From the Band’s Music, the Weight Builds a Future

Abstract: Gamely traversing his native Woodstock on a rainy weekday recently, the guitarist Jim Weider pointed out its onetime cultural hot spots, ending at Levon Helm Studios , which stands as a wooden shrine to its creator, the co-founder of the Band and a latter-day link to Woodstock’s post-festival heyday. The studios’ bookings have dropped off since Mr. Helm died in April 2012 , shaking the tight-knit Woodstock community. But Mr. Weider, who collaborated with Mr. Helm for 25 years, 15 of them as a member of the Band, and other surviving members of the Helm inner circle have formed the Weight, an ensemble dedicated to playing the Band’s songs — and keeping the spirit alive. “We want to try and keep the tradition going,” he said. As word about the Weight’s formation has spread, the demand for tickets has been strong. The group’s last date, a rousing late-December performance at the Helm studios, was, like most of the 20 or so concerts the Weight has put on, sold out. On Jan. 8, the group will appear at City Winery in Manhattan, which has added a second show to meet the demand. The band will also appear at Daryl’s House in Pawling, N.Y., on Feb. 20. The performances have inspired dancing in the aisles, reflecting the continued appeal of favorites like “ The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down ,” “ Up on Cripple Creek ” and “ The Weight ,” songs Mr. Weider cited as “anchors” of the show. “The Weight” — whose laid-back call to “take a load off Fanny” helped define the Woodstock ethos — has, Mr. Weider said, emerged as the band’s de facto anthem. Image Mr. Weider Credit Suzy Allman for The New York Times The response to the effort owes in part to the authority conferred on it by the band’s lineage. All of the Weight’s members — Mr. Weider, Randy Ciarlante on drums, Byron Isaacs on bass, and Brian Mitchell and Marty Grebb on keyboards — played with Mr. Helm or the other founding members of the Band whom they survive, the keyboardist Richard Manuel and the bassist Rick Danko , who died in 1986 and 1999, respectively. The Weight thus lays claim to the Band’s legacy. That claim is bolstered by the group’s treatment of the material: rough-hewed and hard-charging in the manner of the original, with Mr. Weider, 63, leading the charge. A plain-spoken graduate of Onteora High School who still plays the Fender Telecaster he bought for $340 in 1971, Mr. Weider met Mr. Helm when the guitarist was a teenager working as a clerk in a Woodstock record store in the late 1960s. The attraction was immediate and lifelong. “Levon loved Jimmy like a little brother,” said Barbara O’Brien, the longtime general manager of the Helm studios and a Woodstock native. Mr. Weider said the brotherly feeling was mutual. The two musicians’ working relationship began in the late ’70s, when Mr. Weider, having returned to Woodstock after building a reputation in Nashville and Atlanta, joined the Levon Helm All Stars. The relationship grew and, in 1985, Mr. Helm asked him to join the Band, which had been reconstituted after its breakup following the departure of the guitarist Robbie Robertson. If the history at this point seems a distant echo, that is no surprise. As Mr. Weider pointed out, sounds have been muted at so many of the music spots that once hummed with activity. The Joyous Lake, an unassuming room where the jazz bassist Charles Mingus once traded stage time with rock ‘n’ roll stars appearing under pseudonyms, had become a clothing store. The Sled Hill Café, where Mr. Weider schmoozed with the guitarists Buzz Feiten and Tim Hardin, had been reduced to a plot of grass, while a grassy plot that served as the site for so-called sound-outs, small gatherings that presaged the 1969 Woodstock festival, had given way to suburban-style housing. Image Tape from Mr. Helm’s mixer board. Credit Suzy Allman for The New York Times Most telling, perhaps, the Bearsville Studios, once fashioned by the manager Albert Grossman as the Band’s recording headquarters, appeared to have become a dumping ground. Standing in the driving rain at the top of a long and winding Speare Road just west of Woodstock proper, Mr. Weider, who had not seen the building for nearly a decade, peered at it in obvious dismay. “It’s a shame,” he said. Back at the Helm studios, printed set lists from a past performance lay untouched on the bandstand. The studios’ rooms, 5,000 square feet of space in all, lay silent, save for the conversation of Mr. Weider, Ms. O’Brien and Mr. Ciarlante, and the rain hitting the roof of the wooden structure. Little work had been done to the physical structure, inside or out, since Mr. Helm’s death, Ms. O’Brien said. But without Mr. Helm as a drawing card, the atmosphere had changed, with the demand for the space weakening, though to her he remained a white-hot presence — and she intended to keep the flame alive. “He never gave up,” she said, “and we don’t want to give up.” Mr. Ciarlante echoed the sentiment. A native of nearby Saugerties who, on Mr. Weider’s recommendation, became a member of the Band in 1991, he recalled the raucous weekly Midnight Ramble concerts and the buoyant after-hours recording sessions — “We did a lot of laughing,” he said. And, with the Weight gaining notice, he held out the prospect of more good times. As the new year unfolds, the Weight plans to spread the good times beyond the Northeast, having scheduled an increasing number of concerts in the Midwest and the South. The set lists, likewise, will probably expand as Mr. Weider reaches deeper into the Band’s catalog. Already, he said, he had unearthed songs the Band had rarely played in its later years, like “ The Rumor ,” “ Look Out Cleveland ” and “ Forbidden Fruit .” “Carrying on the music again is what Levon would have wanted,” he said.

Music
Woodstock NY
Rock music
City Winery
Levon Helm Studios
Jim Weider
The Band
the Weight
Levon Helm


Earnhardt Returns to Track

Abstract: Dale Earnhardt Jr. is returning to racing at Martinsville Speedway on Sunday after a nearly three-week absence caused by a crash at Talladega on Oct. 7 that left him with his second concussion in six weeks. He was examined and cleared to return on Tuesday. Earnhardt said the concussion he sustained at Talladega left him emotional and filled with anxiety.

Earnhardt Dale Jr
Automobile Racing
National Assn of Stock Car Auto Racing


Bill Simmons Suspended by ESPN for Tirade on Roger Goodell

Abstract: On Monday, ESPN’s Bill Simmons challenged his employer to discipline him for excoriating N.F.L. Commissioner Roger Goodell’s handling of the Ray Rice domestic violence case. Simmons, on his Grantland.com podcast, repeatedly called Goodell a liar for saying that he had not seen the elevator video of Rice punching his fiancée. Simmons calmly delivered his harshly critical remarks while peppering them with obscenity — an incendiary brew, especially considering ESPN’s business relationship with the N.F.L. on “Monday Night Football,” the college draft and other programming. ESPN did not wait long to discipline Simmons. On Wednesday, it suspended him for three weeks from all his activities: a long menu that includes columnist, podcast host, editor in chief of Grantland and executive producer of the 30 for 30 documentary series. “Every employee must be accountable to ESPN and those engaged in our editorial operations must also operate within ESPN’s journalistic standards,” the company said in a statement. “We have worked hard to ensure that our recent N.F.L. coverage has met that criteria.” Image ESPN suspended Bill Simmons for three weeks. Credit Amy Sussman/Getty Images The New Yorker Simmons, ESPN said, “did not meet those obligations.” On his Grantland podcast, Simmons said: “Goodell, if he didn’t know what was on that tape, he’s a liar. I’m just saying it. He is lying. I think that dude is lying. If you put him up on a lie-detector test, that guy would fail.” He added: “I really hope somebody calls me or emails me and says I’m in trouble for anything I say about Roger Goodell, because if one person says that to me, I’m going public. You leave me alone.” ESPN has removed the podcast from the Grantland website. This is the third suspension for Simmons in his career at ESPN, and the most serious. In 2009 and 2013, he was barred from using Twitter for messages that violated company guidelines. In the latter case, he said that a quarrel on ESPN2’s “First Take” between Skip Bayless and the Seattle Seahawks was “awful and embarrassing.” Simmons was unavailable for comment on the latest ESPN action against him. Simmons’s latest suspension is not the first one at ESPN connected to the Rice case. In July, Stephen A. Smith, a commentator on “First Take,” was discussing Rice and the two-game suspension that Goodell initially imposed. In rambling remarks, Smith suggested that women should avoid provoking men into assaulting them. He was soon after suspended from a week from “First Take” and his ESPN Radio show. ESPN has not publicly offered its rationale about the length of its suspensions. In 2012, ESPN suspended Max Bretos, an anchor, for using the term “chink in the armor” in reference to Jeremy Lin. In 2010, Tony Kornheiser got a two-week suspension for comments about an outfit worn by Hannah Storm, a “SportsCenter” anchor.

Football
ESPN
Bill Simmons
Roger Goodell
Domestic violence
Ray Rice
NFL
Super Bowl
Super Bowl 2015
TV


