Sprint Nextel Freezes Its Pension Plans

Abstract: The Sprint Nextel Corporation, the wireless carrier, said yesterday that it had frozen the pension plans for almost half of its 80,000 employees and would not offer a fixed retirement benefit to new workers. Workers vested in Sprint's pension plan before the Aug. 12 purchase of Nextel Communications stopped earning credits on Dec. 31, a spokesman, David Gunasegaram, said yesterday. Unvested employees who contributed to the plan will receive benefits earned, once they qualify. The 39,000 affected workers were notified in November. The pension program will continue for the 20,000 employees at the local division, Mr. Gunasegaram said. He also said that Sprint's 401(k) retirement plan would be bolstered, with the company matching employee contributions dollar for dollar up to 5 percent of income.

NEXTEL COMMUNICATIONS INC
SPRINT NEXTEL
LABOR
PENSIONS AND RETIREMENT PLANS
TELEPHONES AND TELECOMMUNICATIONS


Japan Raises Severity Level for Fukushima Nuclear Accident

Abstract: TOKYO — Japanese officials struggled through the day on Tuesday to explain why it had taken them a month to disclose large-scale releases of radioactive material in mid-March at a crippled nuclear power plant, as the government and an electric utility disagreed on the extent of continuing problems there. The government announced Tuesday morning that it had raised its rating of the severity of the accident at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station to 7, the worst on an international scale, from 5. Officials said that the reactor had released one-tenth as much radioactive material as the Chernobyl accident in 1986, but still qualified as a 7 according to a complex formula devised by the International Atomic Energy Agency . Japan ’s new assessment was based largely on computer models showing very heavy emissions of radioactive iodine and cesium from March 14 to 16, just after the earthquake and tsunami rendered the plant’s emergency cooling system inoperative. The nearly monthlong delay in acknowledging the extent of these emissions is a fresh example of confused data and analysis from the Japanese, and put the authorities on the defensive about whether they have delayed or blocked the release of information to avoid alarming the public. Seiji Shiroya, a commissioner of Japan’s Nuclear Safety Commission, an independent government panel that oversees the country’s nuclear industry, said that the government had delayed issuing data on the extent of the radiation releases because of concern that the margins of error had been large in initial computer models. But he also suggested a public policy reason for having kept quiet. “Some foreigners fled the country even when there appeared to be little risk,” he said. “If we immediately decided to label the situation as Level 7, we could have triggered a panicked reaction.” The Japanese media, which has a reputation for passivity but has become more aggressive in response to public unhappiness about the nuclear accident, questioned government leaders through the day about what the government knew about the accident and when it knew it. Prime Minister Naoto Kan gave a nationally televised speech and press conference in the early evening to call for national rebuilding, but ended up defending his government’s handling of information about the accident. “What I can say for the information I obtained — of course the government is very large, so I don’t have all the information — is that no information was ever suppressed or hidden after the accident,” he said. “There are various ways of looking at this, and I know there are opinions saying that information could have been disclosed faster. However, as the head of the government, I never hid any information because it was inconvenient for us.” Junichi Matsumoto , a senior nuclear power executive from the plant’s operator, the Tokyo Electric Power Company, fanned public fears about radiation when he said at a separate news conference on Tuesday morning that the radiation release from Daiichi could, in time, surpass levels seen in 1986. “The radiation leak has not stopped completely, and our concern is that it could eventually exceed Chernobyl,” Mr. Matsumoto said. But Hidehiko Nishiyama, deputy director general of Japan’s nuclear regulator, the Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency, said in an interview on Tuesday evening that he did not know how the company had come up with its estimate. “I cannot understand their position,” he said. He speculated that Tokyo Electric was being “prudent and thinking about the worst-case scenario,” adding, “I think they don’t want to be seen as optimistic.” Mr. Nishiyama said that his agency did not expect another big escape of radiation from Daiichi, saying that “almost all” the material that is going to escape has already come out. He said that the rate of radiation release had peaked in the early days after the March 11 earthquake, and that the rate of radiation had dropped by 90 percent since then. The peak release in emissions of radioactive particles took place following hydrogen explosions at three reactors, as technicians desperately tried to pump in seawater to keep the uranium fuel rods cool, and bled radioactive gas from the reactors in order to make room for the seawater. Mr. Nishiyama took pains to say — and other nuclear experts agreed — that the Japanese accident posed fewer health risks than Chernobyl. In the Soviet-era accident at Chernobyl, a burning graphite reactor pushed radioactive particles high into the atmosphere and downwind across Europe . The Japanese accident has mostly produced radioactive liquid runoff into the ocean and low-altitude radioactive particles that have frequently blown out into the ocean and fallen into the water as well. The Nuclear Safety Commission ordered the use of a computer model called Speedi — short for System for Prediction of Environmental Emergency Dose Information — to calculate the amount of radiation released from the plant, said Mr. Shiroya, the commissioner on the safety agency, who is also the former director of the Research Reactor Institute at Kyoto University. To use the model, scientists enter radiation measurements from various distances from a nuclear accident. The model produces an estimate of the radioactive material escaping at the source of the accident. Speaking at a news conference, Mr. Shiroya said those calculations were complex, and it was only recently that researchers had been able to narrow down the amount to within an acceptable margin of error. “At first, the calculations could have been off by digits,” Mr. Shiroya said. “It was only when there was certainty that the margin of error was within two to three times that we made an announcement,” he said, later adding, “I do not think that there was any delay.” Even so, some people involved in the energy industry have been hearing about the results of the Speedi calculations for days. A senior executive said in a telephone interview on April 4 that he had been told that the Speedi model suggested that radioactive materials escaping the Daiichi complex were much higher than Japanese officials had publicly acknowledged, and perhaps as high as half of the releases from Chernobyl. Mr. Nishiyama and Mr. Shiroya said separately on Tuesday that that estimate had been wrong. But their two government agencies also released different figures for the level of emissions so far, and there appeared to be a degree of supposition embedded in the numbers. Mr. Nishiyama’s agency said that emissions totaled 370,000 terabecquerels; a terabecquerel is a trillion becquerels. The agency’s figure is 20 percent of the former Soviet Union’s official estimate of emissions from Chernobyl. But most experts say that the true emissions from Chernobyl were 1.5 to 2.5 times as high as the Soviet Union acknowledged. Mr. Nishiyama’s agency appears to have assumed that true emissions from Chernobyl were twice the official figure, and so calculated that the current nuclear accident had released 10 percent as much as Chernobyl. Mr. Nishiyama’s agency is part of the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry, which promotes the use of nuclear power. Mr. Shiroya’s commission, which is independent from nuclear power operators and their equipment providers, issued an estimate that emissions totaled 630,000 terabecquerels. Although Mr. Shiroya did not provide a comparison to Chernobyl, that works out to 34 percent of the official Soviet estimate of emissions and 17 percent of the unofficial higher estimate. Mr. Shiroya also said there was a threefold margin for error involved. The outside estimates of total releases would range from as low as 6 percent to as high as 51 percent of the unofficial totals from Chernobyl.

Japan
Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Disaster
Japan Earthquake Tsunami


