German Bank Chief Weidmann Calls for Economic Changes

Abstract: A member of the European Central Bank’s rate-setting council, Jens Weidmann, said monetary policy could not bolster long-term growth, and called for changes to make the economy more investment-friendly. Central bank officials are weighing whether to undertake more stimulus measures to pull the eurozone out of an extended period of sluggish growth. Mr. Weidmann, who is the head of Germany’s central bank, said in a speech that central bank action “cannot permanently boost growth prospects.” His remarks come after Mario Draghi, president of the European Central Bank, said last week the bank was ready to do more to improve the economy. But Mr. Weidmann has been a skeptic, and he called on governments to undertake politically difficult changes, like cutting back regulations that make it hard to start a business or streamlining rules on hiring and firing.

Jens Weidmann
European Central Bank
EU
Eurozone
Germany
Banking and Finance


Two Defensive Injuries End the Jets’ Preseason Stroll

Abstract: CORTLAND, N.Y. — More than two weeks into training camp, everything had been going so well for the Jets. No quarterback chaos, contract holdouts or disgruntled receivers. Just the daily grind, and enthusiasm for the coming season. Then came Sunday, when a double dose of misfortune struck and compromised the team’s depth at cornerback, a position already considered one of the shakiest on its roster. About a half-hour after the rookie Dexter McDougle tore the anterior cruciate ligament in his left knee, Dee Milliner was helped off the field, unable to put any weight on his left ankle, after getting tangled with receiver Quincy Enunwa near the sideline. Coach Rex Ryan declined to speculate on a prognosis for Milliner, saying he preferred to wait until he received the results of a magnetic resonance imaging test, but he sounded as if he expected to hear that Milliner had sustained a sprain and not a fracture. That would still sideline Milliner for a few weeks, most likely costing him the remainder of the preseason and, perhaps, jeopardizing his availability for the Sept. 7 opener against Oakland. Unlike in years past, the Jets’ defense is strongest up front, on the line, and not in the secondary. Losing Milliner, for however long, would hurt a defense that depends on sound, physical play in its man-to-man coverage on the outside. It would also interrupt the progress Milliner made during his superb training camp, development which carried into the team’s preseason victory Thursday against Indianapolis, when he broke up two passes and almost had an interception. By failing to sign Dominique Rodgers-Cromartie and Vontae Davis, and adding only the injury-prone veteran Dimitri Patterson — who missed practice Sunday with calf and ankle injuries — the Jets increased their reliance on Milliner, who struggled last season as a rookie before showing signs of improvement over the final month. They believe he is ready to be their top corner, but there is no natural replacement for him. Next up on the depth chart are Kyle Wilson, who is more suited to play the slot, and the third-stringers Darrin Walls and Ellis Lankster. “Who plays in their place?” Ryan asked, referring to Milliner and McDougle. “I’ve got to find out who’s out there.” Ryan, speaking before the extent of McDougle’s injury was announced, seemed particularly concerned about him. Ryan said McDougle, the team’s third-round draft pick, had said he felt a “sharp pain” after getting his cleat stuck while covering Stephen Hill during a red-zone drill. When Ryan came over, McDougle, lying on the field while being examined, said, “Oh God, you’ve got to be kidding me.” Later, McDougle posted on Twitter , “This is a tough blow but I promise, I will be back better than ever.” McDougle, who was listed as a second-stringer on the team’s official depth chart, felt the same way last September after sustaining the first of what are now two season-ending injuries in two years. He missed most of his senior season at Maryland after fracturing his scapula and dislocating his shoulder, but still attended every practice, film session and game to stay sharp and involved. That might again be McDougle’s plight. And the Jets’ plight could be just as dire if they cannot withstand these losses. “I’ve been talking about our depth,” Ryan said. “And now we’ll get to see it, if that is the case.”

Football
Jets
Dee Milliner
Dexter McDougle


Mexico Working to Increase Oil Production

Abstract: MEXICO CITY — The Mexican Senate approved legislation on Thursday intended to reverse a decline in production by the state-owned oil monopoly Pemex, but analysts said the measures would not go far enough. The legislation frees Pemex from many government controls and will allow the company more flexibility in the way it signs contracts. But critics contend it does not remove the barriers to private investment that make Mexico’s oil industry one of the most closed in the world. Mexico’s lower house, the Chamber of Deputies, is expected to pass the bills by next week. The hope is that the new laws will create a more agile Pemex, formally known as Petróleos Mexicanos, to find and produce more crude oil to halt Mexico’s sharp drop in production over the last five years. Pemex’s crude oil output has dropped 10 percent this year and exports have fallen even faster, by 18 percent. Mexico has slipped from its position as the second-largest supplier of crude oil to the United States, after Canada, to the fourth. The government and many analysts contend that Mexico’s best hope to reverse the decline is to explore for oil in deep waters in the Gulf of Mexico, where oil companies have had success in drilling in United States waters. But Pemex lacks the technology and the capital to tap the billions of barrels thought to lie beneath the sea floor at depths of 1,000 feet or more. To attract partners, Pemex would have to grant them a share of any reserves they find, which is forbidden under Mexico’s constitution. The bills would not change that. Instead, they would let Pemex pay cash incentives to contractors for finding oil or using new technology. Pemex relies heavily on oil services companies. Jeremy M. Martin, director of the energy program at the Institute of the Americas in San Diego, wrote in an e-mail message that “as an effort to address rapidly declining oil production (and a lack of new discoveries), the legislation is not enough to reverse the ominous trends for Mexico’s oil industry.”

Mexico
Pemex
Oil (Petroleum) and Gasoline
Production


Cuomo Prods Assemblymen to Resign

Abstract: ALBANY — In a strongly worded statement about the seemingly endless series of allegations of sexual misconduct in the State Assembly, Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo called on Tuesday for two assemblymen facing such allegations to either immediately deny the reports’ veracity or resign. Image Dennis H. Gabryszak Credit Mike Groll/Associated Press Mr. Cuomo, a Democrat, said the most recent allegations, against Assemblymen Micah Z. Kellner and Dennis H. Gabryszak, also Democrats, “should be the last straw.” “This pattern of behavior is repugnant by every standard and directly contradicts the policies the Assembly has advanced for the last 20 years,” the governor said, adding that if the two men did not resign, the Assembly should “seriously consider” expelling them. “Enough is enough,” he said. “It’s a new year; let’s start with a clean slate.” The statements by the governor come at the end of a year in which there have been multiple reports of sexual misconduct in the Assembly, and just a day after Mr. Kellner was stripped of a committee chairmanship and banned from any future leadership positions by Sheldon Silver, the powerful Assembly speaker. The actions followed reports earlier this year that Mr. Kellner, who represents the Upper East Side of Manhattan, had sent sexually inappropriate messages to a younger female staff member, behavior for which the assemblyman later apologized. Image Micah Z. Kellner Credit Oscar Hidalgo for The New York Times Mr. Silver reiterated on Tuesday that sexual harassment was “intolerable,” adding that “both members must seriously and immediately consider whether they can continue to represent their constituents effectively.” In mid-December, Mr. Gabryszak, who represents a Buffalo-area district, was accused of sexual harassment after three former aides came forward with accounts of explicit conversations and sexual propositions. He did not return calls or emails to his offices on Tuesday. In a statement, Mr. Kellner said he did not accept Mr. Silver’s assertions nor those of an Assembly ethics panel that was critical of his behavior, calling them “factually inaccurate.” In addition, he called for a public hearing regarding their findings, with sworn testimony. “Perhaps then the real facts surrounding this matter will be heard,” he said.

Micah Z Kellner
Dennis H Gabryszak
Andrew Cuomo
Sexual harassment
New York


For Fox, Much Is Riding on 3 Sequels to ‘Avatar’