Nebraska Bans Death Penalty, Defying a Veto

Abstract: LINCOLN, Neb. — Nebraska on Wednesday became the first conservative state in more than 40 years to abolish the death penalty, with lawmakers defying their Republican governor, Pete Ricketts, a staunch supporter of capital punishment who had lobbied vigorously against banning it. After more than two hours of emotional speeches at the Capitol here, the Legislature, by a 30-to-19 vote that cut across party lines, overrode the governor’s veto of a bill repealing the state’s death penalty law. After the repeal measure passed, by just enough votes to overcome the veto, dozens of spectators in the balcony burst into celebration. The vote capped a monthslong battle that pitted most lawmakers in the unicameral Legislature against the governor, many law enforcement officials and some family members of murder victims whose killers are on death row. The Legislature approved the repeal bill three times this year, each time by a veto-proof majority, before sending it to Mr. Ricketts’s desk. Adding to the drama, two senators who had previously voted for repeal switched to support the governor at the last minute. Opponents of the death penalty here were able to build a coalition that spanned the ideological spectrum by winning the support of Republican legislators who said they believed capital punishment was inefficient, expensive and out of place with their party’s values, as well as that of lawmakers who cited religious or moral reasons for supporting the repeal. Nebraska joins 18 other states and Washington, D.C., in banning the death penalty. Though it is not clear that other Republican-dominated states will follow Nebraska’s example, Wednesday’s vote came at a time when liberals and conservatives have been finding common ground on a range of criminal justice issues in Washington and around the country. In other states, Democrats and Republicans driven by different motivations have formed alliances to limit the revenue that towns can collect from traffic fines; to crack down on civil asset forfeiture, a practice that disproportionately affects the poor; and to ease mandatory prison sentences. On the presidential trail, Hillary Rodham Clinton and Senators Ted Cruz and Rand Paul have all called for easing mandatory minimum sentences, while other Republican candidates have embraced proposals to revamp bail and expand drug treatment that have also been championed by Democrats. Though it formally considers itself nonpartisan, the Nebraska Legislature is dominated by Republicans. Image The Nebraska Legislature during a debate before the vote. Credit Andrew Dickinson for The New York Times Mr. Ricketts, who fought against the repeal bill by appearing repeatedly in television interviews and urging Nebraskans to pressure their senators to oppose it, immediately denounced the vote. “My words cannot express how appalled I am that we have lost a critical tool to protect law enforcement and Nebraska families,” he said in a statement. “While the Legislature has lost touch with the citizens of Nebraska, I will continue to stand with Nebraskans and law enforcement on this important issue.” In a debate that was by turns somber, fiery and soul-searching, with sprinklings of quotes from Ruth Bader Ginsburg, John Paul Stevens and the Book of Genesis, senators stood to make last-minute pitches to try to persuade the undecided. Some said that capital punishment should be retained as a tool to punish the most heinous crimes. Others said that the death penalty, which has not been used in Nebraska since 1997, was irretrievably broken. “Today we are doing something that transcends me, that transcends this Legislature, that transcends this state,” said Senator Ernie Chambers, an independent from Omaha who sponsored the bill and has fought against the death penalty for decades. “We are talking about human dignity.” A few senators argued that Nebraskans were still broadly in favor of capital punishment, even if many Republicans in the Legislature had turned away from it. Others said that they were deeply conflicted about their vote to retain the death penalty. “Today I will sustain the governor’s veto because I campaigned on it,” said Senator Tyson Larson, two hours into the debate. “This might be the last time I give the state the right to take a life, because I don’t think that they necessarily should.” The bill replaces capital punishment with life imprisonment. The vote on Wednesday came just a day after Mr. Ricketts signed a veto of the death penalty repeal bill in front of reporters assembled at the Capitol and talked about a gruesome bank robbery in the city of Norfolk in 2002 in which five people were shot to death as a compelling reason that Nebraska should hold on to capital punishment. Two family members of a woman who was shot during the robbery stood at the governor’s side. Some Nebraskans said in interviews this week that they agreed with the governor. “I’m sure small-town, rural Nebraska communities are furious about the repeal,” said Chris Spargen, a project specialist in his mid-20s, as he rode his bike down a main thoroughfare in Ashland, 30 miles outside Omaha. “I guess I’m technically falling under that as well.” In downtown Ceresco, Neb., about 18 miles north of Lincoln, Wayne Ambrosias, owner of the Sweet Pea Market, said he did not want his tax dollars used to pay for murderers to stay in prison for their entire lives. And he echoed the governor’s statement that the lawmakers who supported the death penalty repeal bill were out of touch with a widely conservative public. Image Gov. Pete Ricketts Credit Kristin Streff/Lincoln Journal Star, via Associated Press “I don’t think the politicians are in line with the everyday people,” Mr. Ambrosias said on Wednesday, just before the vote. “I think it’s more of a political move. I don’t think the people are telling them that’s what they want.” But others said they saw the issue differently, rejecting the argument that the death penalty was necessary to deter crime. “A lot of times, murder is a crime of passion,” said Don Johnson, a retired commercial fisherman from Alaska now living in Ceresco. “I don’t think they think about the death penalty when they kill somebody or somebody gets killed. I don’t think it’s a preventative measure at all.” Mr. Johnson, who considers himself an evangelical Protestant, said he saw the issue less as a religious belief than a strictly personal one. Other members of his church are in favor of the death penalty, he said, though he admitted he could not quite reconcile the punishment with Christianity. “If you really follow Jesus’s teachings,” he said, “thou shall not kill, you know.” Catholic bishops in Nebraska issued a statement on Tuesday criticizing Mr. Ricketts’s veto. “We remain convinced that the death penalty does not deter crime, nor does it make Nebraska safer or promote the common good in our state,” they said. Since 2007, six states have abolished the death penalty: Maryland, Connecticut, Illinois, New Mexico and New Jersey. According to the Death Penalty Information Center, a research group opposed to the death penalty, no conservative state has banned capital punishment since North Dakota in 1973. The center defines a conservative state as having voted Republican in the two most recent presidential elections. Across the country, efforts to execute criminals on death row have stalled in the face of growing backlash against the death penalty and logistical difficulties with lethal injections. Many states have had difficulty obtaining lethal injection drugs, as European manufacturers, citing moral and ethical objections, have refused to sell them to prisons in the United States. Texas, which executes more inmates than any other state, has only enough drugs to carry out one more lethal injection. Searching for alternatives in the face of drug shortages, some states have taken other measures. In March, the Utah governor signed a law allowing firing squads to be used for executions, and Arkansas, Wyoming and Idaho have considered replacing lethal injections with firing squads. Mr. Ricketts tried to ward off concerns about the availability of drugs by announcing this month that he had made arrangements with a pharmaceutical company to obtain the necessary drugs for lethal injections. Some lawmakers said that the governor had not actually obtained the drugs, asserting that he was trying to sway legislators to uphold his veto. Those lawmakers have also raised questions about whether those drugs would be legal to use if the governor had obtained them.

Nebraska
Capital punishment
Pete Ricketts
State legislature
Legislation


A Tale of Two Recessions and World Markets, Turned on Their Heads

Abstract: WHAT’S in a date? On Oct. 9, 2002, the American stock market hit bottom after the 2001 recession and began a great bull market. Exactly five years later, on Oct. 9, 2007, that bull market reached its peak. Within months, stocks around the world were tumbling into the worst bear market since the Great Depression. A look at what happened over the two periods — from 2002 to 2007 and from 2007 to 2013 — shows a pattern of reversal. What was best during the first period was worst during the next one, and vice versa. The American stock market, as measured by the MSCI index that covers all major United States stocks, doubled from 2002 to 2007. That was not horrible by any means. But every major market around the world did better, as can be seen in the accompanying charts. The MSCI index that includes all major stocks in the world except for American ones tripled. After the 2007 peak, the declines were sharp and rapid for most markets until the bottom was reached on or close to March 9, 2009. As can be seen on the chart, American and world markets began to recover at about the same pace. But near the end of 2010, the United States began to do better than most markets, and that advantage accelerated in the summer of 2011. By Wednesday, exactly six years after the peak, only two of the 15 largest stock markets in the world were higher than they had been at the 2007 peak: Switzerland and the United States. Over all, the index for stocks outside the United States was 22 percent lower than it had been on Oct. 9, 2007, while the American market was up 7 percent. The 2002-7 period brought attention and money to the so-called BRIC countries — Brazil, Russia, India and China. They were the four best performers of the period, each rising at least 400 percent. But in the later period, they take four of the five bottom slots. Only Spain, which has been seriously hurt by the euro zone crisis and by the weakness of many of its banks, has done as badly. The same pattern of reversal is apparent within the American stock market. During the first period, the three worst-performing sectors within the Standard & Poor’s 500 were the two consumer groups and health care. Since then, those three groups have outperformed all the other sectors. The three best sectors during the earlier period were energy, utilities and materials, a category that includes natural resources stocks. None of them are now significantly higher than they were at the 2007 peak. The summer of 2011, when the American market began to accelerate, did not at the time seem to be a propitious time to invest in the United States. On Aug. 5, Standard & Poor’s lowered the government’s credit rating during fears of a government budget crisis and possible default. Since then, the American market has gained 38 percent, more than any other major market and well above the average of 11 percent for the rest of the world outside the United States.

Recession and Depression
US Economy
Stocks,Bonds


Iraq: Attacks Kill at Least 30

Abstract: A suicide bomber detonated explosives at a Baghdad cafe crowded with young people late Thursday, killing at least 26 people and wounding more than 50 ahead of provincial elections scheduled for the weekend. Earlier Thursday, a car bomb struck an army convoy in Mosul, 225 miles northwest of Baghdad, killing three soldiers. Hours later, gunmen killed a police officer at a security checkpoint in Baghdad, the police said.


Uganda Shelves Antigay Bill

Abstract: KAMPALA, Uganda — After receiving overwhelming criticism from across the globe, Uganda ’s Parliament on Friday let the time expire on a contentious anti-homosexuality bill that had threatened this East African country’s international standing. The Anti-Homosexuality Bill sought to impose the death penalty for a number of reasons, including being a “serial offender” of the “offense of homosexuality.” The bill also called for Ugandans to alert the government to known cases of homosexual behavior within 24 hours. Religious leaders said they had obtained more than two million signatures in support of the measure, and though it had been in legislative limbo for more than 18 months, the bill had been added to the Parliament’s agenda for debate this week, with many observers anticipating a possible vote on Friday. Instead, a handful of lawmakers spent the day laughing and thanking their colleagues for their service and debating the political events of the day before, in which opposition demonstrations eclipsed the inauguration of President Yoweri Museveni. Then the lawmakers adjourned for the last time before the next session is seated, unless an emergency meeting is called. The bill could be reintroduced in the next Parliament, but some lawmakers said its best chance for passage might have been in this session. “It has not been dealt with,” Edward Ssekandi, the Parliament speaker, said of the bill’s last-minute addition to the agenda. “We can’t bring that bill for second reading, a general debate, then vote in committee. No, there is no such thing.” Since the bill was introduced, gay-rights advocates have gone into hiding in Uganda; a vitriolic newspaper published the names and addresses of gay men and lesbians and told readers to kill them; and one prominent activist for gay rights, David Kato, was bludgeoned to death with a hammer in his neighborhood outside Kampala. The legislation has torn at the tight-knit and vulnerable gay community in Uganda, with some saying they were paid to pose in support of the bill. But while some officials have said that almost all of the bill’s clauses were either unconstitutional or redundant, the general spirit of the legislation — that being gay is not tolerated by the majority of Ugandans — was something lawmakers did not want to give up. A parliamentary committee studying the bill recently endorsed the anti-homosexuality legislation, including the death penalty, as well as suggesting an amendment to criminalize same-sex weddings. The legislation led a number of Western nations to scrutinize their relations with Uganda, and some members of Parliament said they resented a third hand guiding the bill’s destiny, arguing that the country’s sovereignty was threatened. “There has been immense, immense pressure from outside, bordering on intimidation,” said James Buturo, a departing member of the current Parliament and Uganda’s minister of ethics. “It means,” he said, “it waits for the next Parliament.”

