Suicide Attack on Mogadishu’s Main Airport

Abstract: NAIROBI, Kenya — Gunmen and suicide bombers attacked Mogadishu’s main airport on Thursday afternoon, shortly after a high-level United Nations delegation met with Somali officials there in an attempt to resolve an escalating internal political dispute. Witnesses said a Toyota sedan exploded at the airport gates after it was stopped by a guard. Another carload of attackers — dressed in government military fatigues, a tactic used in a hotel attack last month — arrived shortly afterward. The attackers jumped out of their car and started shooting wildly, witnesses said. At least one of the attackers detonated an explosive vest. United Nations officials said that nine people were killed, among them four attackers, three civilians and two African Union peacekeepers , but that none of the United Nations officials inside the airport were harmed. The United Nations team, led by the new United Nations special representative for Somalia , Augustine P. Mahiga , had arrived earlier on Thursday to try to overcome a recent falling out between Somalia’s president, Sheik Sharif Sheik Ahmed , and the prime minister, Omar Abdirashid Ali Sharmarke, that has paralyzed Somalia’s transitional government. Earlier this year Sheik Sharif tried to oust the prime minister, but he had to back down after Somalia’s Parliament failed to support him. It seems the president is trying once again to fire Mr. Sharmarke, who has been widely criticized, along with just about everyone else in the Somali government, including Sheik Sharif, for not delivering services and steadily losing territory to Islamist militants. United Nations officials and Western diplomats, including American diplomats, have urged the two men to concentrate on protecting Mogadishu, Somalia’s capital, and to resolve their personal differences later. This past month has been especially violent. The Shabab insurgent group has been waging an offensive to coincide with Ramadan, the Islamic holy month of fasting, which is drawing to a close this week. So far more than 200 people have been killed, including several government lawmakers. Somalia’s military has been nearly invisible during the recent fighting, with almost all combat being handled by African Union troops; there are about 7,000 in Mogadishu. United Nations officials said the commander of Somalia’s armed forces, Gen. Mohamed Gelle Kahiye , is likely to lose his job in the coming days because of the military’s dismal performance. General Kahiye earned a lasting reputation as a solid officer from his time as a colonel in Somalia’s army decades ago. He returned to lead the armed forces after a period in Germany, where he was an assistant manager at a McDonald’s. According to one high-ranking Somali official, only a fraction of the more than 10,000 Somali soldiers and police officers being paid by the United States, the Italian government and the United Nations have shown up during recent battles. “On paydays we have almost 20,000 soldiers,” said the official, who asked not to be identified. “When there’s a battle, we can’t find 100.”

Somalia
Airports
Ahmed Sharif
Mahiga Augustine
Civil War and Guerrilla Warfare


A Newtown, Conn., Boy Who Flapped His Wings Is Mourned

Abstract: BETHEL, Conn. — Six white balloons and 19 purple balloons floated into the gray sky, up to the wisp of blue that peaked out above the steeple. Then 8-year-old Jake Hockley released the last purple balloon, the favorite color of his younger brother, Dylan, and it too lifted into the unknown. When the pipe band from the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey finished playing “Amazing Grace” in the parking lot of Walnut Hill Community Church, nearly 900 people stood outside in silence. No one seemed to know what to do at the end of a memorial service overflowing with stories, pictures and songs recalling an affectionate blue-eyed boy who had a smile for everyone. On Friday, one week after a gunman killed 6 adults and 20 students at Sandy Hook Elementary School, including 6-year-old Dylan Christopher Jack Hockley, a child with autism who died cradled in the arms of his beloved teacher’s aide, mourners grieved at five services. After a moment of silence at 9:30 a.m., the time of the attack, 26 bells tolled at area churches, followed by funeral services for Rachel Marie D’Avino, 29, a behavioral therapist who started working at the school a week before the shooting, and Mary J. Sherlach, 56, the school psychologist. Two students, Grace Audrey McDonnell, 7, and Olivia Rose Engel, 6, were eulogized at St. Rose of Lima Church in Newtown. In front of the packed church here, Ian and Nicole Hockley, the parents of Dylan and Jake, offered a message of hope. Like other children on the autism spectrum, Dylan, whom they called, “D,” liked to flap his arms. When his mother asked him one day why he flapped his arms, she said, she was amazed when, despite his language struggles, he responded: “Because I am a beautiful butterfly.” Ms. Hockley noted the oft-repeated saying that the fluttering of a butterfly’s wings could create a hurricane half a world away. “Imagine,” she said, “what 26 can do.” The family has started a fund to benefit children with autism and special needs. And this seemed to be a theme of the day. Ms. D’Avino was studying for her doctorate at the Institute for Autism and Behavioral Studies at the University of St. Joseph in West Hartford. Her younger sister, Sarah, spoke about how Rachel gave her life to helping children with special needs. “She was a hard worker, a risk taker, a winner,” Ms. D’Avino said during the Mass at the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem, Conn., which was attended by Archbishop Henry J. Mansell of Hartford. Rachel D’Avino was supposed to be engaged to be married on Christmas Eve; her boyfriend, Anthony Cerritelli had already asked her parents’ permission. “If given the chance, Rachel would have gone on to do great things. She had already done great things,” her sister said. Dylan, in his all-too-brief six years, had touched the lives of people of all ages on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean. He was born in Britain, and his nanny from there was one of the many speakers. The family moved to the United States two years ago; Mr. Hockley, who works at IBM, was surrounded by his colleagues in the auditorium of the church. The Hockleys do not belong to the church, but a friend does and the church donated its services. Teachers from Sandy Hook Elementary School and even Dylan’s martial arts school wore purple and cried on one another’s shoulders. Donna Barbagallo and Tracy Conrad, both mothers of sons who clamored for play dates with Dylan and Jake, remarked that Dylan always made them feel special because of the way he greeted them personally. The Rev. Clive Calver, who officiated at Dylan’s funeral, said the family was understandably overcome with grief. “But they also realized that they have to build a life for Jake and for each other,” Mr. Calver said after the memorial service, where Dylan’s ashes were in an urn on the stage. “I think today was just a magnificent demonstration of a commitment of a family. They found a way to honor their son’s memory and yet advance the future.” The Hockleys were composed for most of their time on stage, but Ian Hockley comforted his wife when she broke down while thanking the family of Anne Marie Murphy, Dylan’s special aide, who tried to shield him from the killer’s bullets. Every morning he would look at the class picture, Ms. Hockley said, and point out Mrs. Murphy. But Dylan adored Jake the most, and Jake returned the love. A video of still photos, which the church produced along with an eight-page color booklet, showed the two bouncing on a trampoline, playing with boxes, frolicking in the ocean. One of the messages of the service was how a child with special needs could embrace, delight and even inspire others around him. “They have all sorts of gifts,” Mr. Calver said, “to bring to the rest of us.”