Abstract: LOS ANGELES — Like the deep-sea craft James Cameron used to dive nearly seven miles down in the Pacific, the long-awaited screenplays for his three sequels to “Avatar” will soon pop to the surface, probably within weeks. Mr. Cameron, an avid adventurer as well as one of Hollywood’s most successful directors, has been working for much of the last several years on the “Avatar” films, when he was not indulging his other passion and exploring the deepest parts of the ocean. For those who share Mr. Cameron’s moviemaking adventures — particularly executives at 20th Century Fox, which released “Avatar” to about $2.8 billion in worldwide ticket sales almost five years ago — delivery of finished scripts will signal the beginning of perhaps their grandest enterprise. Fox, as well as Mr. Cameron and his cohorts at Lightstorm Entertainment, his production company, are expecting the three successive “Avatar” films — set for release in three straight Decembers beginning in 2016 — to transform their companies and possibly once again to set a new standard for large-scale, multimedia entertainment. Billions of dollars are riding on the effort. The effects-heavy sequels will be expensive: Mr. Cameron has vaguely said their combined production cost would be less than $1 billion, though the movies cannot be budgeted until they are written. But in Mr. Cameron, the project is being led by a director who helped to redefine his industry with “The Terminator,” “Titanic” and the immersive 3-D science fiction spectacle “Avatar.” “Jim first and foremost in life is an explorer, and it’s what he does in his movies,” said Jon Landau, Mr. Cameron’s business partner. Speaking by telephone recently, Mr. Landau described what he said had been a yearslong effort to conceptualize an entire “Avatar” universe that would be realized over 20 years or more in various media, some of which have yet to be invented. “We decided to build out the breadth of our world — whether or not it’s in one of the films — now,” he said. “This is not about any one medium,” Mr. Landau added, referring to the elaborate ideas being developed by Mr. Cameron, along with a team of four screenwriters, and by a novelist, Steven Gould. Mr. Gould, known especially for the science fiction book “Jumper,” is weaving those ideas into novels that are meant to read as if they had inspired, rather than were spun off from, “Avatar.” Fox has waited, optimistically, through Mr. Cameron’s painstaking deliberations, but at some cost. The “Avatar” hiatus has led to some shrinkage at Fox, which last year fell to sixth among the major studios in market share. In 2013, it had about $1.1 billion in domestic ticket sales, compared with nearly $1.5 billion in 2010, when “Avatar” was working its way toward becoming the best-selling movie in history (without adjusting for inflation, which would put “Gone With the Wind” on top). Image An “Avatar”-themed area is scheduled for 2017 in Disney’s Animal Kingdom in Orlando, Fla. Credit Walt Disney Imagineering For the quarter that ended March 31, the studio contributed $354 million in operating income to its parent, 21st Century Fox. The performance was solid, and it will be bolstered this year by “X-Men: Days of Future Past,” the surprise hit “The Fault in Our Stars” and the next film in the revived “Planet of the Apes” series. But it accounted for less than 20 percent of the total $1.8 billion in operating income at a company that is dominated by its cable network operations. “When I talk to the company, it really matters,” Michael Nathanson, an analyst with MoffettNathanson, said of the sequels. “This could be more meaningful for the company than just the first ‘Avatar’ was.” While Warner exploited its enormous series of “Harry Potter” and “Hobbit” films, Fox played out its decades-old “Star Wars” franchise, which went to Disney with its purchase of Lucasfilm. It also made hay with its somewhat more modest “X-Men” films and rebuilt “Planet of the Apes,” a series born in 1968. But the new “Avatar” films have open-ended storytelling potential — as purely original inventions, they are not limited by existing books or the aging of a young star. And they are coupled with Mr. Cameron’s insistence on an ever more realistic audience experience. In the view of Jim Gianopulos, 20th Century Fox’s chief executive, that makes them worth the wait. “After all these years together, you just say, ‘O.K., Jim’s ready to make a movie. Let’s strap in and go for the ride,’ ” said Mr. Gianopulos by telephone recently. In making the sequels, he said, Fox will have a financial partner, the Seelig Group. But the studio will invest enough of its own money to own a larger share than the portion — somewhat above 40 percent — that it held of the original “Avatar,” which was similarly split with outside financiers The long process of exploiting the new films, Mr. Gianopulos added, would only begin with their expected success in theaters. “We’re going to have merry Christmases for the next few years,” he predicted. As the films roll out, Mr. Gianopulos said, Fox expects that a growing string of ancillary businesses will be helped along by an unusually robust online operation that is being built. “Jim always finds the edge of the envelope and goes flying past it,” he said. Still, impatience has sometimes been noticeable at Fox. During a conference call in early 2010, Rupert Murdoch, whose media conglomerate owns 20th Century Fox, warned eager investors not to expect a promised follow-up from Mr. Cameron anytime soon. “Being Jim Cameron, I wouldn’t hold your breath for an early one,” Mr. Murdoch said. At Lionsgate and its Summit unit, in fact, five “Twilight” films came and went in less time than it has taken Mr. Cameron to create a sequel to his interplanetary blockbuster about lovers reaching across the universe to save life, limb and an endangered world. Asked about the slow pacing, Mr. Landau said it had been born of the same methodical preparedness ethic that guides Mr. Cameron’s deep-sea explorations. “He tries to do things as safely as possible,” Mr. Landau said. Fox executives at one point believed they might shoot an “Avatar” sequel in 2011, for release this year. Image Jim Gianopulos of Fox Filmed Entertainment. Credit J. Emilio Flores for The New York Times But Mr. Cameron, though he did not exactly drift out to sea, became preoccupied with a growing tangle of commitments and concerns. Those included ultra-deep-sea dives, now the subject of a self-narrated 3-D documentary called “Deepsea Challenge 3D,” set for release by National Geographic Entertainment and DisruptiveLA on Aug. 8. In it, Mr. Cameron explains that he is torn between filmmaking and his expeditions, and he has been unable to decide which comes first. There were also extensive land purchases in New Zealand, where Mr. Cameron’s interests include a hemp farm and a search for alternatives to methane-generating sheep herds, as well as a largely concluded battle to defeat a half-dozen legal challenges to his authorship of “Avatar.” Then came his own belief that he needed not one but three films, to be shot simultaneously, along with a growing round of related enterprises, in which Fox participates, to realize his vision. Those adjunct projects are already taking shape. At an “Avatar”-themed area in Disney’s Animal Kingdom in Orlando, Fla., for instance, Mr. Cameron helped design an attraction that by 2017 will plant visitors on his mythical planet of Pandora. “They’ll walk under floating mountains higher than three Staples Centers stacked on top of each other,” said Mr. Landau, referring to the Los Angeles arena. On a smaller scale, Mr. Cameron announced at a conference last month in Montreal that he would join with Cirque du Soleil to develop an “Avatar”-themed touring troupe, with a debut planned for next year. By then, he should finally be shooting movies that Mr. Landau describes as being in “preproduction,” though expensive screenwriters continue to work on the scripts. The first sequel, Mr. Landau confirmed, will be written by Rick Jaffa and Amanda Silver, a husband-and-wife team known for their work on “Rise of the Planet of the Apes.” The second, he said, will come from Josh Friedman, who worked with Lightstorm on the television series “Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles.” The third is being written by Shane Salerno, who also worked previously with Mr. Cameron, and who was already blocking out his “Avatar” script while promoting the release of his documentary “Salinger” last year. Those writers, said Mr. Landau, did much of their brainstorming last year with both Mr. Cameron and Mr. Gould in a room at the MBS Media Campus, a Manhattan Beach, Calif., studio where Mr. Cameron expects to shoot effects sequences, while filming much of the live action — and spending an estimated $400 million — in New Zealand. Technologically, said Mr. Landau, the new films will step beyond the first, though he stopped short of promising radical changes to the 3-D and performance-capture techniques that gave a startlingly immersive feel to those who viewed “Avatar.” Around Fox, executives have speculated that Mr. Cameron will somehow exploit virtual reality systems of the kind that Oculus VR, now owned by Facebook, has been developing. An Oculus spokesman declined to say whether Mr. Cameron had yet sampled its technology. Mr. Gianopulos confirmed that Fox and the filmmakers were closely examining the potential of virtual reality techniques, but a crucial question, he said, is whether they are used within a film or in some corollary medium. As for plotlines, Mr. Landau said only that he expected all the films to follow the principal characters, played by Sam Worthington and Zoe Saldana — one human, one not — who were central to the first. “It’s the story of their life together,” he said. Asked whether one of the movies, as occasionally hinted on fan-oriented websites and elsewhere, would take place mostly underwater, Mr. Landau said that might be expecting too much, even from the submersible Mr. Cameron. “It’s hard to have a dialogue scene underwater,” he noted.

James Cameron
Movies
Avatar
Twentieth Century Fox
Science fiction
3-D
21st Century Fox
Walt Disney
Cirque du Soleil


Google’s Autonomous Vehicles Draw Skepticism at Legal Symposium

Abstract: SANTA CLARA, Calif. — Even as Google tests its small fleet of self-driving vehicles on California highways, legal scholars and government officials are warning that society has only begun wrestling with the changes that would be required in a system created a century ago to meet the challenge of horseless carriages. What happens if a police officer wants to pull one of these vehicles over? When it stops at a four-way intersection, would it be too polite to take its turn ahead of aggressive human drivers (or equally polite robots)? What sort of insurance would it need? These and other implications of what Google calls autonomous vehicles were debated by Silicon Valley technologists, legal scholars and government regulators last week at a daylong symposium sponsored by the Law Review and High Tech Law Institute at Santa Clara University. As Google has demonstrated, computerized systems that replace human drivers are now largely workable and could greatly limit human error, which causes most of the 33,000 deaths and 1.2 million injuries that now occur each year on the nation’s roads. Such vehicles also hold the potential for greater fuel efficiency and lower emissions — and, more broadly, for restoring the United States’ primacy in the global automobile industry. But questions of legal liability, privacy and insurance regulation have yet to be addressed, and an array of speakers suggested that such challenges might pose far more problems than the technological ones. Today major automobile makers have already deployed advanced sensor-based safety systems that both assist and in some cases correct driver actions. But Google’s project goes much further, transforming human drivers into passengers and coexisting with conventional vehicles driven by people. Last month, Sebastian Thrun , director of Google’s autonomous vehicle research program, wrote that the project had achieved 200,000 miles of driving without an accident while cars were under computer control. Over the last two years, Google and automobile makers have been lobbying for legislative changes to permit autonomous vehicles on the nation’s roads. Nevada became the first state to legalize driverless vehicles last year, and similar laws have now been introduced before legislatures in Florida and Hawaii. Several participants at the Santa Clara event said a similar bill would soon be introduced in California. Yet simple questions, like whether the police should have the right to pull over autonomous vehicles, have yet to be answered, said Frank Douma, a research fellow at the Center for Transportation Studies at the University of Minnesota. “It’s a 21st-century Fourth Amendment seizure issue,” he said. The federal government does not have enough information to determine how to regulate driverless technologies, said O. Kevin Vincent, chief counsel of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. But he added: “We think it’s a scary concept for the public. If you have two tons of steel going down the highway at 60 miles an hour a few feet away from two tons of steel going in the exact opposite direction at 60 miles an hour, the public is fully aware of what happens when those two hunks of metal collide and they’re inside one of those hunks of metal. They ought to be petrified of that concept.” And despite Google’s early success, technological barriers remain. Some trivial tasks for human drivers — like recognizing an officer or safety worker motioning a driver to proceed in an alternate direction — await a breakthrough in artificial intelligence that may not come soon. Moreover, even after intelligent cars match human capabilities, significant issues would remain, suggested Sven A. Beiker, executive director of the Center for Automotive Research at Stanford University . Today, human drivers frequently bend the rules by rolling through stop signs and driving above speed limits, he noted; how would a polite and law-abiding robot vehicle fare against such competition? “Everybody might be bending the rules a little bit,” he said. “This is what the researchers are telling me — because the car is so polite it might be sitting at a four-way intersection forever, because no one else is coming to a stop.” Because of the array of challenges, Dr. Beiker said he was wary about predicting when autonomous vehicles might arrive. “Twenty years from now we might have completely autonomous vehicles,” he said, “maybe on limited roads.” Questions of legal liability and insurance are also unknown territory. Potential liabilities will be huge for the designers and manufacturers of autonomous vehicles, said Gary E. Marchant, director of the Center for Law, Science and Innovation at the Arizona State University law school. “Why would you even put money into developing it?” he asked. “I see this as a huge barrier to this technology unless there are some policy ways around it” — though he noted that there were precedents for Congress adopting such policies. For example, liability exemptions have been mandated for vaccines, which are believed to offer great value for the general health of the population, despite some risks. There will also be unpredictable technological risks, several participants said. For example, future autonomous vehicles will rely heavily on global positioning satellite data and other systems, which are vulnerable to jamming by malicious computer hackers. Although they did not participate in any of the panel discussions, several Google engineers and employees attended the event. The company has declined to discuss what it might be planning to do with its autonomous vehicle research, and several participants said privately that they did not believe the company planned to become a provider of autonomous navigation systems to the automobile industry. Several people with knowledge of the company’s plans said that Google’s lobbying for state laws to permit autonomous driving indicated that it hoped to introduce such vehicles soon — driverless delivery vans or taxis, as early as 2013 or 2014. Several participants suggested that in addition to technological and legal challenges, autonomous driving could use a more consumer-friendly name. Some called the definition itself into question. “It won’t truly be an autonomous vehicle,” said Brad Templeton, a software designer and a consultant for the Google project, “until you instruct it to drive to work and it heads to the beach instead.”