Uganda
Homosexuality
Law and Legislation
Murders and Attempted Murders
Capital Punishment
Museveni Yoweri


Afghanistan Government Arrests 4 on Election Panel

Abstract: KABUL, Afghanistan — Four officials of an Afghan election commission were arrested on Sunday by President Hamid Karzai ’s government, which has been deeply critical of the panel’s handling of disputed parliamentary elections. The arrests, which were confirmed by Abdullah Ahmadzai, the chief electoral officer of the panel, the Independent Election Commission, included the head of the commission’s logistics department and three lower-level employees. Mr. Ahmadzai said the attorney general ordered the four taken from the commission’s offices for questioning in a 2009 case, but that the police then ordered their detention. He said he did not know on what charges the four were held. “We do not really know the intention behind this,” Mr. Ahmadzai said. “I cannot call it anything other than pressure at this time. We have been trying to get clarity why they have been arrested.” Hafizullah Hafiz, the head of the complaints department in the office of Attorney General Mohammed Ishaq Aloko, said that the four were charged with abuse of official office and corruption in purchasing related to the 2009 presidential election, not the parliamentary elections on Sept. 18 this year. A Western diplomat, speaking on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak publicly, said the arrests appeared to be a face-saving move by the attorney general, who has been under strong political pressure to act against the election commission. “They haven’t been able to find anything to do with the I.E.C. in the 2010 elections, so they pick some 2009 cases and it’s relatively safe to move on, and it’s nothing that challenges the results,” he said. Mr. Hafiz said the attorney general’s office had arrested 11 people for vote-rigging in the 2010 elections, including currency traders and go-betweens who claimed they could get vote totals changed for a price. But he said earlier claims by the office that election commission officials and a United Nations employee were among the 11 had not been supported by investigations. Despite earlier accusations by the attorney general’s office against the spokesmen for the Independent Election Commission and the Electoral Complaints Commission, no arrests have been made. Earlier, Mr. Aloko had denounced the election commission for certifying the results of the Sept. 18 election, saying that such certification was premature because criminal investigations were incomplete. Other officials said those investigations involved personnel from both election commissions. Western diplomats and United Nations officials have praised the commissions’ work, despite a badly flawed election in which a fourth of the votes were disallowed as suspect and 24 candidates were disqualified because of electoral fraud. President Karzai, though, has pointedly refrained from supporting the commissions, and encouraged those who were unhappy with the election results to bring legal cases before the attorney general. The new Parliament, which is not scheduled to convene until Jan. 21, would reflect a decrease in support for Mr. Karzai, and a drastic drop in the number of Pashtun members, even though Pashtuns are the country’s dominant ethnic group. Candidates disqualified in last September’s elections and their supporters have been holding daily but lightly attended demonstrations here, demanding new elections or reinstatement. Many protesters include prominent political figures and members of the last Parliament, and their gatherings have been have been treated deferentially by the police and the authorities. Armed followers of one protester, Pacha Khan Zadran, a member of the former Parliament and an old mujahedeen commander from Paktia Province, have been blocking the main highway from Kabul to the city of Khost in eastern Afghanistan . Mr. Zadran claimed Sunday that in a recent meeting with the attorney general, he and other protesters were assured that the Independent Election Commission chairman, Fazal Ahmad Manawi, was about to be arrested on election fraud charges. Mr. Hafiz, however, denied that any charges against Mr. Manawi were being considered. Such a meeting did take place, Mr. Hafiz said, but Mr. Aloko told him, “I never said such a thing to anyone” regarding possible charges against Mr. Manawi. Also in Afghanistan on Sunday: ¶A suicide bomber wearing an explosive vest killed two NATO soldiers and two Afghan soldiers when he blew himself up in a bazaar set up inside a NATO military base in the Gardez area of eastern Paktia Province, Afghan officials said. Seventeen soldiers and seven civilians were wounded, they said. A Taliban spokesman claimed responsibility for the attack. ¶In southern Afghanistan, NATO reported that one service member was killed, without giving any details. In the capital of Helmand Province, Lashkar Gah, an Afghan employee of an American contractor, International Relief and Development, was shot to death by men on a motorcycle, a provincial government spokesman, Daoud Ahmadi, said.

Karzai Hamid
Aloko Mohammed Ishaq
Elections
Frauds and Swindling
Afghanistan
Taliban


In Under 5 Minutes, Judo Competitor Jacob Gnahoui’s Olympics Is Over

Abstract: LONDON — This is how Jacob Gnahoui spent his Olympics. For a little more than three minutes, he grappled and pulled and squirmed and strained, on his feet and on the floor and back on his feet again, and then he spent a little less than a half-minute in a smothering embrace. And then it was over. The day had started at 9:30 a.m., and before it was even 9:35, the day was done. Of the thousands of athletes here, Gnahoui, a practitioner of judo, was among the first to be eliminated. There would be many more by the end of the day, and of course there are countless more athletes who never made it to the Games, missing their chances by a few centimeters or tenths of a second, or by a quick miscalculation. But it is different when you make it all the way here and it ends so quickly. The whiplash has to be even more powerful for Gnahoui, who less than 11 hours earlier was holding aloft the flag of his home country, Benin, and leading the country’s tiny Olympic delegation out into the delirious roar of Olympic Stadium. “It’s normal,” he said through an interpreter in the Olympic Village on Saturday afternoon. “It’s normal for an athlete at this level, because they expect it.” This is particularly true in judo, as pitilessly efficient a sport as they come. There is little fanfare when the two judokas approach the mat. They face each other and bow like diplomats, and then they go straight for each other as if attached by bungee cords — no dancing, no circling, but immediately grabbing fistfuls of the other’s uniform and trying to get him on his back. A match, which in the men’s category lasts for five minutes, can end with one competitor being lifted in the air and slammed on his back, or with a 25-second pin, or with a hold so painful or suffocating that the sufferer taps the mat, as if to say “uncle.” Those last two things probably feel like an eternity for a competitor, but for a spectator, the whole thing seems to pass in a flash. “Five minutes of fighting is the same as 90 minutes of soccer,” Gnahoui said. But his familiarity with fleeting intensity goes beyond the judo match or even his whirlwind Olympics appearance. There is not much biographical information about him on the official Olympics Web site, other than his weight, height and birthday. Unlike other athletes, his page does not mention his past victories or his coach’s name or his hobbies, and unlike the man who beat him (and who himself was beaten less than an hour later) he does not have a personal Web site. And off the mat, he is deceptively small and compact for a man who spends his free time throwing people onto the ground. Gnahoui, 26, was born in the ancient town Allada in Benin, a small country in West Africa that was once a French colony. He learned judo from his older brother, fighting for years in T-shirts because he did not have a traditional uniform. Eventually, he began winning tournaments in Africa and in 2006 was invited to the World Cup in Hamburg, Germany, to fight for Benin. At the last minute, Benin officials told him they did not have enough money for his airfare. He had already obtained his 10-day visa to Europe. So his parents scraped up enough money to buy him a ticket. On his seventh day in Europe, he decided to stay in France, he said, and applied to the French Foreign Legion. If it did not accept him, he had decided he would stay anyway, but illegally. He had three days on a legal visa to find out what his future would look like: the life of a soldier or a life far less predictable. So, all of that is to say, “there are many things that I can deal with in the short term.” As it happened, Gnahoui was accepted by the Foreign Legion and has been living in France ever since. He has not seen his family, but he remains attached to Benin, paying his own transportation and lodging to represent Benin at international judo tournaments. When the officials asked him to carry the flag, he thanked them, he said, then went into a room by himself and cried. “I like my country,” he said, this time in English. He hopes his parents saw him on television. So now what? He was planning on meeting a friend Saturday night who lives outside London. And he is looking forward to learning about the city. The gold in his event was awarded Saturday — to Arsen Galstyan of Russia — so he would not have had an extensive Olympics tenure in the best of circumstances, but he is debating how long to stick around. Even if he does stay awhile, he said, he is packing up his uniform. After all, as far as his job is concerned, he’s on vacation.

Gnahoui Jacob
Olympic Games (2012)
Judo
Benin
Russia
Galstyan Arsen


Jean-Claude Juncker to Head Powerful E.U. Agency

Abstract: BRUSSELS — Jean-Claude Juncker of Luxembourg was elected Tuesday to lead the most powerful agency of the European Union after overcoming fierce opposition from Britain and some lawmakers in the European Parliament. Parliament, meeting in Strasbourg, France, voted by a clear majority to make Mr. Juncker the president of the European Commission, a vast bureaucracy based in Brussels that is responsible for proposing legislation in a wide range of areas, including auto emissions and bankers’ salaries. After an at-times rancorous debate, Parliament voted in favor of Mr. Juncker by 422 to 250 votes, with 47 abstentions. Mr. Juncker needed a minimum of 376 votes to be elected. Mr. Juncker faces a daunting task amid criticism that the European Union and its sprawling bureaucracy have grown too powerful and out of touch with the concerns of common citizens. A six-year debt crisis has created huge levels of unemployment in countries like Greece and Spain and weakened growth prospects for much of the rest of the bloc, making union leaders look helpless amid the near collapse of the euro. That legacy helped record numbers of antiunion lawmakers win seats in Parliament in May. In a speech before the vote, Mr. Juncker, a former prime minister of Luxembourg and a former head of the group of ministers overseeing the euro, insisted that there was still “room for a dream” in Europe and urged citizens “to fall in love again” with Europe. Mr. Juncker vigorously defended the euro as a tool that had made damagingly competitive currency devaluations a thing of the past and said that Europe should derive strength from overcoming a near catastrophe. He was shouted down by at least one British lawmaker, who called his comments “rubbish.” Nigel Farage, the head of the United Kingdom Independence Party, warned Mr. Juncker against forming a European “superstate,” while Marine Le Pen, the president of the far-right National Front in France, accused Mr. Juncker of helping turn Luxembourg into a tax haven. Mr. Juncker is scheduled to take over from his predecessor, José Manuel Barroso, at the start of November. But the precise timing of the handover will depend on whether Parliament endorses the rest of his team, which consists of 27 other commissioners, yet to be selected. A vote on that team is expected after the summer.

