The Risk of Parking in Safe Havens

Abstract: Financial lifeboats are starting to get crowded. Investors in droves have been seeking safety from sinking stocks. But some vessels of refuge have shown how quickly they can be rocked when too many investors pile in. Swiss authorities had already signaled displeasure with excessive desire for local money last week when they cut interest rates to zero. Yet investors, prodded by ultralow rates in the United States, kept buying. More stringent measures would be needed to hold off the masses, and media reports about possibly linking the soaring franc to the wobbly euro sent the Swiss currency tumbling. Gold enthusiasts also were abated. The CME Group, an operator of exchanges, raised margin requirements for gold futures. As a result, doomsayers, inflation hawks and speculators who had sought the ultimate escape watched the price of their precious yellow metal fall more than 3 percent at one point on Thursday. American debt and government-guaranteed mortgage bonds have also had an influx from investors trying to navigate the current storm despite the country’s loss of its AAA credit rating. Though they later sold off, 10-year Treasury notes yielded as little as 2.17 percent on Thursday morning, almost 60 percent lower than their 2011 peak. Bonds backed by home loans also got a huge lift this week when the Federal Reserve indicated it would keep financing costs extremely low for two years. That locks in easy, and seemingly safe, profit for those borrowing short and investing long. With yields much lower than inflation — 3.6 percent on an annualized basis — it’s no wonder investors don’t feel much buyer’s remorse. There is of course a difference between speculative bubbles caused by greed and psychological ones born of fear. But so-called safety trades can blow up much the same way as risky ones. It’s just that policy makers, rather than the invisible hand, are the more likely holders of the pin. Changing currency pegs in Switzerland, allowing the renminbi to appreciate in China or ongoing bullheadedness in Washington could make today’s emergency rafts look less seaworthy. Worse, if inflation turns out to be the real threat, investors may find themselves paddling feverishly to change course. Short on Logic The financial fashion is for all things 2008. Bank shares in Europe on Thursday jumped on expectations that some countries were preparing to revive short-selling bans they had introduced in the crisis. The desire to protect financial institutions from a potentially self-fulfilling loss of confidence is understandable. But changing the rules in turbulent times risks damaging markets in the longer term. Though share prices can be volatile, investors should be prepared. Any leveraged investor with a portfolio consisting entirely of French financial stocks would have been justifiably wiped out by the recent sell-off. By contrast, careful and diversified shareholders will be deterred from being prudent in the future if regulators intervene at the first sign of trouble. An unpredictable regime could in theory prompt all equity investors to demand a higher risk premium for owning stocks, inflating the cost of capital for companies. To be fair to regulators, equity investors are not their main concern. The goal is to prevent a loss of confidence that can be self-reinforcing when applied to banks. Sharp share-price drops can set off moves in the credit-default swaps of banks, which add to the equity sell-off. This in turn can prompt a strike by providers of short-term wholesale financing, potentially initiating a full-blown liquidity crisis. But it’s hard to think of examples where genuinely healthy institutions have been brought down purely by speculators hunting in packs. The short-sellers who aimed at financial institutions in 2008 were right: those firms genuinely needed large injections of capital. Though most lenders have been recapitalized, they now face questions about sovereign debt exposures, and the ability of governments to bail them out if necessary. Besides, it’s far from clear short-selling is to blame. The proportion of shares of Société Générale out on loan, for example, is less than the European average. Previous bans have arrested volatility only temporarily. And there is a natural curb to speculative shorting: a sudden turn in confidence can scar investors. Equity prices are a symptom, not a cause, of the financial contagion. Regulators should not punish the market for doing its job.

United States Economy
Regulation and Deregulation of Industry
Banking and Financial Institutions
Stocks and Bonds


Former Slugger Turns His Baseball Dreams Into a Business, Bat by Bat

Abstract: In 2003, Carlos Cruz sold one of his baseball gloves, which he had customized, to a teammate on the Queens College baseball team for $100, twice what Mr. Cruz had paid for it. It was a revelatory moment: Despite being the team’s leading slugger during his college career, Mr. Cruz wasn’t headed to the big leagues, but he saw a way to stay involved in the game. He bought more gloves with the $100 he had made, customized them by adding extra padding and sold them to friends. After a brief professional baseball stint in England, he returned home, eventually landing a job in the human resources department at Canon. At the same time, he built his tiny business — reinforcing webbing or adding personal touches like a Puerto Rican or American flag to a glove — through word of mouth. He created his own brand, Crunoz Sports, and, in 2009 started selling the gloves and uniforms online. In 2011, he added wooden bats. “These are great bats, with bigger sweet spots for young kids,” says Eddie Albert, the commissioner of the 78th Precinct Youth Council sports league in Brooklyn. Image A selection of bats by Crunoz Sports. Credit Andrew Spear for The New York Times This year, Mr. Cruz, 34, who was born in Panama City, moved to Queens at age 13, and starred as a catcher for Newtown High School in Elmhurst, opened a store in an industrial building in Port Morris in the Bronx. Mr. Cruz doesn’t just sell his wares there. He runs the only bat-making business in New York City. Customers can choose their own timber, then watch Mr. Cruz or his best friend and former college teammate, Danny Santacruz, work the machines that transform it into a bat. The whole process takes half an hour (though paint jobs must be left to dry). He has made over 600 bats since opening in April and hopes to expand to 75 per month next year. The ash and birch bats are $75 and the maple ones cost $85, said Mr. Cruz, who said he aims to provide quality products at affordable prices. Bats from boutique companies can top $100, though mass-produced models can be bought for about $30. “My mom struggled to afford the basics,” Mr. Cruz said. He usually used his team’s equipment, but savored the one glove his mom bought him at a Caldor store for $39.99. “He has really good bats with a lot of pop in them,” said Jeremiah Medina, 13, who lives on Staten Island and plays for the Brooklyn Cougars, a youth league team. The team traveled to the Bronx on Saturday for a demonstration day Mr. Cruz hosted at the New York Sluggers Baseball Academy, one floor down from his bat-making business. “This bat is definitely at the top of my Christmas list,” Jeremiah said. Image Carlos Cruz prepared to engrave a bat at his company. Credit Andrew Spear for The New York Times His teammate Evan Collazo, 13, from Brooklyn, said, “The colors really stand out.” In addition to the colors, Mr. Cruz burns the player’s name into the barrel, where major leaguers’ signatures appear on Louisville Sluggers, and gives players their own model number so they can order more with the same barrel, handle and knob sizes. Isaac Nuñez, 14, who also plays for a youth league team, the Bronx Bombers, and is headed to high school at Brooklyn’s Poly Prep, had a bat customized with a thicker handle and smaller knob. “But the best thing is that it also says ‘Made in the Bronx,’” he said. Mr. Cruz initially hoped to open his business in Brooklyn or Queens, but found nothing there he could afford. Then, Fabricio Benitez, another former teammate and owner of the New York Slugger Academy, suggested the Bronx spot. “The borough is changing a little bit and I want people to take pride,” Mr. Cruz said. Crunoz Sports will soon have competition; another business is planning to open a New York bat-making workshop. Pinnacle Sports has long been based on Staten Island, selling bats made of both bamboo and wood. However, those were always made elsewhere, said Tom Verrengia, the chief executive. While the bamboo bats will continue to be made in China, Mr. Verrengia is hoping to bring his wood operations closer to home and is exploring spaces on Staten Island. While he has found a home for Crunoz Sports in the Bronx, Mr. Cruz has plans to serve all of New York City. He knows he cannot compete with the marketing and production of bigger companies, so he hopes to make inroads locally through customer service. Crunoz Sports is setting up a membership program that will entitle members to free bat deliveries anywhere within the five boroughs. He has already provided the service for existing customers, like Grand Street High School in Brooklyn, which at the last minute needed five bats before a big game last season. “Danny and I stayed here till three in the morning to get those done,” Mr. Cruz said. As the owner of a small, fledgling business, Mr. Cruz needs all the help he can get. So his sister Karla helps with the bats, his wife, Cassidy, designs uniforms and his nephews help with the deliveries. “My whole family is involved,” he said.

Baseball
Baseball Bats
Carlos Cruz
Crunoz Sports
NYC
Wood
Bronx


Decision to Close Plant Casts Toyota in New Role

Abstract: DETROIT — After years of watching rivals shutter factories and lay off workers while it prospered, Toyota now finds itself in unfamiliar territory as it prepares to close its only unionized American plant. Suddenly, a company whose success is one reason the Detroit automakers have had to cut so many jobs is itself cutting loose members of the United Automobile Workers union. California officials say as many as 40,000 jobs could be lost after Toyota closes the plant in Fremont, Calif., where it builds the popular Corolla sedan and a small pickup, the Tacoma. And the U.A.W., which accused Toyota of callously abandoning its workers, criticized it for shifting Corolla production to Canada and Japan after millions of dollars in cash-for-clunkers rebates from the United States government caused sales of that car to surge. “It has all the ingredients of a real mess,” said Harley Shaiken, a labor specialist at the University of California, Berkeley. Atsushi Niimi, a Toyota executive vice president whose responsibilities include North America, denied that Toyota had decided to close the plant because its work force was unionized. He said California’s high cost of living and labor were a factor, as was its location far from Toyota’s suppliers. Unlike U.A.W. members at other auto plants, the workers at the Fremont plant have no contract provision that gives them extra benefits after being laid off. Nor can they transfer to another plant, as many senior workers do when a General Motors or Ford Motor Company operation shuts down. Though workers would be free to apply at other Toyota plants, the closest of which is more than 1,700 miles away, in San Antonio, “they will not be prioritized over the applicants from the local community,” Mr. Niimi told reporters on a conference call. He said discussions about any severance or post-layoff benefits would be up to plant management, because it operates as a separate entity from Toyota, known as New United Motor Manufacturing Incorporated, or Nummi. “Management is ready to negotiate in good faith,” Mr. Niimi said. A spokesman for Nummi declined to comment beyond a statement from its chief executive, Kunihiko Ogura. “We particularly regret the impact that this will have on our valued Nummi team members,” Mr. Ogura said. “We are committed to making every effort to ensure the best possible transition for Nummi team members.” Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger of California said in a statement that his office would help to ensure “appropriate employee severance, proper environmental remediation and assistance in transforming the site to alternative uses.” Nummi opened in 1984 as a joint venture by Toyota and G.M. It gave Toyota its first chance to build cars in the United States, while G.M. sought an education in more efficient manufacturing. After filing for bankruptcy protection in June, G.M. said that it would pull out of Nummi, leaving Toyota to decide if it could continue to operate the plant on its own or with a new partner. On Thursday, Toyota said it had concluded that keeping the plant open was not economically viable “over the mid- to long-term” without G.M. Toyota said production would end in March. The vehicle G.M. built at Nummi, the Pontiac Vibe, was discontinued last week. Though G.M.’s withdrawal is what prompted Toyota’s review of the plant and decision to close it, G.M. seems to have escaped much of the blame from the U.A.W. and California officials who have been assembling a package of incentives to persuade Toyota to stay in Fremont. U.A.W. leaders reacted angrily to Toyota’s announcement but never mentioned G.M. “This gave Toyota the opening to do something they may have been contemplating in any case,” Professor Shaiken said. He said Toyota might have underestimated the impact of closing the plant. “They’re viewing this as a business decision,” he said. “And a plant closure in the midst of an economic collapse is also a political decision.”