In Club Hockey League, Meager Funding Doesn’t Kill Appetite for Competition

Abstract: NEWARK, Del. — After 19 games in six days, the American Collegiate Hockey Association’s Division I men’s national tournament ended Tuesday night with a matchup that reflected the breadth of the club league. On one bench sat the top seed, from Arizona State, which, with 76,000 students, is the largest public university in the country. On the other was the third seed, from Robert Morris University-Illinois, a private university of 6,000, many of them commuters, with campuses mostly around Chicago. The A.C.H.A. started with 48 teams in 1991-92 and grew to encompass more than 100 teams within five years. The league now consists of 410 programs in three men’s and two women’s divisions, with teams in every state except Hawaii. Some of the 20 universities that competed in the men’s Division I tournament should be familiar to national sports fans: Arizona, Iowa State, Oklahoma and West Virginia. Others — like Lindenwood, Davenport and Minot State — may not be, although all three have won a national title in the last five years. From 1998 to 2007, Penn State won five national championships in the A.C.H.A. and finished second five times, and the team competed in the league as recently as two years ago. Joe Battista, a driving force behind the A.C.H.A., played for the Nittany Lions in the 1970s and coached the team for 19 years. Thanks to a $110 million gift in 2010 from Terry Pegula, the Buffalo Sabres’ owner and a Penn State alumnus, the Nittany Lions began N.C.A.A. Division I play in 2012-13 and are now one of six teams competing in the Big Ten’s inaugural season as a hockey conference. Some of the teams at this year’s A.C.H.A. tournament believe that with the right financing, facilities and support, they could join Penn State at hockey’s highest level. But, as Battista acknowledged, “there aren’t a lot of Terry Pegulas out there.” Chris Wilk, the A.C.H.A.’s executive director and the coach at John Carroll University, said, “It’s a very significant jump, even if you have a quality program like Penn State.” The biggest difference between the A.C.H.A.’s teams and the 59 N.C.A.A. Division I programs is financing: Most club teams receive no money from their universities’ athletic departments. Players receive no scholarships other than financial aid, and they typically pay a fee to play. Depending on the level of support they receive from the university and student services, that fee can range from a couple of hundred dollars per player to a few thousand. It is used to pay for coaches, ice time and travel. Just traveling to the national tournament was an ordeal for many teams. Central Oklahoma spent 26 straight hours on a bus. “It cost us $13,000 just to get here,” Coach Craig McAlister said. Asked where the money came from, he mentioned the $1,700 fee each player had to pay, as well as money the team raised by selling advertisements in programs and on the boards at its home rink. “All the little things,” he said. “Plus, we don’t buy something new every year.” Of the Central Oklahoma team’s $90,000 budget, $60,000 is eaten up by bus costs, McAlister said. The only money the program received from the university this year was a $9,000 allocation from student fees, with an extra $4,000 granted to defray costs once the team made the national tournament. Arizona State’s budget is $250,000, used largely on travel and ice time. The university contributes $10,000 to the program, with the rest coming from fund-raising and a $3,200 fee for each player. “They get treated, and this is run, like an N.C.A.A. Division I program,” Coach Greg Powers said. “And we expect that kind of professionalism back from our players.” Image The senior defenseman Paul Conte (24) said he and his Adrian College teammates are "treated like kings. We’re spoiled, definitely. That’s why the players demand so much of ourselves.” Credit Tim Shaffer for The New York Times Club hockey has existed at Arizona State for more than 30 years, but only in the last few have the Sun Devils become an elite program. They beat Robert Morris, 3-1, to win their first championship Tuesday. “The quality of the player is the biggest reason for the uptick in our success,” Powers said. “And that has brought us a lot more supporters.” He added: “We have regional scouts in all parts of the United States and Canada. And I make one recruiting trip a year to British Columbia. Now we’re a very popular program.” Powers can offer prospective players a big-university experience — “and they can wear flip-flops and sandals to the rink,” he said. But even some much smaller colleges have robust club programs. Adrian College, a liberal-arts college about 70 miles southwest of Detroit with fewer than 2,000 students, supports four club teams and men’s and women’s N.C.A.A. Division III programs. Except for a $150 fee per player, the club programs are financed by the athletic department, and all of the teams play in the seven-year-old Arrington Ice Arena, a $5.5 million facility with 500 seats. “We’re treated like kings,” the senior defenseman Paul Conte said. “We’re spoiled, definitely. That’s why the players demand so much of ourselves.” Wilk, the A.C.H.A.’s executive director, estimated that only a dozen of the Division I programs played on campus, a setup that would facilitate scheduling, reduce ice costs and generate more support among students. Even at the national tournament, at Delaware’s 2,500-seat Fred Rust Arena, games were played before only a smattering of friends and family members. The biggest groups of attendees were players from other teams, in their gear, waiting for their next practice or game. Close followers of the A.C.H.A. liken its quality of play to that of N.C.A.A. Division III, which also does not offer scholarships. But the fact that most players have to pay to play can be offset by the opportunity to play more games. Chico Adrahtas, the Robert Morris coach, said that with 40 to 45 games a year, his players would have the equivalent of almost two more seasons of hockey over four years than they would have in N.C.A.A. Division III. “Hockeywise, it’s significant to kids to be able to play that many more games,” said Adrahtas, whose team has played in the national tournament five consecutive years. Robert Morris forward Mason Riley, a graduate student, said he had some concerns about the level of play before entering the program three years ago. “You know, the whole ‘it’s only club hockey’ thing,” he said. “But then I saw how skilled the players were and how fast-paced the game was. For me, it’s a perfect combination of academics and hockey.” There is also the satisfaction that comes with building a program. This year’s tournament featured perennial powers like Ohio University, which has won four national championships; Illinois, which has won two; Iowa State; and Delaware, the host, which won the title two years ago. But there are also teams like Syracuse, which won its league and qualified for the tournament for the first time. The hockey career of the Syracuse senior forward Niall Harding ended with a 6-1 loss to Oakland (Mich.) in the first round, but he became part of a winning tradition while with the Orange. “If anyone had said four years ago we’d be here, you’d have been laughed out of the room,” Harding said. “This is a real steppingstone for the program.” He called A.C.H.A. hockey “a really cool niche,” adding, “You can have a college life and still play very competitive hockey.”

American Collegiate Hockey Association
University of Detroit Mercy
Arizona State University
Ice hockey
College Sports


At Gazprom, Views Conflict on Viability of Barents Sea Gas Project

Abstract: MOSCOW — Gazprom , the Russian energy company, has long presented the Shtokman field in the Barents Sea as the jewel in the crown of its natural gas reserves, a find that might hold enough gas to meet global demand for a year. But Gazprom, a state-controlled company, has struggled for years to develop the field. This week, executives at Gazprom presented conflicting views of whether the project was even viable. According to news agencies, Vsevolod Cherepanov, chief of Gazprom’s development department, said the Shtokman field now appeared uneconomical to develop. Mr. Cherepanov, who was in Norway for a meeting with some of Gazprom’s partners in the project, said the latest engineering approach to tap the gas had failed. “All parties have come to the conclusion that the financing is too high to be able to do it for the time being,” Mr. Cherepanov said, according to Reuters. He said an investment decision on a new approach would be postponed until 2014. Bloomberg News quoted Mr. Cherepanov as saying that “Phase 1 has been paused.” But in Moscow, a Gazprom spokeswoman said Mr. Cherepanov’s comment had been misconstrued as suggesting that the company had abandoned Shtokman altogether. Gazprom, she said, had no intention of shelving the project indefinitely. The spokeswoman said the company would issue a full clarification on Friday. Gazprom formed an alliance with Total of France and Statoil of Norway in 2007 to develop the Shtokman field. The companies planned to sell the fuel both through pipelines and as liquefied natural gas. Shtokman’s vast reserves gave Gazprom the upper hand in negotiations with potential partners — the Western multinational companies whose technology it needed to get at the gas. The Shtokman field was discovered in 1988, and in the early 1990s Gazprom began talks with a variety of potential partners. As negotiations dragged on and Gazprom turned down one set of partners and recruited another, the industry’s agenda shifted to shale gas, and global gas prices started to drop. Even before Mr. Cherepanov’s comment, however, the alliance appeared to be faltering. The three companies missed a deadline to make a final investment decision in June. Then, last month, Statoil wrote off the equivalent of $336 million in costs related to Shtokman. The Norwegian company said at the time that it was still in talks with Gazprom about the project. Total is to decide on Sept. 4 whether it will continue as a member of the group, the news agency Interfax reported on Wednesday. If the alliance does collapse, its failure will surely be seen as another concrete sign of the damage inflicted on Gazprom by the success of the shale gas industry in the United States. Gazprom’s sales in Europe are already slumping. Deep under the Barents Sea, the Shtokman field holds an estimated four trillion cubic meters, or 140 trillion cubic feet, of gas, enough to supply the entire world for about a year. But the field lies far above the Arctic Circle, 550 kilometers, or 340 miles, off the Russian coast, in an area buffeted by fierce winds and storms. For energy companies, the climate, ice and darkness for six months of the year all present formidable engineering challenges.

Gazprom
Natural Gas
Barents Sea
Arctic Regions
Russia


The Captain Is in the House, but It’s Not 1994

Abstract: At the airport gate Monday, there was a man wearing a pilot’s hat and a blue No. 11 Rangers jersey who was boarding passengers and playing air hockey and posing for iPhone photographs, oh, please, just one more. His head was shaved like Mark Messier’s, and he sounded like Mark Messier and he squinted when he smiled just like Mark Messier — wait, it really was him, wasn’t it? It was, and it seemed right, felt right. On the day of the first Stanley Cup finals game at Madison Square Garden in 20 years, Messier reprised his role as captain, that familiar C emblazoned above his breast always and forever. He appeared on radio shows and granted interviews and trekked out on a rainy morning to this promotional event at Kennedy International Airport — what, you thought, Messier, Mariano Rivera and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar all happened to meet up by an air hockey table at Gate B32? — all before settling into his seat to watch Game 3, in person, because of course he did. This is what is expected of Messier, the embodiment of that 1994 championship team. However much Messier wants to keep the attention on these Rangers, maintaining a low profile on a day like this, at a time like this, just would not jibe. With great power comes great responsibility and all that. For this is whom Rangers fans wanted to see, to touch like a talisman, with their team trailing the Los Angeles Kings, two games to none. They wanted to hear the imperial captain, no longer 33 but 53, tell them not to worry, that they can die in peace again, to promise victory for Game 3. The Rangers greats Rod Gilbert and Ed Giacomin were acknowledged on the video screen, as were the actors Bryan Cranston and Robert De Niro, but for whatever reason, Messier was not, and it was just as well. By the end of the second period, any intended impact of his visage, or a hopeful message he could muster, would have lost its effect. The Kings led by three goals, and in another 20 minutes, after a 3-0 victory, they would lead the series by three games. Alain Vigneault, the Rangers’ coach, explained their demise Monday by saying, simply, “Couldn’t score.” And that was part of it, because every shot they sent at Jonathan Quick, 32 in all, was turned aside with a stick or a glove or a leg extended at an impossible angle. Image Messier headed to Madison Square Garden for Game 3 of the Stanley Cup finals after the promotional event at Kennedy Airport. Credit Ángel Franco/The New York Times But there was also the tentative power play (0 for 6), and the miscommunication, and a general sluggishness plaguing a team that had lost the first two games in Los Angeles despite scoring the first two goals in each, despite never trailing until ceding the overtime winners. A goal by Jeff Carter with 0.8 of a second before intermission deflated the Rangers, his shot beating Henrik Lundqvist on a deflection, as did the Kings’ second score. Their third came after an intended pass on a 2-on-1 caromed off Ryan McDonagh back to Mike Richards. So, yes, the Kings were a little lucky, but luck did not create their breakouts or their forecheck, or lead to the Rangers’ miscommunication in their own zone. Earlier in the day, Messier said he had been encouraged by their play in Los Angeles, though he is loath to draw comparisons between this Rangers team and the Cup winners from 1994, who found themselves in a precarious predicament far later in the series, losing two straight to Vancouver after forging a 3-1 lead. When you think of Messier, what springs to mind is not necessarily a moment from that triumph against the Canucks, or his lethal wrist shot from the wing, taken from the opposite foot, or the image of his shaking the Stanley Cup, a delirious smile plastered across his face, as if he were fixing a martini. What endures is his commanding presence and unflinching confidence, distilled in the form of his guarantee issued before Game 6 of the 1994 Eastern Conference finals against the Devils. How Messier said the Rangers would win, and then scored a third-period hat trick to stave off elimination en route to their first title in 54 years. On Monday, he declined to deliver a guarantee for the current Rangers, saying only that he admired this group’s resilience, how it overcame a 3-1 deficit in the second round against Pittsburgh. “They didn’t execute the opportunities they had in the first two games, but they had every opportunity to win,” Messier said of the two losses to the Kings in Los Angeles. “There’s a lot of reasons to be encouraged.” With a laugh, Messier declined to offer specifics how these Rangers could improve. “I don’t think I’m going to be the one giving advice right now,” he said. “They’ve got a lot of people that have a lot of experience doing that. That’s not my responsibility.” These next few days, those same people will formulate some thoughts that they hope can help rescue a team now down, three games to none, in the series. Advice will be dispensed, and the players will listen, but unless the Rangers win the next four, starting on Wednesday night at the Garden, their season will end in despair, as it has every year since Messier willed them in 1994.

