity in Zimbabwe to heal the nation’s deep political wounds after President Robert Mugabe ’s triumph in a one-candidate runoff election widely condemned as a sham. The union, a 53-nation body that is Africa’s most authoritative group, made the call after a two-day gathering of African leaders marked by divisions over the handling of the crisis in Zimbabwe. While President Omar Bongo of Gabon endorsed Mr. Mugabe’s presidency, Botswana urged the suspension of Zimbabwe from African forums because its participation would “give unqualified legitimacy to a process which cannot be considered legitimate.” The African Union resolution also urged the continuation of regional mediation efforts, which, to the frustration of the opposition in Zimbabwe, have been led by President Thabo Mbeki of South Africa. Mr. Mbeki has been widely criticized as being too soft on Mr. Mugabe, an ally of nearly 30 years. The union urged the opposition and the Mugabe government to avoid moves that “may negatively impact on the climate of dialogue.” While the document was less critical of Zimbabwe than some African nations had wished, it reflected an unusual readiness to break a general continentwide reluctance to intrude into other nations’ business. The resolution was another departure from the continent’s resistance to treating Mr. Mugabe as anything less than a hero of the struggle for liberation. Despite widespread international condemnations of the election, Mr. Mugabe had wanted the African Union to endorse his re-election, which three African monitoring groups labeled inadequate, not credible or not reflective of the will of the people. But his adversaries — and some of his allies — urged him to accept a settlement that would mean relinquishing the absolute control of Zimbabwe that has marked most of his 28 years in office since independence from white rule in 1980. Before the African Union made its call, Mr. Mugabe and the opposition Movement for Democratic Change had ruled out a negotiated settlement based on power-sharing of the kind that emerged from Kenya’s post-election violence earlier this year. “Kenya is Kenya; Zimbabwe is Zimbabwe,” George Charamba, Mr. Mugabe’s spokesman, said. “We have our own history of evolving dialogue and resolving political impasses the Zimbabwean way. The Zimbabwean way, not the Kenyan way. Not at all.” Deepening the sense of stalemate, the opposition had also issued a statement saying, “There are no talks or discussions taking place between the two parties and, most importantly, there is no agreement in the offing.” Nelson Chamisa, a spokesman for the opposition in Harare, said the party would “carefully study and understand the resolution” before issuing a statement. The opposition, led by Morgan Tsvangirai , received a boost when Bernard Kouchner, the French foreign minister, said in a television broadcast that the European Union would insist that Mr. Tsvangirai lead the proposed national unity government. France assumed the rotating presidency of the 27-nation European Union on Tuesday. The call by the African Union did not seem robust enough to deflect efforts by the United States and its allies to push for international sanctions. “The A.U. position has not changed our moving forward here,” said Richard Grenell, the spokesman for the United States Mission to the United Nations. American diplomats have been consulting with a few other delegations, mostly Europeans as well as Burkina Faso, on the text of a Security Council resolution to put in place an arms embargo as well as travel and financial measures against officials who undermined the elections. South Africa, China, Indonesia and Vietnam are among the delegations that oppose such efforts. Mr. Mugabe dismissed international demands for his ouster, saying through a spokesman that Western countries threatening economic or other pressure could “go hang a thousand times.” Mr. Mugabe won Friday’s runoff with 85 percent of the vote, according to the official count, after Mr. Tsvangirai boycotted the election, citing violence aimed at his aides and supporters. In the first round on March 29, Mr. Tsvangirai won more votes than Mr. Mugabe, securing nearly 48 percent compared with about 42 percent for Mr. Mugabe, according to the official tally. Moreover, Mr. Mugabe’s party lost control of the lower house of Parliament. Both men are citing their election victories as tokens of political legitimacy. By taking up the Zimbabwe debate, the African Union has put is own credibility into play, pursuing an elusive African settlement to secure a democratic outcome while averting the imposition of punitive measures from Western nations led by the United States. The African Union’s Peace and Security Council commissioner, Ramtane Lamamra, told a news conference, “Sanctions are not the best tool that modern democracy has invented.” He added: “The African Union has a different line of thinking on how to help African countries to move forward under such circumstances.” As the conference entered its final day, Mr. Mugabe seemed to display a familiar defiance. Asked how he responded to Western pressure, Mr. Charamba, Mr. Mugabe’s spokesman, told reporters: “They can go hang a thousand times. They have no basis, no claim on Zimbabwean politics at all.” He also dismissed demands that Mr. Mugabe step down as part of a settlement. “With only five days in office, you expect him to retire?” Mr. Charamba said. Mr. Mugabe was jostled unceremoniously by reporters clutching tape recorders and cameras as he arrived at a cavernous conference hall in this resort. At one point, according to African journalists who witnessed the incident, a British television reporter accused him of “stealing elections in your country.” Mr. Mugabe snapped back: “When are the British going to stop colonizing us? I am the president whether you like it or not.”