Jean-Claude Juncker
European Commission
Election
Great Britain
EU
European Parliament


Comcast vs. the Cord Cutters

Abstract: The typical American household pays about $90 a month for cable television service, according to the NPD Group, the market research firm. But according to the research firm of You and Pretty Much Everyone You Know, when you click on your TV and browse the guide, what you often find hardly seems worth $90 a month. This is the battle hymn of the cord cutter: You are paying too much for television, and you aren’t watching most of what you’re paying for. Over the last couple of years, millions of Americans have ditched their cable plans in favor of online streaming services like Netflix and iTunes. Perhaps intoxicated by the money they think they’re saving, cord cutters tend to be evangelical about their lifestyle, feeding a viral phenomenon that is altering the economics of the cable business. But can cord cutters truly escape the cord? And are they, in fact, saving much money at all? Comcast’s deal this week to acquire Time Warner Cable highlights the pickle that cord cutters may soon find themselves in. The acquisition rests on the assumption that as people cut back on their monthly TV plans, the cable lines coming into their homes won’t lose their value. Instead, the more we imbibe of all the glories available on streaming services, the more we’ll need to shell out for high-speed broadband service. In most American households, the cable cord is the fastest conduit for broadband service. This suggests the canny strategy by which those once-inescapable cable providers might combat the rise of cord cutters: The cable giants will simply become even-more-inescapable Internet giants. If the big providers can do that, cord cutters’ gleeful self-satisfaction may prove short-lived. Critics of the Comcast-Time Warner deal argue that it will eventually give Comcast the power to raise prices for its broadband and cable TV services and especially to hold its Internet-only subscription prices so close to its TV-and-Internet prices that few people will see much use in declaring their cable independence. “Comcast and the new, giant Comcast are going to do as much as they can to stop you from unbundling,” said Craig Aaron, president of Free Press, a consumer advocacy group. “In order for you to get content you like, you’re going to be pushed to pay the cable bill, too.” You can get a hint of such a future in Comcast’s current price structure. Today, its cheapest Internet service — a plan that a cord-cutting household might select — goes for $40 a month for the first year. It offers download speeds of up to 25 Mbps, which means it’s fast enough to stream two or three videos simultaneously — say, a FaceTime video chat in the teenager’s room, an episode of “Scandal” in the living room and “Adult Swim” in the man cave. Here’s the twist: Comcast’s cheapest TV-and-Internet plan goes for $50 a month for the first year, or just $10 a month more than the cord cutter’s plan. Subscribers to the bundle get the same streaming speed as the Internet-only plan, as well as basic TV service that offers a handful of local channels. Comcast also throws in its service for watching TV shows on your mobile devices. More enticingly, the plan includes access to HBO and its streaming service, HBO Go, which — unlike Netflix and Hulu — isn’t available to cord cutters who lack a cable TV subscription. None of the prices quoted here include taxes and fees for extra equipment. Comcast also notes that prices may vary by location. Considering these caveats, it’s likely that your bill for these plans will be higher than the quoted prices. Still, it’s instructive to note the very small price difference between the cord-cutting plan and the TV-and-Internet plan. Image Credit Minh Uong/The New York Times Cutting the cord, in Comcast’s universe, just doesn’t save you very much money. Comcast has carefully set up pricing to get you whether you watch shows the old-fashioned way, on a boob-tube fed with a cable, or whether you prefer to veg out with Netflix on your iPad. Either way, you’re probably paying hundreds of dollars a year to maintain your vital hook to the outside world. And if you consider the added costs of Netflix and streaming rentals, it’s possible that the cord cutter may be paying more, over all, than someone who subscribes to cable. Whether and how Comcast’s bid for Time Warner Cable will further shape pricing will be a matter of fierce debate before regulators sitting in judgment of the deal. In its presentation announcing the bid, Comcast argued that because it doesn’t currently offer service in markets served by Time Warner Cable, acquiring it won’t reduce competition in those markets. The company also points out that it is now bound by consumer-protection conditions that the Federal Communications Commission applied as part of Comcast’s acquisition of NBC Universal in 2011 — protections that Comcast is willing to extend to Time Warner Cable’s customers. Among these protections are “open access” rules, also known as network-neutrality provisions, which prevent Comcast from favoring certain content over its network. For instance, the rules would prohibit Comcast from slowing Netflix streaming unless Netflix paid Comcast an extra fee, a model that has been floated by some in the television industry. Because a federal court struck down a more widely applicable set of open-access rules in January, Time Warner Cable is not bound by any similar provisions. Comcast’s acquisition, then, would technically extend the rules to cover more Americans. Critics note that the F.C.C.’s neutrality conditions expire in 2018, after which Comcast would be free to start new, network-neutrality-violating business models for its services — perhaps, for example, charging Netflix a fee to get a faster network speed. More immediately, they point out that while Time Warner Cable imposes no limit on how much data its Internet subscribers can download, Comcast might not be as lenient. Comcast once imposed a a data cap of 250 gigabytes a month on its subscribers. It has since scrapped that plan, and is instead experimenting — in select cities — with a plan that includes up to 300 gigabytes of data a month, plus the option to purchase additional data at a rate of $10 per 50 gigabytes. These caps are very high — enough to stream dozens of high-definition movies a month, so the limits shouldn’t be a problem for most customers. But if Comcast imposes such a cap, a few of Time Warner Cable’s most active cord cutters might feel the pinch. There is also the matter of network performance. According to data published by Netflix , subscribers who use Time Warner Cable experience streaming speeds that are about a third faster than those on Comcast. When those Time Warner users are switched to Comcast’s infrastructure, they may find that “House of Cards” takes a little bit longer to start playing. Which is not to say that striking down the merger would lead to some kind of cord cutters’ nirvana. Americans pay far more for broadband and TV service than people in most other industrialized nations. According to data collected by the New America Foundation , in Los Angeles, the cheapest monthly television, phone and Internet service costs about $80. In Paris, a similar bundle sells for $32, and in Seoul, it goes for $15. Broadband markets in most other countries generally operate under tighter rules than those in the United States. Nonetheless, the F.C.C. has attributed those high prices to a lack of competition in local broadband markets. Most American households are served by only two high-speed Internet providers, and some have only one or none. Even in markets with two providers — usually a phone company and a cable company — prices tend to rise. According to a report by the research firm SNL Kagan, Comcast’s price for its basic Internet tier in Philadelphia and Atlanta rose more than 50 percent from 2009 to 2013. In each of these markets, Comcast faced competition from phone companies — but those high-speed providers raised their prices more than 30 percent over the same period. The steady price increases in broadband rates cast a pall over any cord cutter’s dreams. It’s possible that you might still save money now by cutting off your cable. But if you plan to watch a lot of TV over the Internet, don’t expect to save money forever.

Comcast
Time Warner Cable
Cable television
Computers and the Internet
Tech Industry
Mergers and Acquisitions
Price
TV


G.O.P. Incumbents on the Ballot

Abstract: Eleven Republican senators are up for re-election this fall, and more than half of them face opposition in the primaries. Texas: John Cornyn; renominated. Idaho: Jim Risch; primary on May 20; one opponent. Kentucky: Mitch McConnell; primary on May 20; one opponent. Alabama: Jeff Sessions; primary on June 3; no opposition. Mississippi: Thad Cochran; primary on June 3; one opponent. Maine: Susan Collins; primary on June 10; opponent withdrew. South Carolina: Lindsey Graham; primary on June 10; six opponents. Oklahoma: James M. Inhofe; primary on June 24; no opposition yet.* Kansas: Pat Roberts; primary on Aug. 5; at least one opponent.* Tennessee: Lamar Alexander; primary on Aug. 7; eight opponents. Wyoming: Michael B. Enzi; primary on Aug. 19; opponent withdrew.* *Filing period has not closed. Source: Secretary of the Senate

Senate
Congress
Election
Republicans
US states
US Politics


Rabbi Y. S. Elyashiv, Master of Talmudic Law, Dies at 102

Abstract: Rabbi Yosef Shalom Elyashiv, an eminent authority in the Orthodox Jewish world on applying the Torah and Talmudic law to modern times, whose rulings on conversion, divorce and even the legitimacy of wigs made in India had far-reaching impact and sometimes roiled Israeli politics, died on Wednesday in Jerusalem. He was 102. His death was announced by Shaare Zedek Medical Center, where he had been hospitalized for several months. Rabbi Elyashiv, who was born in Lithuania and moved to the British Mandate of Palestine in 1922, was known as an eminent posek — a decider of Jewish law — a title earned not by appointment but by scholarship, reputation and communal trust built up over decades. Rabbi Avi Shafran, the public affairs director of Agudath Israel of America, a leading Orthodox organization, called him “the premier posek of the generation.” (For decades, Rabbi Moshe Feinstein, who lived in Manhattan and died in 1986, was regarded as the world’s leading adjudicator of Jewish law.) Rabbi Elyashiv’s decisions were honored, if not always obeyed, beyond his own ultra-Orthodox, non-Hasidic world known as Lithuanian or yeshivish Jews. His word also influenced Hasidim, Orthodox Sephardim from Muslim countries and many modern Orthodox Jews. Slender, with a wispy white beard and penetrating eyes, Rabbi Elyashiv (pronounced el-YAH-shiv) represented a rigorously conservative approach to Jewish law that seeks to safeguard its traditions against the assaults of modern life. He opposed service in the Israeli military for yeshiva students, which he called a “plot to uproot Torah from Israel .” He disapproved of professional studies for women. He insisted that for purposes of organ donation, death occurs when the heartbeat and breathing stop, not when brain activity ceases. In 2004, he banned wigs from India made of human hair that were used by Orthodox wives to conceal their actual hair in public. He did so because the Indian hair had been cut off in Hindu ceremonies that he regarded as idol worship, and thus violated the fundamental Jewish belief in one God. Within days, women in Jerusalem were casting their wigs into bonfires, and women in the Borough Park area of Brooklyn were either wrapping their heads in scarves or flocking to stores to buy wigs made of synthetics. Rabbi Elyashiv’s opinions — for years he was a member of Israel’s highest rabbinical court — were crucial to controversies within the country about who is a Jew and when is a marriage truly dissolved and when is a conversion legitimate. He clashed with the Israeli government in the 1980s and ’90s when it arranged the conversions of hundreds of immigrants from the former Soviet Union, arguing that a true conversion required a sincere pledge to observe the laws of Torah, including keeping kosher and observing the Sabbath. He opposed Israel’s unilateral withdrawal from Gaza in 2005, but he instructed the political representative of the Degel HaTorah Party, with which he was affiliated, to support Ariel Sharon, then the prime minister, in pulling out the remaining settlers, many of whom were Orthodox. He also cast decisions in the most private of cases. Hundreds of Jews would stream to his home — a modest one-bedroom apartment in an alleyway in the ultra-Orthodox quarter of Mea Shearim in Jerusalem — to seek his opinions on their personal quandaries, or simply his blessings. They also came to his nightly tutorials on Talmud, much of which he knew by heart. “The breadth of his knowledge was outstanding,” said Rabbi Yeruchim Silber, executive director of the Boro Park Jewish Community Council . Yosef Elyashiv was born in Lithuania on April 10, 1910, the only child of a woman who descended from a renowned kabbalist, Rabbi Shlomo Elyashiv. After the family moved to Jerusalem, Yosef was enrolled in the Ohel Sara Beit Midrash, where he impressed the land’s chief rabbi, Avraham Yitzhak Hacohen Kook, with his quicksilver grasp and retention of Talmud. Though he was surrounded by fervent anti-Zionists in Mea Shearim, Rabbi Elyashiv grew close to the establishment rabbis who worked with the Israeli government. But he did once clash publicly with another chief rabbi, Shlomo Goren, said Daniel Retter, a Manhattan lawyer and Talmud scholar. The dispute centered on two children who were born to a woman after she had married for a second time. She had remarried without obtaining a get, or a ritual divorce, from her first husband, a convert to Judaism. In a well-publicized ruling, Rabbi Goren said the children, a brother and sister, were not ritually mamzerim — the offspring of an illicit union — because the former husband’s conversion had not been valid. Rabbi Elyashiv disagreed. He said that the conversion had indeed been valid and that the children were therefore technically mamzerin and thus no longer entitled to marry ordinary Jews, though they could marry other mamzerim. Rabbi Elyashiv himself had followed the suggestion of Rabbi Kook and married a rabbi’s daughter, Sheina Chaya Levin. The couple had five sons and seven daughters, six of whom married prominent rabbis. One son died of illness as a child, and one daughter was killed in 1948 by Jordanian shelling. In 2009, one of Rabbi Elyashiv’s great-great-grandchildren had a son. The child represented the sixth generation of living Elyashivs. In all, the rabbi is survived by about 1,000 descendants.

