Stem Cells in Court, Scientists Fear for Careers

Abstract: Rushing to work at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center one recent morning, Jason Spence, 33, grabbed a moment during breakfast to type “ stem cells ” into Google and click for the last 24 hours of news. It is a routine he has performed daily in the six weeks since a Federal District Court ruling put the future of his research in jeopardy. “It’s always at the front of my brain when I wake up,” said Dr. Spence, who has spent four years training to turn stem cells derived from human embryos into pancreatic tissue in the hope of helping diabetes patients. “You have this career plan to do all of this research, and the thought that they could just shut it off is pretty nerve-racking.” Perhaps more than any other field of science, the study of embryonic stem cells has been subject to ethical objections and shaped by political opinion. But only a year after the Obama administration lifted some of the limits imposed by President George W. Bush, a lawsuit challenging the use of public money for the research and a conservative shift in Congress could leave the field more sharply restricted than it has been since its inception a decade ago. At stake are about 1,300 jobs, as well as grants from the National Institutes of Health that this year total more than $200 million and support more than 200 projects. The turn of events has introduced what researchers say is unprecedented uncertainty to a realm of academic science normally governed by the laws of nature and the rules of peer review. “We’re used to people telling us, ‘That was a stupid idea, we’re not going to fund it,’ and we turn around and think of a better one,” said James Wells, who heads the laboratory where Dr. Spence has a postdoctoral position. “But there’s nothing we can do about this.” The stem cells, which are thought to have curative potential for many diseases because they can be turned into any kind of tissue in the human body, can be obtained only by destroying a human embryo, which many Americans believe is the equivalent of a life. In August, Chief Judge Royce C. Lamberth of Federal District Court for the District of Columbia found that the Obama administration’s policy violates a law barring federal financing for “research in which a human embryo or embryos are destroyed, discarded or knowingly subjected to risk of injury or death,” and issued an injunction blocking federal money for the research. Since then, the field’s fate has appeared to shift almost weekly as the lawsuit wends its way through the courts. Last week, the government won the right from an appeals court to continue financing the contested research while it appeals the ruling. But there is no telling how the appeals court will ultimately rule, and Judge Lamberth could issue a revised injunction. Many of the nation’s leading stem cell researchers do not know whether they will receive grants they won years earlier through the standard competition, or whether new projects will even be considered. Junior scientists like Dr. Spence, poised to start their own laboratories, are caught in limbo. Senior scientists like Dr. Wells are torn between pursuing research they believe in and protecting students from staking their job prospects on projects they may never be able to complete. The legal roller coaster is raising stress levels and reducing productivity, researchers say. Instead of tending to their test tubes, they find themselves guessing how each member of the Supreme Court might vote on the case. They are also watching the midterm Congressional elections with new interest — and with some dismay, since many believe that new legislation will be required for their work to continue. Under guidelines authorized by both the Bush and Obama administrations, work that leads directly to destroying the embryos cannot be federally financed. The government can, however, support subsequent research on the cell lines created by that process. Last year, two scientists filed the lawsuit, arguing that the distinction is a false one and that the guidelines on public financing violated the Dickey-Wicker amendment, first passed in 1996 and renewed by Congress every year since. Moreover, they said, it siphons limited government resources from research on different types of stem cells, which they and other scientists who share a discomfort with embryonic stem cells view as ethically and scientifically superior. For all the hope vested in them, human embryonic stem cells have yet to yield tangible results for patients. In his ruling, Judge Lamberth agreed that the guidelines violated the 1996 amendment and “threaten the very livelihood” of the plaintiffs. Embryonic stem cell researchers who stand to lose their federal grants as a result argue that other types of stem cells do not have the same properties, and that all need to be studied regardless to determine which work best. They bristle at the intrusion of judges and politicians into decisions usually addressed by the peer review process, in which experts in a field comment on the merit of an idea and the best get financed. Yet even some who believe there is a compelling scientific rationale for their research agree that the legal basis for federal financing may be weak. “I was astonished that Congress hadn’t dealt with this,” said Stephen Duncan, a stem cell researcher at the Medical College of Wisconsin, who stands to lose several million dollars in federal grants depending on the dispensation of the case. “It’s like being a little pregnant. You’re either breaking the law or you’re not.” Mr. Bush, who in 2001 limited federally financed researchers to working on roughly two dozen stem cell lines already in existence, twice vetoed legislation that would have explicitly expressed support for financing the contested research. No such legislation has been introduced under President Obama, but the administration expanded the number of stem cell lines researchers could study. Advocates of the research now see this as a missed opportunity. Efforts to rally Congressional support since Judge Lamberth’s ruling have failed to gain momentum among Democrats and moderate Republicans heading into the November elections. For many, the most recent intrusion of politics into the vaunted scientific meritocracy came as a particular shock because the Obama administration’s new guidelines had only months earlier fallen into place. “The painful thing is that we are being stopped at a time when the velocity of this field of research, thanks to the new administration, was finally going at maximum speed,” said Ali H. Brivanlou, a professor at Rockefeller University. Over the last few weeks, embryonic stem cell scientists have sought alternative financing from private foundations, university administrations and state programs. But the National Institutes of Health, which has a $26 billion budget, is by far the source with the deepest pockets for academic scientists. Some researchers are weighing a switch to the private sector. Others have ordered their students to pay no attention to the news. Others are trying to raise public awareness. Yi Sun, 45, of the University of California, Los Angeles, has resorted to frequent meditation. “I would be in trouble without it,” said Dr. Sun, whose stem cell work focuses on an autism disorder called Rett syndrome . Born in China, Dr. Sun said she was now renewing efforts to collaborate with well-financed stem cell biologists there.

Stem Cells
Fetal Tissue
Research
Suits and Litigation
Medicine and Health
National Institutes of Health
Lamberth Royce C


Ronan Tynan, Once the Yankees’ Star Tenor, Heads to Boston

Abstract: Ronan Tynan became a walk-on Yankee star in 2000, when he stepped onto the field with his artificial legs and clarion voice and belted out “God Bless America” during the seventh inning stretch of important games. But that stopped on Oct. 16 of last year, when a woman accused Mr. Tynan of making an anti-Semitic remark. Since then, the charmed existence he enjoyed since emigrating from Ireland in 1998 has soured — from famous to infamous, as he puts it. Mr. Tynan, 49, insists the fateful remark, a reference to “two Jewish ladies,” was overheard by someone who misconstrued it as a slur and immediately reported it to the Yankees and some local newspapers. The Yankees told him not to show up that evening at Game 1 of the team’s playoff series against the Angels. A media storm followed, ending his tenure with the Yankees. Other work has dried up, and many old friends stopped calling, he said. Now Mr. Tynan is headed to the anti-New York, as far as baseball is concerned. He has sold his apartment on the East Side of Manhattan and bought one in Boston. He insists he has not given up on New York — he will keep a rented apartment here. Nor is he angry at the city. He said he was moving mainly for a change and because he had family and friends in Boston. When pressed, however, he admits that life here has become strained: the barrage of angry e-mail messages and letters; the death threats; the surgeon who wrote saying he would let him die on the operating table, if Mr. Tynan were his patient; the prominent chef who steered him away from a table of customers because one of them was a Jewish man who refused to meet the singer. “It hasn’t driven me out, because I love this city so much, but it has saddened me,” Mr. Tynan said in an interview this week at a friend’s apartment in Manhattan. “I’ve cried and I’ve laughed with New Yorkers, irrespective of creed or whether they’re Jewish or Catholic or Protestant.” Mr. Tynan grew up hobbling around on heavy leg braces on a Kilkenny farm, became a doctor in Ireland and a successful Paralympic athlete before taking up singing at age 33 and rising to much acclaim. Since emigrating, Mr. Tynan has become the voice of a certain strain of patriotic New Yorker. His powerful “God Bless America” — he often leads with Irving Berlin’s rarely heard first stanza, which begins “While the storm clouds gather far across the sea, Let us swear allegiance to a land that’s free” — has rung out in St. Patrick’s Cathedral, Carnegie Hall and Town Hall, and at numerous 9/11 funerals and memorials. He sang it at a smoldering ground zero for rescuers while volunteering on food lines. He has sung for American troops in Iraq and done many performances for Jewish groups. Most of this work, including for the Yankees, has been done free. Mr. Tynan, who was part of the group the Irish Tenors , has been a fixture at events for the city’s Fire and Police Departments, and his patrons included Archbishop Timothy M. Dolan and Rudolph W. Giuliani. The comment that led to his excommunication from Yankeedom was a reference to two women who were being shown the vacant apartment next door to his on the East Side. Mr. Tynan said a real estate agent referred to them innocuously as “two Jewish ladies.” Mr. Tynan chatted with them and concluded the “two Jewish ladies” might not enjoy living next to a loud tenor. An associate of that agent saw Mr. Tynan on Oct. 16 and told him the apartment had been sold, joking, “Don’t worry, they’re not Red Sox fans.” Mr. Tynan said his reply — “As long as they are not the Jewish ladies” — was misconstrued by a woman accompanying the real estate agent, who later complained to the Yankees. “I made a comment that was misunderstood,” said Mr. Tynan, who said he was teased and singled out while growing up with heavy braces on his legs because of a congenital condition that would later lead to amputation. “If anyone knows the pain of discrimination, I do.” Mr. Tynan said he used the term “Jewish ladies” not to disparage their religion, but as a shorthand identification of the people he believed would not enjoy the apartment. (They were not the eventual buyers.) “The Yankees never reached out, and they never wanted to hear the real story,” said Mr. Tynan, who wore his diamond-studded 2000 World Series ring during the interview. Asked for comment this week, a Yankees spokeswoman, Alice McGillion, said simply, “We wish him all the best.” Shortly after the remark, Mr. Tynan met with officials from the Anti-Defamation League in Manhattan. He agreed to join its education initiatives, and he sang at its annual dinner . “It was a stupid comment, which he understands was hurtful,” the league’s national director, Abraham H. Foxman , said Thursday. “He publicly apologized, and he wants to be a soldier in the struggle against bigotry. What else can you ask for?” In the interview, Mr. Tynan said he would dearly miss taking the field in the Bronx in the seventh inning and hearing that “chorus of patriotism” from New Yorkers singing along with him. His decision to move to Boston was reported online this week by The Irish Echo in an article that envisioned Mr. Tynan singing for the Red Sox. Asked if this might ever come to pass, Mr. Tynan would say only that he had had no contact with Red Sox officials. As for the possibility of developing feelings for the Red Sox, he said, “We’ll see how it goes.”