Toyota Motor Corp
United Automobile Workers
Automobiles
Shutdowns (Institutional)
Layoffs and Job Reductions


Houston Tries to Find Use for Fading Astrodome

Abstract: HOUSTON — Dust is the only thing that rests on the roughly 65,000 red seats of the Astrodome these days. The bright green AstroTurf would trip up any wide receiver headed out for a pass: it lies not smooth and flat but bunched up in waves, as if the victim of a slow-motion earthquake. Amid the cracked entrance ramps and the faded ticket booth signs, the stadium once called “the eighth wonder of the world” has become a different sort of wonder: the biggest vacant building in the fourth-largest city in the country, a nine-acre hollow that officials of Harris County spend up to $3 million annually to maintain and secure, though the last major event there was in early 2008. In the more than four years since, the fate of the Astrodome has been a question mark. After the loss of its anchor tenants more than a decade ago — the Houston Oilers football team and the Houston Astros baseball team — plans to turn the Astrodome into an upscale convention hotel fell through. In 2008, the city’s fire marshal closed the building and declared it unsafe to occupy. In 2010, a study estimated that demolishing it would cost $128 million, an option that many officials and Houstonians have been reluctant to consider. The building — the world’s first domed and air-conditioned stadium when it opened in April 1965, designed for both baseball and football — was the prototype for a generation of American sports stadiums and helped introduce Houston to the world, as its Astrodome hosted Muhammad Ali and Elvis Presley, rodeo cowboys and Hurricane Katrina evacuees. “We have to make a decision,” said Harris County’s top elected official, County Judge Ed Emmett. “We can’t have this venerable icon of Houston and Harris County history look like a rusting ship in the middle of the parking lot.” On Wednesday, the stadium gained a tentative new direction. A team of consulting firms recommended renovating the Astrodome and turning it into a multipurpose facility that would host events like in-the-round concerts, football and soccer games and basketball tournaments, at a cost to the county and its taxpayers of $210 million. It was one of four options presented to the Harris County Sports and Convention Corporation, which oversees the stadium. The other three options were keeping the stadium as it is and doing nothing, tearing it down to build an outdoor plaza or turning it into a multipurpose facility, but with added retail, dining and entertainment attractions. Turning the Astrodome into a multipurpose center was tied to a plan to redevelop the Reliant Park complex , which includes the Astrodome, and replace the nearby convention site, Reliant Arena. Those two projects, replacing the arena and turning the Astrodome into a multi-use site, would cost the county $523 million, not counting the $30 million in debt the county still owes on the Astrodome. The multipurpose facility is the most expensive publicly financed option for the Astrodome’s future, a touchy subject in a city that collects only sales and property taxes. “Given the economic climate of the country, the question of money is going to weigh heavily on this debate,” said the executive director of the sports and convention corporation, Willie P. Loston, who performed on the floor of the Astrodome in 1965 as a member of the Phillis Wheatley High School band. “It’s going to cost millions of dollars to bring it down or rehabilitate it to the point where it is usable and productive.” The corporation’s board of directors voted Wednesday to send the consultants’ recommendations to the Commissioners Court, the county’s governing body, for further action. The Astrodome sits in the middle of the Reliant Park complex. This year, the Astrodome played only a bit part in one of the city’s biggest events, the Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo: its doors shuttered, the stadium merely held up giant banners. When the 71,500-seat Reliant Stadium was built next door to the Astrodome in 2000, there was no clear purpose for the Astrodome. “The driver at that time was, ‘Let’s go get the stadium done and then find a purpose,’ ” said Mark Miller, the general manager of Reliant Park. “We’ve literally spent the last 12 years trying to find that purpose.” On a recent tour of the stadium, now known as the Reliant Astrodome, save for the distant sounds of construction workers decommissioning elevators and the echoing footsteps of the tour guide, Mr. Miller, the building was a cavern of quiet. Plywood blocked the entrances and exits of the escalators. The stadium that gave AstroTurf its name now had some of the stuff rolled up and strewed about, waiting for an insurance company’s inspection after an electrical fire caused water damage. “Be kind to her,” said Mr. Miller, as he stood in an outdoor corridor. “She’s a good building.”


India Undermined by Lack of Long-Term Vision

Abstract: NEW DELHI — Six years ago, the official Indian delegation to the World Economic Forum put together “India Everywhere,” a blizzard of promotions designed to lure foreign investment to the country. Guests to Davos were given free iPods loaded with Indian music and pashmina shawls “from the Himalayas to keep you warm in the Alps.” The Web site for India Everywhere is still online, but — perhaps symbolically — it is riddled with broken links. Only the home page remains, cheerleading for “the world’s fastest growing free market democracy” and its imminent arrival “centre stage in the global economy.” In 2013, the world economy is still waiting for India to live up to its billing. Foreign investment in India has continued to rise, reaching a record $46.8 billion in the country’s most recent fiscal year. But economic growth has slowed significantly. After flirting with the 10 percent mark in 2006, it cooled to an annual rate of 5.3 percent in the third quarter of 2012, the most recent period for which data have been released. Admittedly, the past few years have not exactly been warm and nourishing for many national economies. But beyond the effects of the global slowdown, India’s economic progress has been undermined by the country’s internal politics — politics not as a grand ideological tussle, but politics as the more basic, spit-and-sawdust business of winning elections and retaining power. The symptoms of this political malaise can be seen in the ways in which policy making has gone awry in India. The government, for example, tends to place populist projects ahead of more fundamental economic overhauls. It enacts legislation to guarantee poor people 100 days of employment every year, at a daily wage of 130 rupees, or $2.38, for example, but it does not equip these beneficiaries with the skills to break out of the cycle of poverty. It decides to start delivering pension and scholarship payments via bank tranfers, instead of through government intermediaries, but it does not address the problems of corruption and bribery that made the change necessary to begin with. Parties in power, as well as in the opposition, seem mainly to strive to be seen as champion of the common man. Last year, when the minister in charge of the money-bleeding Indian Railways announced fare increases amounting at most to 0.30 rupees (less than one cent) per kilometer of travel, the opposition and even his own party decried the move as anti-poor. The government recanted and rolled back the increases, and the minister was forced to resign. The central government, headed by the Indian National Congress party, has also been hobbled by levels of disclosed and alleged political corruption startling even by Indian standards. Officials managing the 2010 Commonwealth Games in New Delhi were formally charged with awarding inflated contracts to close associates; memorably, rolls of toilet paper were invoiced at $80 apiece. A former telecommunications minister was briefly sent to prison, and his trial is still going on, for selling radio frequency for mobile telecommunications at below-market prices, costing the exchequer $38 billion, according to India’s national auditor. Another official audit estimated that the allocation of coal-mining rights without a transparent auction process set the government back by $33 billion. At the forum in Davos last year, Montek Singh Ahluwalia, the deputy chairman of India’s Planning Commission, brushed off the thought that these scandals had soiled the country’s image as an investment destination. “People will judge us on how we react with the investigation into the corruption,” he told the BBC. The judgment does not look favorable at the moment. Moreover, the exposure of corruption has frozen policy making even further. No government that is trying to make over its image in time for elections in 2014 will initiate changes like cutting fuel subsidies or opening sectors like retailing to foreign investment — moves that, for all their merit, are still contested fiercely in India. Finally, the debate over overhauls and policy is muddied by mainstream political parties that have no clear economic vision. Instead, every party prefers to take stances that are inconsistent but that are perceived to serve it well in the short term. In 1991, the finance minister Manmohan Singh opened up the Indian economy by relaxing many import and foreign investment restrictions and simplifying a byzantine licensing regime. But as prime minister since 2004, he has been far more timid in pushing through a second major round of policy changes. Meanwhile, the Bharatiya Janata Party, which headed India’s coalition government from 1999 to 2004, used to pitch strongly for economic liberalization, promising to, for example, allow greater foreign investment in India’s retailing sector. Now that it is in the opposition, however, the party has resisted the passage of that very same measure for retailing — resisted it so strongly, in fact, that it refused to let Parliament function for days on end, claiming that big-box retailing chains would hurt small shopkeepers. “There may have been some rationale for it in 2004,” Arun Jaitley, a leader of the Bharatiya Janata Party, said vaguely by way of not quite clarifying his party’s reversal on the policy. Such policy reversals have drawn sharp criticism from both foreign and domestic analysts and investors. In 2006, the Goldman Sachs economist Jim O’Neill ranked India a lowly 97th in the world by potential risks to growth, below Brazil and the Philippines. In his 2011 book “Growth Map,” Mr. O’Neill said that the country’s problems boiled down to a lack of leadership. Last April the steel baron Lakshmi Mittal said that India was “low on the investment priority list of countries.” Ratan Tata, who recently stepped down as chairman of the Tata Sons empire, told The Financial Times in an interview that even though he was “bullish about India’s potential,” Indian companies could not help but look overseas, where “you wouldn’t have an eight-year or seven-year wait to get all the clearances for a steel plant.” Late last year, in a rare moment of plain speaking, Mr. Singh, the prime minister, acknowledged that his government needed “courage and some risks” to see India through the policy logjam. Pashmina shawls and loaded iPods will not do the trick any more. Samanth Subramanian is the India correspondent for The National. He is working on a book about the Sri Lankan civil war.