Ice hockey
Stanley Cup
Rangers
Los Angeles Kings
Mark Messier


British Court Finds 3 Not Guilty of Aiding London Bombers

Abstract: LONDON — A British court on Tuesday acquitted three men on charges of helping to plan London’s deadliest terrorist attack in July 2005, when four suicide bombers killed 52 people during the morning rush hour in attacks on subway trains and a double-decker bus. Prosecutors had accused the men — Mohammed Shakil, 32, Sadeer Saleem, 28, and Waheed Ali, 25 — of aiding the bombers by scouting locations for the attacks. The charges were brought in a retrial, after a jury failed to reach a verdict last year on the same accusations. The prosecution of the three men, who denied the charges, was the only one to emerge directly from the July 7 bombings. At Kingston Crown Court west of London, the men were found not guilty of conspiracy to cause explosions, but Mr. Ali and Mr. Shakil were convicted on a second charge of conspiring to attend a terrorist training camp in Pakistan. The jury was not obliged under British law to explain why it rejected the prosecution’s case. Prosecutor Neil Flewitt said the case centered on circumstantial evidence, which he argued created a compelling picture of guilt, the BBC reported. But the three men insisted that they opposed suicide bombings. Their lawyers said that there was no evidence of complicity in the bombing and that they were being tried for guilt by association. The men were arrested in 2007 after one of Britain’s biggest police investigations, as counterterrorism officers sought to uncover what they depicted as a shadowy underworld of militants linked to Al Qaeda . But the police failure to prove their main charge added to a catalog of setbacks in terrorism investigations and other actions that have tarnished the image of Scotland Yard . And it left unanswered one of the key questions lingering long after the attacks: Did the bombers operate alone or with a network of helpers and possibly controllers? According to the prosecution, the three men acquitted Tuesday belonged to the same circle as the bombers — Mohammed Sidique Khan, Shehzad Tanweer, Jermaine Lindsay and Hasib Hussain, all of whom died in the attacks. Prosecutors said the men all worshiped at the same mosque and worked out at the same gym in the hardscrabble Beeston neighborhood of Leeds in northeast England, where the police discovered a bomb-making factory after the attacks. The three men were accused of spending two days in London with two of the bombers, visiting high-profile locations like the London Eye Ferris wheel and places similar to those attacked on July 7, 2005. But the three men insisted that the trip was for family reasons and tourism. As the verdicts were delivered, Mr. Ali gave a broad smile and Mr. Saleem wiped his eyes, according to reporters in the courtroom. Mr. Shakil mouthed the words “thank you” to the jury. The prosecution had sought to prove the existence of close personal and ideological bonds between the four bombers and the three defendants, who acknowledged knowing the July 7 attackers but said they had not helped them. Prosecutors said Mr. Ali and Mr. Shakil had attended terrorist training camps in Pakistan with Mr. Khan in 2001 and 2003, where they had been instructed in the use of automatic weapons and grenade launchers. Mr. Shakil had also appeared in a farewell video made by Mr. Khan in 2004 before a trip to Afghanistan, the prosecution said. The jury’s decision on Tuesday meant that no one had been convicted in the July 7 attacks, leaving survivors and relatives of the dead frustrated. “It was painful to follow the trial, and it is equally painful to be here, nearly four years after 7/7, and still have so many unanswered questions,” said Jacqui Putnam, who was wounded in the attacks, referring to the date of the attacks. After the jury announced its verdict, Imran Khan, a lawyer for Mr. Saleem, read aloud a statement on his client’s behalf saying, “I must make it absolutely clear that I had nothing whatsoever to do with the dreadful attacks on 7 July 2005, which I have always condemned.” He went on, “In my view the police wanted somebody, anybody, to pay for the murders of 52 people.” Some relatives of the victims renewed calls for legal inquiries into the killings, the British news agency Press Association reported. "I don’t know how to describe the distress, the upset, the pain while the whole issue is prolonged," said Graham Foulkes, whose son David, 22, died in the bombings. "We were promised the inquest would be held very quickly. Then we got letter after letter putting it further and further back.”

London (England)
Terrorism
Decisions and Verdicts
Bombs and Explosives
Al Qaeda
Shakil Mohammed
Saleem Sadeer
Ali Waheed


Internet Calling Falls Short of Expectations

Abstract: BERLIN — The engineers at Challenger Mobile, a software company in Stockholm, worked for more than a year to create an Internet telephone system with the goal of selling digital voice service to homes and businesses in Scandinavia. Two years later, Challenger’s software is sitting on a shelf. Christie Sundman, a co-founder of Challenger, said there were not enough buyers willing to trade their conventional copper phone lines for so-called voice over Internet protocol, or VoIP, telephony, a system that has been technologically feasible but financially unsuccessful for a decade. Challenger Mobile ended up selling VoIP service to mobile phone users, who can save half or more on the fees they usually pay to European mobile operators. “It just didn’t make sense for so many reasons,” Ms. Sundman said. “VoIP’s best chance, perhaps its only chance, is as a mobile voice service.” A decade after being developed, and four years after the emergence of Skype, VoIP telephony remains an underdeveloped niche technology, industry experts said, one that is struggling to compete against the market clout of large phone companies, a labyrinth of new technical standards and consumer indifference. Financial success with VoIP has largely eluded even Skype, the free computer-to-computer VoIP service with more than 220 million users. After spending $2.6 billion to buy Skype in 2005, eBay wrote down its investment by $900 million in October, effectively acknowledging that it had overpaid for the business. Infocom, a technology research firm in Stuttgart, says VoIP is a technology still searching for a sustainable business model. “There is a big gap between the hype and the reality of VoIP,” said Etienne Grange, an analyst at Infocom. “From a technology standpoint, the aggressive predictions about the technology’s potential have not come to pass. We are still years away, if not a decade, from VoIP becoming mainstream.” VoIP has made some inroads. In France, 8.5 million households, about a third of those in the country, use VoIP technology to make calls, Infocom said. But in other large European markets with extensive broadband coverage, which is a prerequisite for VoIP calling, consumer use remains much lower. In Germany, only 12.5 percent of households use VoIP for calling, Infocom said. In Britain, the figure is 11 percent. In smaller countries, usage is still in the single digits. A big reason for VoIP’s slow start is resistance by large, conventional phone companies, which have invested heavily to build copper and fiber networks and are reluctant to replace them. In Europe, only the Dutch operator KPN is converting its entire network to VoIP, which it plans to complete by 2012. KPN opted for VoIP not because it thought that the technology was superior but because it was forced to. The country’s aggressive cable television operators, which also sell broadband service, were taking customers from KPN, said Baptiest Coopmans, a KPN board member responsible for consumer businesses. “We are the only company in Europe to go this route as far as I know,” Mr. Coopmans said. “The reason most telecom companies haven’t gone in a similar direction is because many fear eating their own sales.” KPN and operators in France are giving voice service to consumers for free or at steep discounts if they sign bundled packages that include VoIP, broadband Internet and video. Mr. Coopmans said the gains from broadband and video sales had not entirely offset the losses in KPN’s voice business. “But we were able to slow the rate of erosion greatly, and if we hadn’t decided to make this investment, the situation would be much worse,” Mr. Coopmans said. European businesses have also been reluctant to spend thousands, often millions, of euros to install VoIP-based systems. James Murray, chief executive of Alternative Networks, a company in London that provides phone service to British businesses, said most clients were happy with their conventional telephone systems and would only consider VoIP if they were moving business premises or upgrading for other reasons. Businesses in Britain that install VoIP systems, Murray said, do so typically to connect offices within a company. Alternative Networks, for example, is spending €250,000, or $360,000, on a VoIP system to link its 400 employees who work from the office and from home. But the company is maintaining its conventional phone lines to the outside world. “The problem with VoIP is there are still some quality issues at peak times, and you don’t get all of the advantages unless the person you are calling is also using VoIP,” Murray said. “Because so few companies and people out there are using the technology, most businesses don’t consider it necessary to have.” James Tagg, the chief executive and founder of Truphone, a company in London that sells VoIP service over wireless local area networks to mobile phone users, said resistance from conventional phone operators was a real obstacle. Truphone sued T-Mobile U.K. after the company, a unit of Deutsche Telekom, refused to connect its British callers with Truphone customers. Britain’s High Court in July ruled in Truphone’s favor and the companies are negotiating an interconnection fee, Mr. Tagg said. But Vodafone and Orange are using digital controls, Mr. Tagg said, to block their British customers from using Truphone’s service on Vodafone- and Orange-branded mobiles. “You have some very big companies spending big amounts to prevent customers from discovering new low-cost ways of communicating,” Mr. Tagg said. Consumers wanting VoIP service on mobile phones face another hurdle: The phones must have software called session-initiated protocol, which enables the digital exchange of voice data. Only a fraction of handsets come with SIP, said Matt Hooper, an executive vice president at Calibria, a maker of VoIP instant messaging software in Oslo. “Less than 10 percent of handsets out there have SIP,” Mr. Hooper said. “But the technology is catching on.” That remains to be seen, said Youngcho Chi, the senior vice president for marketing at the mobile division of Samsung, the world’s second-largest maker of mobile phones after Nokia. “Believe me, Samsung would be the first to offer this technology if consumers were asking for it,” Mr. Chi said. “But they are not. Mobile VoIP is still very, very niche. It was used by some techies early on, but has not caught on. There have been problems with voice delay and some operators cut back on service because of high-volume use.”