Automobiles
Robots and Robotics
Google Inc
Roads and Traffic
Automobile Insurance and Liability


New-Home Sales Declined Sharply in July

Abstract: Sales of new homes declined unexpectedly in July, the government said on Wednesday in the second report this week that showed that the housing sector stalled last month. The Commerce Department reported that sales of new homes in July fell 12.4 percent from June, to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 276,000 units. That was the lowest level in July since the government began keeping track in 1963 July sales of new homes were 32.4 percent below sales for July 2009. Analysts surveyed by Thomson Reuters had expected sales to be flat in July from June. June sales were revised down to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 315,000, from 330,000, after May fell to an annual rate of 267,000. The report also said the median sales price was $204,000 in July, down 6 percent from June and 4.8 percent from July 2009. The average sales price was $235,300 in July, down 3.1 percent from June. July was the first month that home buyers could no longer qualify for a tax credit of as much as $8,000, which analysts said may have contributed to the decline. The report was released a day after the National Association of Realtors reported that sales of used homes in July plunged to their lowest level in more than a decade, as home buyers lost the incentive of a government tax credit. The association said that the seasonally adjusted annual sales rate of 3.83 million was 25.5 percent below the level of July 2009. Mortgage rates are the lowest in modern memory while affordability, because of price declines of 30 percent in many areas, is the highest in at least a decade. The federal government allows buyers to put only a token amount down, guarantees lenders against default and regularly issues proclamations that the worst is over. Still, with unemployment steady for months at more than 9 percent, and with millions heavily in debt or simply skittish, many potential buyers are sitting on the sidelines. Real estate helped drive this recession, and no one expects it to lead the way out. Instead, the urgent question is how much it will hinder other parts of the fragile recovery. Eric D. Thorne, an investment adviser for Bryn Mawr Trust, said the housing numbers had been expected to show some improvement, and that might have contributed to a market sell-off. “We are in the middle of the debate as to whether this early stage economic recovery is actually happening,” Mr. Thorne said. “We are still fairly optimistic that this recovery is in the early stages of taking hold, though a lot of the data points are still not showing up positively.” Other economic statistics released Wednesday also reflected the sluggish pace of the recovery. Even the manufacturing sector, once considered a strong point, appeared to struggle. Orders of big-ticket items from American factories rose less than forecast in July, an indication that manufacturing was beginning to weaken, the Commerce Department reported Wednesday. It said orders to American factories for durable goods rose 0.3 percent last month, much less than the 3 percent growth that had been forecast. Excluding the volatile transportation sector, orders dropped 3.8 percent. Orders for machinery dropped 15 percent, while those for capital goods dropped 8 percent. “July’s durable goods report adds to the recent evidence from numerous activity surveys that the manufacturing recovery has lost nearly all of the considerable momentum it had,” economists from Capital Economics wrote in a research note. “The rebound in manufacturing was one of the bright spots in an otherwise disappointing recovery, the note said. “Take it away, throw in a renewed collapse in housing, and you don’t have much left.” On Friday, the government will offer its latest estimate on second-quarter growth. Analysts now expect that growth in the quarter will be revised down to an annual rate of 1.4 percent from the previous estimate of 2.4 percent. Though the low rates have not spurred home buying, the demand for home refinancing loans last week hit a 15-month high, the Mortgage Bankers Association said Wednesday in a statement . Refinancing accounted for 82.4 percent of total applications last week up from 81.4 percent the previous week, which is the highest share since January 2009, the association said. “The volume of refi applications last week was up 26 percent over their level four weeks ago,” said Michael Fratantoni, the association’s vice president for research and economics.

Durable Goods (Economic Indicator)
Commerce Department


Hubert Schoemaker, a Biotech Pioneer, Dies at 55

Abstract: Hubert J. P. Schoemaker, a founder and former president of one of the nation's first biotechnology companies, died on Jan. 1 at his home in Paoli, Pa. He was 55. The cause was brain cancer, said his stepson, Jonathan Saruk. Mr. Schoemaker helped start Centocor, which is best known for developing Remicade, a drug for rheumatoid arthritis and Crohn's disease. He also mentored other biotechnology entrepreneurs in the Philadelphia area. "He was able to energize people and translate sometimes very complex science into a very understandable business equation," said David P. Holveck, who succeeded Mr. Schoemaker as chief executive of Centocor and is now an executive at Johnson & Johnson. In 1994, Mr. Schoemaker was discovered to have medulloblastoma, a usually fatal cancer for which he received numerous treatments. But he continued to work at Centocor and a smaller company he later founded. Mr. Schoemaker, who was born in the Netherlands, came to the United States in his late teens and graduated from the University of Notre Dame, majoring in chemistry. He then earned a doctorate in biochemistry from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. After a brief stint working at a friend's bottle factory, he went to Corning Medical, a division of the glassware company that developed diagnostic tests. He left Corning in 1979 to start Centocor with Michael A. Wall, an entrepreneur, and Hilary Koprowski, then the director of the Wistar Institute of Anatomy and Biology in Philadelphia. Another scientist, Vincent R. Zurawski Jr., is also often considered a co-founder of Centocor. The company, which moved to Malvern, Pa., began using the new technology of monoclonal antibodies to develop diagnostic tests. It then used monoclonal antibodies to develop a drug to treat sepsis, a life-threatening reaction to a bacterial infection. It was expected by some investors to be a blockbuster drug, but in 1992, the Food and Drug Administration declined to approve it because of questionable effectiveness. Centocor's stock collapsed, the company laid off about two-thirds of its 1,500 employees and Mr. Schoemaker stepped aside as chief executive, though he remained chairman of the board. Centocor eventually recovered. Reopro, an anticlotting drug, was approved in 1994. That was followed by the 1998 approval of Remicade, which has become one of the best-selling drugs ever produced by the biotechnology industry. Sales in 2004 were $2.1 billion. Johnson & Johnson acquired Centocor in 1999 for $4.9 billion. Mr. Schoemaker left and founded Neuronyx, a company in Malvern, Pa., that is trying to use stem cells to treat neurological and cardiovascular diseases. Last January, Pennsylvania Bio, the trade group representing the state's biotechnology industry, awarded Mr. Schoemaker its first lifetime achievement award. In addition to Mr. Saruk of New York, Mr. Schoemaker is survived by his wife of nine years, Anne Faulkner Schoemaker; three daughters, Maureen, Katherine and Anne; and one son, Matthew, all of the Philadelphia area; his parents, Paul and Betty Schoemaker; three sisters, all of whom live in the Netherlands; and one brother, Paul, who lives in the Philadelphia area.

UNIVERSITY OF NOTRE DAME
CENTOCOR INC
DEATHS (OBITUARIES)