Elyashiv Yosef Shalom
Jews and Judaism
Deaths (Obituaries)
Israel


Militant in Beheading Videos Has Been Identified, F.B.I. Chief Says

Abstract: WASHINGTON — American intelligence agencies believe they have identified the Islamic State militant who appeared on two videotapes in which American journalists were beheaded, the F.B.I. director, James B. Comey, said Thursday, but he declined to name the man while agents from the United States and Britain were searching for him. Intelligence agencies have used voice-recognition technology, overhead imagery and records of Western fighters who are believed to have joined the group in the effort to identify the killer, who first appeared in a video a month ago showing the beheading of James Foley. A second gruesome video, showing the death of Steven J. Sotloff , was released about two weeks later. Both men were freelance journalists. For a while, British officials focused their suspicions on a rapper who they believed had gone to Syria to fight. Now “the assumption is that was wrong,” one official said. On Wednesday, the United States announced sanctions against a number of members of the Islamic State, including Salim Benghalem, whom it identified as a fighter “who carries out executions on behalf of the group.” But he was identified as coming from France, suggesting that the two Americans were killed by someone else. Image Mr. Comey also referred to a fighter with “North American-accented English” who was seen on another video titled “Flames of War.” At the end of that video, a masked man, waving a gun, speaks in fluent English as a group of men appear in the background, digging what seems to be a mass grave. The video later appears to show the men being shot from behind. Mr. Comey also discussed the airstrikes this week in Syria, but was cautious in addressing whether some of the attacks against a second terrorist organization known as the Khorasan Group had disrupted its efforts to carry out attacks in Europe or the United States. “I believe the group still exists,” Mr. Comey said. Earlier in the day, Iraq’s new prime minister, Haider al-Abadi, warned that the Islamic State was focused on attacks in the subways in Paris and the United States, but Mr. Comey and the National Security Council said they were not aware of any evidence supporting that charge. In the Foley and Sotloff videos, the masked killer, armed with a short knife, taunts President Obama and says that the beheadings are in retaliation for bombing attacks on Islamic State targets in Iraq. The killings appear to take place in the same desert location, with hills visible in the background. The executioner speaks in a British accent, which led to a focus on men who hold British passports and are believed to have joined the fight on behalf of the Islamic State, also known as ISIS. President Obama referred briefly to the beheadings of the two journalists and a third killing, of a British aid worker, during his speech on Wednesday to the United Nations General Assembly. “In the most horrific crimes imaginable, innocent human beings have been beheaded, with videos of the atrocity distributed to shock the conscience of the world,” he said. Those comments set up what was perhaps the strongest language of the speech, in which Mr. Obama made the case for direct military action: “No God condones this terror. No grievance justifies these actions. There can be no reasoning — no negotiation — with this brand of evil. The only language understood by killers like this is the language of force.”

FBI
James B Comey
ISIS,ISIL,Islamic State
US Military
Terrorism
Murders
UN General Assembly
Barack Obama


$290 Million Lost in Penny Stock Fraud, Prosecutors Say

Abstract: Investors would hear about the companies through newsletters emailed from websites that tout penny stocks, with names like PennyPic.com, OxofWallStreet.com and MonsterStox.com, their missives full of hyperbolic language and exclamation points. What the investors did not know, prosecutors say, is that the men writing the newsletters owned stock in the companies they were promoting, and also had colluded with officials in those companies to drive up prices with misleading news releases. When prices rose, the promoters and company officials would sell off millions of shares they controlled, leaving investors with worthless stock. It was an Internet-driven variation on the pump-and-dump stock manipulation schemes that unscrupulous stockbrokers have practiced for decades, prosecutors said. On Thursday, eight people were indicted on charges they defrauded thousands of investors of more than $290 million from April 2009 to May 2012, using emailed newsletters to hype nearly worthless companies. Three stock promoters — Anthony Thompson, 38, of Bethesda, Md.; Eric Van Nguyen, 30, of Quebec; and Jay Fung, 40, of Delray Beach, Fla. — were accused of conspiring with officials in control of five public companies to drive up prices of penny stocks. Mr. Thompson and Mr. Fung were arraigned on charges of grand larceny, scheme to defraud and securities fraud in State Supreme Court in Manhattan and released on $1 million bail each; Mr. Nguyen was still at large. “They took advantage of their position as promoters to profit for themselves on the backs of public investors,” an assistant prosecutor, Brian Kudon, said at Mr. Thompson’s arraignment. But Mr. Thompson’s lawyer, Maranda Fritz, said that her client’s newsletter, from FreeInvestmentReport.com, was a paid advertisement for the companies he wrote about, which she said was clearly stated in its disclosures to investors. “It’s advertising,” Ms. Fritz told Justice Roger S. Hayes. “You might as well indict ‘Mad Men,’ if they actually existed.” Mr. Fung’s lawyer, Michael Bachner, also said his client had disclosed to readers that he had a financial interest in the companies he promoted. Prosecutors, however, described in an 85-count indictment an intricate conspiracy to defraud investors. Mr. Kudon said the conspirators bought public shell companies and merged them with newly created private companies. Then they issued or transferred millions of free-trading shares in the shell companies to themselves, family members, friends and associates. Next, they coordinated with the three promoters to issue rosy, misleading news releases about the companies, driving up the stock prices before dumping their shares on the open market, court papers said. The eight defendants made more than $30 million on sales of the stocks, prosecutors said. The companies involved included Smart Holdings Inc., Lyric Jeans Inc., Hydrogenetics Inc., Xynergy Holdings Inc., Blast Applications Inc., Blue Gem Enterprise Inc., Mass Hysteria Entertainment Company Inc., Recycle Tech Inc. and Sunpeaks Ventures.

Fraud
Anthony Thompson
Eric Van Nguyen
Jay Fung
Stocks,Bonds
Computers and the Internet
Tech Industry


As Deal Fails, Saab Is Likely to Shut Down

Abstract: Saab , which earned a loyal following over six decades with its stylish but idiosyncratic cars, failed to attract the buyer it needed most — a new owner for the company — leaving General Motors little choice but to announce Friday that it would shut down the brand. Bigger car companies, which have been struggling with steep losses of their own, showed no interest because Saab was too small even though the brand is well regarded. The last hope for Saab, which General Motors took control of in 1990, had been Spyker Cars, a tiny Dutch maker of high-end sports cars. But some G.M. officials said that Spyker’s reliance on Russian financing for the Saab deal was a major factor in its decision to walk away. “We discovered this week that there were issues that couldn’t be resolved and no additional time would overcome that,” said John F. Smith, a General Motors executive vice president. He added that G.M. would still be willing to consider selling Saab if a new buyer were to emerge. If that does not occur, the process of winding down Saab will begin in January. “I can’t rule it out, but the clock starts now,” he added. Saab, which filed for bankruptcy protection in Sweden in February, has been a perennial money-loser. It is among G.M.’s smallest brands, with sales of 93,000 vehicles worldwide last year, with just under 22,000 in the United States. G.M. also closed its Pontiac and Saturn brands this year. Besides throwing the fate of some 3,500 Saab workers in Trollhattan, Sweden, into doubt, Saab’s expected closing also was more troubling news for Sweden’s industrial base. Another famous Swedish automaker, Volvo, is being sold by Ford to Zhejiang Geely Holding of China. Both Volvo and Saab are based in the west of Sweden, and the region has a deep network of suppliers and contractors that will also be affected. “This is of course a major blow to Sweden, though it wasn’t unexpected,” said Cecilia Werner, communications director for the Swedish Agency for Economic and Regional Growth. She said there were nearly as many Swedes whose jobs were indirectly dependent on Saab as there were Saab employees. Moreover, she said, the company’s long history and distinctive automobile designs have made it part of the Swedish identity, especially overseas. “They say ‘Ikea, Abba, Volvo and Saab,’ ” Ms. Werner said. “This company has been a part of Swedish pride, along with Volvo.” In the auto world, as in Sweden, the announcement Friday was greeted more with sadness than with surprise. Besides losing money for years, Saab was always on the periphery of G.M.’s empire. In the last year, management in Detroit had made it clear it wanted to dispose of the company. In a conference call, Mr. Smith repeatedly declined to specify what problems came up during the due diligence process at Spyker. An earlier deal to sell Saab to Koenigsegg, a Swedish maker of specialty sports cars, collapsed last month. According to people close to the negotiations, G.M. was concerned about Spyker’s Russian financial backers as well as the fate of G.M.’s technology and other intellectual property under Spyker. The people declined to be identified because they were not authorized to speak publicly about the talks. The main investor in Spyker is the Russian bank Convers Group, which is controlled by Alexander Antonov, a Russian tycoon. His son Vladimir, a 34-year-old banker who is a top executive at Convers, is chairman of Spyker. Last month, G.M. pulled out of a deal to sell its European Opel and Vauxhall operations to a consortium led by Magna International, a Canadian maker of auto parts. The consortium was backed by the Russian state-controlled bank Sberbank. “They’d been down the road with Russian investors before and that gave them reason for caution,” said one official, who insisted on anonymity because he was not authorized to speak publicly. “There was no visibility on when that might have been resolved.” Another snag was the question of whether Spyker could qualify for a 400 million euro ($573 million) loan from the European Investment Bank that was part of the earlier deal to sell Saab to Koenigsegg. A spokesman for Spyker declined to comment on the question of the company’s Russian ties, as did a spokesman for G.M. In a statement, the chief executive of Spyker, Victor Muller, seemed to put the blame on G.M. for dragging its feet. “We sincerely regret that we are not able to complete this transaction with G.M.,” Mr. Muller said. “We worked 24/7 for three weeks, but the complexity of the transaction in combination with the strict deadline simply did not allow us to complete the transaction.” Saab will continue to honor warranties, while providing service and spare parts to current Saab owners around the world. Nick Reilly, the president of G.M.’s European operations, said that the move was not a bankruptcy or forced liquidation, so he expected Saab to pay its debts, including those of suppliers. In all, 1,100 dealerships worldwide will be affected, including about 200 in the United States. G.M. is taking other steps to further clean up its balance sheet. On Friday, it said it began repaying the money it owes to the American and Canadian governments. It paid $1 billion to the United States Treasury, toward a balance of $6.7 billion, and $192 million to Canada, which is owed $1.4 billion. G.M.’s chief executive, Edward E. Whitacre Jr., said the company would continue making installments through June, when it would repay the entire balance, “assuming no downturn in the economy or business.” Most of the $50 billion that G.M. borrowed from the Treasury’s Troubled Asset Relief Program was converted to a 60 percent ownership stake, which the government plans to sell in a public stock offering as soon as next year. G.M. initially bought half of Saab in 1990 for $600 million, acquiring the rest in 2000 for $125 million. Under G.M.’s stewardship, Saab lost a large part of its Swedish identity as well as the technical prowess that earned it a loyal following in the 1980s. “People will say they’re sad to see it go, but what they’re lamenting is the Saabs from the ’70s and ’80s,” said James Bell, executive market analyst for Kelley Blue Book. “Since the mid-’90s it’s been a pretty irrelevant brand,” Mr. Bell said. “The only reason people would be excited about buying a Saab would be if someone was an enthusiast of the brand. And I think Saab was even pushing their patience.”