Davos World Economic Forum
Economy
India
Corruption
Politics


SUNY Chancellor to Build a Strategy by Consensus

Abstract: ALBANY — Nancy L. Zimpher, who is leaving the University of Cincinnati to become the chancellor of the State University of New York , has a long and ambitious to-do list: raise academic quality, find new funds for research, improve student transfer options and develop a strategic plan. But topping her agenda as she prepares to take over the largest university system in the nation under a single governing board, with 440,000 students, is perhaps a more daunting goal: personally visit all 64 campuses in the first few months of her tenure — from the sprawling research universities to the smallest technical colleges. “I can’t imagine not starting that way,” said Dr. Zimpher, who is expected to be approved by SUNY’s full board of trustees Tuesday afternoon. “I want a mental map. It’s such a great way to meet people where they are — not just the campus itself, but the community which it serves.” In a wide-ranging interview on the eve of her appointment as chancellor, Dr. Zimpher, a 62-year-old Midwesterner who can play the dulcimer and dabbles in watercolors (mostly of lighthouses), spoke on Monday about her vision for SUNY at a time of economic turmoil, as the system faces potentially devastating budget cuts. She discussed how her experience as president of the University of Cincinnati, where she has led the 37,000-member student body since 2003, might translate to a much larger system. And she gave a preview of the case she planned to make to Gov. David A. Paterson and the State Legislature as she seeks to bolster SUNY. “Being the best state university system in the country, and internationally recognized as a model, means that we have to work with the State of New York to view investments in SUNY as investments in New York’s economy,” said Dr. Zimpher, who was accompanied by Carl T. Hayden, chairman of the board of trustees, in her first interview since being tapped to lead the system. “We produce students, we produce jobs, we serve communities,” she added. “So, yes, we’re in a rough spot as a country and certainly in Ohio and New York, but I continue to believe that higher education is the economic engine for the future of this state. I think we can grow this state out of its revenue challenges.” The appointment of Dr. Zimpher, who is the first woman to lead SUNY, comes nearly two years after the previous chancellor stepped down. The search for a successor was bogged down, in part, by the unexpected resignation of Gov. Eliot Spitzer. During that time, the system has absorbed more than $200 million in state cuts, a significant portion of the state’s $1.4 billion annual outlay. The leadership vacuum and financial strains have coincided with an ambitious blueprint for the future of SUNY and the City University of New York. In a report released last summer, the New York State Commission on Higher Education called for billions of dollars in new investments for the two systems, to update their campuses and hire 2,000 full-time faculty members, including more than 250 internationally recognized researchers. Dr. Zimpher and Mr. Hayden both said the report was still a valuable document, but unlikely to be acted on immediately. “We haven’t forgotten it,” Mr. Hayden said. “We may not do it this year, but together Nancy and this board will bring the promise of that plan to life.” Dr. Zimpher said she had read the report “through several times,” adding: “We aren’t going to step back from our aspirations. This is a great system, and it can be greater.” Colleagues at the University of Cincinnati, which includes 16 colleges, schools and divisions, praised Dr. Zimpher for addressing financial problems there — specifically, reversing a tradition of deficit spending and tackling what one professor called a “mountain of debt.” Others said she took pains to build a consensus in the process of creating an academic strategy, called “UC/21: Defining the New Urban Research University.” Dr. Zimpher said she intended to develop a “home-grown” strategic plan for SUNY, perhaps as early as the spring of 2010, after consulting with campus presidents, faculty members, students, alumni, business leaders and policy makers. The plan for the University of Cincinnati “helped us stay on course and stay focused and measure our progress,” she said, adding that a SUNY plan would serve as a “road map for the next five years” and would “look forward to the five years after that.” Dr. Zimpher also made her mark in Cincinnati by standing up to a wildly successful basketball coach, Bob Huggins, whose players frequently got into trouble and who himself was arrested in 2004 on a drunken-driving charge. She forced him out the following year, after declaring that “character counts.” Mr. Hayden, who has overseen the search for a chancellor, seemed visibly relieved to have finally identified a new leader. “We saw what great talent looks like,” he said of Dr. Zimpher. “The combination that really attracted our attention was the ability to collaborate and to remain decisive. Often they’re contradictory, but in this woman, they’re not.”

Zimpher Nancy L
State University of New York
Colleges and Universities


Houston Is Next for a Nomadic Quarterback

Abstract: Several notable quarterbacks came off the board during Day 3 of the N.F.L. draft Saturday, including Tom Savage of Pittsburgh, who went in the fourth round to the Houston Texans (135th over all). A few years ago, it would have been tough to imagine Savage’s being drafted, as he was in the middle of a meandering five-year career in which he played for three programs. But Savage, 24, once the top-rated recruit in Rutgers history, finished on a high note for Pittsburgh, and that was enough to earn him consideration from N.F.L. teams. Houston was able to take him later than most analysts expected. In the fifth round, two standout Southeastern Conference quarterbacks, Georgia’s Aaron Murray and Alabama’s A J McCarron, went back to back to the Kansas City Chiefs and the Cincinnati Bengals. McCarron won two national titles with the Crimson Tide, and Murray finished as the conference’s career leader in passing yards (13,166) and touchdown passes (121). The first special-teams player selected was punter Pat O’Donnell of Miami, selected by the Chicago Bears in the sixth round (191st over all). The Chiefs took offensive lineman Laurent Duvernay-Tardif, who was working toward a medical degree at McGill University in Montreal, nine picks later. The Buffalo Bills acquired running back Bryce Brown from the Philadelphia Eagles early Saturday afternoon, giving the Eagles a conditional draft pick and a swap of seventh-round picks. Brown ran for 878 yards and 6 touchdowns in two seasons with Philadelphia.

Football
Sports Drafts and Recruits
Houston Texans
Tom Savage


Unstoppable Bolt Breaks Record in 200-Meter, Too

Abstract: BEIJING — The margin of victory seemed almost impossible, his finishing time a sport-shattering moment. Four days after Usain Bolt electrified track and field with a world record dash for the ages in the 100 meters, he might have outdone himself in a disqualification-marred 200 on Wednesday night. Bolt, Jamaica ’s wunderkind, surged so far ahead of a stellar Olympic final field that his last 50 meters elicited nothing but awe. Running hard through the finish, Bolt not only ran 19.30, breaking the world record by two-hundredths of a second less than two hours before his 22nd birthday, but he seemed to set new parameters on what humans can achieve. And he did it with trademark Jamaican style, taking off his spikes and dancing when it was over, seeming to wrap the entire crowd at the National Stadium in his long embrace. He watched the replay on the big video scoreboard along with everyone else. “I was saying, ‘I look cool,’ ” Bolt said. “I was just happy. I was just looking at myself and I was like, ‘That guy’s fast.’ I’m just proud of myself. It’s just a great feeling. You can’t really explain it.” In this race, Bolt wanted to show what he could do when he is serious. In the 100, he stopped racing with about 10 meters to go, threw out his arms and slapped his chest before he crossed the finish line. That made his time of 9.69 — three-hundredths of a second better than the previous world record — that much more astonishing, because it could have been so much lower. In the 200, which he considers his strongest event, Bolt overpowered the field in the turn. He entered the straightaway so far ahead that the only questions left were how much he would win by and would he break the world record. The record was 19.32 seconds, set by the American Michael Johnson in his possibility-altering moment at the 1996 Atlanta Games. Until Wednesday, no one other than Johnson had run faster than 19.62. Bolt’s previous best was 19.67. “A lot of people compare me to Michael Johnson,” Bolt said. “But I don’t like to compare myself to other people because I just try to be me. Michael Johnson was a great athlete. He revolutionized the sport, I just changed it a little bit.” Bolt, though, clearly underestimated what he had done here at the Olympics. On the biggest stage for his sport, he rewrote two of its most revered records. The 200 record in particular seemed unassailable. The most startling part was Bolt’s ability to do it so young. “It’s ridiculous,” said Kim Collins of St. Kitts and Nevis , who finished sixth. “How fast can you go before the world record can’t be broke? How fast can the human being go before there’s no more going fast?” Behind Bolt’s staggering achievement, the rest of the race got complicated. Churandy Martina of Netherlands Antilles crossed the finish line second in 19.82 seconds, more than half a second after Bolt, and Wallace Spearmon of the United States crossed third. But shortly after the three apparent medalists started a victory lap, the scoreboard showed Spearmon had been disqualified. But no one told Spearmon, who was celebrating by running around the track with the American flag. Later, in protesting Spearmon’s disqualification — which was upheld because Spearmon ran out of his lane in the curve — American officials pointed out that Martina had stepped out. After a review, officials of the International Association of Athletics Federations, track and field’s international body, disqualified Martina. That meant that the Americans Shawn Crawford and Walter Dix won the silver and bronze medals. When he heard about the rulings, Crawford, the gold medalist in the 200 at the Athens Games, shook his head in disbelief. “Oh Lord,” he said. “O.K., so Wallace Spearmon stepped out? The second-place guy stepped out? Hopefully, Usain stepped out, too, and I’ll get the gold medal. If two people stepped out, it’s a gold medal for me.” Crawford laughed when he said that, but he was genuinely empathetic toward Spearmon. “He’s put in four hard years of work like everybody else here, worked his heart out like everybody else to make it to the final,” Crawford said. “It’s heartbreaking. I share his pain right now.” The sports minister for the Netherlands Antilles, Omayra Leeflang, was furious about Martina’s disqualification and blamed the United States team. “It goes against the whole spirit of the Olympics,” Leeflang said. “The spirit of the Olympics is to come together in the spirit of fair play. A small country like ours, we did not come here as victims. I think it’s a pity for a big country like the United States to make such a small statement.” The confusion in the placements behind Bolt seemed to be part of another universe. He had finished so far ahead, won in such commanding fashion, that everyone else seemed to be participating in a separate event. “What Bolt has done, he’s made history,” said Crawford, whose time was more than six-tenths of a second slower than Bolt’s. “He added spirit to the sport. He danced for us in the introduction. He danced for us at the end. He put on a show. To me, I feel like him and athletics is like Michael Phelps and swimming . He raised the bar for us in athletics.” Bolt became the first person since Carl Lewis in 1984 to win the 100 and the 200 in the same Olympics, and the first to do it while breaking both world records. “You have people who are exceptions,” said Stephen Francis, the coach of Bolt’s main Jamaican rival, Asafa Powell , the former 100 world-record holder. “You have Einstein. You have Isaac Newton . You have Beethoven . You have Usain Bolt. It’s not explainable how and what they do.” Now the biggest question is what might be next for Bolt and the sport he has changed forever. “I didn’t think I’d see under .30 in my lifetime,” Renaldo Nehemiah, a former world-record holder in the 110 hurdles for the United States, said of Bolt’s 19.30. “He’s doing something we’ve never seen before, but he’s a freak of nature. He did it at 14 and he did it at 17. Most people aren’t surprised he could do it. They might be surprised he did it here, but it was inevitable.”