Zimbabwe
Mugabe Robert
African Union
Politics and Government
Tsvangirai Morgan


Family DNA Searches Seen as Crime-Solving Tool, and Intrusion on Rights

Abstract: The leads have dried up in the killing of a young woman in Queens during a jog last summer. Tips about potential suspects have gone nowhere. A reward has failed to bear fruit, even as it has swelled to over $280,000 . And the samples of a stranger’s DNA found on the hands, throat and cellphone of the jogger, Karina Vetrano, 30, did not match those in national offender databases. But the authorities say that the recovered DNA could hold the key to solving the case if state officials authorize what is called familial searching, which allows investigators to search criminal databases to identify likely relatives of the offender. The technique, which has been used more than a dozen times in the United States over the last 10 years, represents a frontier in the evolving world of forensic science. While some methods, like microscopic hair testing and bite-mark matching , have been challenged in recent years, DNA testing remains a staple of forensic investigation, used to both identify suspects and exonerate the wrongfully convicted. Familial searching allows investigators to search offender databases with wider parameters to identify people who are likely to be close relatives of the person who may have committed a crime. Law enforcement officials say a hit in the database is less a piece of evidence than it is a lead, and such matches have helped solve some heinous crimes in states where the practice has been authorized. But the method raises some complicated ethical issues that have trailed the expansion of DNA technology since its introduction. And as the collection of DNA grows in the private sector, so do the concerns about its potential misuse, particularly in the hands of government institutions. Problems at some laboratories, including the New York City medical examiner’s office, have highlighted how DNA evidence is not immune from human error. A 2013 review of more than 800 rape cases processed by the medical examiner’s office found that DNA evidence was mishandled in dozens of cases. Image The site in Queens where Ms. Vetrano, 30, was found dead. Leads in the case have dried up. Credit Dave Sanders for The New York Times In the case of Ms. Vetrano, who the police say was sexually assaulted and strangled, lack of progress led Richard A. Brown, the Queens district attorney, to push for familial searching. “The Police Department reached a point where they exhausted all their leads. And they came to us and said in essence, ‘What else can we possibly do?’” Mr. Brown said in an interview. Mr. Brown and two of his deputies, Eric Rosenbaum and Robert J. Masters, said that Ms. Vetrano’s case presented an ideal situation for using familial searching, in part because of what they say is the high likelihood that the DNA is from the perpetrator. “It is a stranger rape case,” Mr. Masters said. “In the annals of law enforcement, there are few fact patterns that are more frightening.” The New York State Commission on Forensic Science, a 14-member panel appointed by the governor to develop standards for forensic laboratories, and its seven-member DNA subcommittee will hold a meeting next month on whether to authorize the technique. Familial DNA searching was pioneered in Britain, helping in 2002 in what was believed to be the first conviction using the technique. In 2008, California became the first state in the country to authorize the testing, and Colorado followed a year later. It has now been used in at least eight other states. Image Richard A. Brown, the Queens district attorney, supports the use of family DNA searches. But experts say the constitutional implications have yet to be tested in court. Credit Hilary Swift for The New York Times California has solved seven cases using familial searching, a spokeswoman for the state’s Justice Department said. One was the so-called Grim Sleeper case in Los Angeles. A serial killer preyed on vulnerable women and eluded identification for decades until investigators matched crime scene DNA to the killer’s son, whose DNA was in an offender database. “You’ve got a serial murderer or rapist in your community — you sit on your hands and wait for him to get in your database or do you try something?” said Mitchell R. Morrissey, an early proponent of the testing and a former district attorney in Denver. In New York, efforts to authorize such testing through the Legislature went nowhere several years ago. A compromise that allowed the authorities to use partial DNA matches automatically generated in the course of routine investigations has proved ineffective. But Ms. Vetrano’s case — along with the public pleas of her father, Philip, and his behind-the-scenes work with the Police Department and elected officials — has re-energized the push for familial searching. Critics of the technique say that regardless of its potential for success, it expands the use of DNA databases beyond their original intent. They fault it for allowing for searches of people who happen to be related to someone who has committed a crime, and say that given the composition of the offender databases, familial searching disproportionately affects blacks and Hispanics. “You’re creating a database of suspects largely defined by their race and class,” said Stephen Mercer, the chief attorney of the forensics division of the public defender’s office in Maryland, which outlawed the technique in 2008 in the face of these concerns. “That is just so fundamentally against our core values.” Image Lonnie Franklin Jr., convicted in the “Grim Sleeper” series of killings. The case is among seven that the California authorities say have been solved with the help of familial DNA searches. Credit Pool photo by Al Seib The District of Columbia has also prohibited these searches. Leads provided by familial DNA have resulted in errors. A filmmaker in New Orleans was told that he was a suspect in a murder in Idaho based on a DNA sample given by his father years earlier as part of a church-sponsored genealogy project. Ancestry.com, which had purchased the database from a nonprofit that had collected the DNA, was required by a court order to identify the man to the police. The man was cleared after his DNA — which he gave under a court order — was tested. Since then, Ancestry.com has made the database private and has not received any other requests from law enforcement officials for health or genetic information about an Ancestry member, a spokesman for the company said. The spokesman, Brandon Borrman, said the company would comply with such a request only if legally required. Proponents of the technique said the filmmaker’s case could have been handled differently; DNA samples of potential suspects can be retrieved surreptitiously, from a discarded soda can, for example. But in some cases, that hasn’t been a ready option. Investigators chasing the so-called BTK serial killer in Wichita, Kan., compelled a hospital to turn over a sample of the suspect’s daughter’s DNA; she had recently undergone a Pap test. That sample allowed the police to acquire an arrest warrant for the man, Dennis Rader. Mr. Rader later was sentenced to more than 170 years in prison after pleading guilty to 10 counts of first-degree murder. The legal implications of familial testing, namely whether it is limited by the Fourth Amendment’s prohibition of unreasonable searches or the 14th Amendment’s equal protection clause, have not been tested in the courts, Erin E. Murphy, a law professor at New York University, said. She said the logic that law enforcement officials rely on to support familial testing should, by extension, support the testing of other government databases, which include repositories of DNA from members of the military, forensic personnel and crime victims. But such testing would most likely face wider opposition. Image A memorial where Ms. Vetrano was found dead. Credit Sam Hodgson for The New York Times “Familial searching is just an end-run around these debates,” said Professor Murphy, the author of “Inside the Cell: The Dark Side of Forensic DNA.” “You shouldn’t have fewer civil rights because you’re related to someone who broke the law.” A spokesman for Mr. Brown, the Queens district attorney, said it would be premature to answer questions about whether the office would seek to search other databases. If the DNA subcommittee and the New York State forensic commission vote to approve familial searching after the meeting on Feb. 10, a 45-day period for public comment will follow. The Legal Aid Society and the New York Civil Liberties Union have both filed memos with the commission that question the method’s constitutionality as well as the commission’s authority to weigh in on the matter. Many law enforcement officials around the state said that any trade-offs in civil liberties were minor compared with the potential to solve some particularly difficult cases. “Invasion of privacy is basically what law enforcement does. We do it legally. We do it with warrants, court orders,” William J. Fitzpatrick, the Onondaga County district attorney and a proponent of the technique, said. Mr. Fitzpatrick, who is a member of the state forensic commission, compared the method to a tip from an informant. “You’re telling me that if I have a scientific piece of evidence that shows me a perpetrator’s son is in prison — what’s a better lead?” In New York City, the police commissioner, James P. O’Neill, and the district attorneys from Brooklyn, the Bronx, Manhattan and Staten Island, support authorizing the method. Mr. Vetrano acknowledges that the testing may not lead to his daughter’s killer, but he said he would continue to advocate its use. “This would have been left as a dead issue unless I started making waves,” he said. “I’m the squeaky wheel and I will never ever stop.”