Sexual Harassment Scandal in Albany Becomes Political Fodder

Abstract: ALBANY — New York Republicans, sensing that the sexual harassment allegations against Assemblyman Vito J. Lopez could become a liability for Democrats, are moving to make the scandal a campaign issue. Up and down the November ballot, Republican candidates are calling on their opponents to denounce Mr. Lopez, a powerful Brooklyn Democrat. And Republicans are increasingly asking Democrats to demand that the Assembly speaker, Sheldon Silver , relinquish his leadership post over his decision to authorize a secret settlement of some of the allegations. The campaign statements, many of them dripping with indignation, are not limited to races for the Assembly. Joe Carvin, a Republican town supervisor who is challenging Representative Nita M. Lowey, a Hudson Valley Democrat, urged the congresswoman to “step up and do the right thing” by calling for Mr. Silver to step down. And Wendy E. Long, the Republican nominee for United States Senate, accused the Democratic incumbent, Kirsten E. Gillibrand, of “completely looking the other way.” “She’s made the interests of women the centerpiece of her public existence,” Ms. Long said. “It’s just amazing how, when there’s some real interests of real women, when they don’t suit her political ambitions, she couldn’t care less about standing up for women.” The state Republican chairman, Edward F. Cox, has been a loud critic of Mr. Silver, a Manhattan Democrat. He called the speaker’s handling of the matter a “valid campaign issue.” “Democrats are talking about a war on women, and they’re talking about policy differences,” Mr. Cox said. “In Albany, we’ve got a real war on women — sexual harassment and a speaker who, at best, has shown indifference, at worst has done continual cover-ups of the problem.” Mr. Silver, who has been speaker since 1994, brushed off the criticism from Republicans when he was asked about it on Wednesday at the Democratic National Convention in Charlotte, N.C. “I think it’s political rhetoric, and that’s all it is,” he said. “It’s not worthy of a response.” At another point, he said, “All I can tell you is, Republicans have been looking for me to resign for a long time — about 19 years.” The pressure from Republicans has created some awkwardness for Democrats. Senator Gillibrand, speaking to reporters on Wednesday, had barely finished criticizing Republicans for “a concerted effort to undermine women’s rights” before she was asked if she agreed with Ms. Long’s demand that Mr. Silver should step down from his leadership post. “I do not share my opponent’s view with regard to the speaker,” Ms. Gillibrand said. She did, however, urge Mr. Lopez to step down, describing the accusations against him as “disgusting.” Mr. Lopez, who is also the head of the Brooklyn Democratic Party, was censured by the Assembly last month after two female staff members in his office said he had groped, kissed and verbally harassed them. It later emerged that Mr. Silver had approved a $135,000 settlement to resolve allegations brought against Mr. Lopez earlier this year by two other employees. Mr. Lopez has denied the accusations, which he has characterized as “politically motivated.” Mr. Lopez’s conduct is now being investigated by a special prosecutor, Daniel M. Donovan Jr. , the Staten Island district attorney, assisted by the Albany County district attorney, P. David Soares. Mr. Soares’s involvement was first reported on Wednesday by The Associated Press. The Assembly’s handling of the matter has also been referred to the state ethics commission. At least one campaign ad has already emerged: a radio spot recorded by a Republican Assembly candidate in the capital region that calls for an investigation into Mr. Silver’s conduct. Political scientists said it was no surprise that Republicans were eager to focus attention on how the matter was handled by the leadership of the Assembly, which has an overwhelming Democratic majority. “They’re looking for any way they can make some headway against a Democratic Party stronghold,” said Bruce F. Berg, a political science professor at Fordham University. “Once the investigations look into it, this could very well be a legitimate issue which Speaker Silver has to address. But even if it doesn’t, in this era of ‘faux outrage,’ this is certainly worth a little bit of outrage.” As for Mr. Lopez, Mr. Berg compared the response by Republicans with how Democrats responded to comments on rape last month by Representative Todd Akin, Republican of Missouri. “Certainly Vito Lopez now occupies the same position as Mr. Akin in Missouri: He’s a pariah,” Professor Berg said. Jeanne Zaino, a professor of political science at Iona College who has been critical of Mr. Silver’s handling of the matter, said Republicans were wise to embrace the issue in campaigns. “Absolutely, Republicans should use this, because I think it’s telling about what people see about Albany when they look up there: it’s been corruption after corruption,” Professor Zaino said. The issue was particularly ripe for candidates without Albany experience, whose campaigns were already based in part on the capital’s unseemly reputation. “This is a huge issue, the conduct of our representatives in Albany,” said Bob Cohen, a Republican businessman who is running for a State Senate seat in Westchester County and who on Wednesday called for Mr. Silver to resign. “I have heard the expression over and over again: When are we going to drain the swamp that is Albany?” His opponent, Assemblyman George S. Latimer, a Democrat, did not echo Mr. Cohen’s call for the speaker to resign. But Mr. Latimer said that he was among the first people to call for Mr. Lopez’s resignation and that he was “prepared to immediately come back to Albany and vote to expel him from the Assembly.” To keep up the pressure on Mr. Lopez, about a dozen demonstrators, mainly from Brooklyn, gathered Wednesday on the steps of City Hall in Manhattan. Chanting “Hey hey, ho ho, Vito’s got to go,” they demanded that he resign. “Vito Lopez, for all intents and purposes, is a sexual predator,” said David Galarza, a co-coordinator of a nonprofit group called La Casita Comunal de Sunset Park. “He should be tried. He should be convicted. He should serve time.”

Lopez Vito J
Sexual Harassment
Silver Sheldon
Elections
New York State
State Legislatures


