Right to Information Law Is Lever for India’s Poor

Abstract: BANTA, India — Chanchala Devi always wanted a house. Not a mud-and-stick hut, like her current home in this desolate village in the mineral-rich, corruption-corroded state of Jharkhand, but a proper brick-and-mortar house. When she heard that a government program for the poor would give her about $700 to build that house, she applied immediately. As an impoverished day laborer from a downtrodden caste, she was an ideal candidate for the grant. Yet she waited four years, watching as wealthier neighbors got grants and built sturdy houses, while she and her three children slept beneath a leaky roof of tree branches and crumbling clay tiles. Two months ago she took advantage of India’s powerful and wildly popular Right to Information law . With help from a local activist, she filed a request at a local government office to find out who had gotten the grants while she waited, and why. Within days a local bureaucrat had good news: Her grant had been approved, and she would soon get her check. Ms. Devi’s good fortune is part of an information revolution sweeping India. It may be the world’s largest democracy, but a vast and powerful bureaucracy governs. It is an imperial edifice built on feudal foundations, and for much of independent India’s history the bureaucracy has been largely unaccountable. Citizens had few means to demand to know what their government was doing for them. But it has now become clear that India’s 1.2 billion citizens have been newly empowered by the far-reaching law granting them the right to demand almost any information from the government. The law is backed by stiff fines for bureaucrats who withhold information, a penalty that appears to be ensuring speedy compliance. The law has not, as some activists hoped, had a major effect on corruption. Often, as in Ms. Devi’s case, the bureaucracy solves the problem for the complaining individual, but seldom undertakes a broader inquiry. Still, the law has become part of the fabric of rural India in the five years since it was passed, and has clearly begun to tilt the balance of power, long skewed toward bureaucrats and politicians. “The feeling in government has always been that the people working in government are the rulers, and the people are the ruled,” said Wajahat Habibullah, the central government’s chief information commissioner. “This law has given the people the feeling that the government is accountable to them.” Rajiv Gandhi, a former prime minister, once said that only 15 percent of spending on the poor actually reached them — the rest was wasted or siphoned off. That figure may have changed in the decades since he uttered it, but few Indians doubt that a good chunk of the roughly $47 billion budgeted this fiscal year to help impoverished citizens is lost. India’s Right to Information law has given the poor a powerful tool to ensure they get their slice of that cake. The law, passed after more than a decade of agitation by good-government activists, has become embedded in Indian folklore. In the first three years the law was in effect, two million applications were filed. Jharkhand is an eastern Indian state where corruption and incompetence are rife, fueled by mineral wealth and the political chaos that has gripped the state since it was carved out of the state of Bihar in 2000. Here the rural poor are using the law to solve basic problems. Their success stories seem like the most minor of triumphs, but they represent major life improvements for India’s poorest. In one village near Banta, a clinic that was supposed to be staffed full time by a medical worker trained to diagnose ailments like malaria and diarrhea and provide care to infants and expectant mothers had not been staffed regularly for years. A local resident filed a request to see worker attendance records. Soon the medical worker started showing up regularly. The worker, Sneha Lata, an assistant midwife whose government salary is $250 a month, denied that she had been neglecting her post. She said the information law was a nuisance. “Because of this law I have to listen to all these complaints,” she said. But with villagers now watching, she dares not miss work. In a nearby hut, Ramani Devi sewed a blanket for a grandson born nine days earlier. In years past she would have been in the fields, toiling for a handful of change to make ends meet. As an elderly widow, Ms. Devi (no relation to Chanchala Devi) knew she was entitled to a $9 monthly government pension. That may not sound like much, but in a rural village, it is the difference between eating and starving. Middlemen at the government office demand bribes of $20 to direct applications to the right bureaucrat, and many people ineligible for pensions were collecting them. When a local activist filed a request to find out which villagers were receiving pensions, Ms. Devi, who is a Dalit, formerly known as an untouchable, finally got her pension. Now she proudly shows off her savings account passbook. Simply filing an inquiry about a missing ration card, a wayward pension application or a birth certificate is nowadays enough to force the once stodgy bureaucracy to deliver, activists here say. But a more responsive bureaucracy is not necessarily less corrupt. Sunil Kumar Mahto, 29, an activist in Ranchi, Jharkhand’s capital, said he quickly learned that using the law to expose corruption was pointless. He gave the example of a road project. “The money was spent, but there was no road,” Mr. Mahto said. When he applied to find out what had happened, new money was allocated and the road was ultimately built. But no action was taken against whoever had pocketed the original money. “The nexus of politicians, contractors and bureaucrats is very strong here,” Mr. Mahto explained. “To get action against someone is very difficult.” Some critics wonder if the law is simply a pressure valve that allows people to get basic needs addressed without challenging the status quo. “It has been very successful in rooting out petty corruption,” said Venkatesh Nayak of the Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative . “But our accountability mechanisms are weak, and transparency has no purpose without accountability.” But Shekhar Singh, an activist who fought for passage of the law, said that in a nation recovering from centuries of colonial and feudal oppression, fighting corruption was secondary. “Our main objective was to empower citizens,” Mr. Singh said. “This law has done that — given the people the power to challenge their government. That is no small thing.”

Right to Information law
India
Bureaucratic Red Tape
Politics and Government
Ethics
Law and Legislation


Improper Use of Credit Cards Found

Abstract: The Missouri athletics department is tightening employee use of school-issued credit cards after an audit found a series of improper purchases, including bills for more than $7,600 from a Las Vegas strip club.


As N.C.A.A. Issues Pile Up, a Call for a Commission

Abstract: After hearings on Capitol Hill this year to examine the N.C.A.A. and college sports, some lawmakers believe they have found the next step for the federal government’s role: a presidential commission. A group of legislators and proponents of reform pushed the idea Tuesday in a closed-door meeting with Secretary of Education Arne Duncan in Washington. Led by Representative Jim Moran, Democrat of Virginia, who recently introduced a bipartisan bill calling for a commission, the group of about 20 discussed the issues facing college sports. They include a unionization push at Northwestern, several antitrust lawsuits aimed at the N.C.A.A., an academic scandal at North Carolina and a new governing system that will give prominent athletic programs the freedom to make some of their own rules. At least one representative of the White House attended, as well as the former N.F.L. commissioner Paul Tagliabue; Northeastern’s athletic director, Peter Roby; and several members of the Drake Group, which advocates academic reform in college athletics. Mr. Moran said that a bill had no chance of passing in the lame-duck Congress, but that he was encouraged by Mr. Duncan’s reaction. “The secretary indicated that the president is very interested in the issue,” Mr. Moran said. “The president may take this up.” Of particular interest to Mr. Moran are academic integrity, medical care for athletes, the budgets of conferences and colleges, and the N.C.A.A.’s oversight role. Those topics were discussed Tuesday, Mr. Moran said. “The N.C.A.A. was unsure as to whether they had any authority to intervene in Penn State,” he said, referring to the child sexual abuse scandal there. “Are they the right body? I’m not sure. We have to look at it.” In the past year, a regional official for the National Labor Relations Board ruled that Northwestern’s scholarship football players were university employees, and a federal judge decided that players could be paid for the use of their images . Mr. Moran said there were pitfalls to legislating through the courts, citing what he called the need for a comprehensive examination of the system before it can be fixed. “This has to do with a major sector of higher education,” said Allen Sack, a professor at the University of New Haven and founder of the Drake Group, who attended the meeting. “I thought there was unanimity that the changes taking place are significant enough that it deserves some careful study, and that’s tough to do unless you have the access to finances the federal government can get.” In 1975, President Gerald R. Ford used an executive order to create a commission on Olympic sports, which served as the basis for Mr. Moran’s bill. His proposal calls for a 17-person panel to undertake the study, with representatives appointed by both the White House and Congress. Mr. Moran is retiring after this session of Congress but expects his bill to be reintroduced by a Republican colleague next year. “If the president is not interested, it’s not going to go anywhere,” Mr. Moran said. “But if he does take this up, this has the potential to be a bipartisan achievement for the administration.”