Newtown Conn Shooting (2012)
Funerals and Memorials
Children and Childhood
Autism


With Judge’s Rebuke, a System Built on Hypocrisy Is Wobbling

Abstract: Intercollegiate athletics became a little less of a plantation system Friday when a United States District Court judge in Oakland, Calif., ruled that athletes in big-time sports programs could reap some of the financial benefits of participating in those programs. This decision will prove revolutionary for college sports. The highly commercialized intercollegiate sports system that masquerades as an educational enterprise has been ordered to begin sharing its profits . Judge Claudia Wilken ruled in favor of Ed O’Bannon, the former U.C.L.A. basketball star. O’Bannon and 19 other plaintiffs challenged the N.C.A.A. on the grounds that the organization violated antitrust laws by not allowing student-athletes to profit from the use of their likenesses in broadcasts and video games. By ruling against the N.C.A.A., Wilken tackled the hypocrisy at the root of the big-time college sports system. Wilken’s injunction will allow players at high-revenue-generating programs — football players in the top 10 conferences and all Division I men’s basketball players — to receive a share of the profits from lucrative television contracts. The ruling also acknowledges the blind spot that allows colleges to reap the financial rewards built on the talents of young athletes. The Big Ten commissioner, Jim Delany, and other N.C.A.A. officials have argued that paying student-athletes will hurt college sports. The objection reflects the hypocrisy of a system that uses young labor but prevents those laborers from profiting from their work. A day before Wilken’s ruling, the N.C.A.A. Division I board of directors granted greater autonomy to its five wealthiest conferences. The move allows the elite conferences to make their own rules on several issues. If approved, the plan will allow 64 colleges in the so-called Big 5 conferences, and Notre Dame, to set new ground rules — for example, the universities could enhance the value of scholarships — that could make these programs more appealing to prospective athletes. Yet representatives of these power conferences complain about allowing athletes a share of the revenue. They want it both ways: The rich universities want to break from the pack and set up their own rules, but they object to sharing the revenue with the athletes who generate the wealth. Wilken’s ruling put a price on the cost of doing business. Many universities — those outside the power conferences — say they lose money on intercollegiate athletics. Which raises a question: Why have an intercollegiate program if it loses money? This raises a complex issue of exploitation at all levels of N.C.A.A. competition, from Division I to Division III. Hundreds of institutions use young, willing athletes to provide entertainment to an eager student body and college community. The large sports-factory universities at least acknowledge the entertainment value of student-athletes by offering scholarships; some even find a way to get “extra benefits” to star players. At the Division III level, the student-athletes — the performers — are not compensated with scholarships but can reap the rewards of playing “for the love of the game.” These athletes expend just as much energy, sustain the same injuries and often spend as much time practicing as their counterparts at the higher divisions. So who’s being exploited? Friday’s ruling takes profit-sharing from under the table. The logical next step would be to create a revenue-sharing system in which universities in the Big 5 conferences gave players a percentage of payouts from appearing in football bowl games and reaching the N.C.A.A. men’s basketball tournament. Friday’s decision may be equitable, but it will only escalate the so-called arms race in intercollegiate athletics. For athletes, Wilken’s ruling will make getting into a university in one of the “money conferences” more competitive. The only flaw in the decision was when athletes would receive the money: when they leave college. I would much rather have it designate “when they graduate.” It was troubling to see the number of players who testified during the three-week O’Bannon trial that they saw sports as their main role at college. Will this ruling put more emphasis on sports as a primary occupation of college athletes? “I was an athlete masquerading as a student,” O’Bannon said at the trial. “I was there strictly to play basketball. I did basically the minimum to make sure I kept my eligibility academically so I could continue to play.” Anyone whose son or daughter competes in intercollegiate athletics understands the demands on time. The plaintiffs in the O’Bannon lawsuit argued that the time demands had made it almost impossible to be a regular student. Reducing the athletic demands on student-athletes should be the next N.C.A.A. initiative. During the trial, Delany suggested that athletes spend less time on their sports. “For example, when the basketball season is over, we probably ought to just put a lock on the gym,” he testified. If the players want to play basketball, he said, “they should just go to a playground and go play, but they don’t need to be with our coaches for a month or three weeks.” Delany said the current time demands did not allow players “to cultivate outside interests.” A significant part of being a student-athlete — even with compensation — is graduating. Much of that responsibility falls on the shoulders of the employee, the student-athlete. O’Bannon’s testimony underlines the corrosive impact that professionalized, multimillion-dollar youth sports have had on too many potential scholarship athletes. The essence of our system is that it allows young men and women — many of whom might not have access to a college education — to earn a scholarship and a shot at a degree. The commercialization that has compelled Wilken to rule in favor of O’Bannon makes getting that education challenging. This has been an intriguing 12 months in the civil rights movement in intercollegiate athletics, with Northwestern student-athletes winning the right to form a union; Grambling football players, disgusted with the conditions under which they practiced and played, refusing to play; and now O’Bannon striking the biggest blow yet for player rights. The N.C.A.A.’s house of cards is beginning to fall apart, and, it appears, the jig is just about up.

