Florida State Rallies to Stay Unbeaten; T.C.U. Fends Off Upset Bid

Abstract: Dalvin Cook ran for two touchdowns, including the go-ahead score late in the fourth quarter, and No. 2 Florida State continued its season of rallies by erasing a 16-point deficit and topping host Miami, 30-26, on Saturday night. Jameis Winston completed 25 of 42 passes for 304 yards for the Seminoles (10-0, 7-0 Atlantic Coast Conference), who extended their winning streak to 26 games and defeated the Hurricanes (6-4, 3-3) for the fifth straight time. The Seminoles clinched the A.C.C.’s Atlantic Division title earlier in the day when Clemson lost. They were down, 16-0 and 23-7, before outscoring Miami, 23-3, in the final two and a half quarters. TEXAS CHRISTIAN 34, KANSAS 30 Aaron Green ran for 128 yards and two touchdowns, Cameron Echols-Luper returned a punt 69 yards for another score, and No. 5 T.C.U. (9-1, 6-1 Big 12) turned back a spirited upset bid by host Kansas (3-7, 1-6) to keep the Horned Frogs in playoff contention. Trevone Boykin added 330 yards passing and a touchdown for T.C.U., which trailed, 27-17, midway through the third quarter before a big finishing kick. NORTHWESTERN 43, NOTRE DAME 40 Jack Mitchell kicked a 45-yard field goal with 19 seconds left to force overtime, then kicked a 41-yard field goal to give visiting Northwestern (4-6) a win over No. 15 Notre Dame (7-3). Image Barrett connected with Jalin Marshall, above, on a 57-yard pass play as Ohio State built a 14-0 lead in the first quarter. Credit Ann Heisenfelt/Associated Press The Wildcats closed to 40-37 with 4:10 left on a 6-yard touchdown run by quarterback Trevor Siemian and a 2-point conversion on a run by Warren Long after Notre Dame was called for pass interference. OHIO STATE 31, MINNESOTA 24 J. T. Barrett threw for three touchdowns and ran for an Ohio State quarterback record of 189 yards and another score, helping the No. 8 Buckeyes (9-1, 6-0 Big Ten) overcome three turnovers and wintry weather to beat host Minnesota (7-3, 4-2). Barrett completed 15 of 25 passes for 200 yards and one interception. WISCONSIN 59, NEBRASKA 24 No. 22 Wisconsin (8-2, 5-1 Big Ten) overcame three early turnovers to take control of the Big Ten West Division with a home rout of No. 11 Nebraska (8-2, 4-2). Outdueling Nebraska’s Ameer Abdullah in a matchup of star running backs, Melvin Gordon of the Badgers overcame two fumbles to help his team roar past the Cornhuskers with 49 unanswered points and 581 rushing yards. The star junior decimated what had been a staunch Nebraska defense and delivered an emphatic statement in the Heisman Trophy race. MICHIGAN STATE 37, MARYLAND 15 Jeremy Langford ran for 138 yards and two touchdowns, and No. 12 Michigan State (8-2, 5-1 Big Ten) received a strong performance from its defense in a victory over host Maryland (6-4, 3-3). Riley Bullough scored on a 22-yard interception return to aid the Spartans. Michigan State picked off three passes, allowed only six yards rushing and sacked Maryland quarterback C. J. Brown three times. ARIZONA 27, WASHINGTON 26 Casey Skowron kicked a 47-yard field goal as time expired to give No. 17 Arizona (8-2, 5-2 Pacific-12 Conference) a wild victory over visiting Washington (6-5, 2-5). Image A pass caught by Bucky Hodges, followed by the successful point after, gave Virginia Tech its 1-point win over Duke on Saturday. Credit Grant Halverson/Getty Images Skowron, who also had an 18-yard touchdown run on a fake field goal, missed his first attempt wide right, but the Huskies called timeout just before the kick and he got a second try. VIRGINIA TECH 17, DUKE 16 Michael Brewer threw two touchdown passes, and visiting Virginia Tech (5-5, 2-4 A.C.C.) held on to upset No. 19 Duke (8-2, 4-2). Brewer was 12 of 23 for 138 yards, with touchdowns of 15 yards to Bucky Hodges and 10 yards to Isaiah Ford. ARKANSAS 17, LOUISIANA STATE 0 Brandon Allen threw for 169 yards, and host Arkansas (5-5, 1-5 Southeastern Conference) ended a 17-game league losing streak with a win over No. 20 L.S.U. (7-4, 3-4). Jonathan Williams and Alex Collins ran for touchdowns for the Razorbacks, who held the Tigers to 36 yards rushing on 32 attempts. MARSHALL 41, RICE 14 Rakeem Cato threw four touchdown passes, Devon Johnson rushed for 199 yards and a score, and No. 21 Marshall (10-0, 6-0 Conference USA) beat visiting Rice (6-4, 4-2). The Thundering Herd limited Rice to 180 yards and ended the Owls’ six-game winning streak. UTAH 20, STANFORD 17 Travis Wilson threw a 3-yard touchdown pass to Kenneth Scott in the second overtime, sending No. 25 Utah (7-3, 4-3 Pac-12) past host Stanford (5-5, 3-4). Kaelin Clay caught a 25-yard scoring pass on the first play of overtime before the Cardinal came back with the tying score. Jordan Williamson kicked a career-long 51-yard field goal — the same distance Stanford passed up late in the fourth quarter — to start the second session, setting the stage for the Utes’ dramatic finish.

College football
Duke
Ohio State
University of Minnesota
Clemson
Georgia Institute of Technology
Florida State University
University of Miami


Now Afloat, Paper Mill Gets Back to Roots

Abstract: THOSE holding tickets to the official opening night of the Paper Mill Playhouse ’s new season on Sept. 30 will be treated to a doo-wop band, vintage cars and waitresses in poodle skirts and roller skates — all even before entering the theater. Once inside, they’ll see a state premiere: a musical version of “Happy Days” by Garry Marshall. The evening will highlight changes that have taken place since the Millburn theater nearly canceled its final shows last season because of a fiscal crisis. First, the preshow 50s party will serve as a fund-raiser. Second, the event, along with a town-sponsored sock hop a week before, signals a new spirit of cooperation between the theater and the township of Millburn. And finally, the show itself, running Sept. 26 to Oct. 28, brings the Paper Mill back, after three years of experimentation, to its roots in family-oriented musical theater. With a $1.5 million budget shortfall in the spring and the cancellation in March of a bank loan, the theater looked for a while as if would not be around for its 70th season this fall. But another bank came through with a $3.5 million loan in May, and that, combined with plans to team up with other commercial theaters, tighten production budgets and increase fund-raising, has put the 1,200-seat Paper Mill in a healthier place than it has been for some time, according to its management. Still, those involved with the theater are not breathing easy just yet. In this anniversary year, “I just hope we can celebrate that the theater is back on track and getting to where it needs to be,” said Kenneth Thorn, chairman of the board. In addition to the opening-night fund-raiser, the theater is scheduled to throw its first benefit gala in several years next spring. The management will also be more proactive about spreading the word about its events: Before each performance this season, audience members will be encouraged to tell their friends about it, Mr. Thorn said. The fiscal crisis reminded the community of the importance of the theater on the edge of downtown, according to township officials and the theater management. The township, in fact, is reviewing the possibility of buying the property and leasing it to the theater company for a nominal fee. Last month, the Township Committee named an appraiser to assess the property’s value. Noting that the theater brings an estimated $800,000 to $1 million in revenue to the township, Committeeman Thomas C. McDermott said that in the coming months the council would examine whether the purchase would be a sound investment. “We need to have some comfort level in their operations,” he said. “We want to be sure the money we give them would go toward the viability of the theater.” Part of that comfort level means putting on plays that people will come to see, Mr. Thorn said. In the last few years, the theater has presented more experimental works, under the direction of Michael Gennaro, the former president and chief executive, who left in January. Now audiences can expect more musicals and family fare, Mr. Thorn said. In addition to “Happy Days: The Musical” (a replacement for the previously announced season opener, a musical version of “Frankenstein”), the 2007-8 season will include the musicals “Meet Me in St. Louis,” “Kiss Me Kate” and “Little Shop of Horrors” and the plays “The Miracle Worker” and “Steel Magnolias.” Mr. Thorn said the theater’s board would soon begin a search for Mr. Gennaro’s replacement. The ideal candidate, he said, would be a specialist in musical theater who could “reinterpret old pieces and ultimately create new works.” “We don’t want to just take old shows and put them on stage with new faces,” Mr. Thorn said. “We need to try to make material relevant to today’s audiences.”