2008 Summer Olympics
Track and field
Usain Bolt


Off-Duty Officer Shoots Armed Robber at Beauty Salon

Abstract: An off-duty police officer who got into a shootout with an armed robber as the officer was getting her hair done in a beauty salon in Brooklyn on Saturday night shot the gunman’s revolver out of his hands, police officials said on Monday. A suspect, Winston Cox, 19, was arrested early Monday at a hotel in Brooklyn, the police said. Following a blood trail and using bloodhounds, the police said, detectives were initially led to the home of the suspect’s mother, where officers found a black bag containing the suspect’s revolver and a bullet fired by the officer, Feris Jones. When investigators found Mr. Cox about 1:20 a.m. on Monday at a hotel on Pacific Street in Bedford-Stuyvesant, he answered the door with paper towels wrapped around his wounds, said Paul J. Browne, the Police Department’s chief spokesman. Mr. Browne said Mr. Cox told the officers, “She shot my hands.” Mr. Cox had been arrested five times previously, including once for assault, the police said, although the record of any convictions was not available. He was paroled in June in Vermont after having been convicted of possessing a controlled substance. The shootout in the beauty salon began about 6:30 p.m. Saturday, when the gunman burst into Sabine’s Hallway in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Mr. Browne said. “This ain’t no joke,” the man shouted, waving a .44-caliber Magnum revolver. “This is a robbery. I will kill you.” The gunman ordered the four people there — the proprietor, an employee, Officer Jones and another customer — to place their belongings in a black bag, the police said. He then ordered them into a bathroom in the back while he searched the shop for more worth stealing. In the bathroom, Mr. Browne said, Officer Jones pulled out her revolver. She whispered to the other three women to lie down and gave the proprietor her cellphone and told her to call 911. Then she stepped out of the bathroom, identified herself as a police officer and ordered the robber to drop his gun, the police said. He refused and opened fire from about 12 feet away, Mr. Browne said, shooting four times in quick succession. One bullet whizzed past Officer Jones’s head. She fired back, emptying her five-shot revolver. One shot knocked the gun from the man’s two-handed grip, piercing his right middle finger and grazing his left hand, according to the police. Another shot hit the lock on the front door, jamming it. The gunman tried to flee, Mr. Browne said, but could not get the door open. Finally, he grabbed his gun, kicked out a lower panel on the door and crawled out. Officer Jones followed him out the door to see which way he was running. Mr. Browne said Officer Jones’s performance was commended at an internal police briefing by Police Commissioner Raymond W. Kelly, who said that “her reserve under fire was matched only by her marksmanship.” Officer Jones, a native of Barbados, joined the department in 1990 and has worked the past 12 years in the evidence collection unit in the crime lab. It was the first time she had fired her gun in the line of duty, Mr. Browne said.

Jones Feris
Cox Winston
Police
Shootouts
Bedford-Stuyvesant (NYC)


Conviction of Pu Zhiqiang Affirms China’s Resolve to Muzzle Rights Lawyers

Abstract: BEIJING — In convicting one of China ’s most prominent rights lawyers, the Chinese government has struck a body blow at an independent legal movement that until recently had managed to take root despite numerous obstacles, legal rights advocates say. Although the lawyer, Pu Zhiqiang, 50, on Tuesday received a three-year suspended sentence that theoretically allowed him to go free, the conviction will end his legal career and effectively silence a stalwart member of a group of lawyers who have fought for justice and free speech within the narrow confines of China’s politicized legal system. Since President Xi Jinping came to power, in 2012, a steady stream of lawyers and rights advocates have been detained, and in several cases have been put on trial and sentenced. “Over the last 20 years, the great human rights success story has been the growth of lawyers and activists in China who work on everything from pollution to corruption to women’s rights,” said Sophie Richardson, the China director for Human Rights Watch. “This case makes very clear the senior leadership will not tolerate independent organizing, no matter how peaceful.” There are several seasoned rights lawyers still practicing, including Mo Shaoping, a well-known criminal lawyer who defended Mr. Pu. But over all the profession has taken a “horrific hit,” Ms. Richardson said. In July, the government rounded up and detained more than 300 lawyers and legal assistants, a maneuver that sent a chill through the legal community, even if most of those detained were later released. But more than 20 lawyers have remained in secret detention since the July sweep, according to Chinese Human Rights Defenders, an advocacy group based outside China. Other lawyers have been detained for longer periods, including a colleague of Mr. Pu’s, the rights lawyer Xia Lin, who has been detained for more than a year. “It’s never been easy to be a rights lawyer in China, but this is the toughest it’s been in more than two decades,” said Jerome A. Cohen, an expert on Chinese law at New York University. “The mood is extremely grim.” Given that Mr. Pu faced a maximum of eight years in prison, the three-year suspended sentence was more lenient than had been expected, an outcome most likely influenced by intense international attention to Mr. Pu’s plight. But by preventing him from practicing law again, the government got him where it hurt the most. And it gave the government what it most wanted — the silencing of a street-smart lawyer who had made freedom of expression the heart of his practice. In the 19 months since he was first detained, Mr. Pu, who has diabetes, had been denied visits with his family members, and requests by his lawyer to have him released on medical parole had been rejected. Image Signs depicting the human rights lawyer Pu Zhiqiang outside the Chinese liaison office in Hong Kong last week. Mr. Pu was tried on Dec. 14 before a three-judge panel in Beijing. Credit Kin Cheung/Associated Press “The ruling makes a mockery of the Chinese President Xi Jinping’s ‘rule of the country with law’ and China’s criminal justice system,” Chinese Human Rights Defenders said. Mr. Pu’s case was emblematic because he was known as a forthright speaker who attracted attention in and out of the courtroom with his blend of scathing critiques and references to classical Chinese literature. The prosecution charged Mr. Pu with “picking quarrels and provoking trouble” and “inciting ethnic hatred” in seven posts on Weibo, a popular Chinese microblogging service similar to Twitter. The topics of the posts included criticism of the government’s policies toward the Uighur ethnic minority in China’s far west Xinjiang region, and sarcastic comments about two well-known legislators. During a three-hour trial last week , uniformed and plainclothes police officers outside the courthouse treated diplomats and journalists roughly, and they detained more than 20 of Mr. Pu’s supporters. The lengthy pretrial detention seemed to indicate that the government was not of one mind on how to deal with him, Ms. Richardson said. Senior party leaders no doubt knew that there would be broad criticism from the United States and European countries if he were sentenced to a lengthy jail term. Officials in the Public Security Bureau were probably inclined toward a maximum sentence, she said. “With this sentence, the government does not get criticized for sending him to jail for three to six years, but can send him to jail on a whim,” Ms. Richardson said. The crackdown against lawyers under President Xi began in 2013, when Xu Zhiyong, the founder of the New Citizens Movement, a group dedicated to promoting legal rights, was arrested on charges of “gathering a crowd to disrupt public order.” He was put on trial in January 2014 and sentenced to four years in prison . In 2014, the government conducted a sweeping campaign in which it detained 955 rights advocates, far more than the 1,160 detained in the previous two years, Chinese Human Rights Defenders said. In a statement on Tuesday, Rights Defenders warned that even though Mr. Pu had received a suspended sentence, he was not free, because he could be put back into detention if the government deemed he had broken the terms of his sentence. The group cited the case of Gao Zhisheng , an outspoken rights lawyer who was convicted of subversion in 2006 but was given a suspended sentence. In the years that followed, Mr. Gao was kept under house arrest and, he told The Associated Press , subjected to occasional beatings by the police. In 2010, shortly before the end of his probation, he disappeared and subsequently spent three years in solitary confinement after a secret trial. Released last year, Mr. Gao still lives under round-the-clock police surveillance and has numerous health problems, said to be the result of abuse and malnutrition during his years in custody. “It’s outrageous how Gao has been treated,” said Mr. Cohen, the legal expert. “Pu will be under enormous pressure, because you never know if you will be picked up for whatever reason and put away without due process.”