Forensic science
Murders and Homicides
District attorney
Genealogy
Privacy
Richard A Brown
Queens
New York
Karina Vetrano


City Invalidates Test Scores of Third Graders at Harlem School

Abstract: The results of several dozen standardized tests taken by third graders at a sought-after public elementary school in Harlem have been invalidated amid allegations of testing improprieties by the school’s principal, according to city education officials. The principal, Jeanene Worrell-Breeden, 49, killed herself soon after the testing was completed at Teachers College Community School , adding a tragic note to the episode and raising questions about whether the allegations had factored into her death. She jumped in front of a B train near 135th Street and St. Nicholas Avenue on April 17, and was taken to Harlem Hospital Center, where she died on April 25, the police said. The allegations against Ms. Worrell-Breeden were made the same day that she jumped, and a day after the city’s public school students in grades three through eight completed three days of English exams as part of a high-pressure state testing program. It was the first year that Teachers College Community School, which opened in September 2011 with kindergarten, had children old enough to take the tests. Though this round of testing would serve as the school’s first official appraisal, many community members believed it was prospering. “The tragic irony here is that by all accounts this school is a runaway success,” said City Councilman Mark Levine, who represents much of Harlem. “I’ve visited a number of times and am in regular communication with the parents. They seem to be thriving.” Still, Ms. Worrell-Breeden took a proactive approach to preparing students for the exams. The school had begun incorporating elements of the standardized tests into the curriculum one year earlier, and offered an after-school academy five days a week for the second graders. During exam week in April, students began each day with a pep rally meant to ease anxiety. It was this steadfast devotion to her students’ success that made Ms. Worrell-Breeden a popular figure among the school’s active parents. “Aside from being inspiring and supportive, Jeanene was a visionary leader,” Laurie Kindred, who served as co-president of the parent-teacher association during the previous school year, said. “She was an impassioned, dedicated principal who stood by what she believed on behalf of the kids.” Devora Kaye, a spokeswoman for the city’s Department of Education , issued a statement on Sunday that confirmed that Ms. Worrell-Breeden “was the subject of allegations of testing improprieties.” “An investigation substantiated these allegations, and we closed the investigation following her tragic passing,” the statement said. “This is a difficult time for the T.C.C. school community, and we will provide ongoing support to students, families and teachers.” Ms. Kaye did not provide further details, saying that a report would be released on Monday. The investigation was reported on Sunday by The New York Post. Teachers College Community School is run by the Education Department in partnership with Teachers College at Columbia University. The school offers many programs for students, including violin lessons for all third graders. In the 2014-15 school year, there were 218 students enrolled in prekindergarten through third grade, nearly two-thirds of them black or Hispanic. The school, which admits students by lottery, has become one of the most popular in Harlem, drawing applications this year from 464 families for 50 kindergarten spots, Jim Gardner, a spokesman for Teachers College, said. City education officials said the department’s Office of Special Investigations had substantiated the allegations against Ms. Worrell-Breeden, who was not interviewed during the investigation. They noted that the decision to invalidate the results of the 47 English exams would not negatively affect the students’ promotions to fourth grade.