When an Election Becomes a Forum on Immigration

Abstract: BREWSTER, N.Y. You can find the past of this old blue-collar railroad village at the Southeast Museum, which harks back to the days when three hotels served travelers, people worked at the Tilly Foster iron mine or the Borden Milk Condensary and the local pecking order began with the engineers and conductors with the best jobs on the Harlem Line. And you found the present, sadly, on Election Day, when most people just wanted election season to be over and didn’t even get that. There were lots of small-bore issues in the three-person race for the less-than-imperial prize of supervisor of the Town of Southeast in Putnam County just north of the Westchester line: taxes, a new recreation center, widening Route 22, the sewage treatment plant. But in essence, there was only one: the day laborers from Central America whose presence on the streets of Brewster, the town’s main village, seemed to be virtually the entire rationale for the high-decibel, high-dollar campaign of a local lawyer named Michael Rights. The loud, angry race ended in an inconclusive dead heat with Mr. Rights leading Mayor John Degnan of Brewster by eight votes. The 205 absentee ballots will be tabulated on Tuesday evening. But then maybe the murky ending is appropriate because no local election will decide the issue that is tearing apart this community and others like it. “I think that most of the people who voted for Mike Rights were making a statement that no one’s doing anything, and at least he’s talking about doing something,” said Denis Castelli, the village historian, who supported Mr. Degnan. “I believe that a lot more people than voted for him, if they could snap their fingers and make illegal immigrants disappear, they’d snap their fingers.” Brewster is hardly the only place where immigrants on the corner have become the defining local issue. But it may be one where the opposition to illegal immigration has found its most fully defined politics. One reason is Matthew Neuringer, who graduated from nearby Carmel High School in 2005 and last year ran the virulently anti-immigrant State Assembly campaign for Greg Ball. Mr. Ball, a Republican, turned out a long-term incumbent in the primary and then easily won the general election. This year, both advised Mr. Rights and his S.O.S. — Save our Southeast — slate, which for months inundated voters with dark mailings and urgent robo-calls about illegal immigration, crime and social decay. Mr. Rights, who has declined to say how much of his own money he spent on the race — estimates run well upward of $100,000 — says voters are fed up and want someone who will address the immigration issue. “Illegal immigration is illegal,” he said, lifting a line from the Ball campaign. “What it means is that we have illegal aliens who are off the grid. They don’t pay income taxes, don’t pay property taxes, don’t pay for health care, are stressing schools and emergency services. It’s a vast multibillion-dollar underground untaxed black market in human labor and a portion of that untaxed black market economy is present in Brewster.” In an interview, Mr. Rights stressed that the workers themselves were among the victims, but that was a note not often heard in his campaign. Instead, his campaign was so aggressive that The Journal News called it “dangerous ... a macabre cartoon of fear-mongering over illegal immigrants and blithe lies about his opponents.” It’s not hard to find people who claim the presence of the immigrants on the streets keeps them away from town. And it’s possible that Mr. Rights and Mr. Ball are sincerely voicing the frustrations many people feel about an immigration system almost everyone agrees is broken. But, you also hear another view, that much of the jockeying has to do with power and development, with immigration just the hot-button issue used to rouse the populace to turn out one team and put in another. So Mr. Castelli, for one, says there’s an air of fantasy to the whole uproar. First, he says, immigration is a federal issue, not a local one, and no matter what they say, there’s not much local officials can do about it. Second, for all the talk about immigrants changing the character of the place, Brewster has always been a working-class town of laborers and immigrants, not some upscale suburb like Greenwich or Katonah. It’s just that the color of the workers has changed. And third, he says, if people could snap their fingers and make the immigrants disappear, they’d almost certainly be taken aback by the results. “You couldn’t get a roof patched, a stone wall built, a lawn mowed, a meal cooked, a table bused,” he said. “This is where all the labor is coming from. Twenty years ago my next door neighbor’s kid used to knock on my door and ask if he could mow my lawn. Now he wants to build my Web site. No one who speaks English wants to mow my lawn.”

Illegal Immigrants
Putnam County (NY)
Immigration and Refugees
Elections


Liberties Advocates Fear Abuse of Satellite Images

Abstract: WASHINGTON, Aug. 16 — For years, a handful of civilian agencies have used limited images from the nation’s constellation of spy satellites to track hurricane damage, monitor climate change and create topographical maps. But a new plan to allow emergency response, border control and, eventually, law enforcement agencies greater access to sophisticated satellites and other sensors that monitor American territory has drawn sharp criticism from civil liberties advocates who say the government is overstepping the use of military technology for domestic surveillance. “It potentially marks a transformation of American political culture toward a surveillance state in which the entire public domain is subject to official monitoring,” said Steven Aftergood, director of the Project on Government Secrecy for the Federation of American Scientists. At issue is a newly disclosed plan that Mike McConnell, director of national intelligence, approved in May in a memorandum to Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff, which puts some of the nation’s most powerful intelligence-gathering tools at the disposal of domestic security officials as early as this fall. The uses include enhancing seaport and land-border security, improving planning to mitigate natural disasters, and determining how best to secure major events, like the Super Bowl or national political conventions. Eventually, state and local law enforcement officials could be allowed to tap into the technology on a case-by-case basis, once legal guidelines are worked out, administration officials said. Spy satellites, which provide higher-resolution photographs than commercial satellite imagery, and in real time, have traditionally been used overseas to monitor terrorist movements and nuclear tests. Their expanded use in domestic surveillance marks a new era in intelligence gathering, conjures up images of “Big Brother in the sky,” and raises civil liberties concerns. “This touches so many Americans, it can’t be allowed to be discussed behind closed doors,” said Caroline Fredrickson, director of the Washington legislative office of the American Civil Liberties Union. The new data sharing comes as Congress passed legislation this month that broadened the Bush administration’s authority to eavesdrop without warrants on some Americans’ international communications. Administration officials say that in the aftermath of the Sept. 11 attacks, the government has been looking for ways to use spy satellites and other sensors to strengthen the nation’s defenses against terrorism. “The view after Sept. 11 was that we ought to move this to homeland security and broaden the domain,” Charles E. Allen, the Department of Homeland Security ’s top intelligence officer, said Thursday in a telephone interview. “We obviously believe this is a good expansion.” The new plan largely follows recommendations included in a 2005 independent study group led by Keith R. Hall, a former head of the National Reconnaissance Office who is a vice president of the consulting firm Booz Allen Hamilton. “Today, policies and practices governing the use of I.C. capabilities, many of which predate 9/11, discourage rather than encourage use by domestic users especially law enforcement,” the report said. The abbreviation I.C. refers to the intelligence community. “The ultimate effect is missed opportunities to collect, exploit and disseminate domestic information critical to fighting the war on terrorism, preparing for, responding to, and recovering from disasters natural and man-made,” the report said. The Posse Comitatus Act of 1878 prohibits the active-duty military forces from conducting law enforcement missions on American soil, and Mr. Allen underscored that the new information-sharing would not violate that ban. Mr. Allen said that the new program would be especially useful for disaster planning, and for policing land and seaports. He said the effort might eventually share information with domestic law enforcement officials but only after a careful review that would take several months. “We are not going to be penetrating buildings, bunkers or people’s homes with this,” Mr. Allen said. “I view that as absurd. My view is that no American should be concerned.” A new office within the Homeland Security Department, called the National Applications Office, will be responsible beginning in October for coordinating requests from civilian agencies for spy satellite information. The Homeland Security Department and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence would be responsible for overseeing the program. Reviews would be conducted by agency lawyers, inspectors general and privacy officers. Civil liberties advocates complained that the agencies could not be trusted to supervise themselves, and that Congress needed to play a larger oversight role. An official with the House Intelligence Committee said the panel had been notified of the program last spring but had not been given details of the data-sharing, and would ask for a full briefing when lawmakers returned in September from their summer recess. “Crystal-clear rules on the use of such information are needed to protect the privacy of the American people,” said Representative Jane Harman, a California Democrat who heads the House Homeland Security Subcommittee on Intelligence, Information Sharing and Terrorism Risk Assessment.

Satellites
Surveillance of Citizens by Government
Homeland Security Department
United States


In 3rd Storm, FEMA Trailer Is a Charm

Abstract: LEEVILLE, La., Oct. 16 — Jack Melancon lost his shrimp nets and his roof to Hurricane Katrina last year and the rest of his house to flooding from Hurricane Rita. So when he awoke Monday morning to the groan of a tornado advancing on his government-issued trailer home here about 60 miles south of New Orleans, Mr. Melancon, a commercial fisherman, was certain he was about to take a third strike. Skipping across the wind-driven waters of Bayou Lafourche, the tornado toppled trailers and cut shrimp boats free, driving one into a natural gas pipeline that was quickly turned off. Two people suffered minor injuries. The tornado snatched the roof from the house of Mr. Melancon’s father and the siding from the house of his brother. Then it hurled debris against Mr. Melancon’s trailer, provided by the Federal Emergency Management Agency . Short-lived banshee winds strained to pull the trailer from the soggy earth, but metal straps held it firm. The storm then veered north and disappeared. “It rocked and it rolled and it shook and it blew,” Mr. Melancon said. “The trailer did its job. I would recommend one of these to anybody.”

Federal Emergency Management Agency
Mobile Homes and Trailers
Tornadoes
Hurricane Katrina


Ex-Department of Justice Lawyer Faces Penalties in Leak of N.S.A. Program

Abstract: WASHINGTON — The District of Columbia bar is pursuing ethics charges against a former Department of Justice lawyer who has said he was one of the sources for a 2005 article in The New York Times about the National Security Agency’s program of wiretapping without warrants. This week, the District of Columbia Office of Disciplinary Counsel made public an ethics charge sheet against Thomas M. Tamm, who told Newsweek in December 2008 that he had called one of the reporters who wrote that article, Eric Lichtblau, from a pay phone in 2004 and informed him that the government had some kind of secret, illegal surveillance program. The Bush administration started the program in October 2001, bypassing the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act . Mr. Tamm had learned that information from a secret program that was going into applications the Justice Department was making to the nation’s intelligence court for traditional wiretap orders in national security cases, which he helped prepare, although he did not know the details. Mr. Lichtblau has never confirmed whether he spoke to Mr. Tamm, and he and James Risen, his co-author, have said they had many sources for the article. Mr. Risen was also investigating the program before the two reporters realized they were working on the same subject and teamed up; they won a Pulitzer Prize in 2006. Despite Mr. Tamm’s public confession, the Justice Department decided in 2010 not to prosecute him. But in 2009, the bar ethics office opened an investigation into whether Mr. Tamm, who works as a public defender in Maryland, had violated ethics rules. Late last month, Hamilton P. Fox III, an assistant disciplinary counsel, signed off on pursuing two legal ethics charges. The first is that Mr. Tamm committed a violation when he learned that his organization may have been breaking the law but failed to report the problem internally, including to its highest officer, the attorney general. The attorney general at the time, John Ashcroft, already knew about the program. He had signed off on it from the start. The other charge is that Mr. Tamm violated another rule by telling a reporter information that he had learned in confidence as part of a lawyer-client relationship, the disclosure of which “would be embarrassing, or would likely to be detrimental, to the client.” The potential outcome ranges from no discipline and various reprimands to disbarment. Typically, bar groups in other states echo ethics discipline imposed by other jurisdictions. Paul Kemp, a lawyer representing Mr. Tamm, said they would file a written response in the next two weeks. “This guy has tried to move on with his life after being torn up and investigated for four years by the Justice Department, and now this comes out in 2016?” Mr. Kemp said. Mr. Kemp said the Maryland bar had separately investigated Mr. Tamm and decided in 2009 not to bring any ethics charges. The District of Columbia bar website shows that his bar membership has been suspended for nonpayment of dues. The charges were first reported on Tuesday by the National Law Journal. Wallace Shipp Jr., the District of Columbia disciplinary counsel, said that he could not comment on the specifics of Mr. Tamm’s case, but that his office had decided to open the investigation in 2009 based on news media reports. When asked why it waited until now to move forward, he said that the office was working through a backlog. Mr. Shipp, known as Gene, said lawyers facing ethics charges first have a hearing before a three-member committee, which then sends a report to a nine-member Board of Professional Responsibility. Any finding of a violation or sanction can be appealed to court.