China
Pu Zhiqiang
Political prisoner
Human Rights
Chinese Human Rights Defenders
New Citizens Movement China
Xi Jinping
Criminal Sentence


Shares Rise on Developments in Greece

Abstract: Stock prices stabilized on Friday and the euro was higher as increased hopes for a Greek bailout gave major indexes their first weekly gain since April. Shares gained as Germany agreed under pressure from France not to force private investors to take on some of the burden of a new bailout package for Greece. The announcement in Berlin meant Germany was backing away from a sticking point with the European Central Bank on the issue. The market pared its gains late in the day, however, after Moody’s Investors Service put Italy’s government bond ratings on review for possible downgrade. The rating agency cited growth challenges, a likely rise in interest rates and risks posed by changing funding conditions in Europe as among the reasons for the review. At the close, the Dow Jones industrial average was 42.84 points, or 0.4 percent, higher at 12,004.36, while the Standard & Poor’s 500-stock index was up 3.86 points, or 0.3 percent, to 1,271.50. The Dow rose 0.4 percent and the S.& P. edged up just 0.04 percent for the week — the first weekly gains since April 29. The Nasdaq composite index closed lower Friday, falling 7.22 points, or 0.3 percent, to 2,616.48, its fifth consecutive weekly loss. The euro continued to be buffeted by European debt developments, reacting sharply on Friday to the announcement by Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany about the Greek bailout. “That is when the euro popped,” said Brian Dolan, the chief currency strategist for Forex.com . The European currency rose to $1.4306 in late New York trading from $1.4207 late in the day on Thursday. Mr. Dolan said that the debt issue was likely to continue to weigh on the European currency, however. “You get a short-term rebound in the euro but the long-term issues are still there, and that is going to prevent the euro from a sustained recovery,” he said. In European markets, the CAC-40 in Paris rose 31.43 points, or 0.8 percent, to 3,823.74. The DAX in Germany was up 53.85 points, or 0.8 percent, at 7,164.05, and the FTSE in London gained 16.13 points, or 0.3 percent, to 5,714.94. Bruce McCain, chief investment strategist of Key Private Bank, said concerns about European debt and a slowdown in the United States economy had probably pushed United States stock prices down too far, too quickly. “We priced in a lot of negatives over a short time period,” he said. With investors having reduced their exposure to equities, he said, now the market “has the opportunity to rally a bit.” In the bond market, Treasury issues slipped Friday after rallying on Thursday in response to European debt worries. The Treasury’s benchmark 10-year note yield fell 5/32, to 101 18/32, and the yield rose to 2.94 percent. Analysts said that even if Europe can agree on the details of a rescue package for Greece, worries will persist about political stability in the country as well as a possible contagion effect on Ireland, Italy, Spain and Portugal. “The problems in the euro zone don’t begin and end with Greece,” said Kevin H. Giddis, the executive managing director and president for fixed-income capital markets at Morgan Keegan & Company. In stock market trading on Friday, financials, consumer staples, utilities and telecommunications shares rose by more than 1 percent. Among the gainers, I.B.M. rose 1.8 percent to $164.44, JPMorgan Chase gained 1.1 percent to $40.80, AT&T climbed 1.1 percent to $30.77 and Microsoft rose 1.1 percent to $24.26. Among the day’s biggest decliners was Research in Motion, maker of the BlackBerry smartphone. The company, which has struggled to compete with Apple’s iPhone and Google Android phones, reduced its earnings outlook for the second time this year after the market close on Thursday. RIM shares plunged 21.45 percent Friday to $27.75.

Stocks and Bonds
European Sovereign Debt Crisis (2010- )


Xerox Trims Its Full-Year Profit Forecast

Abstract: The Xerox Corporation , best known for its office copiers and printers, cut its full-year profit outlook on Friday after reporting lower second-quarter results. The company said it expected revenue to remain weak in its technology business, which includes document systems, supplies, technical services and financing of products, especially in Europe. Xerox forecast 2012 earnings per share of $1.07 to $1.12, excluding special items. Previously it had aimed at $1.12 to $1.18, and analysts had estimated $1.11. Xerox stuck to its 2012 operating cash flow goal of $2 billion to $2.3 billion. The company also reported that its second-quarter revenue fell 1 percent to $5.5 billion, below analysts’ average estimate of $5.59 billion. Net income fell 3 percent to $316 million. Earnings per share were 26 cents, excluding one-time items.


N.R.C. Members Split on Speed of Recommended Changes

Abstract: WASHINGTON — A majority of the five-member Nuclear Regulatory Commission is signaling that it wants to move slowly on at least some new recommendations from its staff on how to reduce the chance of a Fukushima-type accident at an American reactor despite calls by its chairman for swift action. Three commissioners are resisting a proposal by the chairman, Gregory B. Jaczko, that the commission act promptly on all the recommendations, which were issued last week by a team of six senior staff members. Mr. Jaczko said that because this task force had completed its evaluation in 90 days, the commissioners should be able to decide within a similar time frame what changes to make in safety regulations, although the reforms themselves would take longer. This is not the first indication of conflict within the agency. After an inquiry, the commission’s inspector general reported last month that some staff members were troubled by Mr. Jaczko’s aggressive management style and by his decision to halt the staff’s work on an Energy Department proposal to build a nuclear waste repository in the Nevada desert. The Obama administration has shelved that project, drawing criticism from many Republican members of Congress. On Wednesday, a day after the task force briefed the commissioners on the post-Fukushima report, one member, William D. Magwood IV, posted a statement at the commission’s Web site asserting that the task force had worked “without the benefit of the full analytical resources of the agency.” Given its 90-day mandate, “it was not possible to give all issues the consideration they deserve,” he wrote. Another member, Kristine L. Svinicki, posted a statement that said, “I do not have a sufficient basis to accept or reject the recommendations of the Near-Term Task Force.” She said the agency should “proceed with the systematic and methodical review of lessons learned.” Both commissioners noted that the task force had found no imminent threat to public health and safety from continued operation of the nation’s 104 power reactors, or from extending their licenses. A third commissioner, William C. Ostendorff , said at Tuesday’s hearing, “I personally do not believe that our existing regulatory framework is broken.” The task force recommended some specific improvements and some sweeping reforms, like integrating decades of regulations and informal changes in operating practices into a single framework that systematically addresses the full range of safety risks. For example, some equipment stored at nuclear reactors in response to the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks — like portable pumps, hoses, extra batteries and extra sources of energy — is held in places that are not protected from flooding, and the items are not regularly tested, the task force found. The study recommended periodic re-evaluation of earthquake risk as an understanding of geology evolves, and rethinking the design of vents that have been added to some reactors to control excess pressures and get rid of hydrogen. When nuclear fuel overheated at Fukushima Daiichi, it led to a hydrogen explosion despite the presence of vents similar to those at reactors of the same type in this country. The nuclear industry argues, though, that not enough is known now about the vents at Fukushima or the recent sequence of events there to justify changes in the United States. The issue of how urgently to move is acquiring a partisan character. On Wednesday, Representative Edward J. Markey of Massachusetts, a longtime critic of nuclear safety regulation for whom Mr. Jaczko once worked, said that the two commissioners who posted comments “want to direct the N.R.C. staff to endlessly study the N.R.C. staff’s own report before they will even consider a single recommendation made by the very same N.R.C. staff.” “We do not need another study to study the N.R.C. staff’s study,” he said in a statement. But on Monday the Republican leaders of the House Energy and Commerce Committee took the opposite tack. After reviewing the task force’s report, they said, they urged Mr. Jaczko in a letter to proceed slowly. “We believe it is essential that the commission have the benefit of the full and deliberate process of review, in accordance with established commission procedures, its principles of good regulation and statutory requirements,” they wrote.

Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant (Japan)


Suicide Bomber Kills 28 in Sri Lanka

Abstract: COLOMBO, Sri Lanka — A female suicide bomber hiding among refugees fleeing the war zone in northern Sri Lanka killed at least 20 soldiers and 8 civilians at a checkpoint on Monday, the government said. A string of victories in recent weeks raised hopes that more than two decades of intermittent civil war between government forces and the rebels known as the Tamil Tigers may soon be over. But the attack raised the prospect that the Tigers would revert to their hallmark tactics of guerrilla warfare and suicide attacks if they lose control of their final patch of territory — about 60 square miles south of the Jaffna Peninsula. The attack, the first of its magnitude in a month, also left dozens wounded. It took place in the northern district of Mullaittivu in an area that the government said had been wrested from the rebels. The bomber joined civilians being searched by government soldiers after they fled the war zone in the north of the country, where government forces have taken several rebel strongholds and pushed the rebel into a wedge. The authorities have urged noncombatants to flee into areas under the government’s control, but tens of thousands of civilians — perhaps as many as 250,000 — may be trapped. On Monday, some 800 civilians had crossed the front lines and were being searched by soldiers before being sent to camps farther afield. The bomber detonated her explosives as she was being searched, said Gen. Udaya Nanayakkara, a spokesman for the Sri Lankan military. Sri Lankan television showed images of bodies, including that of a child, being carried away from the site of the attack. General Nanayakkara said that the military would now change its procedures for processing civilians fleeing the fighting. “We’ll have to check civilians one by one,” he said. “It’s going to take more time.” The government is pressing ahead with it campaign against the Tamil Tigers, which the United States and the European Union list as a terrorist group. Since its founding in 1976, the organization has been fighting for a separate state for the Tamil minority and has been held responsible for about 200 suicide attacks. The government announced Monday that its fighter jets attacked what it described as a rebel naval facility. On Saturday, 15 to 20 rebels were killed when they tried to cross into government-held territory, the Defense Ministry said. But the offensive is hamstrung by the presence of the civilians caught in the war zone, some of which is thick jungle. The government says it has been encouraged by the thousands of civilians who have left rebel-held territory, and says it is providing camps for all those displaced by the conflict. But Monday’s attack exposed both the danger for civilians and the difficulty for the military in separating fighters from refugees. Sri Lanka’s president, Mahinda Rajapaksa, predicted in a speech to the nation last week that within “a few days we will decisively defeat the terrorist force that many repeatedly kept saying was invincible.” But analysts say that defeating the rebels — let alone quelling subsequent guerrilla activity — could take weeks or months. “I don’t see this being conclusively wrapped up in the next few days,” said Alan Keenan, an analyst for the International Crisis Group who is based in Colombo. “My sense is that some remnants will survive and that we have weeks to go.” Meanwhile, Colombo, the capital, is under heavy military and police surveillance, with soldiers patrolling the streets and vehicles routinely stopped at dozens of sandbagged checkpoints. Residents are constantly reminded to be vigilant and to report anything suspicious.