Jeanene Worrell-Breeden
K-12 Education
Teachers College Community School
Tests
Cheating
Suicide
NYC Department of Education
Harlem
Principals School


Derick Brassard Proving to Be Key Figure for Rangers

Abstract: At the trading deadline three years ago, Derick Brassard was part of a deal that sent him to the Rangers from the Columbus Blue Jackets. In some reports, Brassard’s name was more or less ignored because Marian Gaborik’s departure from the Rangers was deemed more important. In other articles, Brassard was called an obscure player. Fast-forward to the 2016 trading deadline, and Brassard is hard to ignore. He has been a consistent force during the Rangers’ tumultuous season and is one of the team’s most valuable players as it prepares for a postseason run. With 19 games left in the regular season, Brassard, 28, has already set a career high for goals in a season with 22 and is on pace to surpass his high for points, 60, which he established a season ago. He is second on the Rangers in points with 46, one behind his linemate Mats Zuccarello. Brassard has helped carry the scoring burden caused by Rick Nash’s slump and long-term leg injury. “I think it’s just the evolution of a young player,” Rangers Coach Alain Vigneault said. “As he’s played here in New York, his role has gotten bigger. I think his confidence in himself and his abilities have gotten bigger; I have seen his skill progress, and hockey sense.” Brassard, the sixth overall pick in the 2006 draft, was not exactly an obscure player in Columbus, either. He was a top-line center for Nash and the Blue Jackets for much of his 309-game tenure there, posting consecutive 40-point seasons. Nash was dealt to the Rangers in the 2012 off-season, and Brassard followed nine months later. “It’s part of the sport; it’s part of the game,” Brassard said. “The only thing you can control is your play and the way you compete on the ice.” Brassard has come of age in New York, but he credits his success this season — after off-season wrist surgery to correct a lingering ailment — to the trainer Ben Prentiss . “I couldn’t do a lot of things, but with Ben’s experience, we could work around it,” Brassard said of training while he recovered. “I was kind of worried with the surgery and everything to have a slow start or a slow season.” John Tortorella, Brassard’s first coach with the Rangers and Columbus’s coach now, said this week that he was impressed with Brassard’s progress. “You could see, obviously, his talent level; you could see that he wants to make a difference,” Tortorella said. “I’m glad for him. He came from the team I’m coaching, so sometimes you get a change of scenery, it works.” After a scorching start, the Rangers were scuffling into January, and Nash’s bone bruise in his left leg, sustained Jan. 22, could have further derailed them. But Brassard has picked up the pace, posting 16 points in 16 games, with seven goals, to help the Rangers go 11-4-1. Besides scoring more, Brassard is shooting more. He is on pace to set a personal record for shots in a season, but he insisted he was not making an effort to put the puck on the net more. “I don’t have more goals because I shoot the puck more this year,” Brassard said. “The pucks are going in a little bit more, and obviously I’m going to try to shoot a little bit more. That’s just the way I play.” This year the Rangers again added a center at the trading deadline: Eric Staal. In his first game Monday against Columbus, Staal started at center but ended up on the left wing on a line with Brassard and Zuccarello. After two big wins last week over top teams in the Western Conference, the second-place Rangers face three games against division rivals in the next four days. They play at Pittsburgh on Thursday and at first-place Washington on Friday and then host the third-place Islanders on Sunday. With Staal in the mix and Nash expected to be back in 10 to 14 days, Brassard is hoping for another run that will have a happier ending than each of the last two, when the Rangers fell short of the Stanley Cup. “We believe in ourselves,” Brassard said. “We believe we can go all the way this year with the experiences we got the last two years. Eric is probably the missing piece that we needed.”