Government Surveillance
NSA
Justice Department
Thomas M. Tamm
Wiretapping Eavesdropping
Ethics Misconduct Malfeasance
Judiciary
The New York Times
Spying and Intelligence Agencies


With Victory Over Arsenal, United Shows Its Mettle

Abstract: Manchester United is heading back toward the top of the Premier League it won last season. The change of team management after so many years, and the march of Arsenal through the opening two months of the campaign, had suggested a tough transition for the champion. “We knew that we couldn’t afford to lose today,” said Wayne Rooney immediately after the result. “We knew we had to do a job, and we managed to do that. It was as tough as anything we’ve faced this season.” But with Sunday’s 1-0 win by United over Arsenal, almost inevitably through a goal by Robin van Persie, the gap at the top is closing, and United has served notice that it is far from ready to abdicate. England’s top fixture this may be, but as the teams lined up to observe the traditional salute on Remembrance Sunday, no fewer than 11 different nations were represented by the players linking arms around the center circle. They included a German, Mesut Özil, and a Japanese, Shinji Kagawa. Out of that impeccable stillness and silence came the roar of 77,000 spectators and the organized rush of 22 players competing for an edge. Arsenal had suffered here the heaviest defeat — by 8-2 in 2011 — of the era in which Arsène Wenger has been its manager. But there was no expectation of that on this crisp and fine Manchester evening. In fact, this has been the season so far when Arsenal has mastered its one weakness, the vulnerability, almost the disdain it used to have for defensive duties. Not once could Liverpool score against it last week, and not once did Borussia Dortmund do so in Germany in midweek. However, Arsenal did fall to a set piece United routine midway through the first half at Old Trafford. And there was an obvious reason why. Wayne Rooney won, and took a corner kick out on the left. He directed the ball toward the near post of Arsenal’s goal, guided it deliberately for his attacking partner, and Arsenal’s former striker, van Persie. The closest two Gunners, Aaron Ramsey and Olivier Giroud, defended like forwards. They were not really adept at the task. Ramsey stood still and allowed van Persie to jog past him; Giroud was beaten in the jump, and van Persie, sold by Arsenal to United for 23 million pounds in 2011, connected with a glancing header so fine and so powerful that it was over the line at the far post before the defender Kieran Gibbs could intercept it. Such a cold goal. So clinical, so precise, and so calculated. We knew at that point that Manchester United is beginning to get to grips after an indifferent start to the season, caused no doubt by the uncertainty of losing its manager, Alex Ferguson, to retirement after more than a quarter of a century in charge. Set piece goals are part of the armory that Ferguson’s successor, David Moyes, had always employed at his previous cub, Everton. With set-piece soccer comes aerial combat. Two repercussions of that came before half time, first when Manchester’s Phil Jones and Arsenal’s goalkeeper Wojciech Szczesny both went for a high ball into the goalmouth. They collided head-to-head, Szczesny was treated while he lay on the turf and Jones, somewhat harshly, was yellow-carded by the referee. That stricture seemed unnecessary because this, at worst, had been an unintended miscalculation between two men with eyes only for the ball. Quite possibly the ref, Michael Oliver, was being overly strict a week after the Tottenham Hotspur goalie, Hugo Lloris, risked playing on with concussion. Lloris, incidentally, was prevented by the doctors from returning for the Spurs’ game on Sunday, a game that was lost 1-0 at home to Newcastle United. Coming after Chelsea had dropped points against West Bromwich, and Manchester City went down by the same score at Sunderland, this turned into a very inviting weekend for both United and Arsenal. United needed victory to get itself back into the title race. Arsenal hoped for the points to stretch the lead it had impressively built after 10 rounds in the Premier League. Understandably, therefore, this contest in Manchester was hard fought, with neither side willing to give an inch. United clearly has not lost the mettle that made it a champion. One unforeseen handicap had befallen Arsenal even before the team arrived at the stadium. Four of its players fell ill somewhere between the return journey from Dortmund and the journey north to Old Trafford. Two of that quartet, the giant defender Per Mertesacker and the elusive winger Tomas Rosicky, did not even make the trip, a third, Mikel Arteta, declared himself ready for action, and the other affected player, the German teenager Serge Gnarby, was on the subs bench. How much that disrupted Wenger’s game plan, he would not say. Excuses are not in the vocabulary of a club hoping and intending to take the Premiership crown off the side it was visiting. Defending champions, however, are no less likely to give up a lead to pretenders. The unforgiving physical aspect to the game continued unabated, and by half time it was Manchester that was forced to re-arrange its defense when its captain and strong man, Nemanja Vidic, suffered a cut mouth. Another facial injury. A suggestion, perhaps of another slight concussion, and though Vidic was back on his feet he was withdrawn and replaced. If English soccer has learned one thing from the controversy of the previous weekend it appears to be that sanity will prevail from here on in. Last week, Tottenham’s coach André Villas-Boas had claimed it was his call, his final word, that counted in respect of allowing his confused keeper to return to the fray. As taut and as tense as the United-Arsenal conflict was, the home side’s captain was taken off for his own good when he suffered had injury. Even as the home crowd sang their triumphant songs, even as the relief encircled the arena, many of us were quietly glad that common sense in medical matters had resurfaced in the English sport.

Soccer
Arsenal Soccer Team
Manchester United
Premier League


Object Floating From Shuttle Is No Cause for Concern

Abstract: There was a flurry of activity on Friday morning aboard the space shuttle Discovery after astronauts noticed an object floating away from the orbiter and saw what appeared to be a small protrusion sticking out of its rudder. The shuttle is scheduled to land on Saturday, and such objects can be worrisome since they could indicate a broken part on the spacecraft. Within a few hours, however, experts on the ground determined that neither issue was a problem. “We’re confident that there’s no impact for entry,” said Col. Terry W. Virts Jr., an astronaut serving as the point of contact on the ground for the crew. Colonel Virts told crew members that the object floating away from the shuttle was one of three clips that attach to the rudder and protect against heating during ascent. It has no function during re-entry, he said, and so its loss presents no problem for the craft or the crew. The protrusion is a normal part of the rudder assembly that was exactly the same as it had been during launching, Colonel Virts said, but it might have appeared to protrude because the rudder was being seen at a slightly different angle than before. Cmdr. Mark E. Kelly of the Navy, the shuttle commander, radioed to the ground shortly after 7:30 a.m. Eastern time on Friday that the object had been spotted floating behind the right wing. The object appeared after a series of routine prelanding procedures in which the crew tested the steering jets, a test that often shakes loose objects from the spacecraft. If a serious problem had been discovered, the crew could have taken the shuttle back to the International Space Station, which it separated from on Wednesday, under what is known as the safe haven plan, so that mission managers could determine whether to repair the craft or try to send another shuttle as a rescue vehicle. The Discovery is scheduled to land as early as 11:15 a.m. Eastern time on Saturday at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, though problems like rain, low clouds over the landing strip or high winds could lead mission managers to delay the landing until later in the day, or put it off to Sunday or even Monday. The shuttle’s mission has been devoted to further construction of the $100 billion space station. The Discovery delivered the $1 billion main module of the Japanese laboratory known as Kibo, or Hope.


Veterans of Storm Find Relief in Combat

Abstract: HARVEY, La., May 16 — For Brett Hughes, the best way to cope with the stresses of life after Hurricane Katrina turned out to be flipping another guy over onto the floor, choking off his blood supply and threatening to mangle his limbs. A little yoga helps, too. Mr. Hughes, by day a detective with the Plaquemines Parish Sheriff’s Office, has by night become a local guru of Brazilian jiu-jitsu, a sport/combat style best known to fans of the Ultimate Fighting Championship (formerly known as cage fights and banned by law in some places). This new role started after the storm, which, he said, gave him a taste of what war might feel like. He was on duty then, and afterward his days were filled dealing with desperate people. And he was adding too many pounds to his 5-foot-8 frame. “I was so stressed out, I needed some relief,” he said. But the gym where he had studied martial arts for years was destroyed by the hurricane, so in February 2006 he rented some time at a kiddie gym in a strip mall here in Harvey, across the Mississippi River from New Orleans, and started training with some friends. He has since built an unlikely club of 20 or so similarly minded men — an insurance agent, a lawyer, two electricians, a medical technician, a marine, an opera singer and a professional political activist, among others. For hours at a time they stretch, punch, run, grapple, sweat, kick and — surprisingly rarely — swear. The club also embraces their families, who gather for crawfish boils and the men’s martial arts competitions. There are exercise classes for the children, and a women’s self-defense class is in the works. For $75 a month, the men learn shoulder throws and arm locks and escape maneuvers from Mr. Hughes, 36. Injuries are not unheard of, but the rules require the victor to let go when the loser uses hand taps to cry uncle. Though the slamming, grunting, writhing goings-on may look violent, Mr. Hughes says his sport is really a sort of chess. “It takes 100 percent focus,” he said, “100 percent concentration.” “And,” he added, “it takes away a lot of the woes of the day.” Around here, those woes range from specific traumas like the loss of a home to more general worries about the future. “There’s always a perpetual fear,” Mr. Hughes said. “What if it comes again?” Jacob E. Cox, a 28-year-old electrician, spends his workdays rebuilding flooded houses. “Dealing with people who’ve lost everything in their lives, it takes a toll on you,” Mr. Cox said, adding that his customers’ nerves were so raw they had to be handled with kid gloves. The class has helped him deal with the strain, he said, “and you kind of get to live out that Rocky fantasy.” Another member, Kevin Avery, 37, who owns a printing business, laments the changes in his community and mourns the friends who never returned after the storm. “I kind of got a little disheartened,” Mr. Avery said. “New Orleans always had a flair, and a lot of it was lost.” But in the months since he found Mr. Hughes’s group, he continued, “I’ve built up good friends for some who have been lost or moved away.” Another benefit Mr. Avery cites is his loss of 30 pounds through more exercise and more healthful eating habits, no easy feat here in the land of fried shrimp and sausage. The men have lunch together at least once a week and encourage one another to lose the poundage Mr. Hughes calls “the Katrina 10.” The last time they went to a barbecue joint, “I had a chicken Caesar and water with lemon,” Mr. Avery confided, adding, “Now you know all my secrets.” In fact, there is a lot of Oprah mixed in with the Gladiator, and not just from the yoga. Mr. Hughes talks a lot about self-confidence and self-esteem, and says, “You have to buy ‘me’ time.” And many of the members are total softies when it comes to their children. Asked what he did when he was not engaged in man-to-man combat, 25-year-old Sean Hopkins replied, “I’m an electrician and a daddy.” (He has a 2-year-old girl.) Ashley E. Olsen, whose brother is a regular and who has signed up her 7-year-old son for the children’s classes, sees a strange combination. “They all are nice, successful guys,” she said, “who apparently like to fight and like to play with children.” The children’s class is taught by Mr. Hughes and Carlos A. Mena, 35, a former wrestler. Mr. Mena, who runs and plays golf as well, enjoys the physical benefits of the workout he gets with Mr. Hughes, but, like other members, he finds it also a distraction from the day-to-day difficulties of living here. Because of his family’s air-conditioning business, he said, he ends up spending a lot of time in ruined neighborhoods. Some of his customers have sold their houses and moved away. His brother fled halfway across the country, to Colorado. But of his time fighting with his friends, Mr. Mena said, “This makes you forget about all that.”