Sri Lanka
Bombs and Explosives
Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam
Civil War and Guerrilla Warfare
Armament Defense and Military Forces
Terrorism


Wimbledon Plays Cupid for Martin Emmrich and Michaella Krajicek

Abstract: WIMBLEDON, England — On Sunday, a relentless drizzle peppered the All England Club for a third successive afternoon, but on the practice courts little could dampen the spirits of Martin Emmrich and Michaella Krajicek, the German-Dutch mixed doubles partners who became engaged two weeks ago. “Which side shall I go to, Princess, which side?” Emmrich jested, as he worked on Krajicek’s return with a series of bullet serves during a brief respite from the weather. The two first met in 2013 in Rosmalen, the Netherlands, which hosts a pre-Wimbledon grass-court tournament. Exactly 12 months later, at the same event, Emmrich summoned up the courage to propose on court, a result of five months of scheming with the tournament director. “I had to discuss it with him, as you can’t just go on court,” Emmrich said. “There was a lot of planning. We had to make sure that she stayed on court after her match, arrange with the TV people. I was playing doubles, so I had to ensure we weren’t playing at the same time. I was so nervous I couldn’t play that day anyway. But it was a perfect day, as she won, too. I got a little tight when she lost the second set.” Krajicek had been told to expect a special guest on the court after her match, but she admitted to not having the slightest idea. “When he first came on, I was like, ‘This is weird,’ ” she said, giggling. “But then when he had tears in his eyes, I was like, ‘Oh my God!’ It was really romantic and the rest of the week I was somewhere in the clouds. But now it’s Wimbledon and as a perfectionist, you always want to have good results.” For Krajicek, 2014 has been a particularly special year. For once, her body has held up to the rigors of the tour. The half sister of the former Wimbledon champion Richard Krajicek, she shares a similarly lethal serve, and after she reached the singles quarterfinals in 2007 at 18, further success appeared inevitable. Seven years later, Krajicek has been through four knee operations, a debilitating viral illness and a mysterious heart problem. “I started having knee pain when I was 14,” she said. “Since I was young, I’ve always had lower back pain, too.” She added: “I just try to block it out, but there are a few moments when you just can’t and you get a little teary-eyed. Some days are a little bit tougher than others.” During her professional career, Krajicek has not had a season when she was injury-free. It has led her to focus more on doubles, where the physical demands are not quite as intense. But she still retains ambitions as a singles player. For now, she has a singles ranking of 206, which left Emmrich in a quandary while she decided whether to compete in Rosmalen or enter Wimbledon qualifying. “I don’t know if I would have gone on court at Wimbledon and proposed, and if they would even have let me do it,” he said. They acknowledged that their Wimbledon experience had been slightly surreal since the news media picked up on their story. “We must have done 50 interviews,” Emmrich said. “But the journalists are always kind enough to ask at least one question about my tennis before it comes to our relationship.” They made a winning start to their mixed doubles campaign Friday, defeating Santiago Gonzalez and Yung-Jan Chan, 6-2, 3-6, 6-2, but engagement bliss did not prevent the ever-competitive Krajicek from becoming a little frustrated with her partner midway through. “There was one game where she earned us five break points on Chan’s serve,” Emmrich said. “And I somehow didn’t manage to make any returns, five times in a row. I can’t repeat what she told me then. I felt some pressure afterward. I asked in the changing room if she’s that hard with her normal partner.” Krajicek said: “It was really funny. I was a little bit upset at that point. I was just like, ‘Seriously can you just put the return in and give us a chance?’ ” But their run ended Tuesday with a 6-1, 6-2 loss to the No. 15 seeds, Nenad Zimonjic and Samantha Stosur. With vacation looming, though, defeat is not too painful. “My brother has been so kind as to lend us his home,” Krajicek said. “It will be a nice week of rest before we head out again. But we will still practice a little bit, it’s not going to be just lying on the beach, unfortunately.” Taking just one week off is a luxury few feel they can afford, even if they are getting married. “We want a summer wedding next year,” Emmrich said. “But if there’s a big tournament after, we will make sure there’s a tennis court close by where we practice.”

Tennis
Wimbledon Tennis,Wimbledon
Martin Emmrich
Michaella Krajicek
Marriage


A Gay Man Tells of Torturous Words and Signs

Abstract: William Cruz, a shy homebody who moved to the Bronx in 2006, always kept his private life just that — private, for reasons of self-protection. “I hear the news, about gay people getting stabbed, beat up,” Mr. Cruz, now 47, said. “You never know. It could be things like that that happen to you, you could bump into the wrong person.” He said those words two days before news broke of a brutal attack in which a 30-year-old gay man, and two 17-year-olds thought to have had sex with him, were tortured by members of a street gang, about two miles from the neighborhood near the Grand Concourse where Mr. Cruz once lived. Mr. Cruz, who survives on disability payments after having been severely injured in a 1981 fire, was never physically attacked while he lived in the Bronx, but he lived in fear of it, because of harassment he experienced in the most vulnerable of all places: his own home. His is a offstage story offering fresh insight into bullying when the target is an adult. Mr. Cruz’s troubles began, he said, in June 2007. There was a minor dispute with the five-story building’s superintendent, Miguel Nieves, over some work Mr. Cruz requested be done in his one-bedroom apartment, whose $1,031 rent he paid mostly with a Section 8 housing voucher. Not long after, Mr. Cruz said, Mr. Nieves started using a variety of antigay slurs about him and talking about him to the neighbors, telling one she should watch out lest Mr. Cruz rape her husband. Mr. Cruz’s cousin signed an affidavit saying that he saw the super’s wife drawing a penis and a gay epithet on Mr. Cruz’s mailbox; someone also drew an image of a penis on his door and that same offensive word, along with “bitch,” in permanent marker. The words, on the threshold of his safe haven, were an assault, there for every child walking up the stairs to see, there to incite any possible homophobic thug with a baseball bat. “I imagine there’s more people out there like himself,” Mr. Cruz said of his old superintendent. “When they find out I’m gay? How will they react?” When Mr. Cruz had a birthday party for himself, he painstakingly covered up the ugly words with a blue tablecloth and a sparkly “Happy Birthday” sign, so that the relatives who knew his sexual orientation would not feel hurt and the friends who did not know would not wonder. As the months wore on, and the insults escalated, Mr. Cruz’s life — already somewhat circumscribed by a disability in his hands — grew smaller and smaller: He feared leaving the house, worried the threats would graduate from the verbal to the physical. If last week’s brutal attack represents the worst of what gay men might expect to endure, Mr. Cruz’s experience speaks more to the day-to-day, low-grade humiliations that are par for the course in so many corners of even New York City. And those neighborhoods extend far beyond the Bronx to ones in Manhattan like the East 50s, where Townhouse Management, which owns Mr. Cruz’s building, seemed incapable of putting an end to the harassment. His lawsuit against the company is scheduled to be heard in Bronx Supreme Court on Oct. 27. “They treated it like a complaint about an overflowing toilet,” said Katie Rosenfeld, a lawyer representing Mr. Cruz. “They could have moved Nieves to another building, they could have installed cameras, they could have had housing-discrimination training.” Mr. Nieves, who no longer works for Townhouse and could not be located for comment, denied all the accusations in a deposition. Stuart Jackson, a lawyer representing Townhouse Management, said in an interview that the company sent supervisors to spot-check Mr. Nieves’s performance more often than usual, repeatedly spoke to Mr. Nieves and made some inquiries of the neighbors, but did not find sufficient evidence of his having done anything wrong. Mr. Jackson also said Townhouse, which owns or manages 2,000 apartments citywide, offered to move Mr. Cruz to another building; Mr. Cruz said no such offer was made until he sued. “But even if it was,” his lawyer said, “William shouldn’t have to move out of the home he chose to feel safe.” Since the spring of 2008, Mr. Cruz has lived in Brooklyn, and he now is content in a one-bedroom apartment decorated with his elaborate collection of Marilyn Monroe posters and calendars. When news broke of the attack in the Bronx, some sense of that newfound security eroded. He did not want to be photographed in a way that he could be recognized; he did not want to reveal the neighborhood where he now lives. “This guy is a very sensitive man,” said Mr. Jackson, the landlord’s lawyer. Can anyone blame him?