Nets-Knicks Rivalry Lacks History

Abstract: Ethan Schorr and Barak Taub stood next to one another at Barclays Center as close friends, separated by allegiance. Schorr, 17, wore a black Nets cap and jersey. Taub, 21, was clad in a blue and orange Knicks T-shirt. Schorr and Taub agreed on one thing when it came to N.B.A. basketball in New York City: the Nets-Knicks rivalry is alive. “Now we finally have a chance to actually compete to the point it is a rivalry,” said Schorr, a season-ticket holder who has been a fan since his team played in New Jersey. When Taub heard his friend’s comments, he could not disagree. The teams have each won a game, with the Knicks escaping the Nets, 100-97, on Tuesday. The Nets defeated the Knicks, 96-89, in overtime on Nov. 26. Since that first game, the friends have been trash-talking about the rematch. “I’m just excited for this,” Taub said. “It’s great to see New York thriving with both teams doing well.” Plenty of Knicks and Nets fans sat next to one another to root for their teams — and to scream in the faces of the opposing team’s fans in the process. The arena eventually filled, and the intensity and noise level increased in the second half, when the Knicks and the Nets traded leads in the third quarter. Of Knicks fans, the Nets’ Deron Williams said: “They’re going to make their presence felt. They have great fans. We know that, but I thought the crowd was great again tonight, like they’ve been all season.” Before Tuesday’s game, Knicks Coach Mike Woodson said it was fun to coach his team in a ruckus-like atmosphere. “If you’re a fan, watching it on TV or sitting in that arena, you had to enjoy that,” Woodson said of the first game. “I can’t help but think it’s always going to be a good game no matter where you play it.” Victor Robiglio and Joe Ciocia, both Knicks fans, said there was no way they were going to miss Tuesday’s game. “This is a new rivalry, and it’s very exciting,” Robiglio said. Ciocia predicted: “With Jason Kidd being back in the lineup, I think they are going to win. The last game was a good game, and the Nets are a really good team.” Gloria Bailey, a Nets fan who was born in Brooklyn and grew up there, was attending her first Nets game. “You know it’s going to be electrifying and rocking,” Bailey said. Bailey said that she did not mind seeing a large number of Knicks fans. “That would be good,” she said before the game. “You know why? Because you have one half going for the Nets and the other half going for the Knicks. It’s going to be a fun night. I’ll probably go to work tomorrow with a hoarse voice.”

Basketball
New York Knicks
Brooklyn Nets


Israel Arrests 22 Over Wildfires, as Arson Is Suspected

Abstract: JERUSALEM — Twenty-two people have been arrested on suspicion of arson or incitement to arson, security officials said on Friday, as Israel continued to battle its worst wildfires in years. The fires, which began on Tuesday, have erupted throughout the country, blazing through parched forests, incinerating scores of homes and forcing tens of thousands of people to flee. Two prisons were also evacuated. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Friday that “a considerable number” of the fires were set and described them as “terror,” a term usually given to militant attacks by Palestinians. “There is a price to crime, and there is a price for terror and incitement, and we will exact it,” Mr. Netanyahu said while on a tour of the Hatzor military base, according to local news reports. “The instructions are to prosecute anyone committing these acts so that all can see that anyone who tries to burn down the state of Israel will face the fullest punishment.” Firefighters had most of the dozens of fires under control by Friday, allowing thousands of people to return to their homes in the northern port city of Haifa, one of the areas that was hit hardest. Still, new fires erupted near Jerusalem and in the Galilee in northern Israel. Hundreds of residents of Nataf, a small Jewish community near Jerusalem, were evacuated on Friday. By Friday evening, a 747 Supertanker firefighting plane from the United States had landed in Israel to be used to extinguish some of the blazes, and 50 American firefighters were expected to join the effort, Israeli news media reported. While unusually hot, dry conditions and strong winds helped fan the flames, almost half of the fires are suspected of being arson, according to Israeli security officials. The “consensus is that this is arson,” Israel’s public security minister, Gilad Erdan, told journalists on Friday. In one instance, Mr. Erdan said, his forces had found evidence that gasoline was used to start a fire in Zikhron Yaaqov, a town in northern Israel. A man from a Jerusalem was arrested with fire-making materials, he said. By Friday evening, two more fires had been set on the Lebanese side of the border, apparently in hopes that the wind would carry the flames into Israel. Of the 22 people arrested on arson charges, one was a Palestinian who was arrested on suspicion of causing a fire early Friday in forests around the tiny Jewish community of Beit Meir near Jerusalem, Israeli news media reported. Eight were released, and 14 had their remand extended. No further information was available about the people being questioned. Israeli officials hinted that they suspected Palestinians were behind the arsons, but Arab leaders in Israel cautioned against placing blame without proof. “Whoever burns down the country cannot be a citizen of the country, and their citizenship status should be revoked,” said Miri Regev, the culture minister, a threat usually reserved for Palestinian citizens of Israel, who form about one-fifth of the country’s population of eight million. If Palestinians set some of the fires, it would be a new and potentially disruptive tactic in a long-simmering conflict. Israeli officials were “accusing the Arab minority of arson, before any formal police investigation took place,” Jamal Zahalka, a legislator in the Joint List, the Palestinian bloc in the Israeli Parliament, said in a statement. “It is unfortunate when elected officials choose to enhance the division in the Israeli society and add fuel to the fire,” he said. Some analysts also urged calm. The wave of fires was unusual, but it should not be overblown at this point, Alex Fishman, a military affairs analyst at the Israeli newspaper Yediot Aharonot, wrote in his column. “If the investigations do not clearly show that this was coordinated by terror cells who were handled by one source to set fires simultaneously, then any attempt to depict these events as a fire Intifada is another effort by politicians to intimidate and distract,” he wrote. In the past, Jewish extremists have used fires in the West Bank to torment Palestinians, setting olive fields and vehicles ablaze. In the worst such episode , in July 2015, a baby was killed and his parents later died of their injuries after arsonists set their home ablaze in Duma, a West Bank village. After the fires this week, Israelis described harrowing moments as they fled their homes. Yaakov Lehman, who lives in Beit Meir, said he was awakened early Friday by neighbors knocking frantically on his door, yelling that the family had to evacuate. Mr. Lehman, 31, a native of Tucson, said he and his wife, Rachelli, who is four months pregnant, grabbed their two small children, ages 1 and 3, passports and water, and tried to find a way out of the tiny community. But the main road was ablaze and the fire was creeping in, Mr. Lehman said. Eventually, firefighters cleared a back road for hundreds of the community’s residents to flee. Mr. Lehman recorded a video of their escape on his phone from his vehicle. Dozens of fires also broke out in the neighboring occupied West Bank, Nael al-Azzeh of the Palestinian Civil Defense forces told local news outlets. He said they were still investigating the causes of those fires. One of them was near Yizhar, a Jewish settlement in the northern West Bank, Israeli news media reported. Some Palestinians and Arabs took to social media to celebrate the fires, but Palestinian officials and some religious clerics reprimanded them sharply and urged people not to rejoice in the misfortunes of others. The Palestinian Authority sent eight firefighting teams to assist, including four to Beit Meir, Israeli news media reported. The fires are the worst in Israel since 2010, when a blaze burned for four days and killed more than 40 people, most of them cadets from the prison service on their way to evacuate a prison.