Hurricane Katrina
Stress (Human)
Martial Arts
Louisiana


Maker Seeks to Restrict Cancer Drug Used on Eye

Abstract: Genentech is moving to restrict the use of its drug Avastin by ophthalmologists, a move that could substantially raise the costs of treating a common eye disease. The move is already angering some eye doctors, who say it may force them to use Genentech’s much more expensive drug Lucentis instead. “I think the retinal community is deeply saddened by the decision Genentech has made to restrict the availability of Avastin in the United States,” said Dr. Philip J. Rosenfeld, a professor of ophthalmology at the University of Miami. He said the move would have a “profound” effect on retinal practices. Lucentis is approved to treat wet age-related macular degeneration, the most common cause of blindness in the elderly. But it costs about $2,000 a dose, with treatment needed as often as once a month. As a result, many retina specialists prefer off-label use of Avastin, a cancer drug that has not been rigorously tested for macular degeneration but has the same mechanism of action as Lucentis. When injected into the eye in tiny amounts, Avastin costs about $50 a dose. In a letter yesterday to retina specialists, Genentech said that its wholesalers would no longer provide Avastin to compounding pharmacies — companies that under sterile conditions can divide a vial of Avastin into tiny portions for use in the eye. The company said the distribution change would take effect Nov. 30. Genentech said it was taking the step in part because Lucentis was now widely available. Eye doctors had started using Avastin before Lucentis won approval from the Food and Drug Administration in June 2006. The company also said that the F.D.A. had expressed concern about possible microbial contamination when a vial of Avastin was split into multiple doses. Such contamination could lead to serious eye infections. The agency sent a warning letter to one compounding pharmacy about this in December. Genentech said F.D.A. inspectors had also expressed concern during a routine inspection of one of Genentech’s own factories. But Dr. Rosenfeld and other ophthalmologists have argued that Avastin had been used safely by many doctors for about two years and appeared to be as effective as Lucentis. He said he thought Genentech’s move was for business reasons, because the cheaper Avastin was cutting into sales of Lucentis. Sales of Lucentis were $209 million in the second quarter. In its last quarterly earnings teleconference with analysts, a Genentech executive said that Lucentis was being used to treat 55 percent of new patients with the relevant form of macular degeneration and 50 percent of all such patients. Retina doctors say Avastin accounted for most of the rest of the patients — or nearly half the market. Genentech did not plan to compete with itself. It said it intended Lucentis specifically for use in the eye, believing that Avastin, a bigger molecule, would not work there. But while waiting for Lucentis to be approved, doctors started using Avastin and found it worked. With 200,000 new cases of wet macular degeneration in the United States each year, the use of Lucentis instead of Avastin could easily add more than $1 billion a year in annual costs for Medicare . The National Eye Institute is sponsoring a trial that will directly compare the two drugs as a treatment for macular degeneration, but results are not expected for several years. Genentech said it had a program to help patients unable to afford Lucentis. The company said yesterday that hospital pharmacies and doctors would still be able to buy Avastin. So retina specialists in hospitals would still have access to the drug. And doctors in private practices could buy Avastin and then send the drug to a compounding pharmacy for processing. “It’s going to make life a little bit more difficult, but I don’t see it as an insurmountable issue,” said Dr. George A. Williams, chairman of ophthalmology at William Beaumont Hospital in Royal Oak, Mich. But Dr. Raj Maturi, a retina specialist at the Midwest Eye Institute in Indianapolis, said the extra steps in sending the drug to a pharmacy would add to the expense and risk. Still, he said he would try to get Avastin, because “I don’t want to see my patients go blind because they can’t afford a $2,000 drug.”

Genentech Inc
Drugs (Pharmaceuticals)
Eyes and Eyesight
Food and Drug Administration


A Property Fight in the Adirondacks, Brewing for a Century, Is on the Ballot

Abstract: TOWNSHIP 40, N.Y. — There are no road signs leading to this place, a square swath of Adirondack Park greenery in Hamilton County. There is no “Welcome to...” or “Thanks for visiting...” sign. Indeed, visitors would have to be a cartographer, or maybe an environmental lawyer, to know they were there. “Either someone shows you the way here, or your car gets a flat tire,” said Dan Reynolds, a nurse from Syracuse who spends many weekends here in Township 40. “And that’s just the way we like it.” But come next week, voters across New York State will be asked to settle a century-old skirmish here, one pitting the state against residents in a township where a numerical name dates to a group of just-the-facts surveyors in the 1700s. At issue are more than 200 parcels of land, spread across the township, which the state has long maintained as its property, to the dismay of those living there who think they are the owners. Over the decades, lawyers and legislators have proposed more than 100 solutions, all of which stalled, prompting some residents to paint their homes green in hopes of being overlooked by state surveyors. There have been lawsuits — some won by the state, some by residents. “If your land is contested, you can’t get a mortgage,” said Jim Dillon, the proprietor of the Raquette Lake Hotel and Tap Room, a combination of a bar, a restaurant, a laundry and a general store on the shores of the lake, a place its fans describe with almost Brigadoon-like luster. Pines shoot out of small islands in the middle of the clear and placid lake, which is ringed with cabins, camps and homes, some accessible only by boat. “If you’re a millionaire, and it’s a second home, maybe it’s not a big deal,” Mr. Dillon said. “But if you’re a working man, it is.” The latest possible fix, on the statewide ballot as Proposal 4, would permit the Legislature to settle the title disputes and add new forest preserve lands, namely a lake-to-lake canoe carry on the Marion River. And while most local land disputes do not require a constitutional amendment, the Township 40 situation does because it involves an adjustment to the “Forever Wild” provision in the State Constitution — Article 14, which guarantees no sale, exchange or destruction of forest preserve. The measure has already been approved twice by the Legislature, a condition for any constitutional amendment. Tensions about land ownership in the area have run high at least since President Roosevelt’s administration (Theodore, not Franklin). “ Adirondack Squatters and Camp Owners Clash ,” read a headline from the Nov. 15, 1903, edition of The New York Times, which outlined arguments that still resonate. “They claim that the state’s title to the land, which was obtained by virtue of tax sales, is defective.” Image Credit The New York Times Joseph Martens, the commissioner of the Department of Environmental Conservation, acknowledged that the titles for many of these properties were “very confused,” mentioning a range of mix-ups, including contested tax sales, poor descriptions of property lines, or cases where two landowners both thought they owned the same property. “The state was acquiring pieces of land as it has done since the creation of the park,” Mr. Martens said, “but private landowners had title to the same property and built residences and camps on the land.” This is not the first time that voters have been asked to weigh in on such a local issue, including those in Township 40. In 2007, voters approved the use of forest preserve land for wells in Raquette Lake, where all the disputed Township 40 parcels are. “Forever Wild” has been altered several times since its constitutional inclusion in the 1890s for minor changes like the building of a public cemetery (and cutting down some trees) or extending a runway (into a forest). Voters last said yes to a change to Article 14 in 2009 when the state was allowed to swap six acres to the power company National Grid for a new power line in exchange for 10 acres of forest. But local residents this year are worried, fearing that downstate voters will reflexively reject a complicated land deal about a place they might not have heard of. “I’m afraid that some people will look at it and not know what it is and vote no,’” said Lance Maly, a retired conservation officer, who lives in Old Forge, in neighboring Herkimer County. “As I might for something in Suffolk County.” And Carolyn Gerdin, 77, whose disputed property has been her family’s retreat since the early 1950s, said: “Even people upstate don’t know what you’re talking about when you’re talking Township 40. It’s not a subject that has really come up to the public before.” Proposal 4 is not the only land swap on the ballot this year. Voters will also be asked to decide on Proposal 5, which would allow a mining company, NYCO Minerals, access to 200 acres of forest adjacent to its current mining operation in the northern Adirondacks. In exchange, the state will receive some 1,500 acres of woods and streams, supporters say. The company would use the 200 acres to look for wollastonite, a mineral used in automobile parts and other industries, before returning the land to the state. That proposal has drawn some high-profile supporters like the Adirondack Council and the New York League of Conservation Voters. But Proposal 5 has also drawn the ire of other environmental groups, who say it sets a dangerous precedent. “The question of whether it is a good deal or a bad deal is the wrong question,” said Peter Bauer, the executive director of Protect the Adirondacks, a nonprofit group in Lake George. “The question is whether we should be playing, ‘Let’s make a deal,’ with the forest preserve.” But Mr. Bauer’s group supports Proposal 4, which is the amendment related to Township 40. “It’s not perfect, but resolves a bad situation,” he said. Proposal 4 seems to have no opponents at all. Supporters point out that it has no cost to taxpayers and avoids potentially expensive litigation by state lawyers. Volunteers have been posting “Yes on Prop 4” signs along major routes in the state, and the road to Township 40 is peppered with lawn signs and handmade placards urging its passage. Ms. Gerdin said she hoped this time would be different in Township 40. “We were dealing with a lot of people coming from all different directions,” she said, referring to residents, state officials and environmentalist. “It took time for people to think, ‘Hey, we might actually solve this.’ ”