Student Loan Debate Becomes Election-Year Fight

Abstract: WASHINGTON — The subject of interest rates on subsidized college loans, once reserved for the deep weeds of Congressional committees, has touched off a blazing battle between Democrats and Republicans at a volume usually reserved for debates over tax cuts or immigration . The election-year fight for the allegiance of college students and their hard-pressed parents grows out of a combination of soaring college costs, mounting student debt and a sluggish job market for graduates. This has made a top-tier issue of preventing the interest rate, now 3.4 percent, from reverting to 6.8 percent. Under attack from President Obama , House Republicans have hurriedly set a vote for Friday on legislation that would prevent the July 1 rate increase. Senate Democrats have their own competing proposal that they intend to consider in early May. The Republicans moved after President Obama spent the last week attacking them for failing to introduce legislation to stop the increase — resulting from a bill pushed by Democrats years ago to lower the rate — as he went from college campuses to late night talk shows to hammer away at the issue. House Republicans are determined not to allow Mr. Obama to spend the next week, when Congress is in recess, continuing his attacks unanswered. Encapsulated in this political brawl is the running theme of the partisan fights from the 112th Congress: Both sides agree on a desired result, but they disagree on how to pay for it. Republicans want to offset costs by taking money from a program within the health care law — itself a contentious issue in the Republican-controlled House — while Democrats, as they have with other costly bills this year, want the money to come from taxes on high earners or oil companies. And as in the fight over a once bipartisan bill to protect women against domestic assault, each side is presenting itself as the voice of sympathy. “For the president to make a campaign issue out of this and then to travel to three battleground states and go to three large college campuses, on taxpayers’ money, to try to make this a political issue is pathetic,” said Speaker John A. Boehner at a news conference Thursday as he leveled some of his harshest attacks to date on the president. “This is the biggest job in the world, and I’ve never seen a president make it smaller,” he added. The debate comes as student-loan debt, like mortgage debt, has become a major burden on households: In 2010, student-loan debt surpassed credit-card debt for the first time. For the past three decades, increases in college tuition have outpaced the overall rate of inflation, and increases in room and board have risen even faster. That has driven a substantial increase in the volume of student-loan debt. American students took out twice the value of student loans in 2011, about $112 billion, as they did a decade before, after adjusting for inflation. Overall, Americans now owe about $1 trillion in student loans. “This is different than a number of years ago,” said Senator Ron Wyden, an Oregon Democrat, who said constituents frequently want to discuss these costs. “Ten years ago, 15 years ago, college funding was a significant investment, like buying a car. Today it is the second-largest that you’re making.” In 2006, as part of their campaign agenda, Democrats promised to cut student loan interest rates in half. After taking a majority in the House, Democrats looked at their fiscal limitations and moved to temporarily reduce interest rates for the low- or middle-income undergraduates who receive subsidized Stafford loans to 3.4 percent from 6.8 percent, with the rate reverting to 6.8 percent in July 2012. (Graduate students with Stafford loans pay the higher rate, as do students with unsubsidized Stafford loans. Most undergraduates take out both unsubsidized and subsidized loans to cover the cost of their education.) Some Republicans have expressed concerns about allowing the rates to remain low, citing fear of default in a poor economy. The default rate for all federal student loans was 8.8 percent in the 2009 fiscal year, the latest year for which data was available; it was 4.6 percent in 2005, mirroring the rest of the economy. With the lackluster economy and high rates of unemployment for young workers, Mr. Obama had asked Congress to deal with the impending increase, but until this week no big moves were made. The House budget, known as the Ryan plan, made no effort to block the increase and the Senate has no budget. Democrats did try to amend the Ryan budget in committee to prevent the doubling of rates; Republicans voted it down. Without legislative action, the rate will snap back to 6.8 percent — acting as a $1,000 tax on new college graduates entering a challenging labor market, President Obama has argued. Indeed, the average student with Stafford loans graduates with about $13,000 in debt. At a fixed 3.4 percent interest rate — one of the lowest in recent decades — a student would spend about $15,350 paying the loan off over 10 years. At a fixed 6.8 interest rate, that student would pay about $17,950 — about $2,600 more. Representative Fred Upton, Republican of Michigan, said the issue would not go quietly away. “Most families really do rely on student loans,” he said. “I went to a state school; it was $330 a semester.” Then, he said, “You could have a summer job and you could do that. Today you can’t.”

Colleges and Universities
Student Loans
House of Representatives
Obama Barack
United States Politics and Government
Credit and Debt
Law and Legislation
Presidential Election of 2012
United States


Deborah Lee James: Learn to See the Plan A in Your Plan B

Abstract: This interview with Deborah Lee James , secretary of the Air Force, was conducted and condensed by Adam Bryant. Q. What were your early years like? A. I grew up in Rumson, N.J., the youngest of three children in my family. In many ways, though, I grew up as an only child because my siblings were substantially older than me. So from my earliest memories, it was just me and my mother, because my parents divorced when I was about 5 years old. Were there glimmers of a future Air Force secretary when you were younger? There really weren’t. I was very shy. And when I was in seventh and eighth grade, I was subjected to a certain degree of verbal bullying, which made me turn even more inward. I didn’t have a lot of self-confidence. I got better when I went to high school. There was an influx of new kids from another town, so I made some new friends, got involved with some of the clubs, took on a few leadership positions and began to blossom a bit more. There were a couple of things that really inspired me in those high school years. My older sister worked for American Airlines, and she got once-a-year free passes that the family could use. So she opened up the world to me, with different cultures and languages. And I went to Argentina for a summer as an exchange student and lived with a family and became quite fluent in Spanish. I had the unbelievable opportunity not long ago to go to Argentina as secretary of the Air Force, and I was able to reconnect with this family 40 years later. Did you have an idea of what you wanted to do after college? I had a dream and a passion that I wanted to be a diplomat, and got a master’s degree in international affairs and public policy. Then I went to Washington, D.C., and applied to the Foreign Service. I got turned down and crashed. I went to bed for several days and cried. I was 23 years old, and I had just spent seven or eight years focused on a dream that blew up. I finally got out of bed and said to myself, well, I have to have a job. So I started applying to other federal agencies. I did want to be in government service. That was in 1981, and the Defense Department was hiring. So I landed my first real job out of school in the Department of the Army, which was not my heart’s desire. But I threw myself into it, and after a few months remarkable things started happening for me. Like what? This whole area of defense and national security, which I never knew or cared about, was really interesting and important work. And I had a great boss who took an interest in me, became a mentor and opened some doors. From that first job, every single job I’ve had has been in defense — sometimes in government, sometimes in the private sector. And now I’m secretary of the Air Force. How cool is that? What a privilege. And it all started with a great big failure and a dream that was never realized. What’s your advice on how to get a mentor? Even if your company or agency doesn’t have a formal mentorship program, don’t let that stop you. A mentor can be anybody in your environment, but it tends to be somebody older than you and somebody who’s done things that you aspire to do. What I tell people, and I’ve done this myself, is that if you see somebody like this, just introduce yourself and ask them if they would be willing at some point to sit down and have a cup of coffee with you and tell their story of what worked for them, what didn’t work, and how their story unfolded in life and how they got to be where they are today. I find that 95 percent of people will give you a half-hour and a cup of coffee. And don’t we all love talking about ourselves and sharing our insights in life? You never know how broadening your network and hearing some of those failures and successes that other people have lived through might impact your life. What have been some leadership lessons? I have learned about the importance of communication, in what you say and what you write. But the most important part of all when you get to a leadership position is to be a good listener. People forget sometimes that an important part of communication is listening, so that you understand where somebody else is coming from. Then you can adjust your leadership style a bit to them. Another is the power of positive leadership and an upbeat outlook. Years ago, my mother used to always say, “Nobody likes a Debbie Downer. Pick up the mood a little bit here.” That’s really important in leadership, because if everything is crashing and burning around you, you have to see the opportunities in all of these problems. How do you hire? I look for people who have competence, with a track record in a certain field. I look for people who have collaboration in their background, and who communicate well. I also check references — trust but verify. I’ll ask about the greatest challenge they’ve faced, their favorite and least favorite parts of their previous job. I’ll frequently ask if they’ve ever had to fire somebody. That’s the hardest thing that many of us have to do as a manager and a leader. What career and life advice do you give to new college graduates? Be prepared to zigzag, because life does not always turn out like you think it’s going to turn out, and that’s true on the personal side, too. When life throws you a curveball, it’s O.K. to grieve. But don’t take too long, because you’ve got to get back up on your feet and then maybe focus on Plan B. Maybe you want to persist and still go for Plan A, but it’s good to have a Plan B, as well. Because Plan B could turn out to be fantastic, just like it did for me.

Management
Mentor
Deborah Lee James
US Air Force
US Military


Birds and Lice Are Color-Coordinated (for the Most Part)

Abstract: Camouflage in nature is nothing new. A wide variety of animals, like rabbits, birds and deer, are cryptically colored to blend in with their background and guard themselves from predators. Now researchers report that parasites, too, are capable of hiding in plain sight. In looking at lice that live in the feathers of birds, researchers found that light-colored lice live on light-colored birds, whereas dark-colored lice live on dark-colored birds. The study will appear in a forthcoming issue of The American Naturalist . The researchers looked at 26 pairs of related but differently colored birds, like a black swan and a white swan, and a white pelican and a brown pelican. In every case, the color of the lice on the bird’s body matched its feather color. Birds regularly preen their feathers and are more apt to find lice that are contrasting in color to their feathers. Over time, lice evolved to match their hosts’ coloring, said Sarah Bush , a University of Utah biologist and the study’s lead author. The researchers found, however, that lice in one area where it’s hard to preen — on the head — did not necessarily match feather color. “Birds can’t look at their own heads,” Dr. Bush said. “There’s no evolutionary selection for lice to be cryptically colored, unless they are removed.” The lice on all the birds’ heads tended to be dark regardless of feather color, leading Dr. Bush to believe that darker lice may have an evolutionary advantage. “Nobody’s tested it, but it may protect them from UV radiation,” she said.