Homosexuality
Cruz William
Bronx (NYC)
Hate Crimes


Next Version of Tablet PC's Said to Be Lighter and Smaller

Abstract: Microsoft and Intel plan to announce next week that several industry partners will make small, light versions of a tablet personal computer, people close to the two companies said yesterday. The machines, which have been the subject of considerable speculation, will be tailored more for consumer entertainment than the larger tablet machines running Microsoft's Windows that were introduced in 2002. The larger tablets, typically with 12-inch screens, sell for about $1,500 and are used mostly by doctors, lawyers, architects and other professionals in office settings. A tablet PC has a touch-sensitive screen that allows input with a pen. The new models -- a category called ultramobile personal computers -- will have smaller screens, seven or eight inches, and sell for $1,000 or less, depending on options. The machines will have the handwriting recognition software of the standard Windows tablet personal computers, and include wireless technology for browsing the Internet. But the new tablets will also have multimedia capabilities for playing music, movies and games in some models. Those describing the features would not speak for attribution because the products have not been announced, nor would they name the three or four manufacturers that they said were involved. Intel will discuss the new category in general at a developers' conference in San Francisco that begins Tuesday. The new models will be announced at the CeBit technology trade show in Germany, which opens Thursday. Intel will supply the chip technology for the ultramobile PC's, and they will run a version of Windows Tablet PC software. The models to be introduced this year are an initial step to what Microsoft and Intel hope will be a popular hybrid category of computer, a consultant to Microsoft said. They will be hefty, at about two pounds, and have a limited battery life of three hours or so between charges, the Microsoft consultant said. A new generation of low-power chips, extending battery life to six hours, will come next year. Later models, he added, will come with screens of four inches or so. Without disclosing specifics, Intel and Microsoft had previously acknowledged working on ultramobile machines intended to have the power of a personal computer. The machines were to be designed to do one thing very well, and do a few other things as well -- more like a consumer electronics product. One model, for example, might be geared toward gamers, but also allow e-mail and simple Web surfing. Another might be marketed to soccer moms or business travelers -- research showed their use patterns are remarkably similar -- who want to be able to do e-mail messaging and read online publications as they do on a desktop without the weight. "We don't want to create a Swiss Army knife, because that's not what users want," Brad Graff, a director of marketing in Intel's mobile platforms group, said yesterday, speaking generally about the company's approach. There has been considerable speculation in the last week about what Microsoft may be introducing. A Web site set up by Microsoft, www.origamiproject.com, stirred interest with vague assertions that a coming mobile technology "will change your life." Then, bloggers found and posted a video advertisement for Microsoft Origami mobile technology. Intel has its own Web site, www.umpc.com, suggesting the ultramobile PC's will be able to handle movies, music, games, television and the Internet.

MICROSOFT CORP
INTEL CORP
MICROSOFT CORP
PRICES (FARES FEES AND RATES)
COMPUTERS AND THE INTERNET


The Jets Get Tim Tebow in Trade With Broncos

Abstract: About eight hours after announcing a trade for Tim Tebow , the Jets actually completed it Wednesday night, ending a surreal day in which one of the most popular and polarizing athletes in the country was sent to the N.F.L. ’s most prominent city. After a brief but fierce pursuit that was almost derailed by a disagreement over money with his former team, the Denver Broncos , the Jets acquired Tebow, whose unorthodox quarterback style has divided football coaches and executives even as his public displays of faith have earned him a fervent fan following. In joining the Jets, Tebow becomes the highest-profile backup quarterback in the N.F.L. A Heisman Trophy winner at the University of Florida , he burnished his image last season by leading the Broncos to several last-minute victories during the regular season and an overtime win in the playoffs against the Pittsburgh Steelers . Tebow is a crossover phenomenon who will diversify the Jets’ offense, but his presence could undermine the incumbent, Mark Sanchez , who recently agreed to a lucrative new contract. Tebow is also a somewhat incongruous fit: an outspoken Christian playing in a city known for its extensive night life and a member of a franchise made famous by the bachelor stylings of Joe Namath and currently known for the profane speeches of its coach, Rex Ryan . “I think New York is unique; if there’s anyone that can handle it, it’s Tim,” said Urban Meyer, who coached Tebow at Florida . “He’s going to handle it the same way he’s handled everything since I first met him: up front and first class and humble about everything. It’s probably a whole different animal in New York, but he handles everything the same way.” In truth, it is the football aspect of the trade — the Jets acquired Tebow for two draft picks — that is more jarring than the prospect of Tebow in Times Square. New York has been cleaned up in recent years, and the improbable ascension of Jeremy Lin , the point guard for the Knicks , has proved that the city is as good a place as any for a Christian athletic sensation to succeed. For the Jets, Tebow could emerge as a change-of-pace quarterback who never threatens Sanchez, excelling in a role that maximizes his talents. Or he could add another layer of madness to 1 Jets Drive, where Ryan, the team’s flamboyant coach, and outspoken players rarely hold back their often-divisive opinions. The holdup in consummating the trade stemmed from a clause in Tebow’s contract that required any team trading for him to pay Denver a portion of his salary for the next three seasons — more than $5 million. The sides eventually compromised, with the Jets kicking in $2.53 million that will be paid over the next three years. In a conference call Wednesday night, General Manager Mike Tannenbaum called himself “an impatient spectator” for most of the night and said the parties were glad they could reach a compromise. He said the Jets read the contract, but there was a disagreement about how the $5 million in question would be handled after Denver received the trade papers. News of the deal surfaced at 12:50 p.m. Wednesday, when the Jets’ official Twitter feed announced that the team had acquired Tebow. At 1:03 p.m., reporters who regularly cover the team received a text message acknowledging that the Jets and the Broncos had agreed in principle to the deal. And then it stalled, ostensibly because the Jets failed to fully understand the provision in Tebow’s contract that would cause them to owe so much money to the Broncos. Into the mix came the Jacksonville Jaguars , leaving the Jets to face the possibility that a high-profile trade would collapse in the most public of manners. The day’s uncertainty almost thwarted Denver’s hopes of arranging a tidy and quick exit for Tebow, who was made expendable by the Broncos’ recent signing of Peyton Manning . In helping to guide Denver to the A.F.C. West title last season, Tebow engineered several last-minute comebacks, including a 95-yard drive that silenced the Jets on Nov. 17. That night’s triumphant finish, like many others for Tebow, came after a miserable first three quarters. The result thrilled Broncos fans, but not John Elway , the team’s executive vice president, who did not believe in Tebow’s long-term prospects as their quarterback. Last season, Tebow completed 46.5 percent of his passes, 34th in the N.F.L., and ranked 28th in quarterback rating (72.9). Heavily invested in Sanchez, a quarterback regarded as flawed, the Jets are adding a quarterback widely regarded as hopelessly flawed. But the Jets view Tebow as a potential component of their run-oriented offense, engineered by a new coordinator, Tony Sparano, who popularized the Wildcat formation when he was the head coach of the Miami Dolphins . Still, Tannenbaum took the time to reiterate his belief in Sanchez, saying: “We’re going to do a lot of great things with him, and every quarterback in the N.F.L. has a backup. We just changed who ours is and we feel really good about it.” Speaking of Tebow, Tannenbaum said: “I think what we’ve become is a diverse, more dynamic offense that’s going to make it more difficult for opposing teams to defend.” He added, “We have a vision for the player, we have a role for the player.” After flirting with Manning, the Jets awarded Sanchez a new five-year contract with $20.5 million guaranteed. Even before the news of the trade broke, cornerback Antonio Cromartie posted a message on his Twitter page questioning the move: “Y bring Tebow in when we need to bring in more Weapons for @Mark Sanchez let’s build the team around him. We already signed to 3 year ext.” Lin, who has learned a lot about the New York media glare over the past two months, had some advice for Tebow when he talked to reporters after the Knicks’ 82-79 victory over the Philadelphia 76ers . “Everyone gave me some advice — make sure not to read the papers,” Lin said. “But I don’t want to say that to offend you guys. That’s what I’ve been told, so I don’t really read anything. That’s what helps me.” Many of Tebow’s fans are drawn by his professions of faith, which complicates any front office’s decisions. The Broncos risked alienating many fans had they benched Tebow or sent him elsewhere without bringing in Manning. Long before Tebowmania engulfed Denver, he starred at Florida, where his community service, charismatic personality and religious beliefs combined to make him a folk hero of sorts. His disclosure at Florida that he intended to remain a virgin until marriage seemed to attract as much attention as winning the Heisman Trophy, which he did as a sophomore. Tebow’s offensive coordinator at Florida, Steve Addazio, called him a “rock star before he walked onto campus.” Despite a glistening résumé — he won two national championships and was a three-time Heisman finalist — Tebow encountered skepticism when he entered the N.F.L. because of his quarterbacking style. That skepticism remains, but he now will face it as a member of a team that courts the media spotlight.


Near Seat of Government, Seats of Power

Abstract: At City Hall, the power-lunch spot that opened near you-know-where in the late Giuliani years, sometimes the challenge is keeping the planets out of one another’s orbits, said Henry Meer, the chef and owner. Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg favors Table 41, a booth along the western wall — as do Raymond W. Kelly, the police commissioner, and Cyrus R. Vance Jr., the Manhattan district attorney. Representative Gregory W. Meeks typically takes Table 21, and the mayoral candidate Joseph J. Lhota’s regular spot is Table 23. Judges, lobbyists and officials have their turf. Though Mr. Meer tries to keep regulars at their regular tables, sometimes the powers’ lunch needs overlap. “In that case, I usually give the table to whoever called first,” Mr. Meer said. Then again, there are days — especially in August, especially when the weather doesn’t play nice — when the celestial figures take their sustenance elsewhere, and the orbs in City Hall seem to burn a little less brightly. So it was on Tuesday, when the few regulars who braved the rain could shout to one another from across the vast dining room. IN THE SEATS A reticent crowd, including a judge who declined to be interviewed because, he said, his court’s security advisers had counseled the judges not to broadcast their movements. But at Table 41 sat Anthony W. Crowell, 42, former lawyer to Mayor Bloomberg, now the dean and the president of New York Law School, with one of the school’s professors, Karen Ash, 56, a lawyer who specializes in intellectual property practice. As legal counselor to Mr. Bloomberg, Mr. Crowell may be best remembered for aggressively promoting the mayor’s effort to repeal the city’s term limits law so he could serve a third term. WHY THEY CAME Why do people go to power restaurants? To do a little business and to be part of the scene. “We’re two blocks away, and we consider City Hall as part of our campus,” Mr. Crowell said. “It’s great people-watching here. It’s the ultimate New York place these days.” He added, “It really helps to contextualize what this area is about — the seat of government and all things that are great about the civic sector in New York.” ON THE PLATES The menu here clings to safe power-lunch classics: a raw bar; some steaks and burgers; surf and turf. Mr. Crowell and Mrs. Ash kept things light. Both started with a vegetarian green lentil soup ($9). He followed with a wedge of iceberg lettuce with bacon, tomato and Maytag blue cheese ($15); she had a Greek salad ($17). “Perfect for a rainy summer day,” Mr. Crowell said. WHAT THEY TALKED ABOUT Even here, people gotta kvell. “We talked about her fantastic daughter Danielle, who just graduated from the law school, at the top of her class, and she is going to a fantastic new job at a law firm called Paul Weiss, and we are celebrating Danielle’s success,” Mr. Crowell said. Beyond that, there were possible additions to the curriculum. “We’re working on it,” Mrs. Ash said.