College Sports
NCAA
US Politics
Labor Unions
Jim Moran


Managing as You Would Be Managed

Abstract: Michael A. Leven , who is 74, has been the president and chief operating officer of Las Vegas Sands, the casino operator, since 2009. Q. Do you remember the first time you became somebody’s boss? A. It was the first time I had my own secretary; when I was a sales representative at the Roosevelt Hotel in New York. She was old enough to be my mother, so I had a lot of respect for her, and because I needed the help. What I’ve realized, which has always been my style, is that I manage people the way I want to be managed myself, so I treated her no differently than I’d want to be treated. And that’s the way I manage now, some 51 years later. Q. The world has changed a lot since then. What do you think is the most important quality a manager should have in an age of globalization? A. Respect for other individuals is the most important characteristic. I have a fundamental belief that although cultures change, and the way people appear to be may be different, internally there are similar values in every single human being across cultures. Though these values may be executed differently, underneath, all human beings are basically the same: they want to be treated with respect, have personal freedom, an ability to be successful. I think those values transcend cultures. Q. What are the challenges of cross-cultural leadership? A. The biggest challenge is simply taking the time to try to understand other cultures as being different. But I’ve been working internationally since the 1960s. I used to run Holiday Inn Worldwide, a company with dealings in 63 countries, so I’ve had a lot of experience dealing across cultures, and at the end of the day, you just have to concentrate on the fact that certain sensitivities are different. For example, if you’re in Japan, people don’t like to say “no.” Things like that you pick up along the way. If you define the concept of “losing face,” which you find in some Asian cultures, it basically means you’ve done something to someone you shouldn’t have done, or maybe it’s in the way you’ve said it. Maybe in Asia if somebody loses face it’s a deeper situation, but it’s pretty deep to lose face in the U.S., too. People don’t say it, maybe because Americans look like they are dealing with it better externally, but internally I don’t think they’re dealing with it any better than an Asian might. So it basically comes back to my fundamental principle: People’s basic hopes and dreams are all the same. You must think about some of the little nuances that they have, which you learn through experience, but you treat everybody the same way in each country. Q. Communication when things are going well is one thing; communication when you have to confront someone is another. How do you handle that kind of difficult situation? A. The way I personally manage, I tend to be sensitive about confrontation no matter who it is. I hope I would take into account the sensitivities of what I’m saying. Sometimes perhaps I’m too sensitive. But if you’re criticizing someone who comes from New York versus someone who comes from Singapore, I don’t think you should be any more direct with the person from New York than Singapore; you should be appropriate in both cases. Q. What about the issue of hierarchy, which can also be quite different across cultures? A. I worked in Britain for five years with Bass, a brewer, and I believe the hierarchy and bureaucracy there was not any different from that of General Motors. You have to understand what the organizational structure is in any organization that you’re in. It may be different from place to place and you have to work your way through. It’s the old “when in Rome” story: Do what the Romans do. You adapt. If you work in a flatter organization, such as I’m in today, where communications are more blurry, in order to be successful you’ll have to be able to work through that. I believe leaders manage by example. If people see me walking and talking through the organization in a nonhierarchical way, then that particular style will go viral through the organization. Leaders are the ones who set the organization’s culture, from the top down. Employees are the same no matter where. Q. But how do you disseminate the corporate culture of an organization across countries and cultures? A. When I work in the various countries that I’m working in, either dealing with governments or individuals, I have to reflect what the corporate culture is there. But I can mitigate that corporate culture if in fact it could be offensive. For example, if you are working for an aggressive entrepreneur who has an aggressive style, that doesn’t mean I walk in with the head of Macau and use that style with him. I recognize that in that particular situation I have to act differently; there is a different culture which you have to be respectful of. But inside the organization, when I travel around, I represent the corporate culture to all employees. Singapore should not have a different corporate culture than Macau or Las Vegas. Q. When you hire, what are you looking for and what do you typically ask? A. When I’m interviewing for senior positions, I’m accepting the fact that they’re technically competent before they ever get in front of me. So what I’m looking for is leadership skills and cultural compatibility. Will they be able to adapt to the culture of the organization? I’m thinking about what I need from that individual, and what that individual needs from me, because it has to be a mutually successful situation. So, things I would ask could be, “Give me an example of a leadership situation you’ve been in and what decision you’ve made.” Or, “When did you first manage?” — like you asked me. Or, “Have you ever worked in a summer camp?” I want to find out whether they can generate trust, how they execute their strategy through people and how they make the tough decisions like termination. “How do you handle it if someone is not doing their job? How do you set objectives and measure their performance?” But also, “What do you do for the community or in your spare time? Do you do any charitable work? Are you involved with your community?” What was the most difficult decision you have had to make as a manager? I think terminating somebody’s employment. I don’t delegate termination of the people that I’ve hired. I put them in and it’s my responsibility to take them out. Most of the time people kind of know that it’s coming; it’s never really a surprise, but I think you should never take away somebody’s dignity when you’re in that position. Do you make a distinction between a great manager and a great leader? Not really. I think most people tend to want to differentiate, but for me, a manager is executing a responsibility through people, and in that sense a manager has to lead. A leader may have a higher level of responsibility, but at the end of the day, the functionality is to get it done through other people. Q. How do you feel about 21st-century communications, e-mail and social networks? A. I hate social media. I’m not on Facebook, I’m not on Twitter. Anybody who wants to LinkedIn with me, I say no. I see these young kids, some of my grandchildren and others, they’re Facebooking away, they don’t talk to each other anymore. It’s taking away personal interaction, which I’m a big fan of. Nothing surpasses personal involvement. Showing up, walking around the building and having people seeing you. People will know who I am. In a leadership position in this business, and I’m sure in others, you can ruin someone’s day by walking by and not paying attention to them. Plus, I enjoy it. I get 135-140 e-mails per day and it’s a pain in the neck. Anything that separates the human part from the enterprise can be dangerous. The other thing about e-mails is that they can be very blunt and short, and if you’re criticizing somebody, which some people do, it’s not the way to do it, just because you want to avoid confrontation in person.

Las Vegas Sands Corporation
Executives and Management (Theory)
Michael A. Leven


Yuliya Stepanova, Russian Doping Whistle-Blower, Starts Anew on Track

Abstract: BOSTON — Yuliya Stepanova, the middle-distance runner who helped expose state-sponsored doping in Russia and set off a global scandal ahead of the 2016 Rio Olympics, returned to international competition on Saturday. Stepanova, a former member of Russia’s national track team now living in hiding in the United States with her husband, Vitaly Stepanov, and their 3-year-old son, ran the 800 meters at the Indoor Grand Prix in Boston. Although she was barred from competing in Rio, she received special permission from global track and field officials to compete Saturday as a neutral individual unaffiliated with any nation. She finished seventh, in 2 minutes 5.14 seconds, in a field that included the Olympians Lynsey Sharp of Britain and Habitam Alemu of Ethiopia. “My goal was not to fall too far behind,” Stepanova, 30, said after the race. She exchanged few words with her competitors as she changed her shoes. “Some athletes like what I did,” she said. “Some hate me.” Charlene Lipsey of the United States, the winner of the race, expressed support for Stepanova’s participation but also argued that athletes with a record of doping — a list that includes Stepanova — should not be allowed to compete professionally. The race was the first international 800-meter competition that Stepanova had officially finished since September 2015, months before all Russian track and field athletes were barred from global competition amid the nation’s mounting doping scandal. Those sanctions remain in effect. Image Yuliya Stepanova after competing in the Indoor Grand Prix in Boston. She and her husband, who also spoke out about Russian doping, have been living in hiding with their 3-year-old son. Credit Gretchen Ertl for The New York Times Over the summer, the International Olympic Committee denied Stepanova’s request to enter the Rio Games as a neutral athlete, refusing to exempt her from the ban in spite of the unanimous recommendation of track officials who commended the lengths to which she had gone as a whistle-blower. Together with her husband, Stepanov, a former employee of Russia’s national antidoping agency, Stepanova spoke out about how Russian athletes had systematically doped and evaded drug testing, as she herself did until she was punished for a violation in early 2013. Subsequent investigations and the testimony of Dr. Grigory Rodchenkov , Russia’s longtime national antidoping lab chief, who carried out the cover-ups, revealed that Russia was cheating on a dramatically wider scale than the couple had known. Late last year, an investigator for the World Anti-Doping Agency published evidence that Russia’s government-directed doping schemes had involved, or benefited, more than 1,000 athletes across 30 disciplines. In Russia, the couple have been condemned as traitors, and they expressed little confidence on Saturday in Russia’s efforts to reform its antidoping system. “In my view, it’s still a circus being run by a bunch of clowns,” Stepanov said. “Running things in Russia right now is the person who created the doping system, Mr. Mutko,” he added, referring to Vitaly Mutko, Russia’s former sports minister, whom President Vladimir V. Putin promoted to deputy prime minister last year. Mutko has repeatedly denied that state-sponsored doping takes place in Russia, but he also admitted that most Russian athletes and coaches saw performance-enhancing drugs as necessary to win. Stepanova, who competed in July at the European Athletics Championships in Amsterdam but was injured during her race and was later disqualified for a lane infringement, said that last year, she would have wanted to continue running for Russia if the nation had accepted her as a representative. She no longer feels that way, she said Saturday, expressing disappointment that Russia had remained defiant and had not changed its sporting culture. She was glad not to be competing for a nation, she said. “I don’t have the pressure to deliver medals to anyone,” she said in Russian, speaking through an interpreter. She added that she was not planning to seek citizenship in the United States or elsewhere. As part of cyberattacks on WADA last year, Stepanova’s private online athlete records — including her location — were stolen, prompting her family to relocate within the United States over the summer. She said that while she and her family remained concerned for their safety — she has received death threats — she felt more secure in the United States than she had in Europe. Since September, Stepanova has trained under Alexander Seeger, a coach in Germany with whom she communicates by email and Skype. Her goal, she said, is to shave five seconds off her time and finish her event in less than two minutes. “When I was training in Russia, everybody told me that was not possible without doping,” she said. She said she viewed the next three years, before the 2020 Tokyo Games, as her final chance to qualify for the Olympics. “What a lot of athletes are forgetting, or what athletes in Russia never learned, is that the whole Olympic movement isn’t about winning at any cost,” Stepanov said. “It’s about trying your best and respecting the competition. If you’re faster than them, good. If you’re not, it doesn’t make you a loser.”