Big Gains for Iraq Security, but Questions Linger

Abstract: BAGHDAD — What’s going right? And can it last? Violence in all of Iraq is the lowest since March 2004. The two largest cities, Baghdad and Basra, are calmer than they have been for years. The third largest, Mosul, is in the midst of a major security operation. On Thursday, Iraqi forces swept unopposed through the southern city of Amara, which has been controlled by Shiite militias. There is a sense that Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki ’s government has more political traction than any of its predecessors. Consider the latest caricatures of Mr. Maliki put up on posters by the followers of Moktada al-Sadr , the fiery cleric who commands deep loyalty among poor Shiites. They show the prime minister’s face split in two — half his own, half Saddam Hussein ’s. The comparison is, of course, intended as a searing criticism. But only three months ago the same Sadr City pamphleteers were lampooning Mr. Maliki as half-man, half-parrot, merely echoing the words of his more powerful Shiite and American backers. It is a notable swing from mocking an opponent perceived to be weak to denouncing one feared to be strong. For Hatem al-Bachary, a Basra businessman, the turnabout has been “a miracle,” the first tentative signs of a normal life. “I don’t think the militias have disappeared, and maybe there are sleeper cells which will try to revive themselves again,” he said. “But the first time they try to come back they will have to show themselves, and the government, army and police are doing very well.” While the increase in American troops and their support behind the scenes in the recent operations has helped tamp down the violence, there are signs that both the Iraqi security forces and the Iraqi government are making strides. There are simply more Iraqi troops for the government to deploy, partly because fewer are needed to fight the Sunni insurgents, who have defected to the Sunni Awakening movement. They are paid to keep the peace. Mr. Maliki’s moves against Shiite militias have built some trust with wary Sunnis, offering the potential for political reconciliation. High oil prices are filling Iraqi government coffers. But even these successes contain the seeds of vulnerability. The government victories in Basra, Sadr City and Amara were essentially negotiated, so the militias are lying low but undefeated and seething with resentment. Mr. Maliki may be raising expectations among Sunnis that he cannot fulfill, and the Sunni Awakening forces in many cases are loyal to their American paymasters, not the Shiite government. Restive Iraqis want to see the government spend money to improve services. Attacks like the bombing that killed 63 people in Baghdad’s Huriya neighborhood on Tuesday showed that opponents can continue to inflict carnage. Perhaps most worrisome, more than five years after the American invasion, which knocked Mr. Hussein from power but set off great chaos, Iraq still lacks the formal rules to divide the power and spoils of an oil-rich nation among ethnic, religious and tribal groups and unite them under one stable idea of Iraq. The improvements are fragile. The changes are already affecting Iraq’s complicated relationship with America. In the presidential campaign, a debate is rising about whether the quiet means American soldiers can leave. Iraqi Officials Gain Confidence American military commanders are seeing a new confidence among Iraqi leaders. They said they believed that the success of the recent military operations had played a role in the Iraqi government’s firm rebuff of American negotiators over a new long-term security pact to govern the United States military presence after the end of this year. “They are feeling very strong right now, after Basra, Mosul and Sadr City,” said one senior American official. The most obvious but often overlooked reason for the recent military success has been an increase in the number of trained Iraqi troops. The quality of the recruits and leadership has often been poor, even in recent months. In Baghdad’s Sadr City, one Iraqi company abandoned its position in April, forcing American and Iraqi commanders to fill the gap with hastily summoned reinforcements. In Basra, more than 1,000 recently qualified soldiers deserted rather than obey orders to fight against Mr. Sadr’s Mahdi Army . One senior Iraqi government official conceded that the deserters simply “felt that the other side was too strong.” But sheer numbers have helped to overcome the shortcomings. After the embarrassing setback in Basra, Mr. Maliki was able to pull units from elsewhere to provide reinforcements and saturate the city with checkpoints and patrols, restoring a measure of order after years of domination by Islamist militias and oil-smuggling mafias. American officials said 50,000 members of Iraqi security forces took part in the Basra campaign, 45,000 in Mosul, and 10,000 in Sadr City — troops that would not have been available to Mr. Maliki’s predecessors. The Iraqis had by far the largest numbers of troops, although American and other coalition troops provided crucial air power, reconnaissance, logistics, medical support and even expertise in psychological operations. One key source of that manpower has been training: Over the past year the Iraqi Army has added 52,000 soldiers; the Iraqi police and the national police have added 59,000; and Iraq special operations forces have added 1,400 troops, Lt. Gen. James M. Dubik, chief of the American security training and equipping mission, said last month. Yet another reason was that many troops were not tied down fighting Sunni insurgents in places like Anbar Province. That is thanks to the Sunni Awakening, and a related program in which the American military has paid thousands of former insurgents and militia fighters and made them neighborhood guards. “Our successes reduced the pressure on the Iraqi security forces by more than 50 percent,” said Sheik Hussain Abaid, the leader of one such pro-American group south of Baghdad. Ali Hatem al-Suleiman, an Awakening leader in Anbar, said an entire Army regiment of Anbari tribesmen was sent to fight in Mosul, while a division based in Anbar was rushed to Basra after commanders decided that a more stable security situation in Anbar meant the troops could be freed to fight elsewhere. Even Shiite government officials, long suspicious of the Awakening because it employs insurgents responsible for the deaths of Shiites, agreed. “Before, there was a security void in their areas, but they were able to fill it,” said Ali Adeeb, a senior official in the Dawa party and a close ally of Mr. Maliki. Defining a Military Victory But the government’s successes in Basra and Sadr City were not so much victories as heavy fighting followed by truces that allowed the militias to melt away with their weapons. “We may have wasted an opportunity in Basra to kill those that needed to be killed,” said one American defense official, who would speak candidly about the issue only if he was granted anonymity. And in Mosul, the celebrations over the performance of the Iraqis who fought there have glossed over the tremendous — but hidden — role played by American Special Operations forces to clear out the toughest enemy fighters before the Iraqi soldiers arrived in full. “It is underreported how much the secret guys did to set the conditions for the Iraqi Army to go in and do what they did,” the official said. What remains to be seen is whether the Iraqi government can capitalize on the operational successes with concrete steps that improve the lives of people in the three areas, like basic municipal services and economic opportunities. “The fear is unrealistic expectations,” the American defense official said. “Services do take time.” Failure to follow through could wipe out many of the gains in places like Hayaniya, one of Basra’s most deprived areas and a Sadrist stronghold, where residents already grumble that they have seen little evidence of improvement. “They said they will repair schools and roads — but when and where?” said Ali Alwan, 45. “It is only talk. We suffered during the military operation, but what is the reward?” Mr. Maliki’s operations against fellow Shiites in Basra and Sadr City have bought at least temporary political good will from Sunnis who long saw his Shiite-dominated government as the enemy. Interviews with three dozen Sunni merchants, academics, teachers, laborers, government officials and office workers in former insurgent strongholds like Falluja, Tikrit, and Baghdad’s Adhamiya, Amiriya and Fadhil neighborhoods suggested that the prime minister had gained some ground with a group whose loyalty is essential in building a unified and stable state. Abdul Hadi Jasim, a barber from Adhamiya, said, “Now, after one of the biggest Shiite militias that ravaged Basra was targeted, I think there is a sense of justice and fairness.” But old suspicions linger, and Sunnis remember the slaughter inflicted by Shiite militias from 2004 to 2007, and how Shiite death squads were protected by Iraqi security forces. In addition to the Mahdi Army, many Sunnis fear the Badr organization, the armed wing of the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq , a close ally of Mr. Maliki’s Dawa Party. Badr forces dominate some Iraqi security force units. “Maliki’s war was a selective one,” says Falah Muhammad Abdullah, 46, an engineer from Falluja. “Why does Maliki’s government hunt down the Mahdi militia while it neglects Badr?” Sunni Skepticism Remains Many Sunnis are convinced that Mr. Maliki is trying to serve other masters: Iran , the Americans, or his own Dawa Party and the Islamic Supreme Council. Both face a serious challenge from the Sadrists in provincial elections later this year. Mowafaq Abu Omar , a 52-year-old street merchant in Adhamiya, voiced a common suspicion — that the true aims of the Basra operation were to seize control of Iraq’s only significant port and to advance the creation of a large, autonomous and oil-rich Shiite super-province in the south. There is also less enthusiasm for the recent operation in western Mosul, which is largely Sunni. Eman al-Hayali, a teacher in Amiriya, praised Mr. Maliki for weakening Mr. Sadr’s Mahdi Army but said she feared the Mosul operation was intended to satisfy the Maliki government’s patrons in Iran and telegraph a message to Iran’s President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad : “Do not worry, your excellency, we are also killing Sunnis.’ ” With such suspicions just below the surface, stability would be jeopardized if former insurgents serving in the Awakening forces come to believe that they are being used by the Shiite-led government while getting little in return. “We are pleased with the government only regarding the war against the Shiite militias,” says Khalid al-Summaraie, a Sunni militia leader in Baghdad’s Fadhil neighborhood. He added pointedly, “They haven’t done anything for us that will give us a better standard of living.” Another important factor buoying Mr. Maliki has been the sharp rise in oil prices, which, among other things, has allowed the Iraqi central bank to buy back its currency at a feverish pace, forcing the value of the Iraqi dinar higher and limiting increases in consumer prices. Driven by higher food costs, inflation stood last month at the rate of 16 percent, up from 11 percent in January. But that rate might be a good deal higher without the central bank’s aggressive policies. The bank spends $1 billion to $1.5 billion every month in oil revenue to buy Iraqi dinars on the open market, said Mudher M. Salih Kasim, senior adviser to the bank. This is the main lever for controlling consumer prices, said Mr. Kasim, who noted that the value of the dinar had risen about 20 percent against the dollar. An oil price crash, he added, would be “a disaster.” The government is also trying to funnel money to placate Iraqis who endured the military operations in Sadr City, Mosul and Basra and cement their loyalty. Tahseen al-Sheikhly, a spokesman for the Baghdad security plan, said $100 million would go to Sadr City to upgrade economic and social conditions there in the wake of the two-month military operation, which left buildings shattered and markets destroyed. Dr. Safaa al-Deen al-Safi, who is charged with carrying out development and reconstruction activities, said another $100 million would be spent on areas like health and education. Reversible Gains The anti-government and anti-occupation forces have also stumbled. The Islamist Sunni insurgents alienated many Iraqis with a trail of blood and bans on alcohol and smoking . And as attacks on Shiite areas by Sunni insurgents dropped, Shiites who had looked to the Mahdi Army for self-defense were less willing to put up with abuses. But the improvements in Iraq face an array of destabilizing provincial, national and regional forces. The Sunni insurgency — now in many places operating as pro-American Awakening groups — continues to wait to see whether the government makes good on promises of jobs and a less sectarian administration of security and public services and infrastructure. The Sadrists remain powerful and may not forgive what many consider a betrayal by Mr. Maliki, who could not have become prime minister two years ago without their blessing. Mohanned al-Gharrawi, a senior Sadrist cleric in Baghdad, said, “We feel like a bridge that they used to reach their aims and goals, and then they left us behind.” Despite their newfound confidence, some senior Iraqi officials close to Mr. Maliki said that without an American military safety net they are vulnerable to threats from outside and inside their borders. One important but less-noticed element of the security negotiations has been Iraq’s effort to extract an American pledge to defend the government against foreign or domestic aggression. Mr. Adeeb, the top Maliki adviser, said officials wanted the Americans to protect the Iraqi government against anything the government viewed as a threat — not just what the Americans saw as a threat. “Our political system is weak, the terrorists and former regime members are sparing no effort to overthrow the system, and neighboring countries have their own ambitions,” Mr. Adeeb said. “Our army is not qualified to defend Iraq yet.”