Tynan Ronan
New York Yankees
Boston (Mass)


Fatal Clashes Erupt in Peru at Roadblock

Abstract: LIMA, Peru — Clashes between indigenous protesters and security forces on a remote jungle highway in northern Peru left more than a dozen dead on Friday, including 11 police officers, heightening tension over intensifying protests by indigenous groups over plans to open vast tracts of rain forest to oil drilling, logging and hydroelectric dams. Initial accounts of the clashes varied. Indigenous leaders here said the killings unfolded early on Friday after the police fired from helicopters on hundreds of protesters who had blocked the highway in the northern Bagua Province, with at least 22 civilians killed. The Chachapoyas Medical Association, in the region where the killings took place, put the number of dead Indians at 25. Peru’s interior minister, Mercedes Cabanillas, said the police did not initiate the bloodshed but were “victims of the frenzy.” Prime Minister Yehude Simon said Friday night that 11 police officers and 3 Indians had been killed, and that 38 police officers and a civilian engineer were abducted by the protesters. The protests are part of an increasingly well-orchestrated campaign by indigenous groups that have been inspired in part by similar movements in Bolivia and Ecuador. Angered by the government’s failure to involve them in the plans, the indigenous groups in Peru have surprised the authorities with their sudden strength and organization and are now threatening to blunt President Alan García’s efforts to lure foreign investment to the region. “The president thought we would be docile in accepting plans that could completely change the way we hunt for food and raise crops, and we are not,” said Juan Agustín, 41, a Shipibo Indian and a leader of the Peruvian Jungle Interethnic Development Association, an umbrella group here representing more than 300,000 people from dozens of indigenous groups. The protests have disrupted oil production and pipelines, blocked commerce on roads and waterways, and halted flights at remote airports. While shortages of fuel and food have been reported in some jungle areas, the real concern is that the protests will succeed in cutting energy supplies to major coastal cities. The killings in Friday’s clashes in Bagua, near an oil pipeline that was a target of the protesters, present a robust challenge to Mr. García, with indigenous leaders here describing them as “genocide.” Officials imposed a curfew in the region as they tried to prevent further violence. Mr. García had already declared a 60-day state of emergency on May 9 in areas affected by the protests, which began in April. But the move seems only to have escalated tensions, with protests spreading from northern Peru to strategically important locations in the country’s south. Last weekend about 200 Machiguenga Indians occupied valve stations on the pipeline that moves natural gas from the huge Camisea project in the southeast. Soldiers regained control of the sites, the energy ministry reported. But indigenous leaders said they would try again. The protesters demand that Mr. García repeal decrees that have made it easier for companies to enter the Amazon Basin, and they have focused on thwarting larger projects. For instance, leaders from the Asháninka indigenous group are trying to derail a plan by Eletrobrás , a company controlled by Brazil’s government, to spend more than $10 billion to build five hydroelectric plants in Peru. “We want an immediate halt to every project that was conceived without consulting those of us who live in the forest,” said Daniel Marzano, 39, an Asháninka leader from Atalaya Province. But it is the coordinated focus of the protests on energy installations that has most alarmed analysts and Peru’s business and political classes, who overwhelmingly live in coastal cities. “The leaders have a strategic vision of hitting the country where it hurts,” said Alberto Bolívar, a security expert, who pointed out the potential for the protesters in some remote jungle areas to combine forces with a resurgent faction of the Shining Path , the Maoist group feeding off Peru’s cocaine trade. On Friday, the guerrillas fired on a helicopter carrying troops in southern Peru, killing one soldier and wounding four others. Aldo Mariátegui, editor of the daily newspaper Correo , speculated that the protests were being supported by the governments in Venezuela and Bolivia to oust Mr. García. It is a view held by some among Peru’s political and business elite. Indigenous leaders interviewed here rejected the notion, however. Instead, they said conflict arose because the government had opened the rain forest to new investments without thoroughly consulting or involving the people who live there. In the case of oil, for instance, at least 58 of the 64 areas secured by multinational companies for oil exploration overlay lands titled to indigenous peoples, according to a study last year by scientists from Duke University . Explaining the government’s position last month, Mr. García said, “We have to understand when there are resources like oil, gas and timber, they don’t belong only to the people who had the fortune to be born there, because that would mean more than half of Peru’s territory belongs to a few thousand people.” Such views resonate in a country of nearly 30 million people where almost three-quarters of them live in urban areas. But the protests, which show few signs of abating, offer a different vision of how Peru should develop. Even before the clashes in Bagua, the government used the navy this week to break through blockades on the Napo River in the north to allow barges for Perenco, an oil company planning to invest $2 billion, to move deeper into the rain forest. “Now we have a government resorting to using military force to spearhead development of the Amazon,” said Paul McAuley, an environmental activist in the Amazonian city of Iquitos with Christian Brothers, a Roman Catholic lay order. “This cannot be a strategy that is sustainable.”

Demonstrations and Riots
Indigenous People
Logging Industry
Oil (Petroleum) and Gasoline
Hydroelectric Power
Forests and Forestry
Peru


Google Plans New Headquarters, and a City Fears Being Overrun

Abstract: MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. — Apple is moving into Silicon Valley headquarters that look like a spaceship. Facebook is expanding its campus with a new building designed by Frank Gehry. Now it’s Google ’s turn. This week, Google, the search giant, is expected to propose new headquarters — a series of canopylike buildings from Heatherwick Studio, a London design firm known for works like the fiery caldron at the 2012 Olympics, and Bjarke Ingels, a Danish architect known for his innovative designs. The project in Mountain View, which Google has not made public but has discussed with members of the City Council, is likely to aggravate an increasingly testy relationship between the company and community leaders who fear the company is overrunning their small city. When Google moved here in 1999, it had a dozen employees and a search engine known only to computer aficionados. Now, its 20,000 local employees make it the biggest employer in a city that is bursting at the seams. “Our problem is that we have too many good jobs,” said Leonard M. Siegel, a 66-year-old environmental activist who was recently elected to the City Council. “Everyone else wishes they were in our situation, but it’s a crisis for the people here.” The same story is playing out across Silicon Valley. In Menlo Park, home of Facebook, the November election featured a measure — ultimately rejected by voters — that would have cut downtown office growth in half. Citizen groups in nearby Palo Alto have rebranded their City Council’s most anti-development members as “residentialists.” “Nobody wants change,” said Gilbert Wong, a councilman in Cupertino, Apple’s hometown. “It’s my role as an elected official to explain to our residents that either you get on board and help us figure out the balance between jobs and housing, or other people are going to make that decision for us.” Image Leonard M. Siegel, who was recently elected to the Mountain View City Council, outside his home. Credit Jason Henry for The New York Times Google owns or leases about 7.3 million square feet of office space in Mountain View — roughly equivalent to three Empire State Buildings. That includes most of the property around its headquarters on the north side of the city near Highway 101, which cuts the length of the valley, according to Transwestern, a commercial real estate brokerage. That success has brought Mountain View loads of tax dollars and a 3.3 percent unemployment rate, as well as skyrocketing home prices and intolerable gridlock. Good and bad, tech is responsible for most of it: Google is Mountain View’s biggest taxpayer, and technology companies account for 27 percent of the jobs in the Silicon Valley region, compared with 7 percent in California and about 5 percent nationally, according to Moody’s Analytics. The result is an existential argument that pits residents who want to halt the city’s growth against people who think Mountain View needs to grow up and become a real city. Mountain View, about 40 miles south of San Francisco, has close to 80,000 people; with its strip-mall thoroughfares and streets of single-family homes, it looks like a sleepy suburb. But since hiring has boomed, the city’s roads swell with commuters during the morning and evening rush. Katherine Suri, a retired NASA scientist, moved to the city in 1974 and lives on a quarter-acre lot whose original views included a nursery and apricot orchards. She spent a good deal of the ’80s chauffeuring her children around town in an Oldsmobile station wagon. Now her view is of other houses, and the traffic is so bad that Ms. Suri makes sure to schedule her doctors’ appointments around 11 a.m. When she walks to the Y.M.C.A. each morning, she sometimes has to weave between cars stuck in gridlock. Despite the inconveniences, Ms. Suri has accepted that the city will change whether she likes it or not. “Mountain View is getting more populous with Google and the other companies, and that’s just the way it is,” she said. “We need to learn how to deal with it.” Google has tried to reduce traffic, for both the city and itself. It transports its employees to work in private buses and was at one point experimenting with bringing some of its San Francisco workers in on boats. In January, the company started a free daytime shuttle that is open to the public; its workers pedal around the city on multicolored company bikes. Since so much of the traffic is associated with Google, Mountain View has spent the last two years debating a plan to redevelop the city’s North Bayshore area, which surrounds Google’s main offices and is close to major highways. Google’s vision for a new Googleplex, the nickname for the company’s headquarters, will include bike and pedestrian paths and is one of several development proposals from various companies expected to be submitted to the city on Friday. “These companies are world-class corporations bringing worldwide attention to Mountain View, and Mountain View needs to evolve to a world-class city,” said Ken S. Rosenberg, one of seven members of the City Council. “One of the criteria of a world-class city is that it is architecturally interesting.” Even if Google’s proposal is accepted, the city’s most divisive issue — how much new housing to build and where — has yet to be settled. Google executives have said on several occasions that they want to add housing to North Bayshore, but Mountain View’s outgoing City Council found many reasons to say no. One argument was that it would be dangerous to burrowing owls that live underground in adjacent Shoreline Park. Another was that if people moved there, they would soon want more schools and other expensive services. Others feared that new housing could create a Google voting bloc. Last November, in an election that was widely viewed as a referendum on the city’s housing policies, Mountain View elected three candidates, including Mr. Rosenberg, who campaigned on the idea of adding housing near Google’s campus, an idea that runs contrary to the previous council’s redevelopment plan. Google’s headquarters proposal does not include any plans for housing. But the company has told the City Council that it wants housing, and lots of it. Councilman Siegel agrees. He wants to amend the city’s plan to allow at least 5,000 new housing units. That this could bring in even more Google employees is just what some people fear. “This last election we had maybe 12,000 voters,” said Jac Siegel, a city councilman who left office this year and is not related to Leonard Siegel. “If you brought 5,000 people in and they all work for Google and they said, ‘We want you to vote for this candidate,’ they can own the town.”