Arson Fires Israel Jerusalem Haifa Wildfires Palestinians


Diplomats Pulled 2 Ways, Between Protection and Accessibility

Abstract: Security breaches at American diplomatic compounds in the Middle East this week highlight the two competing challenges that United States diplomats confront: keeping safe in a world full of anti-American extremism and interacting with foreign populations outside the towering walls of government installations overseas. By all accounts, J. Christopher Stevens , the American ambassador to Libya , who was killed Tuesday during an attack on a lightly fortified American diplomatic post in Benghazi, Libya, represented those resisting the United States government’s push to turn diplomatic facilities into virtual fortresses and ring diplomats with bodyguards. The move gained impetus after the bombings in 1998 of two American Embassies in East Africa. Although Mr. Stevens’s trademark runs through the countryside and his casual stops to converse with everyday Libyans made him stand out from his button-down colleagues who focus their work in back rooms and over conference calls, his violent death most likely will only increase efforts to protect American diplomatic personnel from the chaos of the countries where they are posted. The State Department’s spokeswoman, Victoria Nuland, disputed suggestions on Thursday that there was inadequate security at the post in Benghazi. “The security at Benghazi was appropriate for what we knew,” she said, indicating that every American diplomatic mission reviewed security before the Sept. 11 anniversary. “This is the way we work in all of our missions all around the world, that the outer perimeter is the responsibility of the host government,” she said. “There was obviously a physical perimeter barrier, a wall, and then there was a robust American security presence inside the compound.” When it comes to security at the State Department’s 275 diplomatic missions around the globe, a number of which encounter some form of attack each year, the lessons have been hard learned. When the American ambassador to Lebanon, Maura Connelly , went to a concert at a Roman temple in the country’s central valley this summer, she traveled in a convoy of five armored sport utility vehicles with smoked glass. The convoy snaked through traffic at high speed during the 90-minute drive over the mountains from Beirut, the capital. It was impossible for others on the road to ascertain which vehicle carried the American diplomat to Baalbek , a town perhaps better known now for Hezbollah and hostages than for its annual music festival. There seemed to be added Lebanese government checkpoints along the way, too. Such protection measures came through bitter experience in Lebanon. After the civil war erupted in 1975 , an American ambassador was assassinated after his limousine was hijacked as it crossed a neutral zone in divided Beirut, and suicide bombers blew up the American Embassy twice. Those two deadly attacks prompted an overhaul in security measures at diplomatic missions worldwide — measures that proved inadequate to keep the mobs at bay in Cairo and Benghazi on Tuesday and in Sana, Yemen, on Thursday. “State is operating in locations that in reality are essentially war zones or conflict zones, which in the past they would have evacuated,” said Michael Courts, the acting director of international affairs and trade at the Government Accountability Office, which has issued several reports critical of embassy security measures. “They are operating in much more dangerous environments.” The threat was first addressed in the 1980s with the establishment of the Diplomatic Security Service, essentially made up of bodyguards for diplomats. But it took the terrorist attacks that shattered the embassy compounds in Nairobi, Kenya, and Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, to spur a multibillion-dollar embassy reconstruction program. Still, a 2009 G.A.O. report said that despite the building program and the hiring of about 40,000 people around the world to provide protection, the measures remained insufficient. Problems included inadequate buildings, foreign-language deficiencies among protection staff members, posts left vacant for long stretches and lack of experience. Some problems were attributed to host countries, with issues ranging from the denial of weapons permits to the refusal to allow trees to be felled to improve sightlines. There has also long been tension among diplomats over whether the “Fortress America” approach of building imposing diplomatic compounds is less productive than allowing personnel to circulate in the countries where they are posted and permitting visitors to arrive at embassies without off-putting body inspections. The latest attacks could threaten a new effort to relax the imperious architecture of the past decade, said Jane C. Loeffler, an architectural historian who wrote “The Architecture of Diplomacy.” She said that when she visited the State Department this week, just before the attacks, to conduct research on the effort, she found officials “excited and upbeat about this incredible change in direction” that would place embassies closer to the middle of cities and generally make them more welcoming by reimagining security features. After the attacks, she said, “my first reaction was, who could argue that architecture matters at all?” But reflecting further, she added that making the embassies less forbidding was as important as ever in reducing America’s image problems overseas. American diplomats in places with a high threat level, like Sana or Peshawar, Pakistan, travel with security details that make mingling difficult and usually live isolated from local populations in heavily guarded compounds. “When I looked at security measures, if I was satisfied, I was always relatively satisfied,” said Edward P. Djerejian, a former ambassador to Syria and Israel. “I used to tell my security guys, ‘O.K., we built a 16-foot wall, but there is such a thing as a 17-foot ladder.’ That is what we saw happen in Cairo.” The facilities themselves are considered just one element in the overall protection. “When you have someone storming the compound, it takes more than just the facility,” said Charles Michael Johnson Jr., the G.A.O.’s director of international counterterrorism and security assistance issues. “It is meant to slow down the attack to give time for the host government to come in with a more adequate response.” The first question that seasoned diplomats asked after the latest attacks was how the host governments’ security officers responded. The security agencies of Egypt, Libya and Yemen have been in disarray since their revolutions started. The slow response by the Egyptian government to protesters’ scaling the high embassy walls prompted concern in Washington over the attitude of the new government there, which is allied with the Muslim Brotherhood, about protecting foreigners. In Yemen, attackers breached an outer wall, but government forces drove them out before they reached the main buildings. The attackers in Benghazi, in what might have been a planned assault, killed Mr. Stevens and three other Americans. “You can protect people where they work by building more fortified embassies,” said Anthony C. E. Quainton, a former assistant secretary of state for diplomatic security. “But how do you protect them all the time, in all places?” Any movement can be particularly fraught. The 2009 Government Accountability Office report noted that the embassy in Baghdad, one of the largest in the world, maintained a fleet of 914 armored vehicles, one-third of the total worldwide, at an average cost of $173,000 per vehicle. In Syria, a police state before the current uprising, it was not unusual to find Margaret Scobey, the American ambassador there from 2003 to 2005, wandering the carpet bazaar by herself on the weekend. In Egypt, with shaky if adequate security even before the revolution, American ambassadors were barred by their security detail from walking anyplace. Ambassadors moved around in an armored BMW limousine, with bodyguards in Jeep Cherokees driving in front and behind. One American ambassador to Egypt, who was traveling with his family through the Sinai Desert before the revolution, apparently annoyed a local Bedouin in a Toyota pickup truck when the security cars would not let him pass. He dropped back, then caught up with the convoy at a gas station, roaring in at such high speed that the Egyptian bodyguards opened fire. They shattered all the windows in the truck but missed the man as he drove away. The Egyptian team raced the ambassador away from the gas station in his limousine, with the Jeeps spinning in rapid circles to haul in wandering family members. Diplomats endeavor to take such attacks in stride as part of their job, although the risks are unpredictable, as Mr. Stevens’s death underscores. “By going out in Benghazi — where the Libyans don’t have full and sovereign control of their territory — then all these security measures fall out of place,” Mr. Djerejian said. “It is not your normal environment for an ambassador.”

Diplomatic Service Embassies and Consulates


Thrill of the Hunt Not Lost on Bonobo Society

Abstract: The two chimpanzee species, the common chimp and the bonobo, may both be closely related to humans, yet they are rather different from each other behaviorally. Chimpanzee society is dominated by males, while among bonobos, females are dominant and there is less aggression (and a lot of sex). One illustration of the differences cited by scientists is that chimpanzees occasionally conduct group hunts for other primates while bonobos do not. The hunts, for tree-dwelling monkeys, seem to be more about male bonding and dominance than about nutrition, so it makes sense that the bonobos don’t do it. Except that new research shows that in fact they do. Over five years of study in Salonga National Park in Congo, Martin Surbeck and Gottfried Hohmann of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany, observed three successful instances of monkey hunting among groups of five to seven bonobos. In the two most closely observed hunts, described by the researchers in Current Biology, bonobos of both sexes noticed monkeys in the trees and then approached silently, with individuals taking positions under different trees. Then a few bonobos chased the monkeys while the others remained on the ground. The meat was shared with other members of the hunt, as is the case with chimpanzees. The researchers say that more studies are needed to discover the environmental and social factors that lead to this behavior by bonobos, and to help scientists understand how aggression and hunting evolved in the two chimpanzee species.