College basketball
College Sports
NCAA
Ed O'Bannon
Competition law
College


Aviation World at Odds Over Loans for Aircraft

Abstract: Back in the mid-1980s, Boeing and Airbus avoided a trade war by making a gentlemen’s agreement not to seek government financing to sell planes in each other’s home markets. The deal symbolized an aviation world dominated by the United States and Europe. That world is a lot different now. No longer can Airbus and Boeing count on being the biggest manufacturers of large airplanes. Manufacturers in Canada and Brazil are seeking to gain a foothold in this lucrative market. And not too far in the future, China, Japan and Russia will be competing as well. At the same time, airlines from Asia and the Middle East that did not exist three decades ago, or were small players, are now vying for a much bigger piece of the global aviation market. The old rules, some airlines and plane manufacturers contend, are not working anymore. This week, negotiators from the European Union and countries including the United States, Japan and Brazil will meet in Ottawa to grapple with the politically charged issue. Their goal is to draw up a new agreement by the end of the year on the rules for financing the airplane business — and specifically, how much government assistance is permitted. The various interests are in conflict, and it is unclear if the talks will be successful. “The home market restriction has become unsustainable,” said Scott Scherer, vice president for strategic regulatory policy at Boeing’s financing unit. “It’s the big elephant in the room.” The discussions, which are taking place under the auspices of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, are complicated by the fact that what might be in the interest of the airlines may not necessarily work for aircraft manufacturers. The so-called home market rule applies to only four European countries — France, Germany, Britain and Spain — where Airbus planes are produced, and to the United States, where Boeing is based. As a result, for example, Ryanair, which is based in Dublin and is one of Europe’s biggest low-cost carriers, has tapped into export-credit financing to buy most of its fleet of 200 Boeing planes. Its London-based rival, EasyJet, cannot make a similar deal. The loudest objections to the current rules have come from European airlines, which say that cheaper, government-backed loans have helped fuel the growth of their rivals in Asia and the Middle East and given them an unfair advantage. The charge is mostly aimed at Emirates Airlines in Dubai, whose rapid expansion in recent years has rattled airlines in Britain, France and Germany. The airline threatens to take their international passengers away from European hubs and fly them instead through its gleaming new terminals in Dubai. Boeing and Airbus also worry about new competition. At the moment, their biggest concern is the emergence of a new jet from Bombardier of Canada, the C-Series. This single-aisle plane, due to enter service in 2013, will be able to seat about 130 passengers, posing a direct challenge for the first time to the best-selling Boeing 737 and Airbus A320. The current rules set separate financing standards for large airplanes and regional jets with 100 or fewer seats. But the C-Series, with its larger capacity and range, has now blurred that line, Boeing and Airbus say. This, they argue, puts them at a competitive disadvantage for sales in the single-aisle category, the most profitable segment of the market. Bombardier said it would welcome a new arrangement where airlines could obtain financing, regardless of where they were based. “We do not support the so-called home market rule,” Marc Meloche, the senior director for structured finance at Bombardier Aerospace, said. “All customers should have access to all financing sources, based on market principles." Besides the Canadian factor, the other major catalyst for the talks has been the economic downturn, which essentially shut down commercial credit markets and left official export agencies, especially the Export-Import Bank of the United States, as outsize purveyors of financing. In 2009, about 35 percent of Boeing and Airbus sales were financed by credit agencies, according to the manufacturers, up from about 20 percent before the economic downturn. In the United States, the Export-Import bank guaranteed $8.6 billion in commercial aviation loans in its fiscal year ending September 2009, nearly double what it typically helped finance each year since 2002. This year, export credit agencies in the United States and Europe are expected to guarantee more than $15 billion in civil aviation loans, about the same as in 2009. Export agencies, set up to help finance exports to countries with weaker credit, usually require quicker repayment than commercial loans and impose more restrictions on the airlines. But in today’s depressed market, industry experts say, the agencies’ loans are on average about three to five percentage points lower than commercial loans. This can be a significant factor for planes whose list price ranges from $60 million for a single-aisle plane to about $350 million for the largest plane today, the Airbus A380. The export credit agencies “did a great job in 2009, when banks were unable to fulfill their role,” said Christian McCormick, chief executive of Natixis Transport Finance in Paris. “They have created something of an addiction by the airlines to this product that is completely out of the market.” Because of the home market restrictions, American and European airlines could not get government backing for new planes. But airlines did, including Emirates Airlines, Korean Airlines and Cathay Pacific. European airlines were already hurting from the rapid rise of some of these carriers, particularly Emirates and Etihad Airlines in the Persian Gulf, saying they pay lower fuel prices, airport fees and corporate taxes. Opposition to the government loans has become the latest tactic the airlines are now using to curtail these carriers’ growth. In a joint letter dated Oct. 11, airlines from Europe and the United States proposed limiting to 20 percent of new plane deliveries the export-credit backing that an airline can receive each year. The letter was signed by nine European airlines, including Air France, British Airways and Lufthansa, and the Air Transport Association, which represents airlines in the United States. They also want export credit to be provided on less favorable terms than commercial bank loans. The airlines may get some of what they want. A draft agreement that began circulating among governments this month would increase the price of export agency financing to airlines, according to one person involved in the negotiations, but not include the cap on lending. “This is becoming a big political fight,” said Adam Pilarski, an economist and senior vice president at Avitas, a consultancy in Chantilly, Va. “Incumbent airlines are beginning to feel that if they do not do something, somebody may take their place.” “Nobody complains about airlines from Uganda having this advantage,” Mr. Pilarski said. The complaints have raised hackles in Dubai, where Emirates dismisses claims that it has received any competitive advantage from state-subsidized loans, saying it has financed only 20 percent of its fleet through export credits. “We have grown without subsidy through the success of our commercially driven business model — and see no reason to apologize for what we have achieved,” Tim Clark, the president of Emirates Airline, said in a statement. Some aircraft financiers, however, were skeptical of Emirates’ claims. One European banker, who would speak only anonymously because his bank provides loans to the airline, estimated that nearly 50 percent of the Emirates jet purchases had been subsidized by Western export credit agencies. Emirates raised eyebrows again this summer with two more huge jet orders — including plans to buy an additional 32 Airbus A380 jets valued at $11 billion at list prices, bringing its total orders for the twin-deck superjumbo to 90. In July, Emirates placed another huge order, for 30 Boeing 777s.