Land use
Adirondack Park
Forests
Referendum
New York
NYCO Minerals


Giants Kickers Josh Brown and Rookie Brandon McManus Competing in Camp

Abstract: EAST RUTHERFORD, N.J. — Head-to-head competition for a starting job at an N.F.L. training camp is an exhausting marathon of effort. There are hundreds of plays run in front of dozens of scrutinizing coaches, with all of it recorded by video cameras so the performances can be analyzed again late into the night. These battles to become an N.F.L. first-stringer are waged across weeks and spread over a numbing succession of backbreaking practices staged under a broiling sun. That is the typical way to rise to the top of the depth chart. But this summer at Giants camp, one fight for a starting job has been defined by the elegant and elemental sight of a football twirling end over end against the horizon. It is a ball sent skyward by the right foot of the rookie kicker Brandon McManus, and it is a vision rarely disregarded because the ball soars an uncommonly long distance. McManus, 23, has never kicked a field goal in an N.F.L. regular-season game, but he has kicked a 75-yard field goal in practice. His kickoffs fly 10 yards over the back of the end zone. That kind of leg power will get a prospect noticed and invited to most any kicking competition. In the case of the Giants, that competition begins Sunday night in the team’s opening preseason game, against the Buffalo Bills. The Giants already have a kicker, Josh Brown, who has been one of the league’s best for 11 seasons. Last year, Brown, 35, had one of his finest seasons, converting 23 of 26 field-goal tries and making every extra point. He has a strong leg, too, and his kickoffs for the Giants were usually deep in the end zone. If Brown were a quarterback, linebacker or wide receiver, there would not be any discussion about his starting status. But in a tryout this year, the Giants watched as McManus, a free agent from Temple, lofted towering kicks 10 feet over the top of the goal-post uprights and 35 yards beyond them. Because the kicking position is often something of a revolving door, the Giants coaches did not delay in offering McManus a contract, albeit one that becomes largely worthless if he does not make the team. What has evolved since is a classic team-sports struggle — the young, untested talent with enticing potential vying to push aside the seasoned veteran trying to prove that his steady accomplishment is still invaluable. But the Giants have made one thing clear: It is an open, viable competition. “Strong leg there,” Giants Coach Tom Coughlin said when asked about McManus. “It’s good to have strong legs competing against each other. That’s good work.” The special-teams coach Tom Quinn said both kickers were doing well but added, “I think McManus has got a real big upside once it all starts clicking for him.” What sets the Brown-McManus tussle apart from the usual battle for a N.F.L. job is the nature of the kickers’ day-to-day habits. The two kickers, along with punter Steve Weatherford and long snapper Zak DeOssie, spend 95 percent of their time away from the rest of the team — isolated on another field, practicing their craft alone yet together. Other than Quinn, who has other responsibilities coaching the punt and kickoff teams, they have no one to turn to for conversation, for encouragement and for companionship. Yet Brown and McManus are staunch rivals, with only one likely to get a Giants uniform at the end of August. “It is cordial,” Brown said, “but there is an understanding that you’re trying to take something from me, and I have three kids that you’re trying to take it from, too. That’s personal.” Brown added, “There’s no Tonya Harding thing going on, but we’re not over there hugging each other.” McManus, for his part, is just trying to realize a dream that began in seventh grade when he started kicking. “I’m sure Josh remembers when he was the younger guy trying to get a job,” McManus said. “It’s part of the business. Obviously, he’s going to do everything he can to keep the job.” McManus’s powerful kicks come mostly from his 6-foot-4 frame, which gives him added leverage. But traditionally, the length of a lever can also lead to more room for error and more unpredictability. Inconsistent kickers are unemployed kickers. McManus was undrafted out of Temple, where he set university records for points scored and field goals made. He made 14 of 17 field-goal tries as a senior but converted only 72.3 percent throughout his college career. (Brown has tried 310 N.F.L. field goals and made 81.9 percent.) Last summer, as a free agent, McManus was in the Indianapolis Colts’ camp, where he was unlikely to unseat the probable future Hall of Famer Adam Vinatieri. “But I learned a lot about how to practice and prepare yourself from watching Adam,” McManus said. “A light bulb went off about how to do this a better way.” Vinatieri’s precision, even in practice, wore off on McManus. When he got his one preseason field-goal attempt for the Colts last year — a 50-yarder against the Giants — he nailed it. In Giants camp this year, he has not only kicked the ball far but has also been accurate. But as well as McManus and Brown are kicking in Giants training camp practices, their competition will come down to how they do in the Giants’ five preseason games. “Games are completely different from practice,” Brown said. “The pressure’s different, perceptions are different, situations are different. So I’m going to have a massive advantage because I’ve been in all these situations.” McManus said he would be emotionally prepared, adding that unlike some other kickers, he did not seek therapy from a sports psychologist. “I am a mentally stable person and prefer to be the person that has the game on my shoulders,” he said. “That’s why I became a kicker. I want people to know who I am.” For now, Brown and McManus await the next stress-filled month when they will be both colleagues and combatants. “It’s just the business aspect of our position,” Brown said, smiling. “It’s not a matter of what you do; it’s a matter of what have you done lately.”

Football
Josh Brown
Brandon McManus
Giants


Mars Cashes Out Warren Buffett to Take Control of Wrigley

Abstract: Mars Inc. has finally taken full control of Wrigley, formally putting M&Ms and Altoids mints in the same division — and cashing out its partner, Warren E. Buffett, in the process. In a statement on Thursday, Mars said it would combine Wrigley with its chocolate business, creating the Mars Wrigley Confectionery. In cashing out its partner ahead of schedule — the privately held Mars could begin buying some of Mr. Buffett’s stake this month — the confectioner is exercising full control over one of the biggest acquisitions in the company’s 126-year history. And it is retiring what had been pricey financing to strike the takeover, which most likely generated a tidy profit for Mr. Buffett’s conglomerate, Berkshire Hathaway. “I have enjoyed all of Berkshire’s experiences with the Mars family and management and wish them the very best,” Mr. Buffett said in an emailed statement. “Both Mars and Berkshire have profited from our investment and that’s the way it should be.” Berkshire Hathaway helped Mars buy Wrigley for about $23 billion in 2008 . It was a classic deal for the billionaire, who has traditionally favored acquisitions involving well-known names and strongly performing businesses. But there was a lucrative element in the way Mr. Buffett participated in the transaction. As part of the arrangement, Berkshire received preferred shares worth about $2.1 billion, which paid a 5 percent annual dividend, and $4.4 billion worth of bonds that carried a hefty 11.45 percent interest rate. Image Mars will combine Wrigley with its chocolate business, bringing together M&Ms and Snickers with Doublemint gum. Credit Larry Downing/Reuters Mr. Buffett has done such financing on occasion — always on terms generous to the billionaire. Berkshire bought billions of dollars worth of preferred shares in General Electric and Goldman Sachs during the financial crisis of 2008. Indeed, that troubled year represented an extraordinary opportunity for Mr. Buffett. In his letter to shareholders in 2009 , he noted that Berkshire “poured $15.5 billion into a business world that could otherwise look only to the federal government for help.” Mr. Buffett also bought preferred shares of Bank of America in 2011 and helped 3G Capital, a deal-hungry investment firm that he publicly praised, in its acquisitions of Heinz and Kraft. The dividends that those preferred shares paid Berkshire were hefty, rising to as high as 10 percent. Mars paid off its Berkshire bonds three years ago. Berkshire said in a regulatory filing this summer that it expected the preferred shares to be cashed out as soon as this year. The partnership has already been profitable for the Buffett-run conglomerate. When Mars bought back Berkshire’s bonds in 2013, Mr. Buffett’s company collected at least $680 million from that transaction, The Wall Street Journal reported at the time. Berkshire has earned roughly $840 million in dividends from the preferred shares as well. Financial terms of Thursday’s deal were not disclosed, though previous preferred-stock investments by Berkshire charged a premium if they were cashed out ahead of schedule. “We are grateful for the strong and productive partnership we have with Warren Buffett and Berkshire Hathaway. It is a great relationship that has yielded value on both sides,” Grant F. Reid, Mars’s chief executive, said in a statement. “We’re equally pleased that sole ownership of Wrigley provides us with an opportunity to rethink how we simplify our chocolate and Wrigley businesses so that we can bring a more holistic approach to this vibrant category.” Mars said it expects to fully combine the two businesses over 2017. Martin Radvan, global president of Wrigley and a 30-year veteran of Mars, will lead the new Mars Wrigley Confectionery. The headquarters of the combined business will be in Chicago.

Warren Buffett
Wrigley Wm Jr
Berkshire Hathaway
Mars Candy
Mergers and Acquisitions
Chocolate


Irish Defeat U.C.L.A. for Their First Victory

Abstract: PASADENA, Calif., Oct. 6 (AP) — Notre Dame fought its way out of one of the worst slumps in team history. Jimmy Clausen scored on a sneak and Maurice Crum returned a fumble 34 yards for a touchdown in a 50-second span of the third quarter, and the Irish won for the first time this season, 20-6 against U.C.L.A. (4-2) on Saturday. After an 0-5 start, the worst in Notre Dame history, the Irish avoided matching their longest losing streak. The victory was their first in eight games dating to last season. The only other time the Irish lost eight in a row was in 1960. Notre Dame knocked U.C.L.A. quarterback Ben Olson out with a knee injury in the first quarter. The redshirt freshman McLeod Bethel-Thompson had four interceptions and a fumble.