World Cup 2014: Portugal Ties United States With Goal in Stoppage Time

Abstract: MANAUS, Brazil — The ball was barely past United States goalkeeper Tim Howard, and already he had put his hands to his head. On the bench, Jurgen Klinsmann spun away as if he had seen a ghost. Up the field, not far from where he lost the ball, Michael Bradley could only stare. This was what shock looked like. The Americans had advanced, hadn’t they? Hadn’t they? The celebration had been epic after Clint Dempsey, the captain, the man with the black eye and the broken nose and the swollen cheek, scored just nine minutes from the end to put the Americans in front and surely — surely — into the knockout round of the World Cup. It was bedlam. It was overwhelming. It was historic. But then, suddenly, the lead was gone. This United States team will not be the first to advance to the Round of 16 after just two group-stage games. It will not get to skate in its final Group G game, against Germany. It will not get to relax. Instead, it will live on the precipice between success and failure for another day. That was the cost of two lapses on Sunday — one at the beginning of the game and one, brutally, at the end — that allowed Portugal to salvage a 2-2 tie at the Arena da Amazônia. Half a minute more, and the United States would have had a victory that guaranteed advancement. Now, the math is suddenly murkier. Image A stoppage-time goal by Silvestre Varela gave Portugal a 2-2 tie in Manaus, Brazil, on Sunday. Credit Elsa/Getty Images “Football is cruel sometimes,” Howard said. It is. Yet despite the collective gut punch that the United States endured here, the situation is not dire. A victory against Germany on Thursday in Recife would be ideal, allowing the United States to top the group. A loss would leave the Americans possibly needing to win a tiebreaker with Portugal or Ghana. A tie would also put them through, in second place behind Germany. Given that reality, as well as Klinsmann’s heritage and connection to the German national team, questions were immediately raised as to whether he and Germany Coach Joachim Löw, Klinsmann’s former assistant, would conspire to play out a mutually beneficial tie on Thursday in much the same fashion that West Germany and Austria seemed to have manipulated a game at the 1982 World Cup that allowed both teams to advance. Klinsmann quickly shot down the notion, saying, “That is only part of German history, not the United States.” He added: “We have that fighting spirit. We have that energy and that determination to do well in every single game. We are going to go into Recife very ambitious.” Sunil Gulati, the president of the United States Soccer Federation, was even more forceful. “We’re going to that game trying to win the game, full stop,” he said. Of course, the Americans thought they had won Sunday. Things started poorly for the United States, as a bad miscue from defender Geoff Cameron allowed Nani to give Portugal an early lead. The mistake did not cause the Americans to crumble, though, and they largely had the better of play before Jermaine Jones finally leveled the score in the 64th minute with a whistling shot from nearly 30 yards out that left Beto, the Portuguese goalkeeper, flat-footed. World Cup 2014: How Teams Can Advance to the Next Round Analysis and graphics show what needs to happen for teams in the 2014 World Cup to advance to the Round of 16. It was a thunderous strike, the ball whizzing over Dempsey — who wisely ducked — and curling devilishly in a way that even the Portuguese star Cristiano Ronaldo would have to admire. Jones sprinted to the sideline as the ball nestled into the side netting, pounding the U.S. Soccer crest on his jersey as his teammates erupted. “I heard Beas behind me,” Jones said, referring to fullback DaMarcus Beasley. “He said, ‘Shoot, shoot, shoot.’ So I shot.” That goal had the United States in position for a tie, but the Americans wanted more, and, about 20 minutes later, Graham Zusi crossed the ball off a broken play. Dempsey, who scored in the opening seconds of the first match against Ghana, was lurking in front of the net, and when he turned the ball over the line, he looked to have completed the perfect bookend to a miraculous opening two games. After watching Dempsey finish with his stomach — the captain could certainly be forgiven for not dropping his battered face for a header — Klinsmann exploded, running up and down the sideline and even pulling Zusi in for a hug and a kiss on the head. The outcome seemed almost unbelievable: The United States, which had been roundly expected to crash out of the so-called Group of Death, was on the verge of being the first team to advance. But it was not to be. Deep into added time, Ronaldo — who had largely been neutralized by a crowded midfield strategy that Klinsmann orchestrated and the players executed — finally found a bit of space. Bradley lost the ball near the sideline, and Ronaldo seized upon the opening, swinging in a perfect cross that Silvestre Varela, a Portugal forward, barreled past Howard with a powerful header. Image Varela, left, took a cross from Cristiano Ronaldo and headed the tying goal past the United States’ Tim Howard in the final seconds. Credit Warren Little/Getty Images Portugal, which really needed a win to have any significant chance of advancing, barely celebrated. The Americans, collectively, all but collapsed. They had run so hard for so long on a night that was so hot. The conditions were staggering, the Amazonian climate suffocating. Temperatures were in the high 80s, and humidity levels nearly 70 percent, making it feel as if the entire game were being played in a bathroom where the shower had been left on. Through it all, victory had been theirs. Then, suddenly, it was gone. The Americans tried to be pragmatic. Klinsmann quickly preached turning the focus forward, to Germany, and the fast turnaround that would be required. They are still in control of their fate, the players said afterward. Still in command of what will happen. It was all true, but it did not dull the pain. Dempsey let loose a monstrous roar after he scored that goal — joined, presumably, by most of the soccer-watching public in the United States — but there was only silence after Varela’s header. That came with shock, too. “We could all taste it,” defender Matt Besler said. “We could all taste the second round.” Then he shrugged. “I think we like to do things the hard way,” he said. “It’s the American way.”

2014 World Cup
Soccer
US Men's Soccer Team
Portugal
Cristiano Ronaldo
Clint Dempsey
Nani


Otis R. Bowen, Health Secretary and Indiana Governor, Dies at 95

Abstract: Otis R. Bowen, who served two terms as governor of Indiana and later became the first physician appointed as secretary of health and human services, serving under President Ronald Reagan amid the rising debate about AIDS, died on Saturday in Donaldson, Ind. He was 95. His death was announced by Gov. Mike Pence of Indiana. Dr. Bowen was a family practitioner in Bremen, Ind. (population 3,500 at the time), for a quarter-century beginning in the late 1940s, and as a state legislator in the 1960s he was known to occasionally pull out a pad and write prescriptions for colleagues’ minor ailments. He brought a calm bedside manner and an independent streak when he arrived in Washington in 1985, joining the administration during Reagan’s second term. At the time, criticism was rising that the administration was not doing enough to respond to AIDS. Dr. Bowen did not become as prominent an advocate for AIDS issues and education as Dr. C. Everett Koop , the surgeon general who served under Reagan and who died in February, but he offered explicit warnings about the disease’s threat, including its risk to heterosexuals. In 1987, Dr. Bowen warned that deadly health disasters like the Black Death , smallpox and typhoid could seem “pale by comparison” with AIDS if more was not done. In 1988, after new studies showed the spread of the disease slowing among many groups, he shifted quickly, saying, “We do not expect any explosion into the heterosexual population.” Dr. Bowen successfully lobbied Congress to approve a bill that would extend Medicare to cover catastrophic illnesses — an issue that he had been interested in since serving on a Social Security advisory board in 1983. The law, drafted with the assistance of his chief of staff , Thomas R. Burke, was passed amid praise for its bipartisan support. But after Medicare beneficiaries complained that it had made their premiums rise — some conservatives called the measure socialistic — the law was repealed in 1989. Otis Ray Bowen was born on Feb. 26, 1918, in Richland Center, Ind. The son of a schoolteacher, he received his bachelor’s degree from Indiana University and his medical degree from Indiana University Medical School in 1942. He served in the Army Medical Corps during World War II. He won his first election in 1952, when he ran for coroner in Marshall County. He was elected to the Indiana legislature four years later and became speaker in 1967. He served in that role for four sessions, longer than any of his predecessors. He lost a bid for governor in 1968 but won in a landslide in 1972, defeating Matthew Welsh, a Democrat, who had been governor from 1961 to 1965. Re-elected easily in 1976, he was the first governor of Indiana to serve for two terms in more than a century. As governor he helped draft a major revision of state tax policy that reduced reliance on property taxes and increased revenue from sales taxes. Dr. Bowen had returned to practicing medicine and was teaching at Indiana University Medical School when President Reagan appointed him at the urging of Senator Dan Quayle of Indiana. Dr. Bowen is survived by his wife, the former Carol Hahn; a daughter, Judy McGrew; three sons, Rick, Tim and Rob; a stepson, Vance; a stepdaughter, Mindy; 12 grandchildren; 4 step-grandchildren; and 8 great-grandchildren. His first wife, Elizabeth Anne Steinmann, died in 1981. His second wife, the former Rose May Hochstetler, died in 1991.

Otis R Bowen
Indiana
Health and Human Services
Obituary


Sharks’ Ortmeyer Keeps Playing Despite Risk of Blood Clots

Abstract: When Jed Ortmeyer steps onto the ice, he shifts his focus to hockey — and those closest to him cannot help worrying. Ortmeyer, a 31-year-old San Jose Sharks forward , has a disorder that makes his blood prone to clotting. He must administer daily injections of an anticoagulant, which helps the problem but increases his chances of serious internal and external bleeding . “His risk of having something happen is real,” said Dr. Nicholas J. Morrissey, a vascular surgeon at NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital/Columbia University Medical Center, who has not treated Ortmeyer. “Because things that to you and I that are not a bother can be bothersome to someone who is on blood thinners.” Concussions , cuts, bruises — regular occurrences in hockey — are particularly dangerous for Ortmeyer. His mother, Judy, tells him to retire whenever he is hurt. And his older brother Jake said, “There have been a couple times where he takes a funny hit or goes down funny, and I’m like, ‘Oh, jeez, be good, be all right,’ just for the fact that the kid has had such a long string of bad luck.” Ortmeyer’s disorder went undiagnosed until 2006, when Ortmeyer developed a pulmonary embolism, a blood clot in a main artery in the lungs, while with the Rangers. “I’d be lying to you if I didn’t say I have some concerns,” said Tom Renney, his coach then. “But in no way, shape or form am I surprised that he’s continuing to pursue his dream, and I’m proud of him for it.” Ortmeyer wears extra padding on the ice and compression socks when he travels. He must monitor his diet . To check for clots, he has monthly ultrasound examinations on his legs and abdomen. He times his injections so the medication, which is legal in the N.H.L., is theoretically out of his system when he plays, a plan Morrissey said was not guaranteed to be safe. “You want them to be covered 24/7, not take a holiday for six hours a day,” he said. “That six hours is when you are potentially at risk.” Ortmeyer averages about 13 minutes a game, mostly on third-line shifts, in his first season with the Sharks and has four goals and two assists. He stands out with energy and hard work, so his production rarely shows up on a score sheet. The first N.H.L. player from Nebraska since 1925, Ortmeyer grew up in Omaha, where hockey has a devoted following but trails college football and baseball. He and Jake became the first local players for Omaha’s junior team, the Lancers of the United States Hockey League. “Youth hockey has grown tremendously because the kids could see that even though they weren’t from Minnesota or they weren’t from the East Coast, they still had a chance, and they could look up to Jed,” said Roseanne Gyhra, who housed Lancers for 13 years. Ortmeyer went on to play for the University of Michigan , helping the Wolverines reach the Frozen Four in three of his four years. He was the team captain and most valuable player his final two seasons. The first sign of his ailment appeared when he developed a blood clot after he tore the anterior cruciate ligament in his right knee, but doctors assumed it was a complication from surgery. Ortmeyer resumed his college career, although he later tore his left anterior cruciate ligament. “He didn’t come in with a lot of fanfare, so you didn’t know if he was going to continue to develop,” said Red Berenson, Michigan’s coach for 26 seasons. “But he just found a way to become a better player. If you had to measure him in terms of will and work ethic, it would be hard to put anyone ahead of him.” That was why the Rangers signed the undrafted Ortmeyer in 2003. He soon became a fan favorite. “He was one of those guys that would block shots,” Renney said. “He always put himself in harm’s way. And I think you know that’s kind of New York, isn’t it?” In August 2006, Ortmeyer had chest pains; he said his arms ached and went numb. “I just thought I was overtraining or pulled something, and then I started coughing up blood ,” he said. Emergency room doctors in New York discovered the embolism. Being young and in shape might have saved Ortmeyer, Morrissey said. “Pulmonary embolism is one of the most common causes of sudden death in this country, so he was in a life-threatening situation,” Morrissey said. Ortmeyer was treated and returned home that night. He was found to have one of several inherited blood disorders, which Morrissey said affect 5 percent to 9 percent of the general population. “At first it wasn’t about whether or not he should keep playing, it was about how, thank God, he’s still alive,” Jake Ortmeyer said. Soon after, a filter was surgically inserted in the main vein in his abdomen to keep clots from traveling to his heart and lungs, and he began taking blood thinners. The 6-foot, 188-pound Ortmeyer returned to the Rangers six months later and helped them reach the second round of the playoffs in 2007. Fans chose him to receive the team’s Steven McDonald Extra Effort Award for the second time. “The encouragement that I got from the fans, and the reception I got when I did come back was amazing,” he said. “It gives you a lot more energy and excitement every day when you come out on the ice at Madison Square.” But he became a free agent and signed a two-year contract with the Nashville Predators in July 2007. He tore his A.C.L. for the third time in February 2008 and missed the rest of the season. When he developed another clot after surgery, doctors urged him to stop playing. This summer, however, he signed a one-year deal with the Sharks , who lead the Pacific Division. “He’s a pretty astute player,” Sharks Coach Todd McLellan said. “He understands what we want to do and how we want to do it. I don’t know that he’s skilled enough or fast enough or strong enough to rely on any one of those three skills, so he puts it all together and becomes a usable part.” When Ortmeyer scored during a victory against the Rangers on Oct. 19, his first game against his former team, many in the Garden crowd cheered. Manny Malhotra, a former Ranger who was his linemate that night, said: “I’m just blown away by all the things that he’s gone through, the road back to recovery, the things that go through his mind every day. That’s one thing you’ll never question is his desire to want to be out there and his desire to play.” Berenson, Ortmeyer’s college coach, said he had mixed feelings. “I’m impressed with his will to play and his love of the game, but I just hope that he’s not taking any unnecessary risks,” he said. But Ortmeyer says he just wants people to remember what he has given to the game, not his sacrifices. “I feel like this is what I’ve always wanted to do,” he said. “I feel like I can still compete and play and contribute, so it wasn’t time for me to sit on the sidelines.”