Urban Planning
Mount View CA
Google
Roads and Traffic
Silicon Valley
Real Estate
Housing


Gina Quattrochi, Who Helped Provide Housing for AIDS Patients, Dies at 63

Abstract: Gina Quattrochi, who turned Bailey House into the nation’s largest provider of housing to people with AIDS and a model for similar organizations around the United States, died on Dec. 13 in Manhattan. She was 63. The cause was multiple myeloma, Priscilla Lenes, her former partner, said. Ms. Quattrochi (pronounced kwa-TROH-key) became involved in the AIDS crisis in the mid-1980s while serving as the associate general counsel for the New York State Nurses Association , a union with 30,000 members at the time. “I was doing that job for a number of years and started losing a number of friends to the AIDS epidemic,” she said in a 2010 interview with the website Dot 429 . “I really felt that I wanted to do something to change the course of the epidemic that was affecting a lot of my friends.” In 1986 she became a board member of the AIDS Resource Center, founded three years earlier to provide housing and other support for homeless people with AIDS. She led the negotiations with the city to acquire the former hotel on Christopher Street in the West Village that became Bailey House (later renamed Bailey-Holt House), the first group residence for people with AIDS. Five years later, she left the nurses’ association to become the AIDS Resource Center’s chief executive, a position she held for the next 25 years. “I was well over my head quickly,” Ms. Quattrochi told Albany Law magazine in 2008. “I thought I knew everything as a lawyer, but running an organization that served people with AIDS was a whole other undertaking. I learned to be humble.” Under her leadership, the organization, renamed Bailey House in 1995, grew from a small housing agency with an annual budget of $3.5. million into an organization with an annual budget of $18 million, serving 1,800 people in New York living with H.I.V. or AIDS and providing a wide variety of services. It expanded its operation to East Harlem, opening the East Harlem Services Center on Park Avenue near 122nd Street, in 1999, and Schafer Hall, a 91-unit housing center on East 118th Street, in 2001. She was particularly effective in convincing policy makers of the connection between homelessness and the risk of H.I.V. infection, and the importance of stable housing in any effort to tackle AIDS and H.I.V. “The work is important,” she told Albany Law magazine. “The battles change and the political climate changes. The epidemic still rages in many parts of the country, including New York City and all over the world.” Regina Rosaria Quattrochi was born on April 22, 1953, in Queens. Her father, Joseph, was a New York State Supreme Court officer. Her mother, the former Madeleine Kinsler, was a homemaker. She graduated from Mary Louis Academy, a Roman Catholic school, in 1971, and earned a degree in English from the State University of New York at Albany in 1975 and a law degree from Albany Law School in 1978. She practiced labor law for four years with Jackson, Lewis, Schnitzler & Krupman , representing employers, before becoming associate general counsel for Cerebral Palsy Associations of New York State. After three years she left to join the nurses’ association. She helped found the National AIDS Housing Coalition in 1993, serving as president for three years, and in 2011 became a founding member of the 30 for 30 Campaign , which advocates on behalf of women living with and affected by H.I.V., including transgender women. The campaign’s name refers to the number of years that the AIDS crisis had lasted by 2011 and the percentage of women in the total number of AIDS cases. In 2014, Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo appointed her to a task force with the mission of reducing H.I.V. infection by identifying people with H.I.V. and AIDS, whether diagnosed or not, and linking them with health care providers. Ms. Quattrochi was an adjunct associate professor at New York University’s Robert F. Wagner Graduate School of Public Service from 1995 to 2006 . She is survived by a daughter, Anna Lenes, and a son, Giovanni Quattrochi, both of whom she raised with Ms. Lenes.

Gina Quattrochi
Obituary
AIDS,HIV
Real Estate
Housing
NYC


Seoul Imposes Sanctions on N. Korea

Abstract: SEOUL, South Korea — South Korea imposed its first financial sanctions on North Korean companies, officials said Tuesday, taking a symbolic action that could anger the Communist regime while bolstering a joint front with the United States as the allies seek to punish the North for its recent nuclear test. North Korea continued its harsh rhetoric on Tuesday when the government-run newspaper, Minju Joson, warned that the regime can use its nuclear program not only for defense but also as “a merciless offensive means.” The escalating tensions began hurting investor sentiments. On Tuesday, a South Korean fur-coat maker became the first company to announce it was withdrawing from the Kaesong joint industrial complex in North Korea, a sign that deteriorating inter-Korean relations and tensions over the North’s recent nuclear test were jeopardizing the complex, once hailed as a model of future economic cooperation between the two Koreas. The financial sanctions against three North Korean firms, which became effective on June 1, were disclosed on Tuesday, a day after North Korea sentenced two American journalists to 12 years of hard labor for illegal entry and unspecified “hostile acts.” The families of the journalists, Laura Ling and Yuna Lee, urged North Korea to grant them clemency. “We remain hopeful that the governments of the United States and North Korea can come to an agreement that will result in the release,” the families said in a statement. American officials said that the harsh sentences were likely to be used as a negotiating ploy by the North as it tries to avoid new sanctions being worked out at the United Nations Security Council in response to the nuclear test two weeks ago. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton stressed that the reporters’ case and Washington’s efforts to punish North Korea for its nuclear test are “entirely separate matters.” Still, American officials appeared to be weighing whether to send a special envoy in a high-profile effort to seek the release of the two journalists. The two most likely candidates are former Vice President Al Gore, whose Current TV channel employs the two journalists, and Gov. Bill Richardson of New Mexico, who has visited North Korea several times and helped negotiate the release of two Americans in the 1990s. Asked Monday if Washington will send an envoy, Mrs. Clinton said her government is “pursuing every possible approach” to win their release. On Tuesday, the Ministry of Strategy and Finance in Seoul said that it has banned trading with three North Korean firms — Korea Mining Development Trading Corporation, Tanchon Commercial Bank, and Korea Ryongbong General Corporation — and will freeze their assets. But officials said that these firms have no trading with South Korea or assets in the South. The Security Council had earlier targeted those three North Korean entities when it reaffirmed financial restrictions against the North after its rocket launch on April 5. Until now, while voicing support for Security Council decisions, South Korea had avoided implementing such symbolic but politically sensitive sanctions for fear they would anger Pyongyang. That stance began shifting in May when South Korea announced it could search North Korean ships suspected of carrying weapons of mass destruction in its territorial waters as part of an American-led global arms embargo. Ms. Ling, 32, and Ms. Lee, 36, were arrested March 17 on the China-North Korea border. “There is a serious doubt that these journalists had a fair trial because the legal proceedings have not been transparent,” said Kay Seok, a Seoul-based researcher for Human Rights Watch. “It’s not clear whether the North Korean government has honored the defendants’ right to choose their own lawyers, and whether they had the benefit of courtroom translators.” Analysts in Seoul doubted that the journalists would spend time at one of the North’s notorious labor camps, where North Korean defectors said malnutrition and beatings were rampant. Rather, they said the journalists could be held at a “sanitized” prison that Pyongyang allowed international human rights officials to visit in the mid-1990s.

North Korea
Embargoes and Economic Sanctions
South Korea
Nuclear Weapons


Chevron Reports Lowest Profit in Five Years

Abstract: The Chevron Corporation posted its lowest profit in five years Friday after the global recession cut fuel demand, dragging down energy prices. First-quarter net income fell 64 percent to $1.84 billion, or 92 cents a share, from $5.17 billion, or $2.48 a share, a year earlier, Chevron said. Excluding divestiture gains, profit was 72 cents a share, 9 cents below the average of 13 analysts’ estimates compiled by Bloomberg. The company’s earnings from oil and natural-gas wells in the United States fell 99 percent, to $21 million, as crude futures in New York traded 56 percent lower than a year earlier, the biggest decline in more than a quarter century. “Prices have come down so far that nobody’s showing a higher profit,” said William J. Andrews, a money manager at C. S. McKee & Company in Pittsburgh.