Iraq
Nuri Kamal al-Maliki
Politics
Baghdad
Basra
Mosul
Security


Mets Win Again, but With 2 Injuries, ‘It’s Not a Good Day’

Abstract: The crowd at Citi Field was doing the wave in the seventh inning. The Mets had scored seven runs in the fourth and eventually defeated the Miami Marlins, 7-6, to win their eighth straight game and complete a four-game sweep on a Sunday afternoon when Matt Harvey pitched. But in the eighth inning, the trainer Ray Ramirez emerged in the Mets’ dugout to report that the left-handed reliever Jerry Blevins had fractured his left forearm after being hit by a comebacker earlier in the game. Soon after, Ramirez returned to say that catcher Travis d’Arnaud had fractured his right hand when he was hit by a pitch. As word spread, the Mets’ dugout went silent. Players went to the clubhouse to console Blevins and d’Arnaud. Soon, word spread throughout the ballpark, and the crowd became eerily quiet as well. “It’s not a good day,” Manager Terry Collins said afterward, his arms folded while leaning forward on a table. The Mets did not have a timetable for how long either player would be out; both were expected to be evaluated by doctors on Monday. The Mets said they would call up Kevin Plawecki, their promising prospect at catcher, and Hansel Robles, a right-handed pitcher. Collins had already experienced days like this. Dating to spring training, the Mets have lost Zack Wheeler, Josh Edgin, Vic Black and David Wright to various injuries and Jenrry Mejia to suspension. Adding Blevins and d’Arnaud, the Mets have lost two everyday position players, a starter and four relievers. Still, Sunday had started on a positive note. The Mets blitzed Marlins starter Tom Koehler, who gave up seven runs in three and a third innings. They sent 12 batters to the plate in the fourth to take a commanding lead. Harvey had been feeling sick the past few days, but he insisted on pitching and lasted six innings, striking out seven batters and holding the Marlins to four runs. The Mets were on their way to their eighth straight win, their longest winning streak since 2010. They had not swept a four-game series since 2011. The Mets have started a season 10-3 only two other times: in 2006 and 1986. Blevins relieved Harvey in the seventh inning, and the second batter he faced, Dee Gordon, hit a line drive off Blevins’s left forearm. Blevins fielded the ball and flipped it to first with his glove. But the crowd began murmuring as he was examined. The Mets traded for Blevins before this season so he could be their left-handed specialist out of the bullpen. He had done that, and more. He had pitched five innings this year and had not allowed a base runner. Then, in the bottom half of the inning, Marlins reliever A. J. Ramos threw a fastball that sailed high and inside and struck d’Arnaud on the hand. The crowd murmured again, as d’Arnaud bent over and clutched his hand. During the first few weeks of the season, d’Arnaud had emerged as one of the Mets’ better hitters. When Wright went down with a hamstring injury last week, Collins shifted d’Arnaud into the second spot in the lineup, and the move was seamless. In 11 games, he batted .317 and had driven in 10 runs, the most on the team. In the seven-run fourth, d’Arnaud had tallied two hits. “I can’t stress enough how invaluable Travis has been over the first two weeks of the season,” said Sandy Alderson, the general manager. “Both behind the plate and as a hitter. Some of the throwing that he’s done, blocking pitches — everything has improved defensively. And he’s been outstanding offensively as well.” But Alderson repeatedly said how fortunate the Mets were to have a replacement as talented as Plawecki ready to take over. A former first-round draft pick, Plawecki is considered a talented offensive catcher, just like d’Arnaud. Last year, Plawecki batted .309 in the minors and had 35 extra-base hits in 101 games. “He’s swinging the bat well now,” Alderson said. “Did a nice job for us in spring training. I have all the confidence in the world that Kevin will do a nice job for us.” As if the day could not get worse, the Mets also revealed that Black would have his shoulder re-examined. After pitching for Class AA Binghamton on Saturday, he felt more soreness. Bobby Parnell is also weeks away from returning from Tommy John surgery, and Wright is still at least a few weeks from returning, too. During his postgame news conference, Collins was asked who would bat second, in place of d’Arnaud, who was merely there replacing Wright. “I’m not that far yet,” Collins said. “I’m trying to absorb today. But there will be somebody there.”

Baseball
Matt Harvey
Travis d'Arnaud
Jerry Blevins
Mets
Miami Marlins


General Mills Tries to Put Focus on Whole Grains

Abstract: CEREAL is a mainstay of the American breakfast, but deciding among the numerous varieties can be daunting — just take a trip down a supermarket’s cereal aisle and try to parse the ingredients on any box. To help consumers sort through the options, General Mills is placing an emphasis on in-store signs and information along with social media as part of a new campaign to promote the whole grain content of its cereals. “We are re-energizing our whole-grain message to help consumers identify whole grains more easily,” said Adrienne Daniels, marketing manager for the campaign. “Our focus on in-store advertising is driven by our research that the whole grain choices are confusing.” The company began adding whole grains to its cereal in 2005, after federal dietary guidelines recommended daily food intake include whole grains. Its products, which include Cheerios, Cinnamon Toast Crunch, Fiber One and Total, each contain at least eight grams of whole grains per serving. General Mills says its cereals are a major source of whole grain for breakfast, and that whole grains can help with diabetes, weight control and reducing the risk of heart disease and even certain cancers. But federal regulators have taken issue with some cereal industry assertions, including in May 2009, when the Food and Drug Administration warned General Mills that it risked violating federal law with claims that its Cheerios Toasted Whole Grain Oat cereal helped reduce cholesterol. Talks are continuing to resolve the issue. General Mills, which is based in Minneapolis, is competing with the Kellogg Company in the $6.5 billion cereal industry. It had slightly less than the one-third of market share won by Kellogg last year, said Christopher Growe, an analyst at Stifel Nicolaus in St. Louis. General Mills is moving to close the gap by spending 20 percent more on its whole grains advertising in 2011, although it declined to disclose its overall spending on the campaign. The company advertises the whole grain content of its Big G cereal lineup, including Cheerios and Wheaties, separately from its advertising for individual cereal varieties. The company spent nearly $245 million on all cereal marketing in the first nine months of last year, according to figures from Kantar Media. • The new marketing campaign, developed with McCann Worldgroup, features a 30-second television spot showing a newspaper boy on his delivery route. It is an idealized landscape with a twist since the route is across America. The boy, riding his bicycle, is not distributing newspapers, but boxes of Cheerios and other whole grain cereals to doorsteps. Increasing the company’s presence in stores, Ms. Daniels said, will give consumers a shortcut or identifier to direct them to whole grain cereals. The company will include special banners at the ends of aisles, more displays, including on pallets and in Spanish, colorful balloons and information at the checkout, as well as pointing out the check marks for whole grain content from General Mills. Mike Nelson, McCann’s global business director for General Mills, said most consumers “know grains are good for you, but are not aware the degree to which cereals are so important to start the day.” Even though most adults know that whole grains are important in the diet, only 5 percent actually get the three daily servings, or 48 grams, recommended in the guidelines issued by the Agriculture Department. The average person consumes only about one-half of a whole grain serving daily. In a survey done by a research firm hired by General Mills, nearly half of those questioned thought bread was their primary source of whole grain, not cereal. For years, cereal makers have been battling with bread and pasta makers over which product has the higher whole grain content. • The General Mills survey found that 55 percent knew how to correctly identify whole grain on a food label, but 28 percent did not know the difference between “whole grain” and “enriched grain,” which can be white flour. Whole grain contains the entire grain kernel, and is found in ingredients like whole-wheat flour and oatmeal. “Whole grains is not an easy topic to grasp,” said Ellen Klosz, a nutritionist with Consumer Reports. “We know that if it is one of the first couple of ingredients in the ingredient line, the product should have more fiber. However, it can be confusing to consumers since it is not always clear that, for example, rolled oats are whole grains.” Whole grains are good, but consumers need to know whether a cereal contains whole grain from wheat or oats, or less-healthful whole grains from corn, said Jennifer L. Harris, who studies food marketing at the Rudd Center for Food Policy and Obesity at Yale. “They call us food nannies,” she said, “but people need to check the label.” To help the baffled consumer, Mr. Nelson said that the General Mills campaign was reaching out to bloggers, including the MyBlogSpark network of people who review new products and other “influencers” — people who set a buying example for others. Consumers can sign up with the company’s Web site, generalmills.com , to receive and review products and host get-togethers to try new items with friends. The whole-grains campaign is planning to give away one million servings of its whole grain cereals to needy families to spur consumption, although the company has not yet announced specifics of the giveaway. The campaign also created a series of pro-whole grain videos with a company nutritionist and Dr. Travis Stork, a host of “The Doctors” daytime talk show.