Airlines and Airplanes
Regulation and Deregulation of Industry
International Trade and World Market


Rajon Rondo Rips Teammates: ‘My Vets Would Never Go to the Media’

Abstract: CHICAGO — Bulls guard Rajon Rondo criticized Dwyane Wade and Jimmy Butler in an Instagram post Thursday for questioning the team’s desire. Rondo fired back one day after Wade and Butler criticized their teammates following a rough loss to Atlanta. Though he did not mention Wade and Butler by name, it seemed clear he was referring to them in a lengthy caption that accompanied a photo of Rondo with his former Boston Celtics teammates Kevin Garnett and Paul Pierce. Rondo, apparently referring to Garnett and Pierce, repeatedly used the term “my vets,” saying they would “never go to the media.” He wrote they “didn’t take days off,” that they “didn’t care about their numbers,” that they “played for the team.” “When we lost, they wouldn’t blame us,” Rondo wrote. “They took responsibility and got in the gym. They showed the young guys what it meant to work. Even in Boston when we had the best record in the league, if we lost a game, you could hear a pin drop on the bus. They showed us the seriousness of the game.” Rondo also seemed to question Chicago Coach Fred Hoiberg’s control of the team. “My vets didn’t have an influence on the coaching staff,” he said. “They couldn’t change the plan because it didn’t work for them. I played under one of the greatest coaches” — the former Celtics coach Doc Rivers, now with the Los Angeles Clippers — “and he held everyone accountable.” Wade and Butler lashed out at the team after a 119-114 loss at home against Atlanta on Wednesday night. The Hawks ended the game on a 19-4 run to wipe out a 10-point deficit, and both stars ripped the team in comments to the news media. Wade, a 12-time All-Star and three-time champion with the Miami Heat, took aim at the younger players. “I’m 35 years old, man,” he said. “I have three championships. It shouldn’t hurt me more than it hurts them. They have to want it.” Butler, who has had a standout season for the middling Bulls, said his team did not deliver effort on a consistent basis and did not take losses as hard as it should. Rondo defended the younger players in his post. “The young guys work,” he wrote. “They show up. They don’t deserve blame. If anything is questionable, it’s the leadership.” The Bulls, 23-24, went 42-40 last year and missed the playoffs for the first time since 2008. Their next game is Friday against Miami at home. Chicago signed Wade and Rondo, hoping two veterans with championship experience could add some stability and leadership. But it’s been a rocky season for Rondo, a mercurial point guard. He came with a history of clashing with coaches, got benched for poor play after beginning the season as a starter. He is now in a backup role. The team also suspended him for one game for detrimental conduct in December. “I may be a lot of things, but I’m not a bad teammate,” Rondo said in the post. “My goal is to pass what I learned along.”

Basketball
Chicago Bulls
Jimmy Butler
Dwyane Wade
Rajon Rondo


Computing the Mysteries of Attraction

Abstract: ELIZABETH BRERETON was a freshman at Connecticut College and Robert Smith was a sophomore at Wesleyan in 1965 when they became a part of what might have been this country's first computer dating service. It was called Operation Match, and it sent questionnaires to college campuses around the country. "There were stacks of them as you went into the dorms," Ms. Brereton remembered. Students rated their own looks, intelligence and interests on a scale from one to five and described their ideal date using the same measures. They then returned the survey, along with a $3 fee, to the Operation Match offices in Cambridge, Mass. The idea had sprung out of a late-night discussion among some Harvard students about the inanity of blind dates and mixers. The students realized that computers had made it possible to pair up compatible dates far more easily than the stiff campus dating scene of the 1960's could. You wouldn't have to worry about circumstance keeping you from meeting your perfect match at a party. You would have a list to work from. Ms. Brereton's and Mr. Smith's responses, like the thousands of others, were transferred to punch cards and fed into an enormous Avco 1790 computer, according to Harvard publications. Six weeks later, it spat out lists of mates for everyone. When Ms. Brereton got hers in the mail, the 10 names on it included Mr. Smith, a tall future lawyer from New Jersey. And Mr. Smith's list included Ms. Brereton, a tall upstate New Yorker planning to become a social worker. But neither one of them picked up the phone to call the other. OPERATION MATCH had its moment in the sun, appearing in the Valentine Day's issue of Look magazine and on the CBS quiz show "To Tell the Truth." But it never really had much of a chance. There just was not enough computing power at the time. For a matchmaking system to succeed, it would need to analyze surveys instantaneously and let students sit in front of computers for themselves. It would, of course, need the Internet. Today, online personal ads have mushroomed into a $500 million annual business, with Barry Diller and Yahoo among the biggest players. No other industry makes as much money online from monthly fees, not even pornography, according to Jupiter Research. But the dating sites have their own problems. There are thousands upon thousands of listings on the big sites, like Match.com, and they are often filled with exaggerations. The business is not growing rapidly anymore. So the original idea that those Harvard students had -- compatibility through technology --is suddenly hot again. Match.com has started Chemistry.com, which relies on the compatibility theories of a Rutgers anthropologist. The plot of the recent comedy "Must Love Dogs," with John Cusack and Diane Lane, revolved around PerfectMatch, another site. Further up the cultural spectrum, The Atlantic Monthly devoted its March cover story to the different academic ideas behind Chemistry, PerfectMatch and a third site, eHarmony. There is, in fact, some legitimate social science here. For one thing, similar people really are more likely to stay together. During the first five years of marriage, the divorce rate for a couple of the same religion hovers around 24 percent, no matter what that religion is. But it jumps to 38 percent for a marriage between a mainline Protestant and a Catholic and 42 percent for one between a Jew and a Christian, according to Evelyn L. Lehrer, an economist at the University of Illinois, Chicago. Divorce rates are also somewhat higher for interracial couples and for couples with a wife who is at least four years older than her husband. (When the man is a lot older, on the other hand, divorce is no more likely than when spouses are about the same age.) This is a bit depressing, because it sounds almost like an excuse for segregation. But take the data for what they are -- national averages, not individual destinies -- and averages are quite useful when thousands of people are involved. Chemistry and eHarmony both match people with similar demographic profiles. From here, the sites move into the still murky science of personalities. PerfectMatch deems some traits, like energy level and optimism, important for a couple to share, so that they don't clash over how to lead their lives. But with others -- flexibility, perfectionism, emotion -- a marriage can benefit from difference. I have no idea which of these theories will end up being right. And the people running the sites insist they have no illusions about replacing the mystery of human attraction. "What this does is try to narrow it down so you spend less time with people who are totally out of the question," said Pepper Schwartz, the sociologist behind PerfectMatch's system. "We're just upping your chances." It is the same thing innovative people are doing in all kinds of fields now. Doctors are combining patient records with medical databases to double-check their intuition. Ben S. Bernanke, the new Federal Reserve chairman, is attracted to the notion of letting an economic formula help set interest rates. Big league baseball is in the midst of a scientific revolution, using extensive data to make better decisions about ballplayers. But love seems like the final frontier in the debate between gut instinct and hard evidence. It's just hard to accept that a computer might know something about romance that we don't. Which brings us back to Ms. Brereton and Mr. Smith. In 1969, four years after he filled out his Operation Match survey, Mr. Smith went to a mixer, of all things, for graduate students at the University of Chicago. He saw a woman across the room he wanted to meet, and he walked over to introduce himself. Her name was Elizabeth Brereton. "We knew immediately that we had been matched by Operation Match," she said. Four months later, they were engaged. They have spent the last three decades living outside of Boston in a house that has been filled with children, friends and more than its fair share of overnight guests. I met their oldest child, Matthew, in first grade, and during college I spent an entire summer living in the Smiths' guest room. So in honor of the Smiths, here is a prediction about which matchmaking site will finally fulfill Operation Match's grandest ambitions. It will be the one that helps pair people up while making them think that they have found love all on their own. David Leonhardt E-mail: leonhardt@nytimes.com