2016 Summer Olympics
Track and field
Whistleblower
Yuliya Stepanova
Russia
Doping


Pirates Slugger Savors a Legacy of Consistency

Abstract: The Pittsburgh Pirates have been so successful lately that the culture change at PNC Park is old news. After breaking a streak of 20 consecutive losing seasons, the Pirates have started a new streak: This will be their third playoff season in a row, barring a collapse down the stretch. Aramis Ramirez is late to the party, but he might have the sharpest perspective in the clubhouse. Ramirez, 37, returned to the Pirates last month in a trade from Milwaukee. He first signed with Pittsburgh from the Dominican Republic at age 16 and was traded to the Chicago Cubs in 2003, just as he was entering his prime. “When I was here earlier, it was not a good team,” Ramirez said last week. “It was no secret; we weren’t playing well. That was one of the reasons I got traded so young. I was surprised; I was only 25, with like four years in the league.” That deal stung Pirates fans, perhaps more than any other. Burdened by their ratio of debt to income, the Pirates dumped Ramirez and outfielder Kenny Lofton for a paltry return: infielders Jose Hernandez and Bobby Hill and a pitching prospect, Matt Bruback, who never reached the majors. Ramirez was on his way to one of the most quietly productive careers in recent baseball history. He has never come close to a major award, never played in a World Series and never played outside the National League Central. But starting with that 2003 season, Ramirez hit 25 homers and drove in at least 80 runs in nine of the next 10 years. And he has played only one defensive position: third base. That combination of power and positional longevity has put Ramirez in elite company. He ranks fifth on baseball’s career list for home runs by a third baseman, trailing the Hall of Famers Mike Schmidt and Eddie Mathews and two players not yet eligible for Cooperstown: Chipper Jones and Adrian Beltre. Ramirez is next, with 376 home runs as a third baseman through Friday. Ramirez, who is retiring after this season, said he did not closely track his statistics. His friends and family have let him know where he ranks, and he said he wanted consistency to be his legacy. “That I was able to do it year in and year out,” Ramirez said. “I’ve been blessed with good health over the years, being able to play every day my whole career, be an everyday player. That’s really tough to do, put up good numbers, year in and year out.” Ramirez was an All-Star last season but has faded this year, with a .249 average, 12 homers and 58 runs batted in through Friday. But he is hitting in the middle of the order for a team leading the N.L. wild-card race, and Clint Hurdle, the Pirates’ manager, said he had been impressed by Ramirez’s awareness. “Very cerebral, into the game,” Hurdle said. “Nothing to do with what you think a third baseman might be watching, he’s watching.” Hurdle said Ramirez instinctively noticed pitchers’ tendencies and defensive alignments. Ramirez also surprised him in a recent game by pointing out, on the bench, that his teammate Gregory Polanco had gotten three hits on three first-pitch swings. “Truth be told, we have guys in our dugout who probably had no clue that he’d been up three times and hit the first pitch,” Hurdle said. “I don’t mean that with disrespect; it’s just they’re not getting tested on it. But he knew right away: third at-bat, that’s the third pitch he’s seen, third knock. He’s got a mind for the game that I wasn’t aware of.” Ramirez might make a good coach in retirement, Hurdle said, but with career earnings of almost $150 million, he would not need the paycheck. Ramirez said his only plan for retirement was to spend more time with his three children. His immediate plan, he added, was to win the next Pirates game, and then keep doing it through the end of the postseason. “That’s the only reason I’m still in this game, to play in the World Series,” Ramirez said. “I’ve done everything else from a personal standpoint. That’s the only reason.” Back to a Perfect Pace The worst day of Felix Hernandez’s career came three years after his best. On Aug. 15, Hernandez allowed a career-high 10 earned runs. On Aug. 15, 2012, he threw a perfect game. It was the fifth perfect game in the majors in less than three seasons. Three years later, there have been no more perfect games. That is more in line with the general pace of perfect games in recent decades. There was one each in 1981 (Len Barker), 1984 (Mike Witt), 1988 (Tom Browning), 1991 (Dennis Martinez), 1994 (Kenny Rogers), 1998 (David Wells), 1999 (David Cone), 2004 (Randy Johnson) and 2009 (Mark Buehrle) before the recent outburst. In 2010, Dallas Braden and Roy Halladay threw perfect games — and Armando Galarraga would have thrown another, but an umpire, Jim Joyce, blew the call on the potential 27th out. In 2012, Philip Humber, Matt Cain and Hernandez were perfect. The Yankees’ Brendan Ryan played for the Mariners then and was the final out for Humber’s perfect game and the shortstop for Hernandez’s. He said he was a bit surprised no pitcher had thrown a perfect game since then, but not too much so. “The pitching is so good today, but things go in waves,” Ryan said. “That’s just the way this game is. Everything goes in cycles. Home runs go in cycles, errors seem to come in cycles, tough calls, all that stuff.” “Tough calls” was likely a reference to the final out of Humber’s perfect game, when Ryan barely checked his swing on a 3-2 breaking ball well out of the strike zone. Ryan argued the call on the field but has chosen not to complain publicly. “I would love to colorfully answer a lot of stuff, but only probably when I’m done playing,” Ryan said. “A lot of stuff seems to have umpires come into play.” Nobody has pitched two perfect games, but Ron Hassey caught two, for Barker and Martinez. The Pirates’ Sean Rodriguez, who struck out to end Hernandez’s, could have been the last out twice. He was available to pinch-hit in June when Washington’s Max Scherzer retired the first 26 Pittsburgh hitters, but Jose Tabata got the call instead. Tabata was hit by a pitch. So Much for Predictions The Kansas City Royals have been the American League’s best team this year, surprising those who thought last year’s World Series run was a fluke. The Royals have also surprised Baseball Prospectus’s Pecota prediction system, which forecast a startling 72-90 record for the Royals. When the Royals passed the 72-win mark last week, the team tweaked that prediction in its official notes for the news media, suggesting “a computer ‘time out’ ” for the system. Sam Miller, the editor in chief at Baseball Prospectus, told Andy McCullough of The Kansas City Star that while the Royals played well as a team in 2014, few of their players had standout seasons. Miller defended Pecota but said the Royals’ style of play essentially flummoxed the formula. “Bottom line,” Miller told McCullough, “I think we know that this system has a hard time with elite, highly leveraged bullpens, which the Royals have had; that it probably has a hard time with great defenses, which the Royals have; and that it has a hard time with any team that can outperform its raw stats for whatever reason, which the Royals have done.” While Pecota also forecast a division title for the woeful Boston Red Sox and 87 victories for the dismal Seattle Mariners, it is only fair to note that this space predicted wild cards for the disappointing Chicago White Sox, Miami Marlins and San Diego Padres, while also picking the Royals to miss the playoffs. Image Ryan Braun, who hit a grand slam last Sunday, is the Brewers’ career leader in homers. Credit David Banks/Getty Images Moving On and Up Two years after serving a 65-game suspension for performance-enhancing drugs, the Milwaukee Brewers’ Ryan Braun has settled into a quiet kind of afterlife. He is a productive player — though not as productive as before — and he is tied through 2020 to a team likely to finish last for the first time in his 11 years in the organization. As he waits for the Brewers to contend, Braun is rising on their records list. Last Wednesday, he became the franchise’s career home runs leader with 252, passing Robin Yount, a Hall of Famer. Braun did it in about 5,100 plate appearances; Yount — who never hit 30 home runs in a season — came to bat more than 12,200 times. Braun broke the record on Aug. 19, the same date Yount hit his final homer, more than two decades ago. It was the perfect day to do it, if you like numerology: Braun wears No. 8, and Yount wore No. 19.

Baseball
Aramis Ramirez
Pittsburgh Pirates


U.N. Official, Navi Pillay, Calls for Intervention in Syria

Abstract: BEIRUT, Lebanon — The United Nations high commissioner for human rights on Friday called for international intervention to protect Syrian civilians from the government’s crackdown, amid warnings that the country is headed toward civil war. The commissioner, Navi Pillay, estimated that more than 4,000 people, including 307 children, have been killed in the nearly nine months since the uprising erupted against the government of President Bashar al-Assad . Ms. Pillay, who has emerged as a forceful voice on Syria , estimated that at least 14,000 people have been detained. “The Syrian authorities’ continual ruthless repression, if not stopped now, can drive the country into a full-fledged civil war,” Ms. Pillay told an emergency session of the United Nations Human Rights Council in Geneva. “All acts of murder, torture and other forms of violence must be immediately stopped,” she said. Ms. Pillay also warned of the danger posed by increasingly bold attacks by army defectors against security forces loyal to the government. In the latest such attack, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, an opposition group in exile, said Friday that a group of defectors known as the Free Syrian Army killed at least eight people in a strike on an intelligence forces building in the northwestern province of Idlib, near Turkey. The emergency session of the Human Rights Council, the third on Syria held since April, was called by the European Union, with support from the United States and Arab countries. In August, Ms. Pillay called for the United Nations Security Council to refer Syria to the International Criminal Court for committing crimes against humanity. The European Union imposed sanctions on Thursday against Syrian officials and companies. Syria’s ambassador to the United Nations in Geneva, Faysal Khabbaz Hamoui, reacted angrily to Ms. Pillay’s comments. “The Syrian problem is one that can be resolved only by Syrians,” Mr. Hamoui said during the session. “The solution cannot come from the corridors of the international community. It is only resolutions trying to put more oil on the fire.” Protesters across Syria took to the streets after Friday Prayer in demonstrations labeled “a buffer zone is our demand.” There have been growing calls from the opposition inside Syria and abroad for international intervention against Mr. Assad’s leadership. The Local Coordination Committees said that at least seven people were killed across the country when security forces fired at their demonstrations.

Middle East and North Africa Unrest (2010- )

Human Rights and Human Rights Violations


Calif. Governor Candidates Meet in Heated Debate

Abstract: SAN FRANCISCO — With the stakes — and tempers — running high, Meg Whitman and Jerry Brown clashed on issues both substantive and scandalous in the final debate of the hard-fought and closely watched California governor’s race on Tuesday night. Early on, both candidates worked to their strengths. Mr. Brown, the Democrat, flashed knowledge of intricacies of state government, while Ms. Whitman, the Republican, who showed more confidence than in earlier debates, offered her case that she was a “job creator” in a state with an unemployment rate of more than 12 percent. But near the midpoint of the hourlong debate, Mr. Brown and Ms. Whitman engaged in heated banter over remarks made by a Brown campaign aide — inadvertently recorded in early September on a voicemail message and released last week by a Los Angeles police union — referring to Ms. Whitman as a “whore.” It is not clear whether Mr. Brown heard the remark, or acknowledged it, but he apologized again on Tuesday, though he objected to a characterization by Tom Brokaw, the former NBC News anchor who was serving as the moderator, that the word was equivalent to a racial slur. “This is a five-week-old private conversation picked up on a cellphone with a garbled transmission, very hard to detect who it is,” Mr. Brown said. “The campaign apologized promptly, and I affirm that apology tonight.” Ms. Whitman rolled her eyes and scolded Mr. Brown. “It’s the people of California who deserve better than slurs and personal attacks,” she said. “That’s not what California is about.” But Mr. Brown did not back down, pointing out that one of Ms. Whitman’s senior advisers, former Gov. Pete Wilson, had once referred to Congress as “whores,” in reference to the public sector unions. “You know better than that Jerry,” Ms. Whitman said. “That’s a completely different thing.” The debate, in front of a demonstrative crowd at Dominican University in San Rafael, just north of San Francisco, was the most combative of three meetings between the two candidates. At the most recent debate, in Fresno this month, Ms. Whitman had to answer questions about a Mexican housekeeper, Nicandra Díaz Santillán, whom she employed for nine years. Ms. Whitman said she fired Ms. Díaz Santillán after discovering her immigration status, and recent polls found weakening support from Latinos. Mr. Brokaw also addressed this issue, asking Ms. Whitman how, if she could not find an illegal immigrant working in her own home, she expected businesses to do so. Ms. Whitman blamed Ms. Díaz Santillán for falsifying papers. “It broke my heart, but I had to fire her,” she said. Mr. Brown said that the nation needed comprehensive immigration reform, and that compassion had to be shown to illegal immigrants. “These are mothers and dads, and kids,” he said, adding that Ms. Whitman’s opposition to allowing some path to citizenship was cruel. “I don’t think that’s human; I don’t think it’s right.” The debate came just three weeks before California voters go to the polls, after years of recurring budget deficits exacerbated by the recession and a collapse in the housing market. Ms. Whitman, the billionaire former chief executive of eBay, has poured more than $120 million of her fortune into the race. But Ms. Whitman said she was the one who was “up against some pretty big entrenched interests,” a reference to the state’s influential public unions, who have largely backed Mr. Brown, a two-term former governor. He responded that a Whitman administration would largely benefit the rich. Earlier, Mr. Brown had raised the proposed elimination of the capital gains tax. “Ms. Whitman, I would like to ask you: how much money will you save if these tax breaks were in effect this year or last year?” Ms. Whitman acknowledged that she was an investor and that “investors will benefit from this.” But she added: “My track record is creating jobs. My business is creating jobs. Your business is politics.”