Chevron Corp
Company Reports
Recession and Depression


South African Police Official Defends Officers Who Fired on Miners

Abstract: MARIKANA, South Africa — South Africa’s police commissioner on Friday defended the actions of officers who opened fire on miners a day earlier during a wildcat strike at a platinum mine. She said the episode left 34 people dead and 78 wounded, a sharply higher toll than initially reported. The commissioner, Riah Phiyega, described a desperate struggle by the police to contain the machete-wielding crowd of thousands of angry miners who broke through two lines of defense, leaving officers with no choice but to open fire with live ammunition. “The militant group stormed toward the police firing shots and wielding dangerous weapons,” Ms. Phiyega said at an emotional news conference here, using an extensive array of aerial photographs and video to demonstrate how the violence unfolded. Previous attempts by the 500-strong police force to repel the crowd with rubber bullets, water cannons and stun grenades had failed, she said. “This is no time for finger-pointing,” Ms. Phiyega said. “It is a time for us to mourn the sad and dark moment we experienced as a country.” It was South Africa’s worst labor-related violence since 1994. The shootings stunned the nation: front pages of newspapers were plastered with pictures of dead miners lying in a field above headlines like “Bloodbath” and “Killing Fields.” President Jacob Zuma cut short his trip to neighboring Mozambique for a regional summit meeting to rush to the site of the bloody protest, 60 miles northwest of Johannesburg. “These events are not what we want to see or what we want to become accustomed to in a democracy that is bound by rule of law,” Mr. Zuma said in prepared remarks. He announced the formation of a commission of inquiry to investigate the illegal strike and the response of the police. The police retrieved six guns from the protesters, including one that had been taken from a police officer who was hacked to death by the workers earlier in the week, Ms. Phiyega said, as well as many machetes, cudgels and spears. Miners who escaped the melee gave a very different account of what happened when the police closed in on the rocky outcropping they had occupied. A 36-year-old mine employee named Paulos was among the striking workers on Thursday when the police began encircling the rocky hill with razor wire. “They started shooting at us with rubber bullets,” Paulos said. “Then I saw people were falling and dying for real. I knew then they were proper bullets.” He struggled to understand why the police had opened fire with live rounds. “I never thought this would happen,” he said. “We thought the police were there to protect us.” Women who said they were wives of missing miners gathered at the site of the protest, waving wooden sticks and singing protest songs. “I don’t know where my husband is, whether he is in jail, among the dead or the injured,” said a woman named Mbalenhle who declined to give her last name. “Our husbands were only fighting for their rights, but the police are killing them.” The shootout followed a tense week of protests by workers at the platinum mine, owned by Lonmin, a London company. The miners walked off the job last Friday, demanding that their wages be tripled. The striking workers are members of a radical labor union that splintered off from the National Union of Mineworkers, one of the country’s biggest and oldest unions. The splinter group claims that the older union, which is closely allied to the African National Congress, is too cozy with big business and the political elite. Frans Baleni, general secretary of the National Union of Mineworkers, rejected that notion and said the rival union, the Association of Mine Workers and Construction Union, was giving people false hope, with tragic consequences. “You have opportunists who are abusing ignorant workers,” Mr. Baleni said. “We saw the results yesterday.”

Strikes
South Africa
Mines and Mining
Labor and Jobs
Police
Police Brutality and Misconduct
Phiyega Riah
Organized Labor


The Young Germans Who Stood Up to the Nazis

Abstract: Jud Newborn, a Holocaust scholar who lives in Plainview, was doing research in Munich as a graduate student in the early 1980s when he became intrigued with the story of the White Rose resistance movement. The small, student-based group wrote and printed anonymous anti-Nazi leaflets in Munich and distributed them in that city and beyond before its key members were captured and executed in 1943. Though their efforts to rouse Germans against the Third Reich lasted just months, the White Rose circle — especially the siblings Hans and Sophie Scholl — are “icons” in Germany today, Dr. Newborn said in a recent telephone conversation. German streets and schools bear the Scholl name, he said; several German feature films have recounted the story of the movement. Dr. Newborn, who earned a doctorate in cultural anthropology from the University of Chicago, is the co-author with Annette Dumbach of a book on the White Rose and has developed a multimedia lecture on the subject. In recognition of Holocaust Remembrance Day (April 8 this year), he will present the lecture at two Long Island venues: the East Northport Jewish Center , on April 7, and Temple Israel of Riverhead , on April 14. Both events are free and open to the public. The lecture will be accompanied by nearly 80 historical images, including photographs, posters and newspaper articles, as well as recorded music. Dr. Newborn may also occasionally speak with a mock-German accent when quoting Nazi officials, in the service of his White Rose presentation. (The second half of the program focuses on more contemporary figures who have acted heroically against great odds.) “I don’t like to do the kind of boring lecture I wouldn’t want to hear,” Dr. Newborn said, of his dramatic methods. “I want people on the edge of their seats.” The story of the White Rose movement is harrowing enough to achieve just that. Starting in June 1942, its five core members — the Scholl siblings, Christoph Probst, Alexander Schmorell and Willi Graf — along with Kurt Huber, a philosophy professor at the University of Munich, surreptitiously produced a series of six leaflets exhorting the German people to resist Nazi rule. They distributed the leaflets, with the help of supporters, in Munich and other cities. The leaflets “appeared as if out of nowhere,” befuddling Nazi officials, Dr. Newborn said. But on Feb. 18, 1943, the Scholls — or in some accounts, only Sophie — flung some leaflets over a balustrade at the University of Munich. Observed and then reported by a janitor, the Scholls were guillotined four days later, as was Christoph Probst. Other executions followed. Dr. Newborn’s presentation includes images and phrases relating to the Scholls’ final days. Perhaps none is more poignant than the word Sophie wrote on the back of her indictment: “Freiheit,” it says. Freedom.

Holocaust and Nazis
Northport NY
Jud Newborn
Sophie Scholl


Murray Oliver, N.H.L. Player and All-Star, Dies at 77

Abstract: Murray Oliver, a five-time All-Star forward in the National Hockey League in the 1960s, died on Sunday at his home in Edina, Minn. He was 77. The cause was a heart attack, his wife, Helen, said. Oliver, a left-handed shooter who weighed 170 pounds and was 5 feet 10, played for the Detroit Red Wings, the Boston Bruins, the Toronto Maple Leafs and the Minnesota North Stars from the late 1950s until the mid-1970s. He scored 274 goals and had 454 assists during his 1,127-game career. He scored 20 of those goals during his rookie season with the Red Wings, 1959-60. He lost that season’s Calder Memorial Trophy, the N.H.L.'s award for rookie of the year, to Bill Hay of the Chicago Blackhawks by 38 votes. Oliver played in N.H.L. All-Star Games in 1963, 1964, 1965, 1967 and 1968. He scored 27 goals, his career high, during the 1971-72 season with the North Stars. He retired from the N.H.L. in 1975. Murray Clifford Oliver was born in Hamilton, Ontario, on Nov. 14, 1937, and grew up playing hockey and baseball. He married Helen Murray on Apr. 28, 1962. In addition to his wife, he is survived by their son, Michael; their daughter, Susan Schepers; and five grandchildren. Oliver was an assistant coach with the North Stars from 1978 to 1986. He served as head coach for 36 games in the 1982-83 season after Glen Sonmor stepped down. He also worked as a pro scout with the North Stars, the Maple Leafs, the Vancouver Canucks and the Atlanta Thrashers. He retired after the 2004-5 N.H.L. season was canceled because of a lockout.


Bruins’ Division Title Comes With Few Cheers

Abstract: Tim Thomas wore a baseball cap with a Bruins logo stitched underneath the words “2012 Division Champs.” Otherwise, you would never know Boston had just clinched the Northeast Division with a 2-1 win over the Rangers on Sunday night. Five minutes after the game, the only beverages found in the visitors’ locker room at Madison Square Garden were water and sports drinks. There were no loud cheers. The only hug witnessed was in the hallway between the longtime friends Marian Gaborik of the Rangers and Zdeno Chara of the Bruins. With the victory, the Bruins locked up the second seed in the Eastern Conference and will face the seventh-place team, most likely the Ottawa Senators, in the playoffs. But they seemed to take more gratification in beating the Rangers for the first time in four tries this season. “We really wanted to come out with a win here tonight,” said Thomas, who made 32 saves. “This is a tough building to play in. It’s dark, there are funny bounds. “The Rangers are a very good team, and the breaks hadn’t gone our way the first three games. We wanted to put those behind us. I thought it was a very important win for those reasons.” Of the three Ranger victories, one came on a power-play goal by Gaborik in the final seconds of overtime, and the most recent, a 4-3 win on March 4, was notable for a frantic third period and Thomas’s complaining afterward about the Garden’s lighting. On Sunday night, with the score tied at 1-1 in the second period, a rare mistake by the usually steady Rangers defenseman Dan Girardi led to Patrice Bergeron’s winning goal. “For once, we got some breaks, instead of the other way around,” Bruins Coach Claude Julien said. This time it was Rangers Coach John Tortorella who was frustrated. “They had six scoring chances through a three-period hockey game, and we end up losing,” he said. After a mediocre two months, the Bruins are 7-1-1 in their last nine games, including four straight victories on the road. They were not motivated by denying the Rangers their chance to clinch the Eastern Conference title but by what a victory would mean for Boston when the playoffs start next week. “We talked about it before the game,” said Boston defenseman Dennis Seidenberg, whose goal four minutes into the second period tied the score. “Our goal was to send a message, in case we see the Rangers in the playoffs.” The Bruins agree with Tortorella’s philosophy that first or second place hardly matters, that how a team is performing entering the postseason is paramount. “Who won the division last year?” Thomas asked reporters, rhetorically. Although they are the defending Stanley Cup champions, the Bruins have been below the radar in the East lately, with Sidney Crosby’s return; with the Penguins and the Flyers brawling Sunday before their likely playoff series; and with the Rangers winning more games than anticipated. But Boston is a legitimate contender, especially with Thomas looking as if he is back in form. In the final minute, Thomas made a leg pad save in traffic on Artem Anisimov that had the Rangers shaking their heads. “Just a great save,” Tortorella said. “Thomas was the difference.” Thomas said, “I feel like my game is heading in the right direction.” As he wore a smile with his division title hat, Thomas was asked if there was any joy in adding a division banner to the rafters of the Boston Garden. “Sure,” he said. “But it’s not the banner we want.”