HARVARD UNIVERSITY
MATCH.COM
YAHOO! INC
DILLER BARRY
DATING (SOCIAL)
MARRIAGES
COMPUTERS AND THE INTERNET


New Webcams Add Wide-Angle Video Calls to Your TV

Abstract: PEOPLE have long used webcams on their laptop and desktop computers to add live video to Internet calls. But the face-to-face chats often include grainy, low-resolution images and much crowding around the computer when the whole family wants to get in the picture. Now wide-angle cameras that pop onto large-screen televisions are on the market; they capture high-definition video and a generous stretch of the living room sofa, too. Several devices, including the TV Cam HD ($199.99) from Logitech , are already on sale, with at least a half-dozen others expected in time for the holiday shopping season, said Richard Doherty, research director of the Envisioneering Group, a market research company in Seaford, N.Y. The new TV cams are for people who want to add an Internet-based feature to their high-definition TV’s. “You can add this capability for a few hundred dollars or less,” Mr. Doherty said. “Lots of people have HDTVs they’ve bought in the last few years, and they aren’t going to get rid of them for Internet TVs.” Internet-enabled TVs have software for video chatting, but many models require viewers to buy a suitable add-on camera. Logitech’s TV Cam HD works with any high-definition television that has an available HDMI port, a common connection. It comes with connectivity to the Internet by way of Ethernet or Wi-Fi, and Skype software that supports high-definition video calling. To control the camera, you use a small remote control to zoom in or pan during a call, or to enter text on the screen. Mr. Doherty says the new cams have crisp images and an enlarged field of view. “It can pack a real emotional punch when a loved one’s face appears on the big expanse of an HDTV,” he said. “And when you can watch sitting on the couch with the rest of your family, it’s a pleasant, relaxing experience.” To try out the Logitech cam, I asked a neighbor, Li Wah Lai, a Manhattan-based graphic designer who has tested earlier generations of webcams, to use it for a video visit with her son Ming Alterman, a marketing manager for Coca-Cola in Shanghai. “It was a totally different family experience from our usual laptop talk,” Ms. Lai said. She and her husband, Daniel Alterman, as well as their younger son, Mickey, all joined in for the Sunday-morning video chat with Ming. “I thought it would be the same,” she said. “But it wasn’t.” There was no jostling in front of the camera, as there typically is when using a laptop, to guarantee that everyone could be seen and heard. “It was very relaxing,” she said. They did not have to constantly ask Ming: “Can you see us? Can you hear us?” And Ming became more comfortable, too, she said: “It was more of a family event.” Clifford I. Nass , a Stanford communication professor, said the sight of familiar faces in high definition was especially appealing. “It’s not just the pixels,” he said. “It’s the ability to detect facial expressions more accurately. The brain loves having this kind of information.” THE wide-angle lens could also contribute to the emotional impact of video chatting, said Jeremy Bailenson , director of the Virtual Human Interaction Lab at Stanford. A generous field of view, he said, “plays a big part in creating the feeling that the digital other you are talking with is actually in the room with you.” The wide field of view permits more glimpses of nonverbal interactions, he said, like the exchange of glances during the chat. With the Logitech device, all calls are placed and received by using the remote control. Because there is no keyboard, entering text can be tedious: you have to click up, down, right or left on the remote, for example, to select each letter of the name of new Skype contacts from a keyboard projected on the screen. Ms. Lai started off slowly with this skill, but within minutes her fingers were flying. You can also use the remote to adjust the image you are projecting, zooming in, panning or tilting. The device requires users to have Skype service. which is free for calls between its users. Incoming calls to the cam will ring out even when the television is turned off — you’ll need to grab the remote and turn on the TV. And if you are still in your bathrobe, you can also leave the call for voice mail.

Computers and the Internet
Television Sets
Internet Telephony
Digital and High-Definition Television
Logitech International SA
Skype Technologies
Video Recordings and Downloads
Cameras


For Women From Qatar, Saudi Arabia and Brunei, a Simple Triumph

Abstract: LONDON (AP) — Noor Hussain Al-Malki sat in Lane 3, face in her hands, barely a dozen painful strides from where her first Olympic race began. It was a short, somewhat bittersweet and definitely unprecedented effort. Malki, 17, was the first Qatari woman to compete in track and field at the Olympics, after the country decided to include female athletes — four in total — in its delegation for the first time. Wearing a maroon head scarf, long sleeves and leggings, she stood out among the starters in the preliminaries in the women’s 100 meters Friday morning. She was slow out of the blocks, appeared to be very tight, and finally clutched at her right leg before stopping after about 15 meters. The official result is listed as D.N.F. — did not finish — but just being there was a significant achievement. After covering her face momentarily, Malki got to her feet and slowly limped off the track. She was then pushed out of the competition arena in a wheelchair. The conservative Islamic nations Qatar, Saudi Arabia and Brunei were the last countries to enter women in the Olympics, each sending female athletes to London. Maziah Mahusin of Brunei did not advance out of her heat in the 400 meters, but she did set a new national record when she crossed the finish line in 59.28. “I’m really proud of myself, even though I didn’t win anything,” said Mahusin, who carried her country’s flag at the opening ceremony. “I’m really happy. I’m really, really happy.” Tahmina Kohistani of Afghanistan finished way back in the 100 meters Friday and yet with a wide grin. She was the only female representative from Afghanistan on the track. “I think being here is more important than a gold for me and my country,” said Kohistani, who finished last in her heat but in a personal-best time of 14.42 seconds. “We have a lot of problems in our country. “So right now, I feel like I have a gold medal.”