Whitman Margaret C
Brown Jerry
California
Debating
Elections
Politics and Government
Governors (US)


Venezuela: President’s Rival to Be Charged as Plotter

Abstract: The national prosecutor’s office said Wednesday that it would charge a prominent opposition leader in what it called a plot to kill President Nicolás Maduro. The announcement did not provide details of the charges against the leader, María Corina Machado, but this year senior government officials accused her of organizing a conspiracy to kill the president. They showed what they claimed were a series of emails that they said implicated Ms. Machado and other opposition figures. They also said that Kevin Whitaker, a former State Department official who is now ambassador to Colombia, was implicated in the scheme. Ms. Machado is a former legislator and an ally of another politician, Leopoldo López, who was jailed this year after weeks of protests against the government. Mr. Maduro, a leftist who faces a severe economic crisis, has frequently said his enemies are plotting to kill or overthrow him.

Venezuela
Nicolas Maduro
Maria Corina Machado


In ‘Weather Channel’ at Islip Art Museum, Elements We Barely Notice

Abstract: The weather, especially the sky in its many moods, has attracted artists for centuries. Claude Monet is said to have painted at his easel in the snow, while J. M. W. Turner, the English Impressionist, was so fanatical about accurately depicting the look and feel of storms at sea that he had himself lashed to the mast of a ship during a squall. None of the 13 artists in “Weather Channel” at the Islip Art Museum have resorted to such measures. For the most part, theirs is a more benign view of the weather. The show has a few high points, but it is considerably smaller than previous exhibitions here because of budget constraints imposed by the Town of Islip, which finances the museum. Video art provides some of the show’s best moments, and one piece in particular stands out. “Inertia,” a six-minute film by Tony Phillips, presents sped-up footage of the artist sitting motionless in a chair in the desert from dawn until sunset, impervious to the heat and occasional gusts of dusty wind. The work is simultaneously an endurance performance piece and a study in changing light and atmospheric effects. It is also reminiscent of some of Andy Warhol’s films, insofar as nothing really happens. But the fact that it is sped up makes it infinitely more watchable and to some degree more interesting. The overall mood of the show, organized by Karen Shaw, the museum’s curator, is one of tranquillity. Mia Pearlman’s extremely detailed atmospheric charcoal and graphite drawings of swirling cloud formations allude to different kinds of weather. Ms. Pearlman takes something relatively mundane and presents it in a way that is transfixing. Winter inspires several artists in the show. The Maine landscape is the subject of photographs by Nancy Manter, who drives the deserted streets of the town of Seal Cove taking photographs through the frosted windshield of her car. She is fascinated by the contrast between the safety of the car and the numbing cold outside, which makes the images intense. By contrast, the painter Gerald Michalak finds an exhilarating beauty in ice and snow. Beginning with depictions of people and landscapes, he gradually covers them with layers of white paint until they disappear, imitating the effects of a snowstorm. To use an adjective that may sound old school (or new age), they are incandescent. Other artists document the destructive effects of weather, especially rainwater. Margie Neuhaus, a photographer, has captured in small, focused pictures the corrosive impact of a leaking roof at her childhood home in Bethel, N.Y. Here, weather is presented as being part of a larger, natural cycle of environmental decay and renewal. Along these lines, but slightly more interesting, are Patrick O’Hare’s photographs of the weather in all seasons, and in all parts of the country, but with an emphasis on ordinary suburban communities. His pictures show us scenes of shopping malls, roads and airports, highlighting the everyday weather conditions that come and go without our ever really noticing them. By and large, the depictions of the weather in this show are decidedly unromantic, in stark contrast to visions of weather as a manifestation of the sublime that are found, for instance, in the 19th-century paintings of the Hudson River School. Perhaps these days, our artists no longer search for signs of God in nature; they seem more interested in weather as an everyday fact — something we live with.

Islip Art Museum
Art
Weather
Long Island (NY)


First Charge in U.S. Inquiry of New Orleans Police Shootings After Katrina

Abstract: NEW ORLEANS — On Sept. 4, 2005, with floodwaters of Hurricane Katrina still standing in much of the city, Lt. Michael J. Lohman of the New Orleans Police Department arrived at the Danziger Bridge in eastern New Orleans. A group of police officers had rushed there just ahead of him in response to a radio call for assistance. At the bridge, Lieutenant Lohman found that six civilians had been shot by police officers, two fatally. None of them had weapons. Almost immediately, federal authorities said Wednesday in a blistering series of accusations, he and the other officers began to plot a cover-up, planting a gun near the site to make the shootings appear justified. That action led to Lieutenant Lohman’s appearance in a federal courtroom on Wednesday afternoon, where he pleaded guilty to one count of conspiring to obstruct justice. It is the first charge in a wide-ranging inquiry into police misconduct that led to civilian deaths in the chaotic days after Hurricane Katrina, and it is unlikely to be the last. “Know this,” Jim Letten, the United States attorney for the Eastern District of Louisiana, said to reporters after the hearing. “The investigation continues. It is ongoing.” It is also not the only federal investigation into civilian deaths caused by the police force in the days after the hurricane. The fact that the accusations go beyond the shooting to a larger cover-up “is really indicative of a systemic integrity issue,” said Rafael C. Goyeneche III, a former New Orleans prosecutor who is the president of the Metropolitan Crime Commission, a watchdog group. “It’s going to rock the Police Department to the core.” A spokeswoman for the Police Department declined to comment. The bill of information , which contains charges but is not an indictment, and was unsealed Wednesday, is the clearest picture yet of the federal investigation into the Danziger Bridge shootings. The documents filed by the authorities said that five of the civilians had been walking to get food and supplies, and that the other two were on their way to a family member’s dentistry office when they were fired upon by police officers. Four were seriously injured. James Brissette, 19, and Ronald Madison, who was 40 and mentally disabled, were killed. Mr. Madison’s brother Lance, who was in the courtroom on Wednesday, was arrested and charged with eight counts of attempted murder in trumped-up charges related to the cover-up, but was later cleared. Lieutenant Lohman, 42 and now retired, concluded shortly after arriving on the scene that the shooting was “legally unjustified,” federal authorities said. He encouraged the officers to “come up with a plausible story” that would allow him to conclude that the shooting was justified, the authorities said. When another police investigator told Lieutenant Lohman that he was going to plant a gun under the bridge to bolster the story that the officers were being fired at, Lieutenant Lohman went along, and even asked if the gun was traceable, the authorities said. At the encouragement of Lieutenant Lohman, the officers who were involved made up details, the authorities said, like a claim that one victim had reached for a “shiny object” in his waistband. At one point, according to the documents, Mr. Lohman was frustrated that the cover-up story in the report, which was drafted by a police sergeant, “was not logical,” so he drew up one of his own, which broadly changed details to fit the false story. The sergeant later replaced that report with a shorter one that was changed to fit the audiotaped statements of the police who were involved. That sergeant is unnamed by the authorities, but the police report is signed by Sgt. Arthur Kaufman, who was assigned to investigate the Danziger shooting. He prepared a supplemental report later with another police sergeant, which was widely criticized. Sergeant Kaufman and at least one other officer, who was directly involved in the shooting, have received letters informing them that they are targets in the investigation, their lawyers acknowledged. Lieutenant Lohman faces up to five years in prison, but Mr. Letten said the officer had been cooperating with the authorities, an indication that charges against others might be coming. In 2006, the seven officers who were directly involved in the shooting were charged with murder and attempted murder, but the charges were dismissed in late 2008 by a judge who cited improprieties in the handling of the case. The United States Attorney’s Office, along with the F.B.I. and the civil rights division of the Justice Department, picked the case up soon afterward. During the federal investigation throughout 2009, dozens of police officers testified before grand juries, federal agents seized files from the police homicide division, and the Danziger Bridge was shut down for hours as agents looked for evidence. Several other cases are under investigation by the federal authorities, including the shooting death of 31-year-old Henry Glover, whose remains were eventually discovered in a burned car parked behind a police station in the Algiers section of New Orleans. That case was brought to the attention of the authorities by an article that appeared in The Nation magazine in December 2008 and on the Web site ProPublica.org .