Boston Bruins
New York Rangers
Thomas Tim
Hockey Ice


Widespread Child Sexual Abuse Case Rocks Pakistan

Abstract: HUSSAIN KHAN WALA, Pakistan — Pakistani officials have initiated an investigation into allegations that a gang of men sexually abused more than 200 children and sold videos of the abuse. The accusations have rocked the country, drawing the attention and condemnation of human rights activists and politicians in a case that involved subjects long considered taboo here. At least 280 children under the age of 14 from three villages in eastern Punjab Province were said to have been subjected to sexual abuse by a gang of 15 men, who made videos to extort money from the children and their parents. Seven of the accused have been arrested, police officials said Sunday. The accusations of abuse started trickling out last month as victims began to report it to the police, and last Tuesday, hundreds of residents staged a protest, accusing the police and local politicians of protecting the gang members and ignoring the accusations. Some of the protesters clashed with the police, and dozens of people were injured, including several police officers. On Saturday, details of the abuse were carried by The Nation, a Lahore-based English-language newspaper, which reported that the gang members had drugged and intoxicated their victims, some as young as 6, and had recorded hundreds of videos. Some of the children stole jewelry and money from their parents to pay the men to stop them from making the videos public, according to the reports. The newspaper said many of the videos were sold to buyers and pornographic websites overseas. The coverage prompted an outpouring of outrage on social media, especially on Twitter. Pedophilia remains a taboo subject in Pakistani society. Human rights activists say that child abuse is rampant in the country and that homeless children, as many as 1.5 million according to some estimates , are particularly vulnerable. However, provincial officials in Punjab played down the scale of the abuse and said that only seven cases had been registered by the police so far and that they were in possession of only 30 videos. Most of the victims and gang members are from Hussain Khan Wala, a dusty farming village in the Kasur District of Punjab Province, near the border with India and about an hour’s drive from Lahore, the provincial capital. “This group was active since 2007 when they were school students,” Shahzad Sultan, a senior police official said in an interview on Sunday, referring to the suspects. He said most of the videos involved consensual sex between teenagers. Local police officials say the allegations became public only after a land dispute arose between two rival groups in the village. Mr. Sultan said that the videos of consensual sex were being used now as part of an effort by one party in the dispute to discredit or intimidate members of the other group with accusations of child abuse. “The videos are old,” he said. The man identified as the main suspect, Haseem Amir, said in an interview that his uncle had bought the land under dispute now and that members of another family who opposed the sale were now accusing him and his friends of child abuse. The seven suspects who were arrested are ages 16 to 25. Mr. Amir, 25, denied that he was involved in blackmail and extortion. “We made some mistakes while we were teenagers in school,” he said, alluding to the sex videos. “We used to record videos and share with one another just for fun.” But Muhammad Ashraf, the father of one of the accusers, who filed a complaint to the police on Sunday, said his son, 20, was abused as a student five years ago, but did not tell the family at the time. After video clips surfaced about two months ago, “we came to know about it,” Mr. Ashraf said. “My son was disturbed and sad,” Mr. Ashraf said. “He asked us to lodge the case. He used to steal money and some valuables, and says he used to give it to the blackmailers.” In one video, a boy is seen crying after he is sexually abused, and tries to cover his face with a hand to hide from the camera. In another video, a man orders a boy to smile as he films him while the boy is abused. A senior police official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of offending local sensibilities, said the case involved a “mixture of social deviants” and behaviors that reflected changes in Pakistani society. “Such acts of teenage homosexuality are becoming common practice,” the officer said. Opposition politicians said over the weekend that they planned to take up the issue of child abuse in Parliament on Monday.

Pakistan
Rape
Child Abuse
Child pornography
Gang
Social Media
Video Recordings
Downloads and Streaming


Talk Grows About Who Will Succeed Palestinians’ Fading Mahmoud Abbas

Abstract: RAMALLAH, West Bank — The past five months of Palestinian attacks on Israeli Jews have undermined the already weak political position of Mahmoud Abbas , the Palestinian president, who rules ineffectively over a divided people and failing institutions. The attacks that have killed more than two dozen Israelis and several others are an angry, frustrated response among Palestinian youth to ongoing Israeli occupation of the West Bank and expansion of its Jewish settlements, even as Mr. Abbas’s Palestinian Authority continues to cooperate with the Israelis on security and other matters. Talk of who will replace the nearly 81-year-old Mr. Abbas, and when, has surged. Arab countries like Egypt, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates have provided financial and political support to Abbas rivals, including the former Gaza strongman, Muhammad Dahlan, now in exile in Abu Dhabi. Nathan Thrall, a senior analyst for the International Crisis Group, recently published a piece titled “The End of the Abbas Era.” There is discussion now of a more collective leadership, perhaps led by Nasser al-Kidwa, a nephew of the revered Yasir Arafat and a former foreign minister and Palestinian representative to the United Nations, alongside Majid Faraj, the current intelligence chief, and Salam Fayyad, the former prime minister and finance minister. Mr. Faraj, who was born in 1962, is highly considered by both the United States and Israel as a discreet and trustworthy partner. He recently told Defense News that his forces had disrupted at least 200 attacks against Israel since October. That led to criticism from Hamas , the Islamist rival to Mr. Abbas’s Fatah Party and organizer of some of the attacks, and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, but some Palestinians understood it as an effort to save Palestinian lives, since scores have been killed by Israelis during attacks or attempts. Mr. Fayyad, who never joined Fatah, is also respected by Israel and by the West, but has been cast out by Mr. Abbas as a perceived threat to his rule. Names of other potential successors also circulate, including Jibril Rajoub, a former Palestinian security boss who is said to have support from Qatar, and in January called on Mr. Abbas to name a deputy. Image Muhammad Dahlan in 2006. The former Gaza strongman lives in exile in Abu Dhabi after being expelled by Mr. Abbas from Fatah in 2011 after Mr. Dahlan accused him, bizarrely, of helping to murder Yasir Arafat. Credit George Azar for The New York Times Mr. Dahlan’s name always surfaces. Now in lavish exile in Abu Dhabi, Mr. Dahlan, 54, was expelled by Mr. Abbas from Fatah in 2011 after Mr. Dahlan accused him, bizarrely, of helping to murder Mr. Arafat. Mr. Dahlan has a reputation for corruption but is well funded, reportedly with backing from Egypt and the Emirates, speaks Hebrew and English, and is believed to pump money into Palestinian refugee camps and Fatah’s militant wing, the Tanzim, which has sometimes clashed with the security forces. The other inescapable figure is Marwan Barghouti, 56, sometimes called the Palestinian Mandela for his long period in an Israeli prison and his efforts to bring Hamas and Fatah together. Mr. Barghouti is the only Fatah leader who outpolls the Hamas leader in Gaza, Ismail Haniya, when Palestinians are surveyed about an Abbas successor. Saeb Erekat, whom Mr. Abbas installed in September as secretary general of the Palestine Liberation Organization , told the German broadcaster Deutsche Welle this month that he would support Mr. Barghouti should he run for president. But Mr. Barghouti is serving five consecutive life terms for murder, so he may be less candidate than kingmaker, operating from behind bars through his influential wife, Fadwa, and a network of supporters. Mr. Abbas might go sooner rather than later, said a former Palestinian negotiator who spoke on the condition of anonymity in order to be frank. Facing this new wave of violence, Mr. Abbas is typically paralyzed, said this former negotiator. “He can neither support it nor oppose it,” he explained, “so he shuts up and does nothing, which further enhances the perception that drives all this, that he and Fatah have produced nothing and will produce nothing, and that they are useless.” A December poll by the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research found that 65 percent of Palestinians wanted Mr. Abbas to resign. A similar portion favored another armed intifada, having lost faith in a negotiated peace and the Oslo accords on which Mr. Abbas has staked his career. “Abu Mazen has achieved nothing,” Sheikh Taha Qattanani, 43, said in a recent interview. “We Palestinians deserve a stronger leadership, regardless of whether it’s Fatah or Hamas.” Ramiz Hassouna, 45, a Fatah supporter, said: “Now Fatah has no strategy or plan for the Palestinian people, and Fatah members have lost their dedication to the land and to the Palestinian cause. They’re more interested in their bank accounts — money for them, and for Abu Mazen and his family.” Image Marwan Barghouti in 2012. Mr. Barghouti is the only Fatah leader who outpolls the Hamas leader in Gaza, Ismail Haniya, when Palestinians are surveyed about an Abbas successor. Credit Bernat Armangue/Associated Press While most believe Mr. Abbas intends to die in office, his isolation is increasing. “Abu Mazen is like a tree in the wind, with leaves blowing off everywhere,” said a former aide. “He thinks everyone is listening to him, but no one is listening anymore.” Palestinian institutions and finances have deteriorated, with a 2015 budget deficit estimated around $700 million. Fatah and Hamas remain as divided as ever, with Fatah running the West Bank under an Israeli umbrella and Gaza securely in the hands of Hamas. Mr. Abbas and his allies have grown old in office without bringing in younger Palestinians. Writing in the Gulf News this month, Diana Buttu, a former Palestinian negotiator, said these failures “are not solely the fault” of Mr. Abbas, but also rest “on those who continue to allow this deteriorating and divided situation to exist.” Still, Ms. Buttu said the president’s “rule has been dismally marked by deflecting blame onto others, consolidating powers unto himself and destroying Palestinian institutions.” The political weakness of Mr. Abbas became painfully clear in September, when he called a meeting of the Palestinian National Council after removing another former ally and now critic, Yasser Abed Rabbo, whom he accused of conspiring with Mr. Dahlan and Mr. Fayyad. Mr. Abbas had called the session, the first since 1996, to “realign” the P.L.O.’s Executive Committee and banish Mr. Abed Rabbo. But it never materialized. Mr. Abbas also said he would make an important declaration about Palestinian tactics and hinted he would dismantle the Palestinian Authority. But he did neither. At the time, Tawfiq Tirawi, a member of Fatah’s Central Committee, said there was an internal struggle over nominations. But in another sign of the sensitivity about succession, Mr. Tirawi, along with other key Fatah members like Qadura Fares, refused interview requests. “We worry that the Palestinian Authority is getting weaker,” said Gilad Erdan, Israel’s minister of public security and strategic affairs. “It’s very hard to decide who will be the leader because if you say who you prefer, you damage him in the eyes of those there.”