Football
University of California
University of Notre Dame


Routine Trip Turns Fatal as a Man Is Pushed in Front of a Subway Train

Abstract: Far from the city’s major Chinese enclaves, a couple left their Bronx apartment on Sunday headed to Chinatown for breakfast on a crisp fall morning. A few blocks to the D train. A short wait on the platform. Then, without warning, the husband disappeared beneath the screeching downtown train, pushed to his death, apparently by a stranger, just before 8:45 a.m., the police said. “Push, push!” his stricken wife screamed, according to witnesses, uttering one of the few English words she knew. An assailant fled up the stairs and out onto the street. Nothing was stolen, the police said, nor did the smattering of early Sunday straphangers describe a prolonged confrontation between the victim, Wai Kuen Kwok, 61, and his assailant. Instead, investigators came to believe as of late Sunday, that the attack was the sort that sows fear in many New York City subway riders: a random, purposeful and fatal shove at the platform’s edge by a stranger. Before Sunday’s death in the Bronx, 49 people had been struck and killed by subway trains this year, according to a spokesman for the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, a number that includes suicides as well as accidental falls. But Mr. Kwok’s killing was the first time since late 2012 that a rider was deliberately shoved to his death by another. The police released surveillance video of a man described by witnesses as the assailant, who remained at large as of Sunday evening. The video shows the man walking from the station exit, riding a local bus, the BX35, and smoking a cigarette on the sidewalk. Detectives believed he may live in the vicinity of the 167th Street station, where the attack took place. Even without surveillance video of the push, the police said other evidence made clear that Mr. Kwok, who last worked for a kitchen supply company, had not fallen on the tracks by accident or jumped into the path of the train. The motorman on the southbound D train told detectives that the man’s body suddenly flew in front of the train, the police said. Video Video released by the NYPD shows a man wanted for questioning in Sunday’s murder of Wai Kuen Kwok, 61, at the 167th Street subway station in the Bronx. Alfredo Brown, 36, who was in the station on his way to church on Sunday morning, said he heard “a commotion,” though other witnesses told the police that there did not appear to be any confrontation. The victim’s wife, 59, who was not injured, was taken to Bronx-Lebanon Hospital Center for observation. By Sunday afternoon, detectives at the 44th Precinct station house, with the assistance of family members, had interviewed the woman, who speaks Cantonese. “Please tell the world he is a fine, regular family man,” said his son, Gary Kwok, 29, a doctoral student at Adelphi University who lives with his parents in their Bronx apartment. The last time a subway rider died after being pushed onto the tracks was December 2012, when a woman shoved a man into the path of a 7 train along an elevated stretch in Queens. The woman, Erika Menendez, was charged with murder as a hate crime in the death of the man, an Indian immigrant. Before Sunday’s attack, Mr. Kwok and his wife had been on their way to Chinatown, a weekend ritual for the couple. Inside their third-floor apartment, relatives huddled around Mr. Kwok’s wife. Neighbors described the family as friendly, generous and nearly inseparable. “Whenever they go out they are always together and they always come back together,” said Dely Ramos, 64, a longtime resident of the building. Jaime Wu, 21, who lives in a downstairs apartment with her mother, said Mr. Kwok’s wife watched over her when she started riding the train in middle school. “She would wake me up and make sure I didn’t miss my stop,” Ms. Wu said. Ms. Wu’s mother, Yan Lian Liang, would often ride to Chinatown with Mr. Kwok and his wife. However on Sunday, Ms. Liang, a home health aide, had been returning from work when her train stopped halfway into the 167th Street station. She heard an announcement, but understood little of the English. As she climbed the stairs out of the station with the other passengers, a woman could be heard screaming and sobbing on the platform. “I heard screams but at the time I didn’t know what was happening,” Ms. Liang said, speaking in Cantonese. “Later, when I got home, I found out.”

Murders
Subway
Wai Kuen Kwok
Bronx
Video Recordings
Downloads and Streaming


Britain and Australia Advance at Davis Cup

Abstract: A tearful Andy Murray celebrated taking Britain to its first Davis Cup semifinal in more than three decades, sealing an emotional 3-1 victory over France in London to line up a home series against Australia. The Australians rallied from 2-0 down on Friday to edge Kazakhstan, 3-2. Argentina will visit Belgium in the other semifinal, after it wrapped up a 4-1 victory over Serbia and Belgium completed a clean sweep with a 5-0 win over Canada. ■ The American Rajeev Ram won the Hall of Fame Tennis Championships for the second time, beating second-seeded Ivo Karlovic, 7-6 (5), 5-7, 7-6 (2), in Newport, R.I. ■ Slovakia’s Anna Karolina Schmiedlova won her second career title when she defeated the top-seeded Italian Sara Errani, 7-6 (3), 6-3, in the Bucharest Open final. (AGENCE-FRANCE PRESSE)

Tennis
Andy Murray
Great Britain
Australia
Davis Cup


Hacking in Asia Is Linked to Chinese Ex-Graduate Student

Abstract: SAN FRANCISCO — A breach of computers belonging to companies in Japan and India and to Tibetan activists has been linked to a former graduate student at a Chinese university — putting a face on the persistent espionage by Chinese hackers against foreign companies and groups. The attacks were connected to an online alias, according to a report to be released on Friday by Trend Micro, a computer security firm with headquarters in Tokyo . The owner of the alias, according to online records, is Gu Kaiyuan, a former graduate student at Sichuan University, in Chengdu , China , which receives government financing for its research in computer network defense. Mr. Gu is now apparently an employee at Tencent, China’s leading Internet portal company, also according to online records. According to the report, he may have recruited students to work on the university’s research involving computer attacks and defense. The researchers did not link the attacks directly to government-employed hackers. But security experts and other researchers say the techniques and the victims point to a state-sponsored campaign. “The fact they targeted Tibetan activists is a strong indicator of official Chinese government involvement,” said James A. Lewis, a former diplomat and expert in computer security who is a director and senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington . “A private Chinese hacker may go after economic data but not a political organization.” Neither the Chinese embassy in Washington nor the Chinese consulate in New York answered requests for comment. The Trend Micro report describes systematic attacks on at least 233 personal computers. The victims include Indian military research organizations and shipping companies; aerospace, energy and engineering companies in Japan; and at least 30 computer systems of Tibetan advocacy groups, according to both the report and interviews with experts connected to the research. The espionage has been going on for at least 10 months and is continuing, the report says. In the report, the researchers detailed how they had traced the attacks to an e-mail address used to register one of the command-and-control servers that directed the attacks. They mapped that address to a QQ number — China’s equivalent of an online instant messaging screen name — and from there to an online alias. The person who used the alias, “scuhkr” — the researchers said in an interview that it could be shorthand for Sichuan University hacker — wrote articles about hacking, which were posted to online hacking forums and, in one case, recruited students to a computer network and defense research program at Sichuan University’s Institute of Information Security in 2005, the report said. The New York Times traced that alias to Mr. Gu. According to online records, Mr. Gu studied at Sichuan University from 2003 to 2006, when he wrote numerous articles about hacking under the names of “scuhkr” and Gu Kaiyuan. Those included a master’s thesis about computer attacks and prevention strategies. The Times connected Mr. Gu to Tencent first through an online university forum, which listed where students found jobs, and then through a call to Tencent. Reached at Tencent and asked about the attacks, Mr. Gu said, “I have nothing to say.” Tencent, which is a privately managed and stock market-listed Internet company, did not respond to several later inquiries seeking comment. The attacks are technically similar to a spy operation known as the Shadow Network, which since 2009 has targeted the government of India and also pilfered a year’s worth of the Dalai Lama ’s personal e-mails. Trend Micro’s researchers found that the command-and-control servers directing the Shadow Network attacks also directed the espionage in its report. The Shadow Network attacks were believed to be the work of hackers who studied in China’s Sichuan Province at the University of Electronic Science and Technology, another university in Chengdu, that also receives government financing for computer network defense research. The People’s Liberation Army has an online reconnaissance bureau in the city. Some security researchers suggest that the Chinese government may use people not affiliated with the government in hacking operations — what security professionals call a campaign. For example, earlier this year, Joe Stewart, a security expert at Dell SecureWorks, traced a campaign against the Vietnam government and oil exploration companies to an e-mail address that belonged to an Internet marketer in China. “It suggested there may be a marketplace for freelance work — that this is not a 9-to-5 work environment,” Mr. Stewart said. “It’s a smart way to do business. If you are a country attacking a foreign government and you don’t want it tied back, it would make sense to outsource the work to actors who can collect the data for you.” The campaign detailed in the Trend Micro report was first documented two weeks ago by Symantec , a security firm based in Mountain View, Calif. It called the operation “Luckycat,” after the login name of one of the other attackers, and issued its own report. But Trend Micro’s report provides far more details. The two firms were unaware that they were both studying the same operation. Trend Micro’s researchers said they were first tipped off to the campaign three months ago when they received two malware samples from two separate computer attacks — one in Japan and another in Tibet — and found that they were both being directed from the same command-and-control servers. Over the next several months, they traced more than 90 different malware attacks back to those servers. Each attack began, as is often the case, with an e-mail intended to lure victims into opening an attachment. Indian victims were sent an e-mail about India’s ballistic missile defense program. Tibetan advocates received e-mails about self-immolation or, in one case, a job opening at the Tibet Fund, a nonprofit based in New York City . After Japan’s earthquake and nuclear disaster, victims in Japan received an e-mail about radiation measurements. Each e-mail contained an attachment that, when clicked, automatically created a backdoor from the victim’s computer to the attackers’ servers. To do this, the hackers exploited security holes in Microsoft Office and Adobe software. Almost immediately, they uploaded a directory of the victims’ machines to their servers. If the files looked enticing, hackers installed a remote-access tool, or rat, which gave them real-time control of their target’s machine. As long as a victim’s computer was connected to the Internet, attackers had the ability to record their keystrokes and passwords, grab screenshots and even crawl from that machine to other computers in the victim’s network. Trend Micro’s researchers would not identify the names of the victims in the attacks detailed in its report, but said that they had alerted the victims, and that many were working to remediate their systems. A spokesman for India’s Defense Ministry, Sitanshu Kar, said he was not aware of the report or of the attacks it described. Fumio Iwai, a deputy consul at the Japanese consulate in New York, declined to comment. As of Thursday, the campaign’s servers were still operating and computers continue to leak information. “This was not an individual attack that started and stopped,” said Nart Villeneuve, a researcher that helped lead Trend Micro’s efforts. “It’s a continuous campaign that has been going on for a long time. There are constant compromises going on all time. These guys are busy and stay busy.”