Computers and the Internet
Wireless Communications


Obama Speech Leaves G.O.P. Stark Choices

Abstract: WASHINGTON — President Obama’s aggressive Inaugural Address on Monday presented Congressional Republicans with a stark choice over the next two years: accommodate the president’s agenda on immigration, guns, energy and social programs and hope to take the liberal edge off issues dictated by the White House, or dig in as the last bulwark against a re-elected Democratic president and accept the political risks of that hard-line stance. As Mr. Obama’s second term begins, Republican leaders appear ready to accede at least in the short term on matters like increasing the debt limit. Their decision shows that even among some staunch conservatives, Mr. Obama’s inauguration could be ushering in a more pragmatic tone — if not necessarily a shift in beliefs. From the stimulus to the health care law to showdowns over taxes and spending, Republicans have often found that their uncompromising stands simply left them on the sidelines, unable to have an impact on legislation and unable to alter it much once it passed. Even in the budget impasses that forced spending cuts sought by conservatives, the Republicans’ ultimate goals — changes to entitlement programs and the tax code — have been out of reach. Now, some in the party say, it is time to take a different tack. “We’re too outnumbered to govern, to set policy,” said Representative John Fleming, a Louisiana Republican who has taken confrontational postures in the past. “But we can shape policy as the loyal opposition.” The new approach has already produced results. In proposing to hold off a debt limit showdown for three months in return for the Senate producing a budget, House Republicans essentially maneuvered Senate Democrats into agreeing to draw up a spending plan, something they have avoided for three years. Republican concessions, however, may only set up larger confrontations in the coming months over spending, taxes and immigration. For instance, the three-month delay on the government’s statutory borrowing limit set for a vote on Wednesday is likely to produce a fight this spring over changes to Medicare, even for those nearing retirement. An acceptance in principle on the need to institute changes in immigration laws could bog down later this year over what to do with nearly 12 million illegal immigrants. And the House Republican demand that the Senate produce a budget by mid-April could set in motion a Senate effort to overhaul the tax code to raise more revenue, contrary to Republican vows to stand against any more tax increases. The president’s inaugural speech set Republicans on edge. Representative Paul D. Ryan of Wisconsin, the party’s vice-presidential nominee last year, said Mr. Obama had used “straw man arguments” in taking an implicit swipe at Mr. Ryan when he said that programs like Medicare and Social Security “do not make us a nation of takers; they free us to take risks that make this country great.” Mr. Ryan said that his own past references to “takers” did not refer to programs that people had paid into over their lives, and that the president was distorting the Republican stance. Image Speaker John A. Boehner, center, and other House Republicans on Tuesday at a news conference urging a set budget. Credit Christopher Gregory/The New York Times “When the president does kind of a switcheroo like that, what he’s trying to say is that we are maligning these programs that people have earned throughout their working lives,” he said on the Laura Ingraham talk-radio program. Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the Republican minority leader, called the address “basically a liberal agenda directed at an America that we still believe is center-right.” Nonetheless, the accommodations to the president may begin Wednesday when House Republican leaders ask their members to suspend the debt limit for three months as both chambers move forward on broader budget plans. The White House press secretary, Jay Carney, said Tuesday that the president “would not stand in the way of the bill becoming law.” The tests will keep coming. A bipartisan group of senators is expected to release immigration proposals within the next two weeks. Already, there are signs of resistance. Representative Raúl R. Labrador of Idaho, expected to be a point person for Republicans in the coming battle, said he could not support a pathway to citizenship for illegal immigrants, a top demand of the president’s. Senator Harry Reid of Nevada, the majority leader, vowed Tuesday to put on the floor any gun control measures passed by the Judiciary Committee, inching closer to another showdown with the House. To smooth these initial accommodations, House Republican leaders are having to make commitments to the rank and file that may present problems in the future. To win the votes for a 90-day suspension of the debt limit, some of the House’s most ardent conservatives said Tuesday, their leaders had to promise them two concessions. The first was that either $110 billion in automatic, across-the-board spending cuts would go into force as scheduled in March, or equivalent cuts would have to be found. The second was that the House would produce a budget this spring that balances in 10 years — a heavy lift, considering that the past two budgets passed by the House did not get to balance for nearly 30 years. To do that, House Republicans said, substantial changes to Medicare — which previously would have affected only those 10 years or more from the eligibility age of 65 — would instead have to hit people 7 years from eligibility, producing more savings. “In 90 days, this is going to be the ultimate test for those we entrust with leadership positions,” said Representative Dave Schweikert, Republican of Arizona. “And I believe there will be hell to pay if we squander this.” For now, some Republicans concede that the party is standing on shaky ground as it girds for confrontation. “The public is not behind us, and that’s a real problem for our party,” said Representative Justin Amash of Michigan, a Republican who has clashed with his party’s leadership. Newt Gingrich, the last Republican speaker to face a re-elected Democratic president, said that Republicans could not be seen as simply saying no to the president. “You can take specific things he said that you agree with, emphasize those, and take the things you don’t agree with and propose alternatives,” he said.

Barack Obama
Republicans
House of Representatives
Congress
US Politics
US


Fed Signals Any Increase in Interest Rate Is Far Away

Abstract: WASHINGTON — The Federal Reserve signaled on Wednesday it was not close to raising interest rates, saying that the economy remained weak even though the recession appeared to be over. The central bank said it would keep its benchmark interest rate at virtually zero, and it made no change to its longstanding mantra that economic conditions were likely to warrant “exceptionally low” rates for “an extended period.” For practical purposes, analysts said, policy makers are still at least six months away from tightening monetary policy. “Economic activity has continued to pick up,” the central bank said in a statement after its two-day policy meeting. But policy makers quickly cautioned consumer spending would be sluggish, businesses were still cutting back and economic growth would be “weak for a time.” Despite speculation that the Fed might hint about raising interest rates in order to head off future inflation, it was unclear on Wednesday whether policy makers even discussed a change in the wording of their guidance. Policy makers did elaborate on the economic indicators they will be watching most closely. Those will be the level of “resource utilization,” which primarily means the unemployment rate, the trend in inflation, and the stability of inflation expectations. The government estimated last week that the nation’s economy grew at an annual pace of 3.5 percent in the third quarter, its first quarterly expansion in a year. But much of that activity stemmed from temporary stimulus measures like the home buyers’ tax credit and the “cash for clunkers” program. The Fed chairman, Ben S. Bernanke , has cautioned that the recovery was fragile and that unemployment would remain high through the end of next year. The average forecast of Fed policy makers anticipates that the jobless rate, now 9.8 percent, will peak above 10 percent next year and remain well above 9 percent until some time in 2011. Within the central bank, officials have begun debating when they should start signaling a rollback of its rescue measures. But while some of the Fed’s more hawkish policy makers have publicly suggested it might soon be time for tighter policy, Mr. Bernanke and other officials have made it clear they thought unemployment and slow growth were still the main economic threats. The central bank did make a tiny reduction in its effort to prop up the mortgage market. It said it would buy slightly fewer bonds issued by agencies that guarantee home loans — $175 billion, rather than $200 billion it originally expected. But it said the change stemmed from a shortage of such securities. The Fed made no change to its much bigger program to buy $1.25 trillion worth of mortgage-backed securities by the end of next March. “The one consistent theme with all the Fed speakers is that they’re not going to raise rates any time soon,” said Drew Matus, a senior economist at Bank of America-Merrill Lynch. “That is the one consistent theme that gets hammered home time and again.” Beyond saying that “economic conditions” would continue to warrant “exceptionally low” rates, policy makers said those conditions included “low rates of resource utilization,” “subdued inflation trends” and “stable inflation expectations.” Fed officials face competing challenges as they try to get monetary policy back to normal over the next several years. They need to make a judgment about timing — tightening too early could send the economy back into a downturn, as happened during the late 1930s; waiting too long would set the stage for inflation. But policy makers also want to avoid jolting financial markets, which will require them to communicate their plans in advance. They are also grappling with novel questions about their exit strategy. In their statement on Wednesday, Fed officials made it clear they were still seeing little risk of higher inflation, adding that “substantial resource slack” — a euphemism for high unemployment and unused factory capacity — would keep inflation “subdued.” The Fed’s preferred measure of inflation, which excludes prices of food and energy, has climbed by less than 1.5 percent over the last year, well within Mr. Bernanke’s unofficial comfort range of 1 to 2 percent. The overnight Federal funds rate, the interest rate that banks charge for lending their reserves to each other, has been held between zero and 0.25 percent since last December. In addition, the Fed has tried to pump up financial markets and the economy by more than doubling the size of its balance sheet, creating more than $1 trillion in new money for its emergency credit programs and to drive down long-term interest rates by buying Treasury bonds and mortgage-backed securities. Fed officials have already cut back some of their emergency loan programs and stopped buying Treasury bonds, and they have said they would soon stop buying mortgage securities. To tighten monetary policy, Fed officials will have to raise interest rates and start cutting the size of its balance sheet by selling the securities it has acquired.