Cereals
Advertising and Marketing
General Mills Incorporated
Diet and Nutrition
Grain


In Special Education Cases, City Is Fighting Harder Before Paying for Private School

Abstract: New York City, at the suggestion of private consultants, is significantly ramping up its effort to challenge cases in which it pays for private school tuition of children with disabilities whose parents say they are ill-served by the public schools. In their final report to the city, the consultants from the firm Alvarez & Marsal — which is best known for its role in the Education Department’s decision to change school bus routes last winter — found that the city had lost “numerous” legal cases. The consultants said it “was forced to pay millions of dollars in private school tuition for students that could have been adequately served by our public school system,” not because of the cases’ merits but “due to staffing level deficiencies.” The city, the consultants wrote, has already acted on their advice, more than doubling the size of its special education legal team by adding five lawyers and a dozen paralegals. The effort, they estimated, will save the city $25 million a year in private school tuition. Advocates of special education criticized the move. “I don’t think they are paying private school tuition because they don’t have good lawyers,” said Kim Sweet, the executive director of Advocates for Children. “I think they lose these hearings because they don’t have good programs.” Ms. Sweet added, “I would rather see them pour resources into special education services than lawyers.” Since Alvarez & Marsal was hired more than a year ago under a $15.8 million contract to scour the school system for savings, the firm has been a flashpoint for controversy because its contract was awarded without competitive bidding, and because of its role in the decision to change the bus routes. The change was intended to save millions of dollars but ended up leaving children stranded in the cold, parents infuriated and officials saying the department was out of touch with the public. In the report, released on Tuesday, the consultants characterized their work for the city as a success, saying that while they were brought in to find $200 million in savings, they found $290 million. The report also suggested that the city was at least partly to blame for the bus debacle. In an interview, Sajan P. George, a managing director at Alvarez & Marsal, said he thought the bus controversy “overshadowed” the firm’s other work. Federal law allows parents to seek public financing for private schools if they can show that the public schools cannot adequately serve their children. The city’s payment of such tuition for special education students drew renewed attention earlier this year. In October, the United States Supreme Court split evenly in a case about whether the city should reimburse the private school tuition that Tom Freston, the former chief executive of Viacom, paid for his learning-disabled son. The decision, in which one justice recused himself, left standing an appeals court ruling in favor of Mr. Freston. Michael Best, the Education Department’s general counsel, said that over the years, the numbers of these cases had increased substantially. As recently as three years ago, he said, the city made little effort to challenge them, sending nonlawyers to represent the department at hearings. But in the past couple of years, he said, the city created a unit of 10 lawyers, specifically to fight the cases. “In the past you’d have clinicians, social workers, whoever the system would send to handle these cases, and they weren’t lawyers, and there was an active plaintiffs’ bar on the other side that’s suing,” Mr. Best said. Last year, as a result of administrative or court rulings, the city spent $57 million to educate 3,675 special education children whose parents had rejected the public schools. Mr. Best said that the consultants’ estimate that $25 million could be saved sounded “reasonable,” but that it was difficult to say how much of that would be savings — and how much of it would simply chip away at the rate of growth. The report also advised the department to hire six “transportation liaisons” to ensure that only students who are truly in need of the more costly special education bus service receive it. The consultants also further explained last winter’s bus fiasco. They said the city lacked accurate data about previous bus routes and ridership. “Without accurate data to create new routes,” the report said, “the routes will be inherently flawed.” The consultants also faulted the city’s communications strategy, saying that “even with extensive outreach to schools, communication efforts did not sufficiently engage parents.” In the interview, Mr. George said part of the problem was that the city contracts busing to several companies, which have no incentive to keep down costs by, for example, notifying the city when no children get on at a particular stop. “If there’s a regret, it’s that the larger community didn’t realize that the bus vendors were ripping off the school system, and we didn’t have any idea of who was riding the bus,” Mr. George added.

Special Education (Handicapped)
New York City
Education and Schools
Education Department


Pentagon Officials Say They’re Willing to Assume Risks of a Reduced Army

Abstract: WASHINGTON — In shrinking the United States Army to its smallest size since 1940, Pentagon officials said Monday that they were willing to assume more risk the next time troops are called to war. But assuming more risk, they acknowledged, meant that more of those troops would probably die. “You have fewer troops, fewer ships, fewer planes,” Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel said at a Pentagon news conference on Monday as he formally unveiled the department’s $496 billion budget for the 2015 fiscal year. “Readiness is not the same standard. Of course there’s going to be risk.” Gen. Martin E. Dempsey, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, also warned of higher risks during a news conference on Monday. He said that if additional cuts are imposed under the across-the-board mandatory reductions known as sequestration, “the risks grow, and the options we can provide the nation dramatically shrink.” He said a smaller Army must not only serve the needs of the country but also provide battlefield support to other segments of the military. “At the end of the day, it’s our soldiers, sailors, airmen, Marines, Coast Guardsmen — America’s sons and daughters — who will face tomorrow’s challenges with the strategy, structure and resources that we develop today,” General Dempsey said. Under Mr. Hagel’s proposed budget, the Army would drop to 440,000 to 450,000 troops by 2019, down from a peak of 570,000 during the height of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. The Army, which bore the brunt of the fighting and casualties in the wars, was already scheduled to drop to 490,000 troops. The National Guard and reserves, which were costly to train for Iraq and Afghanistan to meet the standards of their full-time counterparts, would face smaller reductions, although the Guard’s arsenal would change to focus more on domestic disaster relief. Many defense experts interviewed Monday said that given the budget realities, the decision to cut back on the Army made sense, even with the increased risk. One goal of reducing personnel costs, for example, is to find more money for training and weapons. Given that President Obama has said he wants to move away from a permanent war footing, budgetary gains would come from not having to carry a large land-war invasion army when the country is no longer engaged in such invasions. “You can’t buy perfect security,” said Lawrence J. Korb, an assistant secretary of defense in the Reagan administration and a defense expert at the Center for American Progress . “How many tank battalions do you want to have? When do you expect to be using them?” Michèle Flournoy, a former top Pentagon official in the Obama administration, said the country was unlikely to find itself engaged in two large simultaneous ground wars like Iraq and Afghanistan anytime soon. “If we got that prediction wrong, there would be some risk in terms of needing to grow the force quickly to try to cope with a second large and sustained ground campaign,” she said. “It’s a calculated risk, but one that I think is reasonable.” Other military experts said a smaller Pentagon budget would mean cutting back on training and forgoing repairs for some equipment. If a crisis erupts, they said, the military could still mobilize troops, but they might not be as prepared, at least not initially. “The Army won’t say, ‘You haven’t given us any money to train these guys — we need six months to get there,’ ” if American troops were suddenly called up, said Maren Leed, a defense expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies and a former adviser to Gen. Ray Odierno, the Army chief of staff. “They’ll send them anyway, and then more of them are going to die. The military will always respond to the need.” On Tuesday, Mr. Hagel is to visit Joint Base Langley-Eustis in Virginia and discuss the future of the Army.

US Military
Federal Budget
Pentagon
Chuck Hagel


Haas Joins a Qualifier in Advancing

Abstract: WASHINGTON (AP) — Fourth-seeded Tommy Haas defeated the qualifier Rik De Voest, 6-4, 4-6, 6-1, Monday to advance to the second round of the Legg Mason Classic. “I just started converting on the big points much better,” said Haas, the highest-seeded player in action on the first full day of the tournament. “I missed a couple shots, and he came up with a good shot, and the next thing you know, he won the second set.” In the first Center Court match of the day, the qualifier Somdev Devvarman earned his first ATP win, 7-6 (3), 2-6, 6-1, over Taylor Dent. Devvarman — a two-time N.C.A.A. singles champion — joined the tour in June after graduating from Virginia but has played primarily in Futures and Challengers events. “I was a little nervous out there, to be honest with you,” Devvarman said. “But after the first few games, that wore off.” Devvarman lost in the first round of the Legg Mason the past two years. In 2006 he was granted a wild-card entry into the field, and last year he qualified for a berth. After winning the first-set tie breaker, Devvarman said he lost focus in the second set before coming back for the win. “He made me play a set I wasn’t happy with,” Devvarman said. Dent, a wild-card entry in the tournament, was making his second appearance since two operations to repair broken vertebrae last year. He also lost in the first round of the Hall of Fame Tennis Championships in Newport, R.I., in July. Dent won four ATP Tour events and reached No. 21 in the world in 2005 before his injuries. “My back feels great,” Dent said. “That’s the exciting part, that I’m not really being held back by any of my injuries.” In other early matches, Dudi Sela defeated Vincent Spadea, 7-6 (6), 6-3, and Florent Serra beat Uladzimir Ignatik, 7-6 (3), 6-3.


Who’d Import Pigs to Israel? Ancient Europeans, Researchers Say

Abstract: JERUSALEM — Israel may not be the most obvious place to study pigs, given that religious strictures in both Judaism and Islam forbid their consumption. But Israeli researchers involved in a lengthy project whose goal is to reconstruct ancient Israel have now established that the pigs here are of European stock, unlike their Middle Eastern counterparts elsewhere in the region, and that they probably arrived with the non-kosher Philistines about 3,000 years ago. In the highlands west of the Jordan River associated with the early Israelites, archaeological studies have shown there are almost no ancient pig bones. The exceptionally high number of pig bones found in the lowlands, at what were urban Philistine sites like Ashkelon and Ekron, has given rise to the theory that the Philistines, sea people who migrated here from the Aegean basin, brought their culinary and husbandry habits with them. A new study based on DNA testing of modern and ancient pigs has revealed that the European emigrant pigs became prominent during the Iron Age, around 900 B.C., and eventually took over the entire wild boar population in the area that is now Israel. The study, published Monday in the journal Scientific Reports, is part of a long-term project in which Israeli researchers are examining the large migrations, trade, climate changes and other forces that shaped and changed the Levant in antiquity. Understanding human and animal movement is crucial to that process, said Israel Finkelstein, a professor at Tel Aviv University’s Institute of Archaeology, who directs the project. “We archaeologists know that pigs and pork consumption are two very good markers of ethnicity and identity,” he said, given the pig taboo in ancient Israel. Waste-eating pigs may have been good for keeping ships clean, he said, but they could not move great distances over land, so raising pigs might have become a marker distinguishing the Israelites, who were originally pastoral nomads, from sedentary societies. When animosity developed between the highlands and the lowlands, as depicted in biblical stories like the battle between David and the Philistine giant Goliath, pigs could have symbolized a “we and they” theme, Professor Finkelstein said, as in, “They eat pork, and we don’t.” The researchers began more than two years ago by mapping the modern wild boar population of Israel. Meirav Meiri, an expert in ancient DNA, tested preserved pig samples from all over the country — a piece of an ear, a sliver of skin — and found that all possessed the European gene signature. That came as a surprise, she said, given that studies of pigs in nearby countries like Egypt, Iran, Iraq, Syria and Turkey had shown they were all of a Middle Eastern gene type. European and Middle Eastern pigs do not look much different, but the DNA results raised the question of how the “Ashkenazi” pigs of European stock got here. Working back through centuries of pig bones and teeth gathered from various collections and archaeological sites, Dr. Meiri painstakingly tested 177 ancient samples, including 34 with DNA preserved well enough to determine their genetic origin. Large numbers of European pigs appeared in Israel around 900 B.C. and became more and more dominant until they had taken over completely. “Once we had a local signature,” Dr. Meiri said of the genetic makeup of the pigs found here in antiquity, but that “no longer exists.” The researchers assume that the Philistines brought domesticated pigs with them and that some of those pigs ran off into the wild and mixed with the local population. But for the European pigs to have taken over so completely, the experts say, there may have been more waves of emigrant pigs from Europe, from the time of the Romans onward. “Here, there’s an island of pigs with European ancestry,” said Steve Weiner, a professor at the Weizmann Institute of Science in Rehovot, Israel, who is a partner in the project, which is funded by a grant from the European Research Council. “We don’t know if Napoleon brought pigs, or the Crusaders, or if they all did.” “Archaeologists,” he concluded, “take pigs very seriously.”