Restaurant
NYC
Mike Bloomberg
City Hall Manhattan NY Restaurant


NATO Ruled by Fear as It Picks a Chief

Abstract: BERLIN — When government leaders gather for the NATO summit meeting in France and Germany on Friday, they will have lost a great opportunity to change the way the alliance’s secretary general is chosen. They will have had no discussion about what NATO’s new political boss will bring to an alliance that never had to fight during the Cold War but whose future now rests on its combat strength in Afghanistan. NATO secretaries general, like the heads of big multinational organizations including the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund and the European Union’s Commission, are chosen behind closed doors. In the case of NATO, secrecy made sense during the Cold War, when the alliance defended Western Europe against Soviet-dominated Eastern Europe. But even after the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, NATO retained the habit of secrecy and turned consensus into an art form in order to avoid difficult discussions. At the same time the alliance has been transformed into a political organization that expects to have its say in international diplomacy. But while its 26 members have proved willing to send men and women into combat, few have explained to their public why their troops are in Afghanistan. Contentious issues, in any case, have rarely been discussed at NATO headquarters in Brussels. Member states’ ambassadors have not broached the issue of the next secretary general. Jaap de Hoop Scheffer, the outgoing Dutch NATO chief, did not place it on the agenda of the weekly meeting, knowing full well that some of the big countries, Britain, Germany, France and the United States, would not be pleased. “The job of a secretary general is to cajole, placate, convince and broker,” said Tomas Valasek, a defense expert at the Center for European Reform in London. Interestingly, it is the first time an acting prime minister, Anders Fogh Rasmussen of Denmark, is seeking the job that in the past was given to bureaucrats or, at most, former foreign ministers. What a surprise then that in the days leading up to summit meeting, it is not clear that Rasmussen would win the race. Turkey, which is a leading member of NATO, is opposing Mr. Rasmussen’s candidature. Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan said Muslim countries had asked him to block Mr. Rasmussen’s appointment because of his refusal to apologize for Danish newspaper cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad that provoked riots in several Muslim states in 2006. “Whether Erdogan is opposing Rasmussen’s appointment for domestic reasons is not clear,” said Karl-Heinz Kamp, director of Research at the NATO College in Rome. “But the more Erdogan talks publicly about it, the more it will be difficult for him to climb down.” Turkey’s public objections have punctured NATO consensus. But by focusing on Mr. Rasmussen’s past, the Turks have lost a great opportunity to look toward the future and ask what kind of secretary general Mr. Rasmussen would make. It is the same for the second level of candidates — Defense Minister Peter MacKay of Canada and Poland’s foreign minister, Radek Sikorski. Mr. Sikorski has been criticized for his antagonistic stance toward Russia. Germany, France and Italy say he is too anti-Russian, which would make it difficult for NATO to work with Russia. But none of these governments, which have very close contacts with the Kremlin because of their dependence on Russian gas, have asked Mr. Sikorski how he sees NATO’s future. But the main reason why NATO is not prepared to have an open discussion about who should lead and modernize the alliance is that it is afraid: afraid of having its divisions exposed; afraid of the future; afraid of the possibility of failure in Afghanistan. “If there was to be a genuine public discussion about who the next NATO secretary general should be, it would expose the deep divisions, weaknesses and uncertainties inside the alliance,” said Bates Gill, director of the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute. “Whoever is chosen at this week’s summit, or later, will have to deal with the uncertainties and the future of the institution.” There are several major divisions inside an alliance that was founded in 1949 on the principles of collective security and solidarity. In Afghanistan, where in 2003 NATO took over the command of the multinational International Security Assistance Force, Canada, the Netherlands, Britain and the United States have borne the brunt of the fighting in the south, where fighting is most intense. Germany and other countries concentrate on safer areas, where they carry out tasks like building bridges that should long have been taken over by civilians and the Afghans themselves. The Dutch and Canadians have repeatedly asked what has become of alliance solidarity. There are big divisions, too, over further enlargement, which is inextricably tied to NATO’s relationship with Russia. Several East European countries feel uncomfortable about NATO going so far “out of area” to Afghanistan because they see unfinished business in Europe. Poland and some other Central European countries still fear Russia. Therefore, they want NATO to expand eastward by admitting neighboring Ukraine and Georgia. “It is about securing this part of Europe without giving Russia a veto over which country can and cannot join NATO,” Mr. Sikorski said in a recent interview. Germany, France, Italy and the Netherlands, however, are opposed to further enlargement eastward because they do not want to provoke Russia. The Kremlin claims that further NATO expansion would allow the alliance to meddle in the Kremlin’s sphere of influence. Whoever the new secretary general is, he (so far, no woman has been mentioned) will have to reconcile the differences within the alliance. Longtime NATO experts like Mr. Kamp say it is naïve to think that such a person can be chosen through a public campaign. “Any candidate needs the consensus of all the NATO countries, and that means the usual horse-trading,” said Mr. Kamp. But increasingly, it is not just governments that matter. When decision-making involves sending tens of thousands of soldiers across the world, public opinion becomes crucial. That is why it matters how the next secretary general of NATO is chosen. Anyone who has been selected behind closed doors may find it that much more difficult to rally support for the alliance’s missions.

North Atlantic Treaty Organization
Afghanistan
Europe


Joyce D. Miller, Advocate for Women, Dies at 84

Abstract: Joyce D. Miller, an influential advocate for women who believed that equality for them in the workplace could be best achieved through labor unions, and who championed that cause when she broke into the male-dominated leadership of the A.F.L.-C.I.O. , died last Saturday in Washington. She was 84. The cause was a stroke, her son Joshua said. Ms. Miller was an advocate for women in the workplace for decades. She was a founding member and later president of the Coalition of Labor Union Women , a national group that since 1974 has helped organize women into unions. In 1980, she became the first woman elected to the executive board of the American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations. And in 1993, President Bill Clinton appointed her executive director of the Glass Ceiling Commission, created by the Civil Rights Act of 1991 to study the barriers to promotion that women and minority employees faced in large companies. When she was elected to the A.F.L.-C.I.O. board, she had been in union management for about 20 years and used to working in a “sea of men,” The Associated Press quoted her as saying. She was 52 and divorced with three children. A 1981 photograph of the board shows her in a blue outfit and pearls, smiling, smack in the middle of 33 men in suits and ties. Ms. Miller saw union membership, collective bargaining and labor contracts as the road to equality for working women, and she believed that women should be a part of union management to make sure that attention was paid to issues like equal opportunity, equal pay, parental leave, child care, health insurance and discrimination against pregnant women in the workplace. She was a tall, formidable presence, possessed of a strong voice that carried well without a microphone (although she had avoided speaking out at her first A.F.L.-C.I.O. meeting because, she said, she did not want to seem like a “pushy woman,” The A.P. reported). “Joyce didn’t hesitate to speak out, to speak out when she thought something was going in the wrong direction,” said John J. Sweeney, a former A.F.L.-C.I.O. president, adding, “She was very focused on fairness and justice.” In 1982, at a Manhattan conference on women’s difficulties in being admitted to skilled union trades like construction and plumbing, Ms. Miller predicted a “feminization of poverty.” “Employers will say that no real woman wants to work in overalls,” she said. “The truth is that no real woman wants to starve.” And to anyone who argued that women earned less than men because they tended to pick less challenging work, she had a reply. “When secretaries were men, clerical work was well paid, upwardly mobile and high status,” she wrote in a letter to The New York Times in 1985 . “When women became secretaries, they hit a low-paid dead end. The same thing happened when women replaced men as sewing-machine operators, bank tellers and telephone operators. The market seems to notice when the workers in a job undergo a sex change.” Joyce Dannen was born in Chicago on June 19, 1928. Her mother was a teacher, and her father owned a dry-goods store. She was raised “with a social conscience,” she said in an oral history project in 2000. She received a bachelor’s degree from the University of Chicago in 1950 and a master’s in social sciences and education there in 1951. Classes about factory workers and the unemployed seeded her ambition to become involved in the labor movement. But despite her education, the only union job she could find at first combined secretary, receptionist and switchboard operator — even though she could not type or take shorthand — at the Cooperative League of America, a group for jointly owned businesses. Later, as a regional education director for a union in Pittsburgh, she found that its employees received food allowances, but that women were given less than men because it was assumed that men would take them out for dinner and pick up their checks. In 1952, she married Jay A. Miller, who also worked for a union. They had three children and moved several times, and she held part-time teaching jobs at colleges and in the public schools. She also kept her hand in the labor movement, volunteering at union education conferences. Everything changed in 1962, when the Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America asked her to become its education director in Chicago. She took the job and rose to vice president. She helped set up child care centers for the union, including one that a government report called “the Rolls-Royce of day care,” as well as housing, legal assistance and college scholarship programs for union members and their children. After joining the Glass Ceiling Commission under President Clinton in 1993, she later became a special adviser to Robert B. Reich, the secretary of labor. Afterward she adjudicated disputes for the Labor Department’s Wage Appeals Board until 1998, when she retired. Her marriage to Mr. Miller ended in divorce in 1965. (He died this year.) Besides her son Joshua, Ms. Miller is survived by another son, Adam; a daughter, Rebecca; two granddaughters; and a brother, Avrum Dannen. “I came to the labor movement with stars in my eyes,” Ms. Miller told The Times in 1980 . “I saw it as a vehicle for social change, and I’ve never changed my mind.”

American Federation of Labor-Congress of Industrial Organizations