United States Economy
Federal Reserve System
Bernanke Ben S


Iraq Hit by Wave of Bombings and Attacks

Abstract: BAGHDAD — Thirty-seven people were killed on Friday in a wave of bombings and attacks across Iraq, and eight soldiers were kidnapped, security officials said. At dawn, a suicide bomber drove a truck filled with explosives into a police station in northeastern Diyala Province, followed by gunmen who sprayed bullets from speeding S.U.V.s. Eleven police officers were killed, including the commander of the unit, officials said. In the city of Samarra, north of Baghdad, gunmen in S.U.V.s attacked an army unit, took control and killed five soldiers, while kidnapping eight others and bringing them to an undisclosed location, a police official said. A curfew was imposed in Samarra. Jafar al-Jibory, a security analyst and an army officer during the Saddam Hussein era, placed blame for the attacks on militants with the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, a powerful jihadist group once affiliated with Al Qaeda that is also fighting in Syria. Al Qaeda broke with the group in February. “These are the acts of ISIS,” Mr. Jibory said. “They have taken the battle from Anbar Province into other provinces. They are showing that they can be in any spot they want in Iraq. They are much stronger than they were in 2006-7, as they have new tactics and well-trained fighters.” He said the militants were also taking advantage of the fact that officials in Iraq are busy preparing for elections in April. In Anbar Province, where ISIS fighters seized control of Falluja in January, a suicide bomber blew himself up at the funeral for a leader of the local Sunni Awakening council, tribal militiamen armed and paid by the Iraqi government to battle ISIS. The suicide bomber killed 13 people, including other Awakening members and tribal leaders, according to security officials, while 37 others were wounded. The Awakening leader who was being buried had been killed by a roadside bomb on Thursday. In the city of Tikrit, northwest of Baghdad, a roadside bomb exploded as a convoy of the commander of the army’s Fifth Brigade was passing by, killing the commander and two of his guards. And in Kirkuk, two car bombs in a public market killed five civilians and wounded 15 others.


Another Hole in House, With Much to Be Done

Abstract: Ross Ramsey, the executive editor of The Texas Tribune, writes a column for The Tribune. After 20 years, Scott Hochberg is bailing out of the Texas Legislature. He says it’s time. He’ll be 59 when he leaves office a little over a year from now. He won’t have to campaign in a newly drawn legislative district, and he’ll get back his nights and weekends. He’ll leave a hole in the House. Mr. Hochberg, a Houston Democrat who started as a House staff member and won his first election in 1992, is an acknowledged wizard at school finance and has a deep well of experience in education issues. He plays it down, saying: “Holes in the Legislature are kind of like holes on the beach. They fill up pretty quickly.” What Mr. Hochberg is good at is a couple of the most important issues the Legislature will be tackling when it convenes in January 2013. The state’s school finance system is under siege, with school districts joining lawsuits challenging the distribution of education money and budget writers struggling to keep conflicting promises: to fully finance public schools on the one hand and to hold the line on taxes and spending on the other. On the policy front, the perpetual wrestling match over testing and management and education curriculums continues. Mr. Hochberg managed to be in the middle of things without becoming a high-profile partisan like his colleagues Garnet F. Coleman, Jim Dunnam and Pete Gallego. He said the changes at the Capitol had more to do with politics than with policy. Education experts have been forming and departing the Legislature for decades. Another one — Senator Florence Shapiro, the Republican of Plano who heads the Senate Education Committee — is leaving after this term, too. People like them have always arrived to fill the holes. But the nature of the place has changed. It has always had partisans, Mr. Hochberg said, but they weren’t encouraged. “What I used to hear an awful lot is, ‘I can’t vote for that because my district will kill me,’ ” he said. “Certain subject areas were certainly off the table, but there was also this feeling of if we could all get together on something, then we’re all better off politically.” “Perhaps now there’s more concern, particularly on the Republican side, with what goes on in the primary,” he said. “If that’s where the cover is being sought, I think Republicans are less likely to seek cover from opposing Democrats and more likely to seek cover from some of the so-called kingmakers on their side.” He remembers a dentist who used to voice his opinions the old-fashioned way — on paper, mailed with stamps. “Literally, the letters were sometimes in crayon or Magic Marker,” he said, “and they started out, generally, with ‘What are you idiots doing down there?’ ” With modern technology, that one dentist could look like an army, sending thousands of e-mails. “He was the only guy who ever saw them,” Mr. Hochberg said. “He didn’t have the ability to send them to 20,000 people with the click of a button.” “I’m really not sure, from a psychological standpoint, that we’ve figured out how to deal with that, and to give it its appropriate weight,” he said. “What it means is that the loud voices can be far louder.” The Republicans came after Mr. Hochberg in 2003, redrawing his district so that — they thought — he’d get beaten by a Republican. He responded by campaigning heavily in apartment complexes filled with adult nonvoters, identifying issues important to them and working to turn out the people he identified as political supporters. He got a higher percentage of the vote in the 2004 election than he got two years earlier and remained safe, until now. His Republican colleagues in the Legislature came after him again this year, drawing a map that put him and Representative Hubert Vo, also a Democrat of Houston, in the same legislative district. The maps currently in place — drawn by a panel of federal judges in San Antonio — have him on safer ground, at least in the partisan sense. But it’s not his old district. “I’ve got about half a new district,” Mr. Hochberg said of the new political maps. “That’s a lot of people to get out and get to know. It takes a while to learn the street corners, the liquor licenses.” “I started over once, 10 years ago,” he said of his decision to leave. “I kind of know what that’s like.”

Hochberg Scott
Education (K-12)
State Legislatures
Houston (Tex)
Democratic Party
Texas
Republican Party


Ruth Bader Ginsburg, No Fan of Donald Trump, Critiques Latest Term

Abstract: WASHINGTON — Unless they have a book to sell, Supreme Court justices rarely give interviews. Even then, they diligently avoid political topics. Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg takes a different approach. These days, she is making no secret of what she thinks of a certain presidential candidate. “I can’t imagine what this place would be — I can’t imagine what the country would be — with Donald Trump as our president,” she said. “For the country, it could be four years. For the court, it could be — I don’t even want to contemplate that.” It reminded her of something her husband, Martin D. Ginsburg , a prominent tax lawyer who died in 2010, would have said. “‘Now it’s time for us to move to New Zealand,’” Justice Ginsburg said, smiling ruefully. In an interview in her chambers on Friday, Justice Ginsburg took stock of a tumultuous term and chastised the Senate for refusing to act on President Obama’s Supreme Court nominee. Her colleagues have said nothing in public about the presidential campaign or about Mr. Obama’s stalled nomination of Judge Merrick B. Garland to the Supreme Court. But Justice Ginsburg was characteristically forthright, offering an unequivocal endorsement of Judge Garland. “I think he is about as well qualified as any nominee to this court,” she said. “Super bright and very nice, very easy to deal with. And super prepared. He would be a great colleague.” Asked if the Senate had an obligation to assess Judge Garland’s qualifications, her answer was immediate. “That’s their job,” she said. “There’s nothing in the Constitution that says the president stops being president in his last year.” The court has been short-handed since Justice Antonin Scalia died in February, and Justice Ginsburg said it will probably remain that way through most or all of its next term, which starts in October. Even in “the best case,” in which Judge Garland was confirmed in the lame-duck session of Congress after the presidential election on Nov. 8, she said, he will have missed most of the term’s arguments and so could not vote in those cases. Justice Ginsburg, 83, said she would not leave her job “as long as I can do it full steam.” But she assessed what is at stake in the presidential election with the precision of an actuary, saying that Justices Anthony M. Kennedy and Stephen G. Breyer are no longer young. “Kennedy is about to turn 80,” she said. “Breyer is going to turn 78.” For the time being and under the circumstances, she said, the Supreme Court is doing what it can. She praised Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. “He had a hard job,” Justice Ginsburg said. “I think he did it quite well.” It was a credit to the eight-member court that it deadlocked only four times, she said, given the ideological divide between its liberal and conservative wings, both with four members. One of the 4-4 ties, Friedrichs v. California Teachers Association , averted what would have been a severe blow to public unions had Justice Scalia participated. “This court couldn’t have done better than it did,” Justice Ginsburg said of the deadlock. When the case was argued in January , the majority seemed prepared to overrule a 1977 precedent that allowed public unions to charge nonmembers fees to pay for collective bargaining. A second deadlock, in United States v. Texas , left in place a nationwide injunction blocking Mr. Obama’s plan to spare more than four million unauthorized immigrants from deportation and allow them to work. That was unfortunate, Justice Ginsburg said, but it could have been worse. “Think what would have happened had Justice Scalia remained with us,” she said. Instead of a single sentence announcing the tie, she suggested, a five-justice majority would have issued a precedent-setting decision dealing a lasting setback to Mr. Obama and the immigrants he had tried to protect. Justice Ginsburg noted that the case was in an early stage and could return to the Supreme Court. “By the time it gets back here, there will be nine justices,” she said. She also assessed whether the court might have considered a narrow ruling rejecting the suit, brought by Texas and 25 other states, on the ground that they had not suffered the sort of direct and concrete injury that gave them standing to sue. Some of the chief justice’s writings suggested that he might have found the argument attractive. “That would have been hard for me,” Justice Ginsburg said, “because I’ve been less rigid than some of my colleagues on questions of standing. There was a good argument to be made, but I would not have bought that argument because of the damage it could do” in other cases. The big cases the court did decide, on abortion and affirmative action, were triumphs, Justice Ginsburg said. Both turned on Justice Kennedy’s vote. “I think he comes out as the great hero of this term,” Justice Ginsburg said. The affirmative action case , Fisher v. University of Texas , was decided by just seven justices, 4 to 3. Justice Elena Kagan had recused herself because she had worked on the case as United States solicitor general. But Justice Ginsburg said the decision was built to last. “If Justice Kagan had been there, it would have been 5 to 3,” she said. “That’s about as solid as you can get.” “I don’t expect that we’re going to see another affirmative action case,” Justice Ginsburg added, “at least in education.” The abortion decision , Whole Woman’s Health v. Hellerstedt , in a 5-to-3 vote, struck down two parts of a restrictive Texas law, ones requiring doctors who perform abortions to have admitting privileges at nearby hospitals and abortion clinics to meet the demanding standards of ambulatory surgical centers. Justice Kennedy had only once before voted to find an abortion restriction unconstitutional, in Planned Parenthood v. Casey in 1992, when he joined Justices Sandra Day O’Connor and David H. Souter to save the core of Roe v. Wade , the 1973 decision that established a constitutional right to abortion. Asked if she had been pleased and surprised by Justice Kennedy’s vote in the Texas case, Justice Ginsburg responded: “Of course I was pleased, but not entirely surprised. I know abortion cases are very hard for him, but he was part of the troika in Casey.” Justice Breyer wrote the methodical majority opinion in the Texas case, and Justice Ginsburg added only a brief, sharp concurrence. “I wanted to highlight the point that it was perverse to portray this as protecting women’s health,” she said of the challenged requirements. “Desperate women then would be driven to unsafe abortions.” The decision itself, she said, had a message that transcended the particular restrictions before the court. “It says: ‘No laws that are meant to deny a woman her right to choose,’” she said. Asked if there were cases she would like to see the court overturn before she leaves it, she named one. “It won’t happen,” she said. “It would be an impossible dream. But I’d love to see Citizens United overruled.” She mulled whether the court could revisit its 2013 decision in Shelby County v. Holder , which effectively struck down a key part of the Voting Rights Act. She said she did not see how that could be done. The court’s 2008 decision in District of Columbia v. Heller , establishing an individual right to own guns, may be another matter, she said. “I thought Heller was “a very bad decision,” she said, adding that a chance to reconsider it could arise whenever the court considers a challenge to a gun control law. Should Judge Garland or another Democratic appointee join the court, Justice Ginsburg will find herself in a new position, and the thought seemed to please her. “It means that I’ll be among five more often than among four,” she said.