Aldon Smith Receives Nine-Game Suspension for Off-Field Problems

Abstract: San Francisco 49ers linebacker Aldon Smith was suspended for nine games by the N.F.L. after a series of legal issues. A statement Friday from the league said Smith had violated the N.F.L.’s substance-abuse and personal-conduct policies. Smith will not be eligible to return until Nov. 10. The 24-year-old Smith, one of the N.F.L.’s top pass rushers, missed five games last season to undergo treatment at an inpatient facility after his drunken driving arrest Sept. 20. Just before training camp began last month, Smith was sentenced to serve three years of probation and spend 11 days with a work crew after he pleaded no contest to drunken driving and weapons charges. HARD WORK AHEAD Eli Manning and the Giants have a lot of work to do before their regular-season opener next Monday night in Detroit. The Giants were 5-0 in the preseason, while adapting to the West Coast offense under the offensive coordinator Ben McAdoo. “Don’t get me wrong, we’re ready for Week 1,” Manning said. “But I think as a season goes on, you’re always looking to improve, whether you’ve been in a system for 10 years, or whether you have young guys and need guys to step up, or you have new players, there’s always room for improvement.” HARRISON WON’T SIGN Outside linebacker James Harrison met with the Arizona Cardinals but will not sign with the team because the two sides could not agree on a contract. Harrison, 36, played last year with Cincinnati. MILLINER A QUESTION MARK Jets Coach Rex Ryan said it was still unclear whether cornerback Dee Milliner’s high ankle sprain would be healed before the team’s regular-season opener against the Oakland Raiders. Milliner injured his left ankle during training camp Aug. 10 and has not practiced since. Ryan said that while Milliner, expected to be the team’s top cornerback, was doing a good job with his rehabilitation, it was still too early to tell whether he would be available for the game Sept. 7. AROUND THE LEAGUE The newly signed backup quarterback Jordan Palmer and the veteran punter Brian Moorman were among 10 players released by the Buffalo Bills. ... The Tennessee Titans cut wide receiver Marc Mariani, a former Pro Bowl return specialist.

Football
Aldon Smith
NFL
Super Bowl
Super Bowl 2015
49ers


An Underdog Tries, but as Usual, the Top Dog Has Its Day

Abstract: INDIANAPOLIS - GEORGE MASON'S exhilarating run through the N.C.A.A. tournament came to an end last night. Quietly. This time there were no breathtaking, last-gasp comebacks. The Patriots rallied, but in the end went out quietly. The "bigger, deeper, stronger" warning they had overcome through the tournament caught up with them as they were beaten, 73-58, by a Florida team than punctured too many holes in the dike for George Mason to plug. Al Horford: a hole. Joakim Noah: a huge hole. Lee Humphrey: a 3-point shooting hole. Too many holes, not enough fingers. So with 47.8 seconds to play, Coach Jim Larranaga threw in the towel, sent in bench players to get their names in the record book to be part of posterity. "I am shocked that we were not in the game in the last three or four minutes because we hadn't played a game the entire year where we weren't in it down the stretch," he said. I'm sure there are athletic directors in Bowl Championship Series conferences with billion-dollar budgets who wonder how a George Mason could sneak through, effectively get behind the defense, and reach the Final Four. There are athletic directors at so-called midmajor conferences wondering why their coach can't do what Larranaga did. After last night's loss, Larranaga said he was concerned that "rather than this be something that everyone can look at and enjoy and get excited about, I don't think it's something that you want to create the expectation now that 'George Mason has done it, they've broken the barrier, now everybody else should be able to do that.' That would definitely be the wrong message." So, what is the message of George Mason's great run? George Mason was the metaphor for the American ideal -- the level playing field. The Patriots emblazoned the notion that "on any given day," "in any given moment," any obstacle may be overcome, no matter the circumstances of birth. "I think by what these players at George Mason have done, they've probably opened up the eyes of many people, including myself," Larranaga said, "that you don't have to have 7-footer on your team or be the biggest and strongest team to have a great basketball team." But you really do need a 6-9 player like Horford and a blue-chip 6-11 forward like Noah to consistently make trips to the Round of 16, the Round of Eight and the Final Four. If George Mason's run represented the ideal, the end of the run -- the 15-point loss to Florida -- underlined the reality. Money is still the determining factor of success in the N.C.A.A. -- and beyond. George Mason was more of an anomaly than the shape of things to come. On Friday, Myles Brand, the N.C.A.A. president, made a passing but startling insight about the correlation between money and the ability to provide academic help for student-athletes to keep them eligible and the universities out of hot water. "We learned that those schools that have the financial wherewithal to provide support for academic achievement do better than those who are financially challenged and can't provide that support," he said. What exactly is the nature of this "academic support"? Why does this support -- tutors perhaps -- cost so many millions? These are questions for another day, but questions nonetheless raised by George Mason's run through the tournament. In any event, now that George Mason is out of the tournament, we'll have to find another underdog. What about U.C.L.A., which defeated Louisiana State, 59-45, in the other semifinal last night? Coach Ben Howland, to his credit, did not try to represent his team as a have-not before the game. As he did last weekend with Memphis, Howland was more content to pump up the opposition for a great fall. This is what he said about L.S.U.'s Glen Davis: "Big Baby presents even more issues and challenges, has unbelievable feet. I imagine him -- how good would he be as a tailback?" But Davis was a nonfactor last night, scoring 14 points and fouling out. Asked about Tyrus Thomas, L.S.U.'s super freshman, Howland said, "Thomas is the Shawn Marion of college basketball." He added: "Thomas, he's a shot-blocking, fly-swatting machine who plays so hard and has such passion in the way he plays the game and competes. I respect their whole team, but he is a special talent." Last week, Howland called Memphis "the most athletic team in the country," then the Bruins beat the Tigers, 50-45, in the Oakland Regional final. Tomorrow, U.C.L.A. plays Florida for the national title. I wonder what Howland will say about Billy Donovan. And now that George Mason is gone, I wonder who'll play the role of the underdog. Before last night's game, Davis said that he would not be intimidated by the U.C.L.A. legacy. "Last time I checked the roster," he said, "Bill Walton wasn't playing. Kareem wasn't playing. Reggie Miller wasn't playing. We can't let that scare us. We can't let that get to us. This is a different time." No, it looks like it's U.C.L.A.'s time again. And the underdog is gone. Sports of The Times E-mail: wcr@nytimes.com

GEORGE MASON UNIVERSITY
UNIVERSITY OF FLORIDA
SPORTS OF THE TIMES (TIMES COLUMN)
NCAA BASKETBALL TOURNAMENT
BASKETBALL


Woman in Fracas After Son’s Detention Cites Racism at Trial

Abstract: When he was a New York City police officer, Merault Almonor heard fellow black men call him a sellout and heard complaints about racial profiling by the force. His wife, Wilma Dore-Almonor, 52, also knows a thing or two about the life of a black person in law enforcement: her father was a city police detective for many years. It would seem a twist of fate, then, that the couple blames racial profiling for the detention of their 13-year-old son, which led to their parts in an altercation at a police station house in Harlem in March 2010. They are currently on trial in State Supreme Court in Manhattan. Mr. Almonor, 50, who is retired from the Police Department, is charged with felony assault, Ms. Dore-Almonor with resisting arrest and trespassing. Testifying in her own defense on Tuesday, Ms. Dore-Almonor gave her most detailed account of what happened inside the 30th Precinct station house. Ms. Dore-Almonor said the younger of her two sons, Devin, was playing Xbox with a friend on a Saturday night when the friend’s mother called to summon him home to the Bronx. Her son left to walk his friend to the bus stop a little after 8:30, she said. A short time later, some of her son’s friends came to her house to say that Devin had been picked up by the police, she testified. They said the police had stopped and frisked him, she said. “This happens all the time in my neighborhood,” Ms. Dore-Almonor said. “I felt very angry.” Her husband drove her to the precinct, she said, and while he looked for a parking place, she went inside. She testified that she told the officer at the front desk, in a calm yet pointed tone, who she was and that she was there to pick up her son. She said a woman in the back of the station house told her that she would have to leave if she did not calm down. Ms. Dore-Almonor told them she was not going anywhere without her son, she said. Eventually, the officer who had arrested her son, Brian Dennis, came out from the back. “I know that you’re a racist,” she recalled telling Officer Dennis, “because I’ve seen you in action.” The argument escalated, Ms. Dore-Almonor said, and Officer Dennis told other officers to arrest her. She said a female officer punched her in the mouth, and the next thing she knew, the officers were pulling her arms back and taking her to the ground. “They kept kicking me,” Ms. Dore-Almonor said, “stepping on my back and they were laughing.” “I didn’t know what was going on,” she said. “I didn’t know why they were doing this to me.” At that moment, she said, her husband came in and said: “What are you doing? That’s my wife.” The police took him to the ground as well, she said, while he stretched his arms out and said, “I’m a cop, I’m a cop.” Prosecutors have a different version of what happened. They say Devin Almonor was arrested because he was part of a rowdy group and had reached toward his waistband as the police approached. Ms. Dore-Almonor, according to a criminal complaint, was swearing and hostile when she came into the station house, demanding to see her son. She refused to leave when asked and was in a part of the station house closed to the public, the complaint said. As the officers were arresting her, prosecutors have said, Mr. Almonor tried to stop them and punched a female officer in the face. Mr. Almonor was initially charged with misdemeanors and released, but the charges were elevated to felony assault a few weeks later. Prosecutors say the change came after the extent of the officer’s injuries were known. The couple says the charges were elevated in retaliation for a lawsuit they filed against the city and several of the officers involved in the episode. The jury is expected to begin deliberations on Wednesday, after closing arguments.