Computers and the Internet
Computer security
Hacker (computer security)
China
Tibet
India
Japan
Gu Kaiyuan


‘I Was a Spy’: He Lived a Hidden Life, and Now Fears Deportation

Abstract: One evening in February, a man entering the subway at Barclays Center in Brooklyn was detained by the police for using a discounted student MetroCard — his daughter’s, it turned out. It was, he would say later, a stupid mistake that would lead to absurd consequences: The man, Blerim Skoro, a citizen of Kosovo, now sits in jail, facing potential deportation. But Mr. Skoro was no mere hapless fare-beater. “I was working for U.S. government,” he told a United States asylum officer in May, explaining his past life overseas and why he was now afraid of being sent back to Kosovo, a transcript shows. “I was trained for Washington. I was a spy.” A native of the old Yugoslavia, Mr. Skoro, 45, appears to have lived a remarkable, if hidden, life that sprang from his arrest in 2000 on federal drug charges; he began cooperating with prosecutors in his case and others, pleaded guilty and received a seven-year sentence. After Sept. 11, 2001, he says in an affidavit, he became a prison informer for the Federal Bureau of Investigation, providing leads on fellow inmates with terrorist ties. After completing his sentence, he said, he was deported in 2007, but agreed to continue working for the government overseas. He says he posed as a willing operative and insinuated himself with members of Al Qaeda in the Balkans, secretly supplying the Central Intelligence Agency with information about plots and the people behind them. After the C.I.A. cut ties with him in 2010, he says, he eventually returned to the United States via Canada — illegally, he admits — and last year, with the help of a lawyer, met separately with the F.B.I. and counterterrorism officials with the New York Police Department, trying unsuccessfully to offer clandestine assistance in the fight against the Islamic State. Spy stories, by their nature, are often unverifiable, and government officials are typically loath to discuss such accounts. Indeed, a bureau spokesman, asked about Mr. Skoro, said he could not “confirm or deny” any part of the story. The C.I.A., the Police Department and the United States attorney’s office in Brooklyn also declined to comment. Mr. Skoro, in several hours of interviews at the Bergen County Jail in northern New Jersey and by phone, showed a deep command of people, places and other facts, and said his information was corroborated through videos, photographs and copies of texts he had given his lawyers. Mr. Skoro, whose wife and three children, all American citizens, live in New York City, said he still had much to offer the authorities. “I dealt with the most ruthless, dangerous terrorists in Balkans and Middle East,” he said. Mr. Skoro, a practicing Muslim, said others of his faith should be willing to covertly assist in the fight against ISIS. But he suggested that his detention would send the opposite message. Muslims, he said, will ask, “How we can trust our government when you’re going to put the spies in the prison?” Mr. Skoro first entered the United States in 1994. In the 2000 drug importation case that led to his cooperation with the government, he transported at least 14 kilograms of heroin and cocaine and laundered about $670,000 in drug proceeds, the judge said at his sentencing. Prosecutors recommended leniency, citing his assistance and noting he had provided significant intelligence about drug traffickers in the city’s Albanian community. Mr. Skoro says the F.B.I. promised he would be allowed to stay in the country after serving his sentence and acting as a prison informer. But after being told in 2007 that he would be deported, he said he left his bitterness behind and agreed to work for the agency abroad. He received training in a safe house in Macedonia, and took on assignments in Pakistan, the Balkans, Syria and elsewhere, he said, posing as a jihadist who had become radicalized in prison. “Nobody was ever suspicious of me,” he said. “I was die-hard.” In Egypt, Mr. Skoro says in his affidavit, he befriended Betim Kaziu, a man who later told him of his plans to attack United States troops stationed in Kosovo, and had even recorded a martyrdom video. Mr. Skoro said he passed the information to the C.I.A., and Mr. Kaziu was later arrested , tried and convicted in Brooklyn and sentenced to 27 years. In 2010, Mr. Skoro says, he was shot and wounded on the way to a C.I.A. debriefing in Macedonia. He managed to escape, but the agency ended the relationship, paying him the equivalent of about $35,000 to $40,000 in euros, he said. Image Mr. Skoro, a practicing Muslim, said that others of his faith should be willing to covertly assist in the fight against ISIS. But he suggested that his detention would send the opposite message. Credit Chang W. Lee/The New York Times The next year, while seeking asylum in Canada, Mr. Skoro was interviewed by the journalist Vincent Larouche for the online publication Rue Frontenac. The article, titled “The Fugitive With 1,000 Secrets,” referred to him by the pseudonym Abu; it characterized his story as “convincing” but noted that much of his account could not be confirmed. Aspects of his story also emerged in a 2015 court decision in Canada, related to an asylum request he had made that used his actual name, and cited his claim to have been a C.I.A. spy who had infiltrated Islamic terror cells. Stéphane Handfield, a Montreal lawyer who represented Mr. Skoro in Canada, said his asylum request was rejected in 2013, and a request to a federal court for review was dismissed in 2015. But Mr. Skoro had already slipped into the United States illegally in November 2014. In New York, he says, he made contact with several lawyers who said recently that they found his story to be credible. One, Rene A. Kathawala, who leads the pro bono practice at Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliff, said his firm would do everything possible to assist Mr. Skoro and his immigration lawyer, Irwin Berowitz, in his deportation case. Mr. Berowitz said an asylum officer who recently interviewed Mr. Skoro found him credible and that he had established a “reasonable fear of persecution” if deported to Kosovo. That finding allowed the case to be sent to an immigration judge for further proceedings, Mr. Berowitz said. Mr. Skoro was also referred to Joshua L. Dratel, a lawyer who has developed a national security practice. Mr. Skoro approached him in April 2015, intent on providing “proactive undercover assistance to law enforcement” with respect to ISIS, Mr. Dratel said in a declaration that is also part of the immigration case. Mr. Skoro initially told Mr. Dratel that he would be receiving a call from an American official, who would refer to Mr. Skoro by a code name, the declaration says. Mr. Dratel said he received such a call. The caller asked whether Mr. Skoro was overseas, in which case he could “use him.” But if he was in the United States, he was “off limits,” the caller said. When Mr. Dratel said Mr. Skoro was in the United States, the caller gave Mr. Dratel the name and number of a senior F.B.I. counterterrorism official in Washington. In June 2015, Mr. Dratel said, Mr. Skoro eventually met at his office with two F.B.I. agents; one agent, Mr. Dratel recalled, said the C.I.A. had confirmed to the bureau that Mr. Skoro had a former relationship with the agency. In November, Mr. Dratel arranged for Mr. Skoro to meet with New York police officials, including John J. Miller, the deputy commissioner for intelligence and counterterrorism. But the bureau and the police ultimately declined to use Mr. Skoro. One senior government official said that officials who met with Mr. Skoro had questioned his reliability. The official declined to be identified because he was not authorized to speak publicly about the case. Jack Cloonan, a retired F.B.I. counterterrorism agent who was involved in the bureau’s investigation of Al Qaeda in the 1990s, said he had never heard of Mr. Skoro and had no idea if his claims were authentic. But he said the case underscored how important it was for the government to have someone who was Muslim and operational who could carry out acts that the intelligence agencies need. Mr. Cloonan also surmised that Mr. Skoro might have been considered unusable by the authorities because his identity had been divulged in Canada, or because there were questions about whether he could be trusted. But Mr. Cloonan said he also understood why officials would have wanted to meet with him. “There’s a clear indication that everybody is scrambling,” Mr. Cloonan said. “Everyone is trying to get information, because we don’t know if there’s going to be another attack on the homeland.” After Mr. Skoro’s illegal re-entry arrest in March, he was jailed without bond after federal prosecutors in Brooklyn argued he might flee. But on March 23, one day after ISIS’ deadly attacks in Brussels, a prosecutor called Mr. Dratel and said the government was now interested in meeting with Mr. Skoro to determine whether he could be of assistance. Mr. Dratel said he met with prosecutors alone, outlining what his client knew and providing copies of screen shots of certain text messages between Mr. Skoro and a purported ISIS operative in Syria. Two days later, the government, without elaboration, moved to dismiss Mr. Skoro’s illegal re-entry charge. The prosecutors did not pursue a meeting with him directly, Mr. Dratel said. He was then moved into immigration custody, where he remains today.