Police Brutality and Misconduct
Hurricane Katrina
Murders and Attempted Murders
New Orleans (La)


Goydos and Marino Take Over Barclays Lead

Abstract: JERSEY CITY — The first event of the PGA Tour playoffs for the FedEx Cup is on the verge of a storybook finish, set on a dramatic golf course that was seemingly built to stage one. In the shadow of the Statue of Liberty, with the Manhattan skyline glistening across the Hudson River, six golfers in the Barclays are about to find out whether they can do what none of them have: win a tournament with Tiger Woods in the field. Cast as the third-round leaders are Paul Goydos, 45, a former schoolteacher who has won twice on the PGA Tour, but not since 2007; and Steve Marino, 29, a long hitter who has a degree in sociology and three career second-place finishes. Goydos and Marino shot identical scores the first three rounds, 65-71-68, and are at nine-under-par 204 after a long day at Liberty National golf club. They are two strokes ahead of a 24-year-old rookie, Webb Simpson, and a 34-year-old Swede, Fredrik Jacobson, neither of whom has won a tour event. Jacobson and Simpson each shot 68 on Saturday. One stroke separates them from the veteran Steve Stricker, whose last win was the 2007 Barclays, and Heath Slocum, who has not won since 2005. Stalking them from five strokes off the pace is Woods, the top-ranked golfer in the world. He has five victories this year, several of them from off the pace: from five strokes behind at the Bay Hill Invitational, from four behind at the Memorial and from three back at the W.G.C.-Bridgestone Invitational. Woods, who shot a 67, is tied at 209 with Zach Johnson, Padraig Harrington, Matt Kuchar and Ian Poulter. Asked what he considered a reasonable number of strokes to make up on the final day, Woods said, “I guess anything seven or less.” He was back in form Saturday, making most of the putts he needed to make, including spectacular par saves at the 13th and 18th holes. Nothing short of Woods’s best will be enough to leapfrog the six players in front of him and to hold off the ones tied with him. But he is at least within throat-clearing distance of the leaders, who are very much aware of his presence. Goydos was in a playful mood after a 68 that was jump-started by birdies on Nos. 3, 4, and 5. Asked if he envisioned looking over his shoulder for Woods on Sunday, he smiled. “First of all, he’s going to be in front of me, not behind me,” Goydos said, referring to where Woods would be on the golf course, playing with Johnson for a fourth straight day. “So I’ll be looking straight ahead.” The looking over the shoulder may take place at the leader boards if Woods starts making a move. That is something Goydos said he anticipated. “This is a golf course that can yield, obviously,” he said. “You can shoot 65 or 64. The field staff, in a sense, will dictate the ability to shoot that score. “But if the golf course is set up the way it’s been for the first three days, the level of difficulty, someone at four under or three under or two under could shoot seven or eight under par. It wouldn’t be a big surprise.” The PGA Tour staff took it easy on the players Saturday. Liberty National was set up 354 yards short of its maximum length, 7,419 yards. The tee was moved up 55 yards on the 508-yard 18th hole, a par 4, and 54 yards on the 563-yard, par-5 13th. Woods, half-joking, said the course was too short. “The guys are playing the ladies tees most of the day,” he said. Marino, a long-hitting 29-year-old from Altus, Okla., disagreed. He thought there was plenty of golf course. “It’s a really tough golf course,” said Marino, whose best chance for a tour victory came this year when he lost to Stricker in a playoff in Fort Worth. “I definitely didn’t feel like I was playing off the ladies tees. They made it a little bit easier on us, and I think they did that because I think they expected the worst with the weather, and we got real lucky that I guess it missed us. “But I think you can expect to see the tee boxes moved back tomorrow.” That will probably be the case. The forecast for Sunday was for sunshine, some wind and a drier course. It also includes the prospect of a charging Woods, who appeared to be enjoying himself when his putts began to drop, particularly the 13-footer at the last hole. That putt saved par after an odyssey into a fairway bunker on the right, the high rough on the left and a slashing 70-yard shot that stopped hole high. The putt went in. The game is on. The playoffs have begun. Can any of the six hold off Woods?

Golf
PGA Championship
Goydos Paul
Marino Steve


Sex Shop Workers Welcome the Protections of a Retail Union

Abstract: One of the country’s largest retail unions represents workers in department stores, grocery stores and bakeries. Now, it has a new category: sex shop workers. Last week, 25 employees of Babeland, an adult toy store with three locations in New York City, voted to join the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union , the group said on Monday. The move, workers said, would help them address a number of wage and training issues, as well as some concerns related more specifically to the nature of adult retail work and to a handful of transgender employees. “This is the only adult sex shop that is organized,” Stuart Appelbaum, the president of the retail union, said in an interview on Monday. “And I think that’s significant.” The employees said there were many reasons why they had wanted to unionize: more transparency around hiring, promotion and disciplinary decisions, and support for airing grievances and navigating workplace disputes. The vote for unionizing, which took place on Friday, was 21 to 4, the union said. “It’s a sign of how much we love this place,” said Lena Solow, who said she had worked at Babeland for three years. “We want it to be the best place it can be.” Babeland sells a variety of sex toys, accessories and books, and the workers proudly consider themselves sex educators. But that also makes them a target for invasive questions and even harassment, they said. “People don’t go into the Gap and ask what shirt fits you best,” added Phoenix Casino, who has worked at Babeland for two years. The employees have advocated better training and support from management to deal with problematic customers. They had pushed for caller ID, for example, to help weed out the threatening phone calls workers said they received on a daily basis. Two of the three stores now have caller ID, Babeland said. The store also said that it had “developed a list of new trainings” based on staff feedback that would focus on how to handle difficult customers. Image Phoenix Casino, a Babeland employee for two years who identifies as transgender, said employees at the store sometimes are asked invasive questions by customers. Credit Misha Friedman for The New York Times Claire Cavanah, a co-founder of Babeland who opened the first store in Seattle in 1993, said she was surprised to learn that the workers wanted to form a union. “For a year we have been working on this very issue, making Babeland a better pace to work,” she said. In March, for example, the company raised the starting minimum wage to $14 from $12 for New York City employees. New York’s current minimum wage is $9. “I guess it was a little bit too late for the staff,” Ms. Cavanah said. The Seattle location was not part of Friday’s vote. Mx. Casino, who identifies as transgender and uses the pronouns them and they instead of he or she, and others said they also wanted management to address issues for employees who identified as transgender or otherwise gender-nonconforming. When Massima Desire clocks in and out of her shift, she cringes when she sees the name that pops up on the screen. While her co-workers call her Massima, the company uses her legal name in its computer system, she said. Getting Babeland to respect her gender identity was just one of the reasons she voted to unionize. “That’s a question of dignity, and that’s what we’re going to be negotiating,” Mr. Appelbaum, the retail union president, said. Ms. Cavanah said that Babeland called employees by the names and pronouns they identified with. She said she was unaware of any issues with clocking in. In recent months, transgender issues have taken center stage in a national debate over civil rights. This month, the Obama administration released a letter forbidding public schools from forcing students to use bathrooms that did not match their gender identity. The directive came during a heated debate in North Carolina over a state law that restricts access to bathrooms, locker rooms and changing rooms. “More and more transgender folks are coming out on the job and coming out earlier, and so that by necessity means there’s more and more work to be done on these issues,” said Hayden Mora, a former labor organizer and a managing partner at the Parallax Group, a consulting firm with a specialty in transgender workplace issues. “Many employers and many folks in management have not yet done the work that’s crucial and necessary.”

Labor Unions
Retail
Wholesale and Department Store Union
Sex
Jobs
Transgender,Gender Dysphoria
Retail
Minimum wage


An Old-Fashioned Camera in a Digital Age

Abstract: FORGET what your parents told you: money does grow on trees. Well, at least for the street photographers who work the crowds around the Rockefeller Center Christmas tree , it does. With digital cameras and ink-jet printers powered by car batteries, they churn out images at about $10 a pop. Arrivistes, as far as Louis Mendes is concerned. Where is the skill in setting a camera to “automatic” and pushing a button? Where is the permanence in a shot printed with no-name ink on no-name paper? Where is the craft? In his hands. Mr. Mendes works the same crowds — and parades, graduations and concerts — cradling like a piece of sculpture a vintage Speed Graphic camera outfitted with two flash units and a Polaroid back. That’s right, instant film, a phrase that sounds almost as dated as “electric typewriter.” In an age when digital photography offers instant gratification and cameras come in most phones, who would have thought a decent living could be had taking pictures with a vanishing technology? Mr. Mendes does, and well enough to do it full time. He can sometimes charge as much as $20 for a portrait, depending on the location. “I’m the only one with this camera,” he said one afternoon last week as the sun set and the wind whipped through the streets. “This is about a moment for nostalgia. People see these cameras in movies, but they’ve never seen one in person. But when they see this, they go: ‘Ooh. Ahh. Wow.’ ” As if on cue, a young man who had just taken a picture of his friends with a tiny digital camera looked longingly at Mr. Mendes’s rig the way an econobox owner might swoon over a vintage Benz. “I get that a lot,” Mr. Mendes said. “I really don’t even have to talk to get customers.” He had started the afternoon outside Dean & Deluca on 49th Street: “Picture with the tree? Picture with the tree?” Maureen Behnke, visiting from New Jersey with her children, took him up on it. He posed them, shot the frame, pulled the film from the camera and tucked it under his arm. As they waited, he offered tips on what to do in the area. “It was about a moment,” she said of her decision to be photographed. “I told my son he would never be this little again. In 20 years, he’ll be an adult.” “And you’ll have a classic,” Mr. Mendes said as he handed her back the 2-by-3-inch photo in a holiday frame. Suitably suave at 70, he has been doing this for almost 40 years now. He is nothing if not stylish, decked out in a red turtleneck, gray blazer and long black leather coat. As always, he sports a black hat whose left brim is clipped up with — what else? — a pin shaped like a Speed Graphic. A fan on his Facebook group called him “Shaft with a camera.” If you have been at any parade or major event in New York — or the Super Bowl or the Essence Music Festival in New Orleans — you have seen Mr. Mendes. You might even have had him snap your portrait. Though at this time of year he does straightforward images with the tree in the background, he has also specialized in double exposures in which the subject appears twice, sometimes in different outfits or different seasons. Yes, he knows Photoshop can let a novice achieve a similar effect. But that’s cheating. “I can do it on the spot,” he said. “You don’t need a lot of stuff to make a shot. You don’t need lights and tripods. Just look at your subject, look at the light and shoot. You don’t need to take a thousand pictures to get a good picture. You need one good picture. One shot.” As for those other guys selling pictures on the street, he pays them no mind. Competition, they are not. Some of them don’t even take a single shot; like barkers working for a photographer, they instead weave through the crowds holding out a sample 8-by-10 to lure customers. Frankly, some of them look like their only photo experience was at Central Booking. “They’re not really photographers, more like picture hustlers,” he said of the shooters who hire the barkers. “They just push a button. They don’t know aperture priority from shutter priority. This, this is me priority. All manual. I set it.” Mr. Mendes plans to work the Rockefeller tree until Jan. 7, when it is scheduled to be taken down and turned to mulch. Then he will return to the sidewalk outside BH Photo or Adorama Camera . Taking pictures of people who already own cameras makes perfect sense to him, the guy with instant film and a classic rig in a sea of digital snappers. “Most photographers don’t have a good picture of themselves,” he explained. “They think nobody can take as good a picture as they can. So, I prove them wrong. There’s good money there.”