Pig
Israel
Archaeology
Research
Scientific Reports Journal


Bruins Prevail on Late Goal Against Flyers

Abstract: Brett Connolly redirected Zdeno Chara’s shot from the point with 1 minute 54 seconds left, lifting the Boston Bruins to a 3-2 win over the host Philadelphia Flyers. Boston’s Tuukka Rask stopped 34 shots in his return after he was scratched late Saturday night with an undisclosed injury. ■ Cam Atkinson had his third career hat trick and Brandon Saad scored twice to help the host Columbus Blue Jackets beat the struggling Montreal Canadiens, 5-2, ending a three-game losing streak. ■ Columbus Blue Jackets Coach John Tortorella was expected to miss the team’s home-and-home series against the Montreal Canadiens after he sustained two broken ribs in a fall during an outdoor practice last week. Tortorella broke the ribs in a collision on Friday with Blue Jackets forward Rene Bourque after Bourque lost his balance skating over a rut in the ice. (REUTERS)

Ice hockey
Blue Jackets
Montreal Canadiens
John Tortorella
Bruins
Flyers


Georgia: 21 Charged After Inquiry Finds Alzheimer’s Patients Were Abused

Abstract: Twenty-one people were charged Tuesday after the Georgia Bureau of Investigation said it found widespread abuse of patients at a specialized care facility northeast of Atlanta. The bureau said its review had found that employees at Alzheimer’s Care of Commerce had struck patients, delayed changing diapers and used bedsheets as restraining devices. The inquiry also uncovered that people with felony convictions were involved in patient care, a violation of state regulations. The authorities filed more than 70 charges against current and former facility employees. The center’s owner, Donna Wright, was among those charged.

Georgia
Alzheimer's
Atlanta
Old age,elderly,senior citizens
Elder abuse
Abuse of the Disabled


Israeli Leader Sees No Quick End to Gaza War

Abstract: JERUSALEM — An informal lull between Israel and Hamas timed for the start of a Muslim holiday collapsed into deadly violence on Monday and Israel’s prime minister signaled no quick end to the three-week-old Gaza war, advising Israelis that “patience and determination” were needed. Despite intensifying outside pressure for a cease-fire, no diplomatic way out was in sight. A day of relatively low-level hostilities erupted by late afternoon into a series of bloody events in quick succession. An explosion at Gaza’s Shati refugee camp killed 10 Palestinians, mostly children playing outdoors, and another blast damaged an outside wall of Gaza’s main hospital compound. Hamas blamed Israel for both strikes but the Israeli military insisted it had not carried out any attacks in those areas and said the blasts were caused by misfired Hamas rockets meant to hit Israel. Mortar rounds fired from Gaza killed four Israeli soldiers at a staging area on the Israeli side of the border, and Palestinian gunmen emerged from a tunnel running beneath the border and clashed with Israeli soldiers. The military said the gunmen had intended to attack civilians in a nearby Israeli border community. One militant was killed in the clash. There were reports of more Israeli casualties but the military did not provide details. “We will not complete the operation without neutralizing the tunnels,” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel said in a televised address. “This is the clear and unequivocal objective of the state of Israel and the need for it has been apparent again today.” Mr. Netanyahu did not announce any immediate change in the stated goals of the operation, which have been defined as severely damaging Hamas’s rocket and tunnel infrastructure, but all the indications were that the fighting would intensify. Image At a morgue in Gaza City, Palestinians mourned the arrival of children killed in the Gaza conflict. Credit Wissam Nassar for The New York Times By Monday evening the Israeli military said it had warned Palestinian civilians in several areas of the eastern and northern Gaza Strip to evacuate their homes “immediately,” through phone calls and text messages, and it stepped up airstrikes and shelling in the north and south of the Gaza Strip, killing at least 23 Palestinians overnight, according to the Gaza Health Ministry. A fifth Israeli soldier was killed in combat in southern Gaza and Hamas fired rockets deep into Israel. At around midnight flares lit up Gaza City, and early Tuesday morning Israeli warplanes attacked the house of Ismail Haniya, the deputy chief of the Hamas movement, in the Shati refugee camp on the western edge of the city, according to witnesses and the Hamas news media. Moshe Yaalon, the Israeli defense minister, spoke of a campaign that could last “more long days.” “If the terrorist organizations in Gaza think they can break Israel and its citizens,” Mr. Yaalon said, “they will come to understand in the next few days that this is not the case.” International pressure for a cease-fire has grown with alarm over the soaring casualty figures, mostly in Gaza. More than 1,100 Palestinians have been killed, the majority civilians, according to the Health Ministry in Gaza. At least 48 Israeli soldiers and three civilians on the Israeli side have been killed. The secretary-general of the United Nations, Ban Ki-moon, joined the Security Council in calling for an immediate and unconditional cease-fire, telling reporters in New York, “Gaza is in a critical condition. Israeli missiles have pummeled Gaza. Hamas rockets have randomly struck Israel.” Video Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel said the country must be prepared for a lengthy military campaign in the Gaza Strip. Credit Credit Gil Cohen Magen/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images Mr. Netanyahu criticized the Security Council’s statement earlier Monday, saying that it “related to the needs of a murderous terrorist organization that attacks Israeli citizens,” referring to Hamas, “and does not address the security needs of Israel.” Mr. Netanyahu reiterated his demand that the demilitarization of the Gaza Strip “must be part of any solution.” In Washington, Secretary of State John Kerry, who spent much of last week in a frustrated effort to achieve even a temporary halt to the fighting, said, “We also believe that any process to resolve the crisis in Gaza in a lasting and meaningful way must lead to the disarmament of Hamas and all terrorist groups.” He also clearly referenced the Egyptian proposal for a cease-fire and a role for the Palestinian Authority after his effort fell short and was harshly criticized by Israelis and the West Bank-based Palestinian leadership. Obama administration officials said Monday that the criticism of Mr. Kerry was unwarranted. The day began with a fragile, unsigned calm meant to usher in Eid al-Fitr, the holiday that ends the Muslim holy month of Ramadan. Lt. Col. Peter Lerner, a spokesman for the Israeli military, said the army had “toned down its activities” and was only “combating tunnels on the one hand and responding to Hamas aggression on the other.” After three weeks of hostilities broken only by a couple of brief humanitarian pauses, Eid al-Fitr was supposed to offer respite to both sides and stirred hopes that the hiatus could create the basis for a more formal cease-fire. The Toll in Gaza and Israel, Day by Day The daily tally of rocket attacks, airstrikes and deaths in the conflict between Israel and Hamas. People came out onto the streets in Gaza City and displaced families filled the Unknown Soldiers Park. But the respite’s short duration was foreshadowed early in the day when several rockets and mortars were fired into Israel, and the Israeli military responded with an airstrike and artillery fire, killing a Palestinian man and a 4-year-old boy, according to the Health Ministry in Gaza. The back-and-forth volleying extended into the afternoon, then disaster struck. Munther al-Dirby, 25, said he was sitting on a sidewalk in Gaza City’s Shati refugee camp watching children play when two missiles crashed down. “I grabbed my son and when I looked up, everyone was scattered in the street,” he said. Two small craters punctured the asphalt. Shrapnel had shattered the windows of cars and sprayed holes in nearby walls. As ambulances brought the dead one-by-one from the hospital back to the neighborhood, young men held the bodies aloft on stretchers and crowds followed them to the cemetery, chanting, “God is Great!” and “Children are the beloved of God.” At around the same time another explosion collapsed part of a wall surrounding a building belonging to Shifa Hospital. The blast left a two-foot-deep crater but caused no injuries. The building was marked as an outpatient department but it was clear that it was unused, with missing windows and closed gate. The Interior Ministry in Gaza said that Israel’s assertion that Palestinian rockets were responsible for the strikes at Shifa and the Shati camp was “a failed attempt to escape from its responsibility for these crimes” and said the bomb squad had “seized remains and ordnance of Israeli shells that landed in these places.” The Israeli military said its radars and sensors had detected the paths of four “terrorist rockets” fired at that time and distributed an aerial photograph tracing their routes. Besides the two that landed at Shifa and Shati, the military said, one fell into the sea and the other was intercepted by Israel’s Iron Dome antimissile defense system en route to the southern Israeli city of Ashkelon.

Israel
Palestinians
Hamas
Gaza Strip
Benjamin Netanyahu
Ramadan
Islam