Monkeys and Apes
Biology and Biochemistry
Science and Technology


Mets Get Two Strong Performances From Starters but Only One Victory

Abstract: WASHINGTON — Before Matt Harvey, long before Zack Wheeler, there was Jenrry Mejia, all tantalizing youth and talent, winning plaudits and rousing hype. Three years ago, Mejia first burst onto the scene for the Mets, a 20-year-old possessing irresistible physical gifts. But he struggled to find his place on the club. Injuries shelved him for months on end. Time passed. Potential felt unfulfilled. And during that time, Harvey and Wheeler ascended to the club’s starting rotation, anointed as indispensable pillars for the future. Almost forgotten during those three years, Mejia on Friday afternoon barged back into the Mets’ pitching picture, leading them to an 11-0 victory over the Washington Nationals in the first game of a day-night doubleheader. He pitched seven shutout innings and was a fine opening act for Harvey, who produced yet another dominant performance, even as the Mets dropped the second game, 2-1, on a game-ending home run by Ryan Zimmerman. Image Matt Harvey gave up one run in eight innings in the second game. Credit Greg Fiume/Getty Images “I don’t know if they gave up on him,” Manager Terry Collins said about the way the Mets’ front office and coaching staff viewed Mejia. “But certainly, it’s easy to fall back in the pack. He was the rage in 2010. Everybody thought, ‘The sky is the limit.’ The injuries have set him way back.” Mejia was signed at 17 years old from the Dominican Republic for $16,500. At 20, he made the Mets’ 2010 opening day roster. But he struggled from the start while working from the bullpen, and over time he began to experience arm problems. During the 2011 season, Mejia had Tommy John surgery. He returned to the Mets late last season for a few unimpressive outings, and he began this year on the disabled list after experiencing elbow inflammation. As Mejia rehabilitated, Mets staff members invoked Harvey and Wheeler’s names as motivation, telling Mejia that his name should be mentioned alongside theirs. Mejia, who was recalled on Friday from his rehabilitation assignment to make his seventh career start, may have accomplished as much. He will stay on the roster — Kirk Nieuwenhuis was optioned to Class AAA after the second game to make room — and Collins hinted that the team could use a six-man rotation. Daniel Murphy hit two home runs and drove in five runs, and Ike Davis added a three-run homer to lead a 13-hit outburst during the first game. It was more than enough for Mejia, who allowed seven hits and no walks and struck out seven. He baffled the Nationals, mixing cut fastballs that reached 95 miles per hour, curveballs, sliders and a sneaky changeup, a pitch Collins did not know he could throw. After Mejia got through a 1-2-3 seventh, he skipped off the field wearing a wide smile. The smile was stuck there when he spoke to reporters between games. “I’ve got to believe in myself,” Mejia said. “That’s what I thought before. If I don’t believe in myself, nobody’s going to believe in me.” Image Daniel Murphy, right, after hitting a two-run homer in the third inning of the early game. That gave him his second career multihomer game. Credit Greg Fiume/Getty Images For all his trials and difficulty, Mejia is only 23 — about six months younger than Harvey and about that much older than Wheeler. Mejia will remain an intriguing project, a big, unformed talent. Harvey, on the other hand, has long dismantled any argument about his abilities. He was sharp and efficient, throwing 99 pitches, 66 for strikes, over eight innings, while allowing one unearned run. He gave up five hits and one walk, struck out seven batters and lowered his earned run average to 2.11. “I was locating everything pretty well,” Harvey said. “My fastball command was right on point, keeping everything down.” But Ross Ohlendorf matched him, giving up one run over seven innings, and both starters were on the bench when the game was decided in the ninth. After the Mets squandered a first-and-third situation with only one out in the top of the inning, LaTroy Hawkins came in to pitch the bottom half. After getting one out, Hawkins threw a 3-1 fastball up and away to Zimmerman, who sent a line drive hurtling into the stands in right-center field, prompting a jubilant ruckus inside National Park. “He hit the ball to the opposite field,” Hawkins said about Zimmerman. “You tip your hat.” Hawkins also praised Mejia, whom he observed for the first time. Hawkins said he was impressed, comparing the unpredictable movement on his secondary pitches, favorably, to a drunkard. The line drew laughs inside an otherwise muted clubhouse, the brief lightness feeling appropriate on an overall positive day, when the club provided further reason for optimism about its stockpile of young, talented arms. INSIDE PITCH Left fielder Eric Young Jr. was scratched from the lineup because of right knee discomfort. Young was hurt Wednesday when he inadvertently stepped on Atlanta Braves pitcher Tim Hudson’s ankle at first base and ended Hudson’s season. Young said he expected to play Saturday.

Baseball
Mets
Jenrry Mejia
Matt Harvey
Washington Nationals