Almonor Merault
Racial Profiling
Dore-Almonor Wilma
Assaults
Dennis Brian
Police
Harlem (NYC)


College Football World Where L.S.U. Fans Smell Like Corn Dogs

Abstract: It started innocently. In August 2011, a Louisiana State fan who went by the online nickname Mike Linebacker decided that the dynamic Tigers cornerback Tyrann Mathieu deserved a nickname more befitting his fearless style of play than Little Ball of Hate — the one he had temporarily been saddled with. “I know he’s the Little Ball of Hate but the similarities between #7 and the Honey Badger are uncanny,” Mike Linebacker wrote on the L.S.U. message board TigerDroppings.com . He included a link to a humorous faux nature documentary on the honey badger that had gone viral on YouTube. The nickname stuck, becoming one of the more recognizable in recent sports history, and it became one more example of the strange symbiotic relationship that exists between college football and the online message boards where many of the sport’s most zealous fans gather. If sports fandom is a culture unto itself, then those who spend a sizable amount of time on message boards dedicated to their favorite teams are part of a subculture. The boards, Web sites where people essentially hold conversations via the messages they post, exist for all sports and scores of teams, but they have proven to be especially popular among college football fans, especially the most die-hard and peculiar among them. It is a freewheeling world in which participants are almost always anonymous, the messages they leave are often not moderated, certain users can attain a kind of respected leadership status and conversations can take place in a dialect that can be difficult for a neophyte to decipher. “I was a participant on a couple of different boards at one point and I didn’t fit in with them at all,” said Spencer Hall, the creator of the popular college football blog Every Day Should Be Saturday . “It was like I didn’t even speak the same language as they did.” But message board sites — frequently confusing, insular and anarchic — have become incubators for wildly absurd rumor and humor that increasingly find their way into the mainstream. That rumor you heard about Auburn recruits being paid under the table via rigged slot machines in a casino? It originated on a message board. That Photoshopped image of the former Tennessee and current Southern California coach Lane Kiffin prancing around a stage as a Chippendale dancer? From a message board. That urban legend about L.S.U. fans smelling like corn dogs? Another message board creation. And in the world of college football message boards, Tiger Droppings — launched in 2001 by a software programmer who was hoping to create a place where he and his fellow L.S.U. fan buddies could chat among themselves, and share images and links — is widely regarded as the king. “I’d been infatuated with the Internet since I was first exposed to it around 1995,” said Brian Fiegel, who created Tiger Droppings using Microsoft FrontPage software. “I thought it’d be cool to have my own Web site that would be a place for me and my friends to goof off on. I had no idea it would grow to be as big as it has.” Fiegel — a Houston resident who grew up in New Orleans and is known as Chicken to the regulars on his board — said that his site registered 12 visitors in its first month. Word soon spread, and other L.S.U. fans started visiting the site regularly. But it was not until early 2007 that Tiger Droppings really began to get popular. “What really drove a lot of traffic to the site was Saban being hired by Alabama,” Fiegel said about the Crimson Tide hiring Nick Saban, the former L.S.U. coach. “That led to a lot of their fans coming over to Tiger Droppings to gloat and rub it in that they’d stolen our old coach.” The infusion of trash-talking Alabama fans led Fiegel and his brother, Brad, his partner in running the site, to create a special forum where Alabama fans, along with fans of other teams, could congregate. It became so popular that the brothers eventually made it its own site, SECrant.com . According to Google Analytics, Tiger Droppings and SEC Rant combined to garner over 55 million page views in the past month, and a number of volunteer moderators have been enlisted to help police the various forums. Tiger Droppings has become so big that some of its more popular participants enjoy a modicum of Internet fame. One is Terrance Donnels, a New Orleans-based acute care nurse with a flair for photo manipulation. Donnels, known on Tiger Droppings as LSUFreek, was recently called an “ invisible sensation dancing in the shadows of the Internet ” by Yahoo Sports. Donnels said he was drawn to Tiger Droppings because it combined his love for college football and the photo-editing software Photoshop. After days of working long hospital shifts following Hurricane Katrina , the site became an escape, a place Donnels could go to forget the misery he had witnessed. “After Katrina, I was just starting to hone my Photoshop skills, and was looking for Photoshop message boards to play around in,” Donnels said in an e-mail. “By chance, I came across Tiger Droppings while looking for some L.S.U.-related info.” Some of the site’s Photoshop threads have become phenomena among message board aficionados. In addition to countless threads in which college football coaches, players, fans and the news media are relentlessly mocked and satirized, there is one in which a seemingly naïve user posted a picture of his mother. Tiger Droppings users have since spent roughly a year and a half Photoshopping the woman into classic movie scenes, iconic works of art and, naturally, less savory situations. “It has the finest collection of sports humorists/Photoshop artists on the Web,” Donnels said of the message board. “There are tons of talented graphic artists and Photoshop hobbyists from around the country, all at an elite level in their craft, all competing for laughs.” Needless to say, when L.S.U. and Alabama play Saturday night, in what will arguably be college football’s biggest regular-season game for the second straight year, there will be plenty of trash-talking taking place on the field, in the stands and all around the stadium. But it will probably pale in comparison to the trash-talking already taking place between L.S.U. and Alabama fans on Tiger Droppings and similar message boards, something Donnels likens to “a bar fight in a comedy club,” featuring “incessant fan-base posturing, horrendous grammar and transparent trolling.” No matter which team wins, the online conversation — hilarious, creative and profane — will go on.

Computers and the Internet
College Athletics
Football
Louisiana State University
Football (College)


As China Seeks to Cultivate the Arts, the West Is Ready

Abstract: On its opening night in May, the Guangzhou Opera House featured Puccini’s “Turandot,” directed by the Chinese filmmaker Chen Kaige, with Lorin Maazel conducting. The Swedish soprano Irene Theorin and the Canadian tenor Richard Margison sang the lead roles. The Opera House, designed by Zaha Hadid, then was host to Ballet Preljocaj, a French dance company performing the contemporary “Snow White” with costumes by Jean-Paul Gaultier. That was followed with a concert by Michael Bolton, the American soft-rock singer. Shu-Chun Lai, program director of the $200 million facility in southern China , is scouting for more contemporary dance performances and big musicals that have done well on Broadway or the West End of London. “We’re looking for signature shows, like ‘The Phantom of the Opera’ — shows that are already well-known,” said Ms. Lai, who previously worked for the Beijing Music Festival. Like many cities in China, Guangzhou has built a top-notch performing arts arena in the hopes of lifting its cultural credentials and offering new forms of live entertainment to the increasing numbers of middle-class and wealthy Chinese. Those stages now need content, and that has Western producers and promoters looking at the Chinese market, and at ways to build new audiences and expand their activities — and earnings. Yet many arts professionals from the West say China has a long way to go. Audiences remain small. Many of those who attend are not accustomed to paying for tickets. And after years of state-financed performances, the government is increasingly looking to the private sector to support both foreign and domestic arts troupes. Tracking the number of foreign performing arts troupes that visit China is difficult. According to data from the Ministry of Culture, the number of state-sponsored cultural exchanges seems to be declining; China’s government invited 44 overseas artistic troupes to perform in 2009, half the number it sought in 2008. But 600 to 700 commercial performances from abroad were staged in 2009, a slight increase from 2008. “You have more theaters, but you don’t necessarily have more money for philharmonic orchestras to come,” said Zarin Mehta, president and executive director of the New York Philharmonic, which performed in Beijing and Shanghai in 2008 on a tour sponsored by Credit Suisse. “I’m not saying they don’t have money in China — they have money for certain things, and for certain artists they will come up with the money,” Mr. Mehta said. “But it’s not a general market for all the American and European productions that can travel.” China is also still developing its industry of behind-the-scenes professionals who can organize tours, book stages, navigate permit requirements and understand how Western arts groups operate. “It’s not just about, ‘Just come and play, and let’s have that program.’ There is much more involved when you have 140 people traveling,” Mr. Mehta added. “For example, I’m planning 2013. In Japan they understand it. In China they don’t understand yet that we plan so far in advance.” Although China’s government is pushing for a more market-oriented approach to performing arts, many theaters and arenas rely heavily on the China Arts and Entertainment Group, which is essentially a state-owned company that finances many foreign productions coming to the country, helps send Chinese performers abroad and organizes events like the Meet in Beijing festival. The group was formed in 2005 by merging two government agencies, and is overseen by the Culture Ministry. It is financed by China’s cabinet, called the State Council, but also recently arranged a credit line of as much as 1 billion renminbi ($147 million), from the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China. In June, the China Arts and Entertainment Group and Littlestar Services — the London-based producer of the Abba-inspired musical “Mamma Mia!” — announced plans to produce a Mandarin-language version of the show. It is scheduled to open in Beijing next June, then travel to Shanghai and Guangzhou before touring elsewhere in Asia. But China Arts and Entertainment is not giving out its money liberally. In Guangzhou, the Opera House has an operating budget from the government but has to rely on sponsorships and ticket sales for programming, Ms. Lai said. Western multinational companies, which often sponsor arts programs in their home nations, are more likely to offer money than are Chinese companies, Ms. Lai said. China Merchants Bank and China Construction Bank are among Chinese companies that have started to sponsor performances and more are showing interest, she added. Attendance at the new Guangzhou arena averaged about 60 percent of capacity in its first month, Ms. Lai said. “We still need to do a lot of audience-building,” she said. “People in Guangzhou are used to going out and eat at night. They’re not used to going out to the theater and buy tickets.” Ms. Lai was recently scouting for crowd-pleasing shows at Live! Singapore, a new international trade event that gives festival directors and theater programmers the chance to mingle with artists and find acts to book. Among those drawing particular interest were Western musicals, which have been lucrative exports to China. Andrew Lloyd Webber’s “Phantom” had a 12-week run in Shanghai in 2006, while a production of “Cats” toured 11 cities in 2007 and 2008. The Really Useful Group , founded by Mr. Webber, will make more than 40 percent of its theater and licensing revenue from Asia this year, the highest percentage yet for the firm. Japan, Australia and South Korea are the top markets for the company’s musicals in the region, said Tim McFarlane, managing director of the company’s Asia Pacific unit. China still represents a small fraction of its business, he said, but it has great potential for growth. “I think the Chinese business will probably take 10 years to be really significant,” Mr. McFarlane said, because the audience that can afford tickets to such shows is still small. Average ticket prices have increased in recent years — seats for the 2006 “Phantom” in Shanghai averaged about 20 percent less than those on Broadway, but a similar show now would cost only 5 to 10 percent less than in New York. Robert Nederlander Jr., chief executive of Nederlander Worldwide Entertainment, which is involved in theatrical production projects in China, noted that for many decades, tickets had been given away by employers or other sources. “Changing this expectation of free tickets has been one of the great challenges in the development of the live performance market” in China, he said. Navigating the Chinese bureaucracy, including censors, and obtaining permits to put on shows can also be daunting for promoters. For instance, a planned production of “The Vagina Monologues” was scrapped in 2004 by wary officials, but the play made it to China in 2009. “It takes a longer time and one needs to navigate through different departments,” said Goh Ching Lee, director of Culture Link, a Singapore-based advisory firm looking to introduce foreign acts to China. The solution is to work with a local promoter, said Charles Hamlen, chairman of IMG Artists, which represents some top performers, including the violinist Joshua Bell, the pianist Jean-Yves Thibaudet and the Bolshoi Ballet. The Nederlander group formed a joint venture with Beijing Time New Century Entertainment in China in 2005 and has since produced four musicals in the country, including “42nd Street” and “Fame.” But Mr. Nederlander sees other ways to capitalize on China’s arts market besides booking Western acts into the country and producing shows there. In November, Nederlander China entered into a joint venture with the Eastern Shanghai International Culture, Film and Television Group to manage and operate performance theaters in Shanghai. The first such theater is the existing Shanghai City in the Minhang district, and there are plans for more. “We see China as having great longer-term growth opportunities for us in terms of theater management,” he said. Nederlander Worldwide has also joined with Shibo Real Estate Investment Holdings to develop a cultural plaza in the heart of the Haidian District of Beijing. Plans call for the area, which is envisioned as a Chinese Times Square, to house several performance halls — including a 2,000-seat theater, which Nederlander would manage. Although the plans for Haidian District were announced early last year, Mr. Nederlander acknowledged that the details were still being worked out. “It’s still in the design phase,” he said. “We have an agreement in place for the management of the larger facility, but something like this doesn’t happen quickly; there is an internal government process in place here that must be followed.”