Ruth Bader Ginsburg
Supreme Court,SCOTUS
2016 Presidential Election
Merrick B Garland
Donald Trump


Rugged Defense Gives Bills Hope for Playoffs

Abstract: ORCHARD PARK, N.Y. — The defining play may have come from the right paw of Mario Williams, Buffalo’s 6-foot-6 Pro Bowl defensive end. Yet no member of a self-effacing and dominant Bills defense is willing to consider the idea that the team’s upset of the Green Bay Packers on Sunday was a single-handed achievement. With less than two minutes left in the game, and Buffalo clinging to a 6-point lead, Packers quarterback Aaron Rodgers took a snap from center at the Green Bay 10-yard line and dropped back to pass. Williams muscled past right tackle J C Tretter, employing his long reach to swat the ball free. Rodgers searched frantically, like a parent who has lost sight of a toddler. By the time running back Eddie Lacy scooped up the loose ball in the end zone, the Bills had a safety, en route to a surprising 21-13 victory that dropped the Packers to 10-4. Linebacker Brandon Spikes said the Bills had practiced the play in their two-minute drill schemes. “At that moment, I knew he was going to make the play because we already spoke about that situation with the game on the line,” Spikes said. N.F.L. Playoff Simulator There are millions of ways the season could end. Find your team’s path to the playoffs with this interactive simulator. The safety was credited as a sack by Williams, his team-leading 13th. Buffalo (8-6) leads the N.F.L. with 49 sacks and is fifth in the league in defense, allowing an average of 313.4 yards per game. With two games remaining, beginning Sunday against the Oakland Raiders, the Bills have a chance to qualify for the playoffs for the first time since the 1999 season, the longest drought of any team. Oakland is 2-12 and ranks last in the N.F.L. in total offense. This week, Williams, who also blocked a field-goal attempt in the second quarter against Green Bay, swatted away questions about his individual play. He instead invoked camaraderie among teammates, a theme echoing the halls at the team’s practice center, especially among a four-man defensive line that has consistently rattled opposing quarterbacks. That unit harassed Rodgers, who completed 17 of 42 passes for 185 yards with two interceptions by the reserve safety Bacarri Rambo, for a career-worst 34.3 passer rating. Image Camaraderie, not competition, has become the driving force for the Pro Bowler Williams, wearing red contact lenses, and his defensive teammates. Credit Alan Diaz/Associated Press “What makes it so difficult to defend those players is that they have both strength and speed,” Bills Coach Doug Marrone said. “That’s the combination where they can beat you multiple ways — with power moves or speed moves. I think that when you have that capability and when you possess that talent, you can cause an opponent a problem, just like other people we’ve played have done that to us.” Buffalo’s defensive line comprises Williams and right end Jerry Hughes (9.5 sacks) bookending Kyle Williams and the 331-pound Marcell Dareus, who leads all defensive tackles with 10 sacks this season. A fourth-year pro flirting with a career season, Dareus credited a prevailing esprit de corps. “Everywhere I’ve been with football, it seemed like there was internal competition on the D-line,” he said. “Here we wanted to kind of change that. Mario gets a sack, Jerry gets a sack. He might get a sack or make a play. We’re so happy for him because we can’t wait to make a play as well, and we want you to be just as excited as I was when you got your play.” The camaraderie was on display when the Bills defeated the Detroit Lions, 17-14, in overtime in Week 5 and carried the defensive coordinator Jim Schwartz off Ford Field on their shoulders afterward. Schwartz was the Lions’ head coach from 2009 until he was fired in January. N.F.L. Playoffs: What Teams Must Do to Advance With two weeks to go, here’s the N.F.L. playoff picture for every team still in the hunt. Dareus said the Bills were quick to hold one another accountable, too. “We hold that against each other,” he said. “If we miss a play, we look around the room, and just, you already know. The mistakes, we try to shorten them up.” The margin for error on defense has been especially slim this season because of an underwhelming offense that ranks 23rd in the N.F.L. The journeyman quarterback Kyle Orton, who took over for the struggling E J Manuel to start against Detroit in Week 5, has led the Bills to a 6-4 record since. Orton has completed 63.7 percent of his passes, with 14 touchdowns and eight interceptions. His rating is a pedestrian 86.7. Injuries at running back to Fred Jackson and C. J. Spiller have limited the rushing game. The offense has produced an anemic 21.6 points per game. Against Green Bay, Buffalo settled for four field goals, the only touchdown coming on a punt return by Marcus Thigpen. All of which has meant more responsibility falling on the broad shoulders of the defense, in which Williams remains the marquee name. A former No. 1 overall pick by Houston in 2006, Williams has a chance to surpass his career high of 14 sacks, set with the Texans in 2007. With a salary of $16 million this season, he is the second-highest-paid defensive player in the N.F.L. behind J. J. Watt of the Texans. Williams signed with the Bills in 2012 but has attracted increasing attention this season, both for his play and for the striking contact lenses — red and blue — that he has worn during games. That is at least one way that a circumspect star player has become more colorful.