Photography
Cameras
Mendes Louis
New York City


Mets Trade for Athletics’ Tyler Clippard

Abstract: Bobby Parnell stood on the mound at Nationals Park last week, stunned, as he watched the Mets’ lead slip away against Washington, their division rival. For the Mets, trying to push their way into the playoff race, it was a devastating sight. All year, injuries had ravaged the pitching staff, with young relievers coming and going, yet somehow the Mets had pieced together a more than capable bullpen. It seemed to be fraying, though. In the team’s first 10 games after the All-Star break, the bullpen blew three saves. The Mets responded Monday by acquiring the right-handed reliever Tyler Clippard, a former All-Star setup man with postseason experience, from the Oakland Athletics to stabilize the bullpen. The trade also kept Clippard, the Nationals’ former bullpen ace, from rejoining Washington, which, according to a number of news outlets, had been interested in reacquiring him. For the last five years, Clippard has been one of the majors’ best relievers, making two All-Star teams. His 40 holds in 2014 led the major leagues, and he has proved to be as effective against left-handers as against right-handers. He has also been a capable closer: In 2012, he recorded 32 saves in 37 chances, and this year he has 17 saves in 21 chances. Clippard, 30, is due to become a free agent this off-season, which limits the financial burden for the Mets, and the A’s sent cash considerations to offset the roughly $3 million that he is owed the rest of the year. In exchange, the Mets dealt a 2013 third-round draft pick, the right-hander Casey Meisner, a prospect who appeared to be a few years from making his Mets debut. At the time of the trade, the Mets’ bullpen had a 2.86 E.R.A., the sixth-best mark in the league. But the Mets had reason to worry. Jeurys Familia garnered All-Star consideration and has converted 27 saves in 31 chances, but this is his first season as a closer. Parnell is still regaining his velocity after having Tommy John surgery. Jenrry Mejia is ineligible for the postseason because of his suspension for performance-enhancing drugs. Vic Black (herniated disk) and Jerry Blevins (broken arm) have yet to return from injuries. And aside from Blevins, none of them have pitched in a pennant race. By contrast, Clippard, whom Oakland acquired in a trade in January, helped the Nationals reach the playoffs in 2012 and 2014, recording a 1.50 E.R.A. in six division series games.

Baseball
Tyler Clippard
Sports Trades
Mets
Oakland Athletics


Israeli Police Investigate B’Tselem Office Fire

Abstract: JERUSALEM — The Israeli police said early Monday that they were investigating whether a fire late Sunday night in a building housing the Jerusalem offices of an Israeli group that monitors the treatment of Palestinians was deliberately set. No one was hurt in the fire at the offices of B’Tselem, a nongovernmental agency founded in 1989 that has been among those criticized by Israeli government officials for securing funding abroad. B’Tselem, also known as the Israeli Information Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories, has been at the center of a political dispute following a weekend television report suggesting that an activist affiliated with the group informed Palestinian security services about Palestinians who had sold land to Jews, which is considered a crime by Palestinians. Fire investigators and police officials are examining the fire for signs of arson, a Fire Department spokesman told the newspaper Haaretz. The fire appeared to have started in two places, the spokesman said. The building also houses the offices of Hand in Hand, an organization behind a bilingual school for Israeli and Palestinian students that was targeted in a November 2014 arson attack, as well as the Israel Airports Authority. B’Tselem said in a statement: “We are still waiting for the findings of the fire investigator. However, if it is discovered that this was an arson attack, it must be seen in the context of the wave of government incitement and smear campaigns against Israel’s human rights groups, and B’Tselem in particular.” The Israeli government has proposed legislation that would require nongovernmental organizations to disclose funding they receive from foreign governments.


Archie Peck, Competitive Croquet Star, Dies at 76

Abstract: Archie Peck, one of the most celebrated players in a sport of cutthroat gentility — croquet — died on Wednesday in West Palm Beach, Fla. He was 76. His death, of cancer, was announced on the Web site of the United States Croquet Association . A champion player in the 1970s, ’80s and afterward, Peck was for decades a familiar presence in the croquet circles of Palm Beach and beyond, characteristically attired in playing togs that were whiter than white and crisper than crisp. With his rugged good looks, effortless athleticism and aggressive style of play, he was widely described as having brought virility to a sport that had long been considered only somewhat less geriatric than shuffleboard. This notwithstanding the fact that Peck, in his playing days, was commonly known as Silky Legs. As The Miami Herald explained in 1982, “Women say he has the silkiest legs around when he wears his Italian-made tennis shorts.” Peck, who ran a successful real estate business in Palm Beach, had already been a scratch golfer, skilled surfer, tennis player, snow and water skier, professional jai alai player and United States Marine when he took up croquet in his 30s. He became a six-time national champion in the sport, earning four singles and two doubles titles, and was inducted into the United States Croquet Hall of Fame and the World Croquet Federation Hall of Fame . He was also an ardent public ambassador for competitive croquet, which, adherents say, combines the finesse of billiards with the strategy of chess. Unlike the backyard game, which employs nine wickets, official American-rules croquet is played with only six, each so narrow that negotiating the ball through it is a true test of skill. John Archibald McNeil Peck was born on Oct. 10, 1935, in Norwalk, Conn., and raised in Palm Beach. As an adult, he was the longtime president of John W. Peck Real Estate, founded in Palm Beach by his father. He lived in West Palm Beach. Peck was divorced twice. He is survived by four children, John Peck, Nina Noel, Alexandra Weary and Amy Nelson; a sister, Lucie Peck Moffett; eight grandsons; and his longtime companion, Amy Weiss. So passionate was Peck for croquet that he is known to have said only a single negative thing about it in his lifetime. “It’s about the world’s worst spectator sport,” he told The Orlando Sentinel in 2006, “unless you’re a croquet player.”


Everything Is in Sequence. So?

Abstract: Correction Appended Cue the music from "The Twilight Zone." As America slept, digital clocks in the small hours of this morning moved inexorably toward an uncanny moment of alignment, 1-2-3-4-5-6: 01:02:03 on 04/05/06. Eerie? Transcendental? A harbinger of fire and brimstone? Maybe all three, to some extent. Certainly the once-every-century moment was heavily bruited about in e-mail messages yesterday. Daniel Goroff, a mathematics professor on leave from Harvard, chuckled a bit when asked about it. "We are pattern seekers and we seek meaning in patterns," said Dr. Goroff, who is also dean of faculty at Harvey Mudd College in Claremont, Calif. "But in order to do that, our brains notice a lot of things that are not meaningful." Numerologists, for the most part, agree. Daniel Hardt, founder of the Life Path Numerology Center in Indianapolis, said the numbers 1 through 6 add up to 21 and when 21 is "reduced," or added together, it equals 3, a number signifying communication. Which means? Mr. Hardt, a hearing-aid salesman turned numerologist, said, "I don't see much." Judith Gabriel, a roulette-dealer-turned-numerologist in Las Vegas, was blunter. "There's nothing in particular there whatsoever," she said. Still, Rose Welsh, an art-gallery-owner-turned-numerologist in TriBeCa, sees a growing spirituality. Why? The number 6 signifies the individual, she said, while the next number, 7, signifies evolution. Of course, the last time there was a big buzz about numbers was the Y2K question that accompanied the approach of the year 2000, stirring fears of monster computer crashes and predictions of disaster, or even of the Second Coming. Stephen Jay Gould, writing in his book "Questioning the Millennium: A Rationalist's Guide to a Precisely Arbitrary Countdown," noted that 2000 was not two millennia after Jesus' birth. He had to have been born in the year 4 B.C., when King Herod was still alive. Nothing miraculous happened 2,000 years later, in 1996, Mr. Gould said, with the possible exception of the Yankees winning the World Series in six games after losing the first two. It is not clear yet whether something happened this morning. But something earthshaking did happen a hundred years ago, on April 5, 1906. On its front page the following day, The New York Times carried a five-paragraph dispatch from Italy with the following headline: "Vesuvius Causes Terror -- Loud Detonations and Frequent Earthquakes -- Villagers Flee." Correction: June 21, 2006, Wednesday An article on April 5 about the date 04/05/06 -- a once-in-a-century alignment -- referred erroneously, in discussing other dates of numerical interest, to calculations by the evolutionary biologist Stephen Jay Gould in his 1997 book "Questioning the Millennium: A Rationalist's Guide to a Precisely Arbitrary Countdown." Mr. Gould, in analyzing a theory that Jesus was actually born in 4 B.C. and that the world would end 2,000 years after Jesus's birth, concluded that the 2,000-year mark would arrive in 1997 -- not 1996. (There was no year zero.) A reader reported the error at the time, but his e-mail was misdirected at The Times.