Olympic Games (2012)
Saudi Arabia
Qatar
Brunei
Track and Field
Women and Girls
Muslims and Islam
Mahusin Maziah
Malki Noor Hussain Al-


Analyzing Wall Street’s Research

Abstract: Frank P. Quattrone thinks Wall Street research has “proven to be a disaster, in my humble opinion.” You remember Mr. Quattrone, don’t you? He’s the mustachioed Silicon Valley banker who brought some of the biggest technology initial public offerings to market — Cisco Systems, Amazon, Netscape, just to name a few. His career was famously derailed by a four-year-long public battle against obstruction of justice charges at the height of the previous market bubble. The charges were ultimately dropped, and he’s now back in business. He was speaking a couple of weeks ago at the AlwaysOn conference for start-ups at Stanford, a buzzy affair for Palo Alto entrepreneurs looking for money and Sand Hill Road venture capitalists looking to spend it. The panel was titled, “The Doctor Is In: An Hour of Free Advice From Frank Quattrone.” Mr. Quattrone, dressed in his West Coast uniform — a blue blazer over a polo shirt and a pair of khakis — was almost finished with his presentation when, in response to a question from the audience, he shared his views about the state of Wall Street research, a topic that was once all the rage but now often goes overlooked. “I do think the industry should petition to remove the Spitzer initiatives because ultimately they hurt the competitiveness of our country by denying small companies the access to research analysts,” he said, throwing a proverbial grenade into the auditorium. Mr. Quattrone was referring, of course, to the former New York attorney general Eliot Spitzer ’s landmark settlement in 2002, which forced the separation of investment banking from research. The settlement followed an investigation into whether some Wall Street analysts were providing misleading ratings of the companies they covered to bolster their firms’ investment banking business. Henry Blodget of Merrill Lynch and Jack Grubman of Citigroup were barred from the securities industry and others took their licks. (As an aside, Mr. Spitzer was not behind Mr. Quattrone’s prosecution.) As a result, banks are no longer allowed to pay their analysts from any revenue derived from investment banking, only from trading operations. Beyond that, an investment banker can’t even call a research analyst at the same firm without a lawyer chaperoning the conversation. At the time, the new rules had a certain undeniable appeal. Because research analysts so depended on investment banking work for their own bonuses — working on initial public offerings and mergers — they faced unquestionable conflicts. Mr. Spitzer’s efforts may have been noble, but five years later it is clear that the effort to eliminate those conflicts created its own set of unintended consequences. If Mr. Quattrone had his way, he would turn the clock back entirely. “I am not denying that there is the potential for conflict — always has been, always will be. I’m just questioning the best means of managing the conflict,” he told me after his presentation. “If the principles of what constitutes ethical and unethical behavior are spelled out clearly, such as disclosing the firms’ investment banking relationships and ownership interests in the covered security, as well as not publishing favorable reports on companies in which you do not believe — and violators are punished — the conflicts will be managed.” It’s widely known on Wall Street that because research can no longer count on investment banking revenue, research is expected to pay its own way. Many of the big banks have responded, to put it bluntly, by running their research departments more cheaply, or not running them at all. Prudential Financial, which had a pretty good research arm, decided to shut it down entirely last summer. Many of the most talented analysts — and therefore the most expensive — have left the business. And the smart up-and-coming ones who saw the handwriting on the wall ran to the “buy side,” jumping into hedge funds, venture capital firms and private equity. Some ambitious analysts have tried to go the independent route, but nearly all of them will tell you it has been tough going. That has created a two-part dilemma. The first is that the quality of research on Wall Street these days, notwithstanding some great recent calls from the likes of Meredith Whitney of Oppenheimer and Richard Bove, an independent analyst, has deteriorated even further and is coming under greater pressure as more banks begin to outsource research functions. It may be true that analysts now put a lot more sell ratings on stocks than they used to, clearly a result of Mr. Spitzer’s settlement. But sell ratings are only a small part of the story. Analysts were never supposed to be just stock pickers. Ask any big institutional investor about what makes good research analysts and the answer is rarely the buy, sell or hold ratings. It is the information they can provide, the details they model and understanding the nuance of the executives. Those aspects of research don’t always end up in reports, but that’s what separates the good analysts from the not-so-good. The second problem — which is an even bigger one — is that it is hard to find good research on small companies. All the focus has moved to large companies where the big money is sloshing around. And that makes being a small public company a very difficult task, since nobody’s paying any attention to them. “The only way that sell-side analysts now can make money inside of a big firm like that is to become an ‘Institutional Investor All-American’ research analyst,” Mr. Quattrone told me, “which means they have to cover the Microsofts and Googles. Why would they spend any of their time working with these small companies?” Mr. Quattrone posits that the lack of research has been one reason the initial public offering market for technology companies has had a tough time. Mr. Quattrone compared Wall Street research with journalism. “Publications have journalists and editorial staff — kind of like research analysts — whom the public expects to be unbiased reporters of fact and opinion who report the truth and provide their honest opinion on important matters,” he said. “They also have a circulation department and an advertising department — kind of like institutional salespeople and bankers — who generate revenue. There is an inherent omnipresent potential conflict of interest between the journalists and the revenue generating departments because the latter produce the revenue that pay the former.” Of course, in journalism — especially at this paper and others — it is forbidden for anyone in the advertising department to tell a journalist how to write his articles. (Other publications are not so fastidious, he said, writing sensational articles to pump up sales or producing a positive piece to suit an advertiser.) But to take Mr. Quattrone’s metaphor one step further, that’s what investment bankers were doing before the settlement — steering analysts to write things that would help land banking deals, often betraying investors and the public in the process. Mr. Quattrone is right that the pendulum has probably swung too far, and in the cool light of day, it might be time to lift some of the restrictions. Analysts should be allowed to talk to their own investment bankers on occasion. Most analysts I talked to for this column said that they missed talking to bankers calling for advice ahead of a meeting, which they said made their research better and helped the banker. They argued that would perhaps make the whole franchise more valuable and give firms the impetus to spend more on research. Give Mr. Quattrone credit for raising an important issue and making an articulate case for change. The solution, of course, is more complicated.