Spying and Intelligence Agencies
Immigration detention
Blerim Skoro
Kosovo
Terrorism
Right of asylum
Deportation
Joshua L Dratel
NYC
Brooklyn


That Old Lady in Dubuque Gets The New Yorker's Obama Cover

Abstract: You know, they even get it in Dubuque. Better delete the word “even.” Some might find it patronizing. You don’t want to say anything that might give anyone reason to be offended. These are hypersensitive times, and so many people are just waiting to pounce. Take umbrage? Some practically hold it hostage. Nevertheless, they get it in Dubuque, “it” being the much-dissected New Yorker cover illustration that shows Senator Barack Obama in an oval office giving a fist bump to his wife, Michelle. He is dressed as a Muslim. She totes an automatic rifle and has an Angela Davis-style Afro. Above a fireplace where an American flag burns is a portrait of Osama bin Laden. The image is so over the top that it can only be what the editors of the liberal New Yorker say it was meant to be: a spoof of attempts by some on the right to cast Mr. Obama as a menacing Middle Eastern version of the Manchurian Candidate. Is it witty? That judgment lies in the funny bone of the beholder. “But certainly, anyone with above-average intelligence and cultural awareness would see that something like that is satire,” said David Rusk, the publisher and editor of Julien’s Journal. His is a monthly magazine about Dubuque, which, for New York provincials unable to locate anything west of Twelfth Avenue, is in northeastern Iowa . When The New Yorker came into being in the 1920s, its founder, Harold Ross, held up Dubuque as the sort of backwater he wanted nothing to do with. Ross, with Eustace Tilley nose in the air, said the magazine would not be “edited for the old lady in Dubuque.” Not surprisingly, Dubuquers thought it terribly snooty of him, not to mention unfair. But they know enough to recognize satire. “Yeah, we get it in Dubuque,” Mr. Rusk said by phone. “Anybody with a reasonable sense of humor” does. “The New Yorker, which touts itself, accurately, to be a highly intellectualized and savvy sort of a publication, ought to be able to get away with that,” he said. “If they can’t, who can?” Score one for Dubuque, which is more than you can say about some people in this city. Let’s not even go into the reflexive condemnations of the drawing from Mr. Obama and Senator John McCain. Both know that you can hardly go wrong in national politics attacking a publication like The New Yorker and those smart-alecky fops who read it and think they’re better than everyone else. The thing is, though, that some who have accused the magazine of elitism are themselves elitists. They include outraged writers of letters to the editor who talk about Mr. Obama in near-Messianic terms. Some of them strongly suggest that too many Americans lack the brains to recognize the illustration for what it is, and will think it to be literally true. “All humor is intrinsically subject to misinterpretation,” Robert Grossman, a cartoonist, said this week on the Web site of The Nation magazine. “I am sure there are some oafish Americans out there who believe in ghosts and Bigfoot, who will get hold of this picture and say, ‘See, what did I tell you?’ But I don’t think there are many of them.” Some New York politicians lost no time joining the umbrage brigade. A group of elected officials called a news conference outside The New Yorker’s office in Times Square to denounce the cover. At a separate news conference on a different issue, the city comptroller, William C. Thompson Jr., was asked about the illustration. He said he was “insulted.” Why, we asked later, should he feel insulted? The cover had nothing to do with him. “I thought it played to the worst stereotypes that had been put out there about Barack Obama,” Mr. Thompson said. “I thought that portraying both of them as terrorists was offensive.” Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg was also asked about the cover at a news conference. He hadn’t seen it, he said. Then he sounded as if he had studied at the Ari Fleischer School of First Amendment Rights. “I think we all have to watch very carefully what we say — our attempts at humor, our attempts at informing people — because some of what we say can be misinterpreted and do real damage,” Mr. Bloomberg said. You may recall that right after Sept. 11, the comedian Bill Maher uttered politically incorrect remarks on air. That led Mr. Fleischer, President Bush’s press secretary, to warn Americans that they “need to watch what they say, watch what they do.” (In an Orwellian fillip, the White House struck “watch what they say” from its official transcript.) With The New Yorker, some of the sensitivity undoubtedly has to do with Mr. Obama’s being black — half black, anyway. Concerns about possible accusations of racism have plainly caused some comics to tiptoe carefully. Mr. Thompson candidly acknowledged that race may help explain why he felt insulted. “Part of it might have been that I’m an African-American, and I responded that way,” he said. Perhaps, then, the answer is for satirists to joke only about the half of Mr. Obama that is white. Hold on. Was that something we shouldn’t have said?

New Yorker
Obama Barack
Magazines
Comedy and Humor
Iowa


Latin American Allies Resist U.S. Strategy in Drug Fight

Abstract: BOGOTÁ, Colombia — Colombia just discarded a cornerstone of the American-backed fight against drugs, blocking the aerial spraying of coca, the plant used to make cocaine. Bolivia kicked out the United States Drug Enforcement Administration years ago and allows farmers to grow small amounts of the crop. Chile, long one of Latin America’s most socially conservative countries, is gathering its first medical marijuana harvest. Across the Americas, governments are increasingly resisting the tenets of the United States-led approach to fighting drugs, often challenging traditional strategies like prohibition, the eradication of crops, and a militarized stance to battling growers in a fundamental shift in the region. “For the first time in 40 years, there is significant pushback from Latin American countries, which endured much of the drug war’s suffering,” said Paul Gootenberg, a historian on Latin America. In many ways, the resistance reflects the declining influence of the United States in Latin America and a sweeping sense that its methods to fight drugs in the region have failed. “If you use the same tools for 50 years and the problem isn’t solved, something is not working right,” said Yesid Reyes, the justice minister in Colombia, which halted its aerial spraying program on Thursday. But the shift comes at a time of changing attitudes and concerns in the United States as well. Political figures in countries like Uruguay, which is cautiously regulating its own legal marijuana industry, are looking at American states like Colorado and Washington that have legalized the sale of recreational marijuana. Officials from Uruguay even insist that their controls are more stringent in some ways than Colorado’s. The reasons Latin American countries are calling for an overhaul of drug policies vary from country to country, but they largely involve attempts to diminish the bloodshed from the drug trade and relieve prison systems strained by surging inmate populations. Latin America’s emergence as a major drug market — Brazil now ranks among the world’s largest cocaine consumers — is also influencing the debate. “The cost in blood and treasure from the drug war has been overwhelming,” said Bruce M. Bagley, a specialist on the Latin American drug trade at the University of Miami. “Leaders are looking at the militarized approach and saying they don’t want 40 more years of Colombian-like policies.” But while there has been a lot of strong talk from Latin American leaders about the failures of the drug war and the need for a new approach, there has been little clarity in the region on the path forward. Colombia is a case in point. Mr. Reyes was one of the government officials to suspend aerial spraying to kill or stunt the coca crop on Thursday, citing concerns that the herbicide used may cause cancer in humans. Last month, Mr. Reyes gave a speech at the United Nations in New York in which he called for new approaches to the drug problem, advocating the decriminalization of drug use. But he and his government have made no concrete proposals to put forward legislation to that effect. In an interview, Mr. Reyes said that Colombia had achieved much success in the fight against drug traffickers and would not back off. He added that it might even resume spraying if it found a safer chemical, leaving it unclear what the government’s new strategies will be. As part of its decision on Thursday, the government gave a panel of experts 30 days to come up with recommendations. Colombia is one of the closest allies of the United States in Latin America, so its decision to stop aerial spraying was highly symbolic. The tactic was a central part of its American-backed antidrug effort, and Colombia’s decision was made over objections from Washington. But once it was clear that Colombia would go its own way, Washington’s response was relatively muted, with American officials offering their public support. The American reaction was a strong contrast to its approach in years past, when Washington would have been much more insistent, analysts said. “I believe we’re at a transition point right now,” said William R. Brownfield, the American assistant secretary of state for international narcotics and law enforcement affairs. As former American ambassador to Colombia, he spoke in favor of the coca spraying program before the Colombian government’s decision to end it. But he also said that the dialogue on drug policy in Latin America was a positive development. “We are effectively in the middle of this discussion,” Mr. Brownfield said. “We should be talking about considering and where appropriate adopting moderate and reasonable reforms to international drug control policy.” While crack cocaine plagued cities and fueled high homicide rates in previous years, American law enforcement authorities across the country face another challenge today — methamphetamines , prescription drug abuse and heroin — detracting from the traditional focus on cocaine. “Cocaine is not the problem it was 20 years ago when crack cocaine was driving a lot of violent crime — we just don’t see that,” said Chuck Wexler, executive director of the Police Executive Research Forum, a law enforcement policy group. Many Latin American countries are still trying to figure out what their new policies should be. Voters in the region have not particularly embraced the drive to legalize drugs. Politically, it is rarely a win. “In Latin America, it is a fairly socially conservative society with respect to drug issues,” said John Walsh, an analyst with the Washington Office on Latin America, a research group. “The drug war and its propaganda has worked. It’s been going on for a long time. They see it as a Manichaean good versus evil, and talk about a regulated approach seems like a surrender.” He added, “There is a lot of support among Latin American elites for a regulated approach, but the politics are forbidding.” In Guatemala, President Otto Pérez Molina has repeatedly called for new strategies, saying he would consider creating legal, government-regulated markets for some drugs as a way of neutralizing the power of drug gangs. But he has made no concrete proposals. President Enrique Peña Nieto of Mexico has said he is open to a debate on alternative approaches like legalization, but he has done little to propel discussions on it. Even in Mexico City, a progressive bastion in an otherwise conservative country, decriminalization efforts have faltered. Mr. Peña Nieto came into office with a focus on improving the economy, playing down the country’s problems with drug gangs and organized crime. But in response to the violent attacks of criminal groups, he has largely adopted the approach of his predecessor, Felipe Calderón, going after the major drug groups by capturing or killing droves of their top leaders. In Bolivia, President Evo Morales kicked out American D.E.A. agents in 2009 and even won an exception to a United Nations antidrug convention that acknowledges the right of Bolivia to allow traditional uses of coca. He also has pushed ahead with a system permitting farmers to grow small plots of coca, which has been chewed as a mild stimulant for centuries and used for traditional medicinal and religious purposes. Yet he has not joined calls for legalization of cocaine or other drugs, either. Elsewhere in the region, there are mixed messages and conflicting policies. In Peru, another major producer of cocaine, Congress is considering a law that would allow the armed forces to shoot down planes suspected of carrying drugs. That would reverse a policy banning such shoot-downs that went into place in 2001, after a plane carrying American missionaries was shot down by mistake and two Americans were killed. Brazil passed a drug law intended to keep recreational drug users out of prison, substituting other measures like community service or education programs. But loopholes in the law have led it to have the opposite effect, and the number of people sent to prison in Brazil for drug offenses, including minor ones, has soared. “There is no consensus in Latin America as to what drug policy should look like,” said Vanda Felbab-Brown, a senior fellow of the Brookings Institution. “What we are definitely going to see is countries increasingly adopting their own policies and experimenting with policies.”

Latin America
Drug Abuse
US Foreign Policy
Coca
Cocaine and Crack
DEA
Colombia