Jed Ortmeyer
Ice hockey
Medicine and Health
Blood Clot
San Jose Sharks


Chicago to Pay $5 Million to Victims of Police Abuse

Abstract: CHICAGO — For decades, they had waited for an apology. This group of black men, some now graying and bent by age, had complained of violent abuse at the hands of the police in the 1970s and ’80s on this city’s South Side. They said they had been suffocated with plastic bags, beaten with phone books, shocked with cattle prods — torture tactics meant to extract confessions to crimes. On Wednesday, after years of investigation, public debate and litigation, the City of Chicago expressed remorse. City Council members voted without dissent to pay $5.5 million in reparations to victims of torture and abuse by a group of officers known as the “Midnight Crew” and overseen by a notorious police commander, Jon Burge. For those affected, there were also promises of a memorial, psychological counseling and job training, and assurances that their story would be taught in Chicago schools. “This is another step, but an essential step, in righting a wrong, removing a stain on the reputation of this great city and the people who make up this great city,” Mayor Rahm Emanuel said. Image Gregory Banks was among those subjected to torture by a group of police officers known as the Midnight Crew. Credit Andrew Nelles for The New York Times For the victims, like Anthony Holmes, who spent 30 years in prison for a 1973 murder he says he falsely confessed to after being tortured, it meant the prospect of relief. “I don’t care how you try to forget it, how you try to put it to the side,” Mr. Holmes said. “It’s always there and at times it comes out on you. You might break down and start crying.” As a broad conversation about police conduct and race plays out in cities like Baltimore and Ferguson, Mo., Chicagoans, too, are re-examining relations with the police, including episodes more recent than those tied to Mr. Burge. On Wednesday, the City Council approved a $415,000 settlement with a woman who said she had been sexually assaulted in 2011 by two on-duty police officers, who have since resigned and pleaded guilty to criminal charges of official misconduct. Protesters have objected to a decision last month by a judge to drop charges against an off-duty Chicago police officer who shot and killed an unarmed black woman, Rekia Boyd, in 2012. And many say they are awaiting the fate of a police officer who shot and killed Laquan McDonald, who was 17 and carrying a knife when he was shot 16 times last fall. Over the past decade, the City of Chicago has spent more than $500 million on settlements, judgments, fees and other costs related to police misconduct, according to a 2014 investigation by the Better Government Association, a nonpartisan watchdog group. Andy Shaw, who leads the association, said the city could have used the money to hire more police officers or teachers, or to balance the city’s troubled budget. Image Some of the victims attended the City Council’s meeting on Wednesday. Credit Andrew Nelles for The New York Times More than 20 years after Mr. Burge was fired from the Chicago Police Department, some people in the city’s toughest neighborhoods say that dealings with the police have grown tense, particularly in the last few years as city officials worked to tamp down a high homicide rate linked to a pervasive gang problem. “I don’t see the times being better at all,” said Mark Clements, 50, a torture victim whose name was read at the Council meeting on Wednesday. “I see these times more so as being times of near-riot.” Late last month, Garry McCarthy, the city’s police superintendent, announced plans for a tour around the city aimed at building trust between police and residents. And police officials say they have worked to make other improvements, too: expanding bike and foot patrols in neighborhoods, creating community policing offices in all police districts, and launching a pilot program for body cameras. In a statement, the Chicago Police Department said: “Jon Burge’s actions are a disgrace — to Chicago, to the hard-working men and women of the police department, and most importantly to those he was sworn to protect. Mayor Emanuel and Superintendent McCarthy have zero tolerance for any misconduct.” The cases related to Mr. Burge and the officers under his command had plagued this city for decades. In 2010, special prosecutors issued a report corroborating the abuse claims. By then, though, statutes of limitation on abuse charges had run out. Instead, Mr. Burge was convicted in 2010 of perjury and obstruction of justice; he completed his prison sentence this year. Reached by phone at his home in Florida, Mr. Burge declined to comment on the reparations.

Police Brutality,Police Misconduct,Police Shootings


Council Bills Seek to Make Construction Less Perilous in New York City

Abstract: Alarmed by a surge in recent deaths and injuries in construction accidents, members of the New York City Council on Thursday urged swift passage of legislation intended to penalize contractors who break the rules. At the same time, hundreds of yards away, thousands of union workers, who were flanked by more than a dozen city and state officials, gathered near City Hall to push for stronger safety standards. To honor the 16 workers who have died this year — most of them immigrants who worked on nonunion projects — the marchers bore witness to a symbolic memorial procession featuring 16 wood coffins, as bagpipers played “Amazing Grace.” The events came two weeks after The New York Times published an investigation into construction fatalities in the last two years, based on thousands of pages of safety reports and handwritten notes, as well as interviews with the deceased workers’ relatives and friends. The investigation found that the rise in deaths and injuries has far exceeded the rate of new construction over the same period. It also found in the cases in which workers died, basic steps had not been taken to prevent them from falling and supervision was lacking. The investigation also found that because of the urgency to finish these projects as quickly as possible, the workers were forced to take dangerous shortcuts or lacked adequate training. As a result, most of the deaths were “completely avoidable,” federal safety investigators concluded. In response, the City Council Committee on Housing and Buildings held a hearing on Thursday to fast-track several bills and to ask questions, some of them pointed, of the city’s buildings commissioner. Several members of the Council also said that they were busy drafting additional bills that would soon be introduced. “Saving New Yorkers’ lives is the reason that I called this hearing today,” said Councilman Jumaane D. Williams, the committee’s chairman. “To the families of those that we have lost, and to those who have been injured, let me say loudly and clearly: We hear you, and we are here because of you.” Mr. Williams, a Brooklyn Democrat, then read out loud the names of some of the workers who have died in the last two years, including several whose stories were described in detail in the Times article. Two of the new bills would double the penalties assessed to contractors for working without a permit and for violating a stop-work order. Another bill would establish a task force of mayoral agencies, to be led by the Department of Buildings, that would convene regularly to assess the safety risks posed to workers, pedestrians and motorists near construction sites. Mayor Bill de Blasio’s administration opposes the bills, said Rick D. Chandler, the city’s buildings commissioner. “If we set penalties too high, we also risk driving work underground, without the benefit of department regulation, which may in turn result in more unsafe construction,” he told the committee. Mr. Chandler said that the department was already doing “proactive enhanced disciplinary work” with additional staffing and had established, for the first time, a Risk Management Office that would use data analysis to better identify problems. He also said the administration would focus more attention on buildings up to nine stories high, “where a disproportionate number of accidents occur.” Mr. Chandler added that the administration was considering requiring that construction superintendents be on site on all midsize alteration projects. At a rally in City Hall Park that lasted more than two hours, Gary LaBarbera, president of the Building and Construction Trades Council of Greater New York, and nearly three dozen speakers exhorted workers to say, “Enough is enough,” when it comes to lax standards. Councilman Rory I. Lancman, a Queens Democrat, who spoke at the rally, has introduced a bill to compel the Buildings Department to report safety violations to the federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration. And Councilman Corey Johnson, a Manhattan Democrat, announced an upcoming bill, co-sponsored with Gale A. Brewer, the Manhattan borough president, that would require all developers who build over 10 stories to have their workers go through an apprenticeship training program, approved by the State Department of Labor. The announcement of the proposal brought raucous cheers, as chants of “Union! Union!” ricocheted throughout the canyons of lower Broadway. Some speakers criticized Mr. de Blasio, a Democrat, for not doing enough on construction safety and for siding too often with real estate developers, as part of his agenda to add housing that is affordable to middle-class New Yorkers. Others said that, for far too long, officials had ignored the plight of the construction workers who do not have union protections. Often they do not speak English, lack official documents and are especially vulnerable to exploitation, speakers said. Steve McInnis, president of the New York City District Council of Carpenters, noted that his union had made the coffins on display at the rally. They had actually made 17, not 16, he added. “One coffin is for the next worker,” he said.

Construction
NYC
Accidents and Safety
New York City Council
Jumaane D Williams
Rory I Lancman


North Carolina: State Joins Utility in Appealing Ruling on Cleanup

Abstract: State regulators are joining with Duke Energy in appealing a judge’s ruling on cleaning up groundwater pollution from the company’s coal ash dumps. The state Environmental Management Commission filed notice on Monday that it would appeal a March 6 ruling by a superior court judge, Paul Ridgeway. The commission and Duke contend that state law does not give the state the authority to order an immediate cleanup. Judge Ridgeway ruled the commission appointed by Gov. Pat McCrory and Republican legislative leaders had been misinterpreting the law for years. Mr. McCrory, a Republican, worked for Duke more than 28 years before retiring and running for governor.

North Carolina
Duke Energy
Water pollution
Judiciary
Pat McCrory