Culture
Guangzhou (China)
China
Art
Stadiums and Arenas


Royal Dutch Shell Posts $5.6 Billion Profit

Abstract: LONDON — Royal Dutch Shell, the largest oil company in Europe, disappointed investors Thursday with fourth-quarter earnings that came in well below analysts’ forecasts. The company posted a profit of $5.6 billion after one-time items and inventory changes, up 15 percent from the fourth quarter of 2011. But analysts had expected earnings of around $6.3 billion. Stuart Joyner, an analyst at Investec Securities in London, described the results as “a substantial miss.” The company’s shares closed 2.8 percent lower on the London Stock Exchange. For the full year, Shell reported earnings of $25.1 billion, up 2 percent over 2011. “We see solid underlying performance in much of the business in these numbers,” Peter Hutton, an analyst at RBC Capital Markets in London, wrote in a research note. Perhaps more than any other energy company, Shell invests in huge oil and gas projects that it hopes will produce steady returns for decades. One example is Pearl GTL in Qatar, which takes natural gas from the emirate’s enormous North Field and converts it into liquid fuels like diesel. Peter Voser, the chief executive of Shell, said production at the gas-to-liquids facility exceeded 90 percent of capacity in the fourth quarter. Pearl GTL cost around $20 billion, but it looks like it will be a big moneymaker for decades to come. And because its products are pegged to oil prices, it gives Shell and Qatar a hedge against lower gas prices. “We are on track despite some headwinds in 2012,” Mr. Voser said during a call with analysts Thursday. Mr. Voser, who comes from a financial background, made his reputation helping to turn around the Swiss machinery maker ABB a decade ago. He was appointed Shell’s chief financial officer in 2004 and was named chief executive in 2009. Mr. Voser said his goal was to deliver $175 billion to $200 billion of total cash flow from operations for 2012-15, a 30 percent to 50 percent increase over the previous four-year period. Still, there are reasons to worry about Shell. The fourth-quarter letdown was largely due to lower earnings in Shell’s core exploration and production business, mainly because of weak performance in the Americas. Shell’s high-profile, multibillion-dollar Alaska drilling program has encountered several snags and delays, including the running aground of the Kulluk drilling vessel on an uninhabited island in late December. Mr. Voser said that the Kulluk had been damaged and that another drilling vessel required upgrades. Shell is still weighing its next steps in Alaska, he said. Shell is also being hurt by natural gas prices in the United States that have been pushed down by the boom in shale gas production. Declining prices have led it to switch strategies and drill for gas deposits that are rich in liquids, which bring in more money than gas. Low gas prices raise questions about Shell’s huge bets on the fuel. Mr. Voser said the low prices in North America appeared likely to persist, but were “an opportunity” for Shell’s so-called integrated gas business, which is devoted primarily to liquefied natural gas and gas-to-liquids projects. These fast-growing businesses earned $9.4 billion in 2012, up from $6.4 billion in 2011. Exploration and production earnings for the quarter were $4.4 billion compared with $5.1 billion the previous year, with the U.S. exploration and production business reporting a $69 million loss, partly because of low natural gas prices. In another disappointment, Shell estimated that it replaced only 44 percent of the reserves of oil and gas that it produced in 2012. That indicated that the company’s exploration effort, despite increased emphasis and spending in recent years, may still not be performing well. Shell said its bookings of reserves were severely reduced last year by U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission accounting rules that required it to cut its estimates of its gas resources in America to reflect low prices. Shell’s production was essentially flat in 2012, at 3.2 million barrels a day. The company increased its capital investment forecast for this year by 10 percent, to $33 billion — another worry for the markets, as it suggests that Shell may be having trouble controlling costs. Mr. Voser said that spending were running high across the industry, but that Shell was having more success in controlling costs than rivals. Shell said that it was likely to increase its dividend in the first quarter of 2013 to 45 cents a share, a 4.7 percent increase over the first quarter of 2012. Shell also had cause for relief on Wednesday when a court in The Hague dismissed most aspects of lawsuits brought against it by Nigerian farmers and fishermen seeking damages for pollution from oil spills in the Niger Delta.

Royal Dutch Shell
Earnings Reports
Oil and Gasoline
Qatar


‘Noon Swoon,’ Then Recovery That May Signal Market Turnaround

Abstract: Soon after midday on Wednesday, panic selling seemed to be seizing the United States stock market. The Dow Jones industrial average was down more than 500 points, and all the fears that have driven this year’s declines — including concerns that the world economy is slowing — seemed as potent as ever. Then investors’ mood changed. Buyers rushed in, sending the Dow up over 400 points. What could have been a rout ended up being just the sort of down day that investors have had to get used to this year. The Dow closed off 249 points, or 1.56 percent, to 15,766.74. The Standard & Poor’s 500-stock index, a broader benchmark, fell 22 points, or 1.17 percent, to 1,859.33. The Nasdaq composite index ended barely changed, 5.26 points lower, or 0.12 percent. And after spiking, the Vix index, which measures investors’ expectations of volatility and is known as Wall Street’s fear gauge, tumbled. To some, the turnaround felt a little like the sort of cathartic turning point that can signal a bottom on the markets — at least for a time. “The noon swoon today looked to me to be consistent with sort of important lows that I’ve seen over the years,” said Douglas A. Kass, a founder of Seabreeze Partners Management. “You had panic, fear and immobility on the part of many investors.” Image A trader at the New York Stock Exchange. The market dropped steeply, then investors rushed in. Credit Justin Lane/European Pressphoto Agency The main reason that the analysts gave for their tempered optimism is that the global economy does not appear to be in as poor a shape as the stock market is suggesting. In other words, while many countries, including China and its $10 trillion economy, still face stiff challenges, the United States stock market now appears to already reflect such risks, these analysts say. “It feels like we are discounting too much bad news ahead,” said Chris Rupkey, chief financial economist at MUFG Union Bank in New York. “On these sort of days, you want to go and look at how the economy is doing, and it appears that the financial markets are overreacting.” In recent years, global stocks have at times sold off sharply without a clear, cataclysmic trigger. Instead, the cause has been concern that the global economy is faltering. In 2011 and 2012, Europe was the source of most fears. Then last year, China started to unsettle global markets, especially after its shock currency devaluation in August. Still, investors have in recent years jumped back into the market after they have concluded that the world economy is not sliding into recession and that the global financial system is not about seize up as it did in 2008. The markets, however, will have to rise by quite a lot to recover their recent losses. The S.&P. 500 has slid 9.03 percent so far this year and is now 12.74 percent below the nominal high that it reached last year. After adjusting for inflation, the stock market is lower than it was in 1999. And some markets are still flashing warning signals. On Wednesday, for instance, investors sought the safety of government bonds. The yield on the 10-year Treasury note, which falls as its price rises, slipped to 1.99 percent, from 2.06 percent, the first time it has closed below the 2 percent threshold since October. The tumbling price of oil has also persuaded investors to be cautious. Cheaper oil reduces costs for companies and consumers. But a falling oil price could also be a signal that companies require less oil, which in turn could be an early signal that the world economy is on the verge of decelerating. 6 Tips for Investors When the Stock Market Tumbles The impulse when the stock market falls hard for a few days in a row is to do something but it probably doesn’t make much sense to overhaul an investment strategy based on a blip of market activity. And on Wednesday, oil prices resumed their slide; the price of a barrel of crude oil reached the lowest level since May 2003. Crude oil was down 6.7 percent, to settle at $26.55 a barrel in trading for February futures on the New York Mercantile Exchange. Royal Dutch Shell warned on Wednesday that it expected its profit for the fourth quarter of 2015 to be about half of what it was in the comparable period a year earlier. In addition, traders see no signs of the oil glut easing, as Iran has permission to sell into the world markets now that sanctions have been lifted as part of a nuclear deal. European stocks ended sharply lower on Wednesday. The Euro Stoxx 50 index was down 3.3 percent. The FTSE 100 in London closed the day down 3.46 percent. London stocks are now down more than 20 percent from their April high: a level analysts generally regard as a bear market. Stocks in Japan closed 3.7 percent lower, bringing the Nikkei 225’s total decline since its near-term high in June into bear market territory, too. In addition to worries about China, investors have also grown concerned that economic overhauls in Japan championed by Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, called Abenomics, are faltering . Despite Mr. Abe’s pledges to increase economic growth, which were accompanied by a huge program of monetary easing carried out by the central bank, the Japanese economy continues to dip in and out of recession. The trading action in the United States stock market contained some unexpected moves. Shares of Twitter, which have plunged in recent weeks, surged on takeover rumors, leaving the stock up 4.13 percent for the day.