Football
Mario Williams
Kyle Williams
Jerry Hughes
Bills
Marcell Dareus


George Scott, Slugger Who Boomed ‘Taters’ in Fenway, Dies at 69

Abstract: George Scott, whose slugging and sharp fielding at first base helped propel the Boston Red Sox to their 1967 “Impossible Dream” American League pennant, died on Sunday in Greenville, Miss. He was 69. His death was confirmed by the Washington County coroner, Methel Johnson, The Delta Democrat-Times of Greenville reported. The Boston Herald said in November that Scott had diabetes and had difficulty walking. Playing 14 seasons in the major leagues, the right-handed-batting Scott was a three-time All-Star and hit 271 home runs, or taters, as he called them. He was credited with popularizing the term in the 1970s, though its precise origin as a baseball expression is murky. Scott hit 19 home runs, drove in 82 runs and batted .303 for the 1967 Red Sox. His batting average was fourth best in the American League. The Sox won the pennant — their first in 21 years — on the season’s final day after finishing in ninth place the previous year. The team’s formidable roster also included Carl Yastrzemski, Tony Conigliaro and Rico Petrocelli and the pitching ace Jim Lonborg. But the Red Sox lost the World Series in seven games to the St. Louis Cardinals. Listed at 6 feet 2 inches and 210 pounds, Scott was evidently well over that, to the consternation of Dick Williams, the manager of the ’67 Sox. But Scott was agile at first base, winning eight Gold Glove awards. He also occasionally played third base. Scott became known as the Boomer — a designation later bestowed on the free-spirited and outsized pitcher David Wells — for his prodigious home runs. But a tater was a tater, no matter the length. “Anything over 450 feet, I’d call it a long tater,” Scott told The Clarion-Ledger of Jackson, Miss., in 2007. “A short tater was one that barely got over the wall.” George Charles Scott Jr. was born on March 23, 1944, in Greenville, the youngest of three children. His father, a laborer in cotton fields, died when he was a baby. His mother, Magnolia, worked several jobs to support the family. Scott was a baseball, basketball and football star in high school before being signed by the Red Sox in 1962. As a rookie in 1966, he hit 27 home runs and was named an All-Star, though he led the league in strikeouts with 152. Scott played for the Red Sox through the 1971 season and then was traded to the Milwaukee Brewers. He tied Reggie Jackson, then with the Oakland A’s, for the league lead in home runs in 1975 with 36 and was No. 1 in runs batted in that season with 109. He returned to the Red Sox in 1977, played two full seasons in his second stint in Boston, and then split the 1979 season with the Red Sox, the Kansas City Royals and the Yankees before retiring. He had 1,992 hits, 1,051 R.B.I. and a .268 batting average for his career. Despite his battles with his weight, he stole 10 bases for the ’67 Red Sox and 16 for the ’72 Brewers. A list of survivors was not immediately available. After leaving the major leagues, Scott played and managed in the Mexican League and managed independent teams in the minors. He was honored by the Brewers in April with a bobblehead giveaway day. One of the most popular Red Sox players of his time, he was inducted into the team’s Hall of Fame in 2006 and followed the Sox closely on TV. “I don’t watch the Brewers,” he told The Boston Herald last year. “I don’t watch the Royals. I don’t watch the Yankees. But I watch the Red Sox, every pitch.”


Some Question Not Adding SNY to Mets’ Sale Pitch

Abstract: When Fred Wilpon announced his plan to sell up to 25 percent of the Mets last week to one or more strategic investors, he kept the team’s majority ownership of the SNY network, which televises the team’s games, off the block. The decision surprised sports bankers and analysts because the five-year-old network is a lucrative business that could lure buyers eager to own part of a media property in New York. SNY generates about $120 million in cash flow a year and could be worth $1 billion — more than the Mets, which Forbes valued last year at $858 million. A stake in SNY would give an investor a slice of its profits and equity in a growing asset at a time when the Mets are struggling. But for Wilpon to sell a substantial part of the Mets’ nearly 70 percent stake in the network, he would first have to offer it to his partners, Time Warner Cable and Comcast — which together own about a third of SNY — and that could slow the process. Comcast would be more likely to want to increase its stake because of its heavy investment around the country in 10 other regional sports networks. Also, the group more than doubled the debt on SNY to $450 million last year, which would most likely reduce the price an investor would pay for a stake in the network. But SNY’s steady income and growth potential would still attract buyers. “SNY is an economic lifeline to the team,” said Lee H. Berke, who consults with teams and owners on starting regional sports networks like SNY. “Look, anybody coming to say they’ll buy the Mets already watches the games on SNY. Everything’s in play and investors will assume that, too.” By walling off SNY from investors, Wilpon seems to be hoping that selling 20 percent to 25 percent of the Mets will be all he needs to satisfy the financial pressures being caused by a lawsuit filed against him and Saul Katz, his brother-in-law, by the trustee for the victims of Bernard L. Madoff ’s Ponzi scheme . The trustee, Irving H. Picard, contends that Wilpon and Katz knew or should have known that Madoff operated a possible fraud, according to two lawyers involved in the case. Picard, according to a lawyer involved in the Madoff cases, is possibly seeking as much as $1 billion — far more than can be raised from selling a quarter of the team. All along, Wilpon has said that he is a victim betrayed by Madoff, his old friend. SNY’s place in Wilpon’s baseball empire cannot be underestimated, and Mets games make up the most important programming. Even though the Mets’ on-field fortunes have declined (and ratings have fallen, though not as drastically as the team has), SNY is thriving. The channel made its debut in 2006 after the Mets paid Cablevision $54 million to escape the last years of the Mets’ deal with the MSG Networks. Last year the rising value and steady income of SNY allowed the Mets, Time Warner Cable and Comcast to refinance the $200 million they borrowed in 2007. The deal allowed them to pay themselves $240 million in the form of dividends but more than doubled their debt to $450 million. The refinancing of SNY, at about the same time as a separate refinancing of debt on the Mets, suggested that Wilpon needed the cash to offset his Madoff losses, or was building a reserve to settle Picard’s accusations before he filed suit. Still, the network may be more attractive to an investor than the team is. At the very least, two bankers said, Wilpon should sell parts of the team and the network as a package. Andrew Herenstein, managing principal of Monarch Alternative Capital, a hedge fund that was a leading creditor of the Texas Rangers before the sale of that team, echoed the view of several bankers and investors that Wilpon and Katz would eventually have to sell a piece of SNY. “In today’s environment,” he said, “buyers of sports franchises need to see real value, which is heavily driven by media contracts. It is hard to see a buyer paying a top price for the Mets if SNY isn’t included in the sale.” One way to avoid selling part of the network might be to find wealthy investors who are Mets fans who would view a slice of the team as a trophy. “All they need is one qualified buyer,” said Marc Ganis, a sports industry consultant. “You may have 20 people, 19 of whom would say no. If they find someone to nibble on that basis, they’ll take it as far as they can.” But he said that Wilpon and Katz were not likely to be able to raise $200 million “for just a 20 to 25 percent stake in the team.” Another strategy would be to sweeten a minority stake in the team by offering a say in operations or an option to purchase the rest of the team. Yet that may not be enough to please an investor who wants a regular return on a substantial investment, which the network would provide. Rob Tilliss, founder of Inner Circle Sports, which advises teams and owners, said: “The problem with the whole thing is, say, I’m Mr. Private Equity or Mr. Hedge Fund. You’re just showing me the financials of an underperforming team and leaving all the goodies over there.” SNY is one of a growing group of regional sports networks that are owned entirely or in part by the teams whose games they televise. The Yankees have YES; the Red Sox have the New England Sports Network; and the Cubs, Bulls, White Sox and Blackhawks own a network in Chicago with Comcast. Regional sports networks let clubs control their messages, sell tickets and promote their players. More important, they are steady businesses that collect stiff monthly fees from cable, satellite and telephone company subscribers in their markets, building a stream of revenue that flows whether a team wins or loses. SNY’s subscriber revenue should be at least $260 million this year, based on the research firm SNL Kagan’s estimate of its $2.37 monthly subscriber fee and total subscriber count of 9.3 million. Advertising revenue augments the subscriber cash. SNY’s main expense is the rights fee that it pays the Mets, which is believed to be $60 million to $70 million. “The question for the Mets is this,” Tilliss said. “Which option is less worse: selling off a piece of SNY or a piece of the Mets?”

New York Mets
SNY Network
Cable Television
Wilpon Fred
Baseball
Katz Saul B
Madoff Bernard L


Honduran Ex-Police Chief Says Government Faked Documents in Assassination Case

Abstract: MEXICO CITY — A former chief of the Honduran national police says the government has mounted a “crude setup” by fabricating and leaking documents to implicate high-ranking officers in the assassination of two top antidrug officials, adding a new twist to a scandal that is peeling back the collusion between drug traffickers and the police . The former chief, Ramón Sabillón Pineda, a police general, has taken to television airwaves and appeared voluntarily before the prosecutor investigating the documents to assert that the plot — and the extent of corruption in the nation’s institutions — is even larger than the papers suggest. “Evidence has been planted, which is common in institutions that are permeated by organized crime,” said Mr. Sabillón, who led the police for 11 months before being dismissed in November 2014. The controversy stems from the assassination of the nation’s antidrug czar as he drove to work in 2009, only months after the Honduran president was ousted in a coup. Two years later, the antidrug czar’s senior adviser was killed in the same way, a grisly example of the tight grip traffickers hold over the country. Though they happened years ago, the assassinations rattled the country again this month after the documents surfaced. They were first obtained by a Honduran newspaper and then by The New York Times. About two dozen police officers are named in the documents, from the highest-ranking officials to lower-level officers who mounted the traffic stops that allowed motorcyclists to pull up alongside the antidrug officials’ cars and shoot. Mr. Sabillón does not argue that the police are innocent. “It did happen, but in another way, and the implicated officers are not exactly the same ones who appear in the reports,” he said in a telephone interview. “There are civilians, police and military implicated in this, but fewer than the numbers that appear in the report. They are alive. They would kill even me if I would advance higher.” But Mr. Sabillón said that the documents failed to expose the broader involvement of political figures beyond the police force. By focusing only on the traffickers’ infiltration of the police, Mr. Sabillón argued, the documents divert attention from the drug gangs’ collusion with the nation’s political elite. “In Honduras, drug trafficking is politics,” Mr. Sabillón said. “I arrested eight drug traffickers and extradited them to the United States,” he said. “And then businessmen, politicians and even the son of a president have fallen.” Mr. Sabillón said he had testified at the attorney general’s office about the links between organized crime and politicians. “With all the formalities, I handed over important documents to the prosecutor that involve political personalities in organized crime,” he said. The leaked documents do not suggest that Mr. Sabillón had any role in the assassinations. But they do indicate that he was aware of the documents and asked for them to be kept under guard. He argued that his signature was faked, and that he did not have the authority at the time to make such a request. He said the documents had been written later by someone in the police force. His reason for speaking out now, he said, is that he wants to “end the work I began,” referring to the extradition of drug traffickers. He said the fabrication and leak of the report were part of an effort to “neutralize the Honduran national police, which is not in favor of the government.” He accused the government of handing control of the security forces, including the police, to the military in an effort to shore up control as President Juan Orlando Hernández seeks re-election. In response to the documents, Mr. Hernández appointed a commission last week that he put in charge of purging the police. Late Thursday, the commission recommended that Mr. Sabillón, along with a police chief named as a chief conspirator in the documents, Ricardo Ramírez del Cid, be suspended during the investigation. Ebal Diaz, an adviser to the president, told Honduran reporters that Mr. Sabillón had been suspended for criticizing the government on television. Mr. Hernández said during his announcement that “the prosecutor has no other option but to call all the ministers, police directors and officers to testify,” and he asked for a new anticorruption mission backed by the Organization of American States for its support in the case. The debate over whether the police should fall under civilian or military control emerged from the creation of a military police force by Mr. Hernández after he took office early this year, fulfilling his main campaign promise. The police “are uncomfortable with my proposal,” Mr. Hernández said during a recent television interview. “I only have two options,” the president said in the interview. “Either we shut down the police or you show me that you have the willingness to make the changes I am demanding,” he said he had told the police leadership. “They say they can do the cleanup. We will give them the benefit of the doubt.” The rest of the police generals named in the reports, including Mr. Ramírez, have also argued that the reports were fabricated for political ends. A series of arrests in recent years suggest just how high drug trafficking has reached inside the government. Last year, the son of Mr. Hernandez’s predecessor as president, Porfirio Lobo, was arrested with a drug shipment in Haiti in a joint operation by the Drug Enforcement Administration and the Haitian police. A few months later, Jaime Rosenthal, a former vice president, and his nephew Yankel Rosenthal, who served as investment promotion minister in the current government, were named in a United States indictment accusing them of laundering drug money through their Banco Continental for the Rivera Madariaga crime family. Wilfredo Méndez, director of the Honduras Center for Research and Promotion of Human Rights, said the release of the police papers indicated a power struggle. “This is a fight among the corrupt and the criminals who eliminate each other in conflicts of control over territory for their activities,” he said. “It isn’t the first time that these things are said in the country. It’s cyclical.”