Banks and Banking
Research
Brokers and Brokerage Firms
Investment Banking
Quattrone Frank P
Spitzer Eliot L


John J. Flynt Jr., Georgia Democrat, Is Dead at 92

Abstract: GRIFFIN, Ga., June 24 (AP) — John J. Flynt Jr., a 12-term congressman who in the 1970s twice beat a political newcomer named Newt Gingrich , died on Sunday at his home here. He was 92. A silver-haired, small-town patrician who was part of the Democratic establishment when the party dominated Southern politics, Mr. Flynt, who was called Jack, served in Congress from 1954 until his retirement in 1979. He was a member of the Appropriations Committee and was chairman of the House ethics committee. He defeated Mr. Gingrich in 1974 and 1976 before he retired and his seat was filled by Gingrich, who went on to become speaker. Mr. Flynt was also a cavalry officer, prosecutor and bank founder. In 2001, the state Department of Transportation named a 17-mile section of state Highway 16 after him. During World War II, he joined the Army Reserve, was aide-de-camp to Brig. Gen. Robert W. Grow in France and was awarded the Bronze Star in 1944. He was a longtime member of the National Rifle Association and gave the keynote address at the group’s annual meeting in 1958.

United States Politics and Government
Deaths (Obituaries)
House of Representatives
Gingrich Newt
Georgia
Democratic Party


Olympics Invite Trouble When Politics Drive Choices

Abstract: Less than two months before the opening ceremony of the Sochi Olympics, the 2014 Winter Games are making headlines again, but — as usual — the big news is not about the athletes or the competitions. It’s about politics. President Obama announced on Tuesday that he would not attend the Olympics, and neither would the vice president, the first lady or any former United States president or vice president. The last time an American presidential delegation lacked high-powered officials like those was 1988, and the move is likely to impart a stinging message to Vladimir V. Putin, the Russian president, who considers these Olympics his pet project. What is worse for Putin is that Obama will send a delegation that includes the tennis legend Billie Jean King and a two-time Olympian in ice hockey, Caitlin Cahow. Both are openly gay, and both are probably Obama’s way of answering back to Putin for Russia’s antigay laws. But whether you agree with Obama’s decision or not, ask yourself this: Why are we talking about this, and how did Olympians end up in the middle of a caustic debate about human rights — yet again? The last time this happened on a scale like this was before and during the 2008 Beijing Olympics, when human rights violations, censorship and severe air pollution made people wonder how the International Olympic Committee had awarded the Olympics to China in the first place. I’ll tell you how: politics and influence and self-interest. Don’t let the I.O.C. fool you with its rhetoric about being free of politics, as sports should be, because it isn’t. And as a result, having the best bid for the Games is no guarantee that a particular city will be picked. When I.O.C. members chose Sochi seven years ago to play host to the 2014 Games, they should have known that they were asking for trouble. Anyone who was paying attention back then knew that choosing Sochi had its drawbacks, not the least being that it is in the Caucasus region, one of the world’s most troubled hot spots. The Olympic Village is about five miles, walking distance for some, from Abkhazia, one of two breakaway regions of Georgia that ignited a war between that country and Russia in 2008. The restive region of Chechnya is also pretty much just down the road. But the I.O.C. chose Russia anyway, with Putin himself helping to win the bid for his favorite beach vacation spot by showing up to address the I.O.C. just before the vote that allowed Sochi to win out over its competition. He spoke in English, shocking nearly everyone in Moscow with his willingness to break from Russian. He was charming, and he guaranteed that “the Olympic family is going to feel at home.” He ended his speech by speaking briefly in French, which, along with English, is an official language of the Olympic movement. Putin is one of the most powerful people in the world, and the fact that he felt compelled to put the finishing touches on Sochi’s bid, that its quality could not stand on its own, speaks to the political dynamics that ultimately sway the I.O.C. Image Billie Jean King, who is openly gay, will represent the United States at the Sochi Games. Credit Jason Decrow/Associated Press In reality, the other two finalists that year — Pyeongchang, South Korea, and Salzburg, Austria — probably had the better bids. But other factors won the day, just as they nearly always do, in one form or another, when the I.O.C. is involved. Remember the bribery scandal that surrounded Salt Lake City’s successful bid for the Winter Games? The fact that the I.O.C. has put that episode behind it does not mean that it has rid itself of all questionable allegiances and alliances. It does not mean I.O.C. members cannot be influenced by a bid city that is good at courting, bestowing favors and using its muscle. In the past, some of the I.O.C.’s selections of Olympic cities have come about because the organization wanted to broaden the reach of the Olympic movement. Fair enough. That is how the Summer Olympics ended up in China, which guaranteed the I.O.C. that there would be no Internet censorship and that Beijing’s air would be relatively pristine. But in the news media center during those games, there were times that reporters could not connect to some websites, including those of The Washington Post and Amnesty International. The day after the Olympics ended, I opened the curtains in my hotel room to find that the heavy smog that had long plagued the city had returned. So much for the Olympics changing the country for the better. China had promised the I.O.C. so many improvements. The I.O.C. bought it because it wanted to. But in the end, the Games did little to change the country’s mind-set. The same thing is likely to happen in Sochi. If the I.O.C. chose its cities more carefully, perhaps we would not be wondering whether athletes should be worried about showing their support for gay rights when they are in Russia. Of course, a couple of more votes for Pyeongchang seven years ago and we might be talking about the security issues in that city, which is close to unstable North Korea. Not much better, right? But we will have a chance to worry about that, anyway, because the I.O.C. chose Pyeongchang, over Munich and Annecy, France, to host the 2018 Winter Olympics. Perhaps that choice will ultimately be seen as evidence of still more questionable decision-making by the I.O.C. On the immediate Olympic horizon is Sochi, then Rio de Janeiro in 2016. Already, the decision to give Rio the Games has become an issue because the city has been evicting poor residents of some of the country’s biggest slums to make way for Olympic construction. Ultimately, when we talk about the Olympics, it sometimes seems that we rarely focus on the athletes themselves. We talk about whether there will be snow — Vancouver 2010 — instead of who will be skiing on it. More significant, we talk about whether athletes will protest antigay laws in the manner of Tommie Smith and John Carlos’s black power salute on the Olympic podium in 1968 in Mexico City. The I.O.C. has set us up for this. But perhaps the I.O.C. has learned its lesson. Last fall, it chose Tokyo — which brilliantly promoted itself as a “very low-risk” choice — to host the 2020 Summer Games, choosing it over Istanbul. Some I.O.C. members were interested in taking the Olympics to Turkey, a Muslim country, which would have been a significant step. Others, though, balked at the fact that Istanbul had never hosted a huge sporting event and that Syria, which Turkey borders, was in the throes of a bloody conflict. In that instance, sensible voters won out. Let’s hope that was the start of a trend.