Relatives Mystified by Fate of American Held in North Korea

Abstract: BEIJING — Merrill Newman is 85 and has a heart ailment, but that did not deter him from fulfilling his wish to return to North Korea, where he fought as a young man, his family and friends say. With a companion from his California retirement village, Mr. Newman booked a nine-day trip to the most closed society in the world, a nuclear-armed state that keeps its people in poverty and is an enemy of the United States. Some call the country the last frontier of travel. “Why do World War II veterans go back to Normandy?” Mr. Newman’s son, Jeff, asked this week as he dealt with the reality that his father has been detained in North Korea for nearly a month and that his whereabouts remained unclear. “The war had a powerful impact on him.” Mr. Newman and his friend had completed their tour and were on board an Air Koryo plane in Pyongyang ready to leave for Beijing on Oct. 26 when uniformed North Korean officers escorted Mr. Newman off, his son said. He has not been heard from since. The day before they were scheduled to leave North Korea, Mr. Newman had a conversation about the Korean War and his service as a soldier with one of his tour guides and another Korean whose identity is not known, his son said. According to the son, Mr. Newman was upset afterward and indicated to his friend, Bob Hamrdla, that the talk had not gone well. Mr. Newman is part of a small but growing number of Americans, Europeans and Chinese who have signed up in recent years to visit the North on state-approved tours, despite the difficulties inherent in traveling to an impoverished police state. Tourists must be accompanied at all times by state-authorized guides who prevent much interaction with ordinary people, itineraries are set in advance and creature comforts are limited. “It tends to be for curiosity seekers who have been everywhere and want to see the place,” said Tony Namkung, a North Korea expert. Jeff Newman said his father “was there as a tourist on an approved tour itinerary with Korean guides.” “He had all the paperwork and was doing all the things you’re supposed to do in order to go see the country,” he added. Mr. Newman, who has visited Cuba, according to his son, traveled to North Korea with Juche Travel Services, an agency that advertises offices in Beijing, Berlin and London. The group was founded in 2011, according to its website . Reached by telephone, the head of the London office, David Thompson, said that he could not talk because of Mr. Newman’s detention. In the last several years, and particularly under Kim Jong-un, who became the country’s leader in 2011 , North Korea has tried to attract Western tourists. The government opened a dolphin aquarium in Pyongyang last year, and despite a lack of money that keeps many of its people hungry, it has started to build a ski resort at Masikryong on the east coast. The Swiss government recently refused to sell ski equipment for the project, saying the country should not be able to afford such a luxury. A wealthy European businessman who visited last year said he and his family were drawn by the desire to see a Communist country where a three-generation family dynasty has ruled with an iron hand. “You don’t even see that in Cuba,” said the businessman, who declined to be named for fear of publicity. During the visit, the family paid 200 euros, or about $270, a person for a seat at the main stadium to see a synchronized dancing show, visited a farm and was taken to a power plant. “As a tourist, there is no freedom,” the businessman said. “After two days, I was ready to leave.” For the last decade or so, two travel agencies, Young Pioneer Tours and Koryo Tours , have been the main conduits for Western tourists, North Korea experts said. Juche Travel Services, which bills itself as tailored for the “modern independent traveler,” was a relative newcomer, they said. Named after the state ideology of “self-reliance,” Juche Travel Services advertises offbeat tours, including a bird-watching tour for October, and suggests an arms and equipment exhibition run by the Korean People’s Army as an attraction. All travel agencies outside North Korea must make their arrangements through the state-run Korea International Travel Company, which provides the guides, said Mr. Namkung, who has arranged trips for Bill Richardson, the former United Nations ambassador and governor of New Mexico, and Eric E. Schmidt, the executive chairman of Google. Mr. Newman and his traveling companion, Mr. Hamrdla, stayed at the Yanggakdo Hotel in Pyongyang, a 47-floor building on an island. The hotel is one of the two main Western-style hotels in the capital, and it is increasingly favored by the North Koreans for tourists because its location makes it difficult for visitors to wander very far without being seen. The itinerary for Mr. Newman and Mr. Hamrdla, who has since returned to the United States, took them to standard places. They visited Wonsan, on the east coast, and Nampho, a city southwest of Pyongyang, where dams that hold back the tide are considered a tourist attraction. Like most visitors, they also went to Kaesong, the industrial zone on the border with South Korea that the two countries jointly operate despite hostile relations. A person familiar with the situation surrounding Mr. Newman’s disappearance, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said that inquiries about Mr. Newman by Swedish officials in Pyongyang who represent American interests in the North had been “stonewalled.” On Thursday, Mr. Richardson — who has visited North Korea at least eight times, including a number of delicate diplomatic missions to secure the release of other detained Americans — also got involved in the effort to determine why Mr. Newman had been taken into custody. In a telephone interview, Mr. Richardson said that he had communicated with his North Korean contacts to express his concern, but that he had received no new information. “I’m flabbergasted at this action by the North Koreans,” he said. “It means that possibly there’s no one in charge, and that the relationship with the United States, unfortunately, is not going to be helped by this incident.” Several months ago , the country allowed a Korean War veteran who was searching for the body of a friend to visit, and invited him back to keep trying. But the country continues to hold an American missionary , a Christian who was sentenced to 15 years of hard labor for “hostile acts” against the Communist North. Mr. Newman’s family members and those trying to help them are mainly concerned about his health. He was on a regimen of nine different medications for his heart ailment, according to an American official. The family sent a package with a 30-day supply of the medicines to the American Embassy in Beijing, his son said, and the package was forwarded to the Swedes in Pyongyang. The Swedes reported back that they had delivered the medicine to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, but there was no word on whether Mr. Newman had received them, his son said. While Mr. Newman’s family worried about how and when they would hear of his condition, the postcards he wrote while on the trip, adorned with the elaborate postage stamps produced by the North Korean government, have started to arrive for family and friends. “They said he was having an excellent time,” the younger Mr. Newman said.

Merrill E Newman
Korean War
US Foreign Policy
Bill Richardson
North Korea
Pyongyang


Times Company Swings to a Profit

Abstract: The New York Times Company reported results on Thursday that reflected a turnaround driven by cost-cutting and an improved advertising market. The Times Company reported a net income of $12.8 million for the first quarter , compared with a loss of $74.5 million in the period a year earlier. The quarterly earnings were 8 cents a share, compared with a loss of 52 cents a share in the first quarter of 2009. “We are benefiting from many of the cost cuts that took place last year,” Janet L. Robinson, the president and chief executive, said in an interview. “Much of the cost cutting was done in 2009. We are now reaping the benefits of that cost restructuring.” The company brought operating costs down 18 percent from the period a year earlier, to $535.2 million, with reductions in labor and in newsprint expenses making up about half the savings. “We can never rule out anything that we would do in regard to cost cutting because we can’t specifically judge how the revenue will be,” Ms. Robinson said, but “we feel that the revenues are going in the right direction, we see positive trending certainly in regard to online, in regard to the declines we see in print advertising, which is quite encouraging.” Overall revenue fell 3.2 percent in the quarter to $588 million, with advertising falling companywide by 6.1 percent to $313 million. The rate of decrease in ad revenue seemed to be slowing. In the fourth quarter, ad revenue fell 14.7 percent, compared with the period a year earlier. Print ad revenue continued to suffer in the quarter, falling 12.3 percent, while online advertising revenue rose 18.3 percent to $80 million. The rate of online ad improvement in the company’s News Media Group, which includes The New York Times, The Boston Globe and other newspapers, was more muted, with digital advertising revenue growing by 11.2 percent to $46.9 million. For the News Media Group, overall advertising decreases improved to single-digit declines, falling 9.1 percent. But advertising revenue continued to grow robustly at the company’s About Group, a collection of Internet businesses that includes About.com, which posted an increase of 29.3 percent. At the close of trading Thursday, the company’s shares were down 3.5 percent, or 45 cents, to $12.29. Emile Courtney, a credit analyst at Standard & Poor’s, said the company’s credit rating would be reviewed for a possible upgrade. In a statement, he attributed the review to “a significant moderation in the pace of ad revenue decline in the March 2010 quarter, signaling the potential that The New York Times could achieve and sustain credit metrics and a liquidity profile in line with a higher rating.” The company said that although it was selling fewer newspapers, the price increases instituted last summer helped increase circulation revenue by 3.5 percent, to $237 million. In June, it began raising the price of single copies of The New York Times and The Boston Globe, and raised subscription prices by about 10 percent and 20 percent. Ms. Robinson said that a metered-pay system for The Times’s Web site would begin in January, when the company would introduce a paid application for the iPad . In the first quarter, the company also took a one-time charge of $10.9 million, or 7 cents a share, to reflect a change in the health care reform package regarding the tax treatment of benefits. The company has been strengthening its cash position, and had more than $100 million in cash at the end of the quarter. Early in the second quarter of 2010, the company said, it opted to put $78 million into an underfunded pension plan, suggesting confidence in its position. “We feel as though our pension obligation is something we should address, and we were in a position to do so primarily because of strong cash flow,” Ms. Robinson said. Other media companies, including Gannett and Lee Enterprises, have also reported a less-severe decline in advertising revenue that has helped lift first-quarter results.