Police Brutality,Police Misconduct,Police Shootings


Arizona Cuts Financing for Transplant Patients

Abstract: PHOENIX — Even physicians with decades of experience telling patients that their lives are nearing an end are having difficulty discussing a potentially fatal condition that has arisen in Arizona : Death by budget cut. Effective at the beginning of October, Arizona stopped financing certain transplant operations under the state’s version of Medicaid . Many doctors say the decision amounts to a death sentence for some low-income patients, who have little chance of survival without transplants and lack the hundreds of thousands of dollars needed to pay for them. “The most difficult discussions are those that involve patients who had been on the donor list for a year or more and now we have to tell them they’re not on the list anymore,” said Dr. Rainer Gruessner, a transplant specialist at the University of Arizona College of Medicine. “The frustration is tremendous. It’s more than frustration.” Organ transplants are already the subject of a web of regulations, which do not guarantee that everyone in need of a life-saving organ will receive one. But Arizona’s transplant specialists are alarmed that patients who were in line to receive transplants one day were, after the state’s budget cuts to its Medicaid program, ruled ineligible the next — unless they raised the money themselves. Francisco Felix, 32, a father of four who has hepatitis C and is in need of a liver, received news a few weeks ago that a family friend was dying and wanted to donate her liver to him. But the budget cuts meant he no longer qualified for a state-financed transplant. He was prepared anyway at Banner Good Samaritan Medical Center as his relatives scrambled to raise the needed $200,000. When the money did not come through, the liver went to someone else on the transplant list. “I know times are tight and cuts are needed, but you can’t cut human lives,” said Mr. Felix’s wife, Flor. “You just can’t do that.” Such high drama is unfolding regularly here as more and more of the roughly 100 people affected by the cuts are becoming known: the father of six who died before receiving a bone marrow transplant , the plumber in need of a new heart and the high school basketball coach who struggles to breathe during games at high altitudes as she awaits a lung transplant . “I appreciate the need for budget restraints,” said Dr. Andrew M. Yeager, a University of Arizona professor who is director of the Blood and Marrow Transplantation Program at the Arizona Cancer Center. “But when one looks at a potentially lifesaving treatment, admittedly expensive, and we have data to support efficacy, cuts like this are shortsighted and sad.” State Medicaid officials said they recommended discontinuing some transplants only after assessing the success rates for previous patients. Among the discontinued procedures are lung transplants, liver transplants for hepatitis C patients and some bone marrow and pancreas transplants, which altogether would save the state about $4.5 million a year. “As an agency, we understand there have been difficult cuts and there will have to be more difficult cuts looking forward,” said Jennifer Carusetta, chief legislative liaison at the state Medicaid agency. The issue has led to a fierce political battle, with Democrats condemning the reductions as “Brewercare,” after Gov. Jan Brewer . “We made it very clear at the time of the vote that this was a death sentence,” said State Senator Leah Landrum Taylor, a Democrat. “This is not a luxury item. We’re not talking about cosmetic surgery .” The Republican governor has in turn blamed “Obamacare,” meaning the federal health care overhaul, for the transplant cuts even though the Arizona vote came in March, before President Obama signed that bill into law. But a top Republican, State Representative John Kavanagh, has already pledged to reconsider at least some of the state’s cuts for transplants when the Legislature reconvenes in January. Mr. Kavanagh, chairman of the Appropriations Committee, said he does not believe lawmakers had the full picture of the effect of the cuts on patients when they voted. “It’s difficult to be linked to a situation where people’s lives are jeopardized and turned upside down,” he said in an interview. “Thankfully no one has died as a result of this, and I believe we have time to rectify this.” Across the country, states have restricted benefits to their Medicaid programs, according to a 50-state survey published in September by the Kaiser Commission on Medicaid and the Uninsured. But none have gone as far as Arizona in eliminating some transplants, which are considered optional services under federal law. Before the Legislature acted, Arizona’s Medicaid agency had provided an analysis to lawmakers of the transplants that were cut, which many health experts now say was seriously flawed. For instance, the state said that 13 of 14 patients under the state’s health system who received bone marrow transplants from nonrelatives over a two-year period died within six months. But outside specialists said the success rates were considerably higher, particularly for leukemia patients in their first remission. “Something needs to be done,” said Dr. Emmanuel Katsanis, a bone marrow transplant expert at the University of Arizona. “There’s no doubt that people aren’t going to make it because of this decision. What do you tell someone? You need a transplant but you have to raise the money?” Just before the Oct. 1 deadline, Mark Price, a father of six who was fighting leukemia, learned he needed a bone marrow transplant. But his doctor, Jeffrey R. Schriber, found donor matches for his transplant the very day the new rules went into effect, and Mr. Price no longer qualified for coverage by the Arizona Health Care Cost Containment System, the formal name for the state’s Medicaid program. What happened next was at once inspirational and heart-rending. Out of the blue, an anonymous financial donor quickly stepped forward and agreed to cover the hundreds of thousands of dollars needed for Mr. Price’s surgery. But Mr. Price died last weekend, after his cancer returned before the operation could be done. He was buried on Thursday, next to his grandfather. “It’s not correct to say that he died as a result of the cuts,” said Dr. Schriber, who is active in lobbying for the financing to be restored. “Did it prey on his mind? Did it make his last days more difficult? No doubt.” Elsewhere, the fund-raising is already under way. Mr. Felix and others are now trying to raise enough for new organs through NTAF, a nonprofit organization based in Pennsylvania formerly known as the National Transplant Assistance Fund that helps transplant patients pay for their medical costs. National coverage of their plight has already led to more than $100,000 in donations for some of the patients affected by the budget cuts. The Felix family is also planning a yard sale this weekend so he does not lose the chance to get another liver. There has been a flurry of lobbying to persuade the state to reverse the decision. Dr. Gruessner said he and others met with state health officials recently to propose other cuts associated with transplants, like eliminating tests typically conducted before surgery. If the Legislature does decide to reconsider the cuts, one of the affected people, a plumber and father of three named Randy Shepherd, 36, who has an ailing heart and needs a transplant, plans to attend the debate. “I’m trying not to take it personally,” he said of being cut out of the program. “None of the politicians had heard of me when they made their decision. They didn’t say, ‘Let’s kill this guy.’ ”

Transplants
Health Insurance
Budget
Legislation
Medicaid
Medicine and Health
Mark Price
Arizona


Holiday on Monday Labor Day

Abstract: NEW YORK GOVERNMENT OFFICES Closed. POST OFFICES Express Mail only; self-service kiosks are available at the main post office, on Eighth Avenue at 32nd Street, but there is no regular postal service. BANKS Option to close. PARKING Sunday rules in effect. SANITATION No pickups, street cleaning or recycling. SCHOOLS Closed. FINANCIAL MARKETS Stock and bond markets closed. TRANSPORTATION New York City subways, buses and the Staten Island Railway will operate on a Sunday schedule. Metro-North will operate on a Sunday schedule. Long Island Rail Road trains will operate on a Sunday/holiday schedule. NEW JERSEY GOVERNMENT OFFICES Closed. POST OFFICES There is no regular postal service. BANKS Option to close. SCHOOLS Option to close. TRANSPORTATION New Jersey Transit trains will operate on a weekend/major holiday schedule on all lines. Bus schedules vary by route; riders should check schedules at njtransit.com . PATH trains will operate on a Saturday schedule. CONNECTICUT GOVERNMENT OFFICES Closed. POST OFFICES Closed. BANKS Option to close. SCHOOLS Closed. TRANSPORTATION Metro-North will operate on a Sunday schedule.

Labor Day
New York City
Connecticut
New Jersey