U.S. Prosecutor to Drop Insider Trading Cases Against Seven

Abstract: The impact of a landmark decision that made it harder to prosecute insider trading was amply demonstrated on Thursday as the top federal prosecutor in Manhattan moved to dismiss the charges and convictions of seven people. The 2013 conviction of Michael S. Steinberg — the highest-ranking employee at SAC Capital Advisors to stand trial for insider trading — would be dropped, as would the guilty pleas of six cooperating witnesses. The decision by Preet Bharara , the United States attorney in Manhattan, came just a little more than two weeks after the United States Supreme Court declined to review a ruling by the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit that tossed out two other insider trading convictions and made it harder for authorities to pursue certain kinds of wrongful trading cases. A dismissal of Mr. Steinberg’s conviction had been seen as a possibility in light of the appeals court ruling, which overturned the earlier convictions of two former hedge fund managers, Anthony Chiasson and Todd Newman, on similar evidence of improper trading in shares of two technology companies. But Mr. Bharara’s decision essentially to wipe away the guilty pleas of six cooperating witnesses, some of whom testified at the trials of Mr. Steinberg, Mr. Chiasson and Mr. Newman, was somewhat unexpected. In a statement, Mr. Bharara said that “insisting on maintaining guilty pleas in these cases would not be in the interests of justice,” in light of the appeals court ruling. But he added that the prosecutions were brought in “good faith.” Daniel C. Richman, a professor of criminal law at Columbia University, said a decision to dismiss the pleas of cooperators was consistent with the “desire that cooperators never do worse than defendants who go to trial.” He added that if prosecutors sought to keep those pleas in place, it could send a negative message about the value of cooperating with investigations. The moves to dismiss were done through filings with the clerk’s office of the Federal District Court in Manhattan. They differed from the often high-octane press statements from Mr. Bharara’s office that routinely accompanied announcements of new convictions during the long-running crackdown on insider trading in the hedge fund industry. “Michael Steinberg did not commit any crime and is an innocent man,” said Barry Berke, the lawyer for Mr. Steinberg. “We hope that his vindication will receive as much attention as his wrongful prosecution.” The guilty pleas from cooperating witnesses that prosecutors moved to dismiss were those of Jon Horvath, Jesse Tortora, Spyridon Adondakis, Sandeep Goyal, Danny Kuo and Hyung Lim. Steven R. Peikin, a lawyer for Mr. Horvath, said: “This was obviously the only appropriate decision, given that the Second Circuit determined that Jon committed no crime whatsoever. Jon looks forward to moving on to the next phase of his life.” The dismissals, now nine in all, are a significant blow to one of Mr. Bharara’s crowning achievements in office. The decision puts a dent in Mr. Bharara’s insider trading record, which was perfect until last year. His conviction rate now stands at roughly 85 percent. Preet Bharara’s Key Insider Trading Cases The United States attorney in Manhattan oversaw a sweeping crackdown on insider trading in the hedge fund industry, but a federal appeals court upended the campaign. The actions to drop Mr. Steinberg’s case and dismiss the guilty plea of Mr. Horvath, a former analyst who worked for Mr. Steinberg at the hedge fund founded by Steven A. Cohen , would appear to diminish the sweep of the guilty plea by SAC to securities fraud. The plea deal by the former hedge fund company, which included the payment of $1.8 billion in fines to federal authorities and securities regulators, meant the end of Mr. Cohen’s run as one of Wall Street’s most successful hedge fund managers. Today Mr. Cohen, who was never charged with wrongdoing by prosecutors, runs an $11 billion family office called Point72 Asset Management that employs more than 800 people. Mark Herr, a spokesman for Mr. Cohen and Point72, said, “We are pleased that the ordeal for Mike Steinberg and his family is over.” Mr. Cohen, who still faces a civil administrative “failure to supervise” case brought by the Securities and Exchange Commission , declined to comment. It’s not immediately clear what impact, if any, the dismissal of Mr. Steinberg’s conviction and Mr. Horvath’s guilty plea will have on the S.E.C. lawsuit. The agency’s civil action is also predicated on Mr. Cohen’s failure to properly supervise Mathew Martoma, another trader convicted of insider trading, whose case is not expected to be affected by the appeals court ruling. The December ruling by the appeals court that threw out the convictions of Mr. Newman and Mr. Chiasson is not expected to lead to the dismissal of many other insider trading convictions. But it is likely that lawyers will cite the decision to challenge other convictions and pleas. Joon Kim, the deputy United States attorney under Mr. Bharara, said, “Although it may be the subject of some ongoing litigation, we expect this to be largely the extent of the fallout from the Newman decision on our prior insider trading cases.” There is precedent for prosecutors to dismiss guilty pleas of cooperators if a related and significant conviction is overturned. In the Enron investigation, prosecutors did not oppose a motion by a cooperating witness to withdraw his guilty plea after the Supreme Court in 2005 reversed the obstruction of justice conviction of Arthur Andersen, the former giant accounting firm. In 2008, a federal judge in New York vacated a number of guilty pleas taken in connection with an investigation into improper trading on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange. Those pleas were vacated after an appeals court overturned the convictions of several so-called floor brokers and specialists, and other cases dropped by prosecutors. Mr. Bharara, in public comments, has been more focused on the future impact of the December ruling than its impact on convictions already secured by his office. He has said the ruling would make it harder for prosecutors to bring criminal cases when corporate executives pass on an inside tip to a friend or a relative expecting nothing special in return. The appeals court, in throwing out the convictions of Mr. Chiasson and Mr. Newman, said the original tips were not unlawful because the corporate investor relations employees who disclosed most of the confidential information did not do so expecting a personal benefit in return. The decision was seen as putting new teeth into an element of insider trading law that has waned in importance over the years, with prosecutors contending a personal benefit can be something as ephemeral as wanting to help out a friend. But the court said friendship alone might not be enough and authorities must show something more was meant to be exchanged in return for the stock tip. Just what that something more is, however, remains a bit elusive.

Michael Saren Steinberg
Insider trading
SAC Capital Advisors
Preet Bharara
SEC
Supreme Court,SCOTUS
Decisions and Verdicts
Steven A Cohen
Todd Newman
Anthony Chiasson


Priebus Re-elected to Lead Republican National Committee

Abstract: CHARLOTTE, N.C. — Reince Priebus was re-elected chairman of the Republican National Committee on Friday, overcoming divisions and tensions in the party as he pledged to remake and restore the Republican brand before the Congressional elections next year and the 2016 presidential race. He was elected with near unanimity to serve a second term at the helm of the Republican Party. He allayed concerns from some party officials and activists about the outcome of last year’s elections and sought re-election without serious opposition. “We can stand by our timeless principles and articulate them in ways that are modern and relevant to our time and relatable to the majority of voters,” Mr. Priebus said in his speech. “And that, I believe, is how we’ll achieve a Republican renewal. That’s how we’ll grow. That’s how we’ll win.” The election here on Friday during the annual winter meeting of the committee unfolded without the drama and dissent of two years ago when Mr. Priebus was elected after surviving seven contentious rounds of balloting to overtake Michael Steele , the embattled party chairman. Mr. Priebus, 40, a former chairman of the Wisconsin Republican Party, delivered a blunt message to the party during his acceptance speech. He said that the Republican Party needed to rebuild across the country and not simply focus on the same battleground states that are at the center of every presidential election. “There is one clear, overriding lesson from November: We didn’t have enough voters,” Mr. Priebus said. “We have to find more supporters. We have to go places we haven’t been and we have to invite new people to join us.” In his remarks, Mr. Priebus reported to members of the committee that he had led the party out of the debt that he inherited when he took over two years ago. He said the party still needed to make strides to compete with the Democratic Party. Mr. Priebus secured the support of the party’s major donors and state officials, even as he appealed to the Libertarian strains of the party that are represented by supporters of Ron Paul. He fought back the possibility of a challenge from Mark Willis, a committee member from Maine, who supported Mr. Paul in last year’s presidential campaign. Mr. Willis did not receive enough support on Friday to have his name placed into nomination. Party officials who gathered here said Republicans needed to be unified if they were going to successfully rebuild after losing the race for the White House and seats in the House and Senate last year. In his remarks on Friday, Mr. Priebus said the party needed to improve its technology to compete with Democrats, but also focus on returning to the basics of building a strong get-out-the-vote operation. He did not talk specifically about the divisions inside the party over fiscal and social issues, but he urged Republican officials to be driven by their overarching goal: winning elections. “Growing the party to be more welcoming and more inclusive does not require abandoning our principles,” Mr. Priebus said. “It means renewing those principles because only they can offer the solutions to the liberal-induced problems of our time.”

RNC
Reince R Priebus
2016 Presidential Election


Congress Plans to Tighten Rules on Energy Speculation

Abstract: WASHINGTON (AP) — Lawmakers continued to contend Monday that large investors are propping up oil prices, saying that speculation in crude futures has nearly doubled since 2000. Pension funds, Wall Street banks and other large investors that have no intention of taking delivery of fuel have increasingly pumped money into contracts for oil and other commodities as a hedge against inflation when the dollar falls. After more than a half-dozen hearings in Congress, Democratic House lawmakers said they intended to tighten restrictions on pension funds, investment banks and other investors that they say are driving up fuel prices. Many Republicans, analysts and regulators, however, say soaring oil prices are a reflection of macroeconomic factors, including the falling dollar, unrest in the Middle East and increased demand from countries like China and India. Oil prices rose $1.38, to settle at $136.74 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange on Monday, on disappointment about Saudi Arabia’s modest production increase and concerns that output from Nigeria will decline. “Make no mistake about it, the excessive speculation in commodity markets is having a devastating effect at the gas pump that is rippling through our entire economy,” said Representative Bart Stupak, Democrat of Michigan, who was chairman of the hearing of a House Energy and Commerce subcommittee. Representative Joe Barton, Republican of Texas, said insufficient supply is the main driver behind rising energy prices. He called for increased domestic production of oil, natural gas and coal. Speculators have increased their share of oil futures contracts on the Nymex to 71 percent this year, from 37 percent in 2000, according to figures released by Mr. Stupak’s office. At the same time, contracts held by traditional oil users have fallen to less than 30 percent from more than 60 percent. But that figure substantially overstates the upward price pressure of those speculative positions. For example, that percentage counts swaps dealers who are in the market both as buyers, who push prices up, and as sellers, who push prices down. According to data from the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, the futures market positions of swaps dealers, as a whole, are almost exactly balanced between purchases and sales of crude oil. The agency also reported that speculative purchase positions are currently near the lowest levels seen over the last year. The percentage may also overstate the amount of actual speculation, because it includes swaps dealers acting for clients who are not speculating. House Democrats suggested a range of remedies, including higher margin requirements and stricter position limits. The acting chairman of the commission, Walter Lukken, cautioned lawmakers that higher margin requirements could drive traders out of the United States markets.

Oil (Petroleum) and Gasoline
Law and Legislation
Prices (Fares Fees and Rates)
Senate
House of Representatives