2014 Winter Olympics
Sochi
Barack Obama
Vladimir Putin
Billie Jean King
International Olympic Committee
Olympics
Human Rights
Homosexuality
Discrimination


Chris Huhne Pleads Guilty to Charge of Obstructing Justice

Abstract: LONDON — A former British government minister announced his resignation from Parliament on Monday, after reversing his longstanding denials to accept responsibility for persuading his former wife to take the blame for a speeding offense he had committed a decade ago. The resignation of the minister, Chris Huhne, 58, a onetime contender to lead the Liberal Democrats, the junior partner in the coalition government, was a tacit acknowledgment of the end of what had once been a high-flying career. “Having taken responsibility for something that happened 10 years ago, the only proper course of action for me is to resign,” he said. Until now, he had steadfastly denied that, in 2003, he persuaded his then-wife, Vicky Pryce, to say she had been at the wheel when their car was caught in a highway speed trap between Stansted Airport and London. Had he admitted the offense at the time, he could have been banned from driving. The case emerged in 2011, after the marriage broke up over an affair he had and Ms. Pryce pleaded not guilty to perverting the course of justice in the episode, saying she had been coerced. Mr. Huhne stepped down as energy minister in February 2012, but his plea of guilty to perverting the course of justice on Monday at Southwark Crown Court and resignation reverberated through British politics. As recently as a week ago, Mr. Huhne had denied the charge. Image Chris Huhne, a member of the Liberal Democrats, leaving court in London on Monday. Credit Paul Hackett/Reuters The deception’s devastating impact on Mr. Huhne’s family, particularly his relationship with his son, Peter, became painfully obvious at the hearing. Text messages between them, read out in court, revealed the son’s deep antipathy toward Mr. Huhne for having coerced Ms. Pryce to take the blame. “We all know you were driving and you put pressure on Mum. Accept it or face the consequences. You’ve told me that was the case. Or will this be another lie?” the son wrote in one of the texts, which were published on the Web sites of The Independent and other British newspapers. In another, the son wrote: “You are the most ghastly man I’ve ever known. Does it give you pleasure that you have lost almost all of your friends?” Judge Nigel Sweeney told Mr. Huhne on Monday that, while he was being released on unconditional bail until sentencing, “you should have no illusions whatsoever as to the sort of sentence that you are likely to receive.” British analysts said a jail term appeared likely, with sentencing guidelines of 4 to 36 months, though in principle, a life sentence is possible. Before the hearing on Monday, the Liberal Democrat leader, Nick Clegg, had called Mr. Huhne a “big beast” of British politics and had said he looked forward to welcoming him back to the “top table” of British politics if he cleared his name. Mr. Huhne lost the party leadership battle to Mr. Clegg in 2007. Mr. Clegg said on Monday that he was “shocked and saddened” by Mr. Huhne’s reversal, but that he believed Mr. Huhne had “taken the right decision in resigning.” “This is obviously an extremely serious matter,” Mr. Clegg said, “and it’s essential that the legal process is now allowed to run its course.” Prime Minister David Cameron’s office declined to comment, saying it was a “matter for Mr. Huhne.”

Chris Huhne
Legislature
Great Britain
Criminal Sentence


At Hearing on G.M. Recall, Mary Barra Gives Little Ground

Abstract: WASHINGTON — Only three months ago, Mary T. Barra arrived for the first time on Capitol Hill to apologize — publicly, profusely and personally — for General Motors’ long failure to recall millions of small cars. On Thursday, Ms. Barra returned to Washington again, and this time, she drew the line. As senator after senator offered more bruising criticism of G.M., Ms. Barra, G.M.'s chief, signaled that there were limits to what the automaker would do. G.M., she said, will not expand its compensation program for victims. The company will not waive its protection from lawsuits gained in bankruptcy reorganization. It will not share more documents from its internal investigation. And she will not dismiss the company’s embattled general counsel, Michael P. Millikin, despite several senators’ calls to do so. Ms. Barra showed lawmakers that after making broad changes to its practices and concessions to victims, G.M. was beginning to look beyond the scandal — a subtle but significant shift for the company as it tries to emerge from the gravest safety crisis in its history. But many lawmakers were not satisfied with her answers, even as they grudgingly praised her leadership. “You’ve provided answers that, I think, for me are unsatisfactory,” Senator Richard Blumenthal, Democrat of Connecticut and one of G.M.'s harshest critics, said. Lawmakers were particularly incensed about revelations in an article in The New York Times on Tuesday that G.M. had responded to “death inquiries” from regulators about fatal accidents by saying that it did not know the cause — when in fact it had determined a likely cause — or by simply rebuffing the request altogether. “I consider it a cover-up when a manufacturer does not respond fully and accurately,” Senator Barbara Boxer, Democrat of California, said. Ms. Barra promised to review all future death inquiries with the company’s new chief safety officer, Jeff Boyer. “It will be his responsibility to bring those to me,” she said. In one pointed exchange, Mr. Blumenthal asked Ms. Barra and Mr. Millikin if they would ask for the pardon of a woman who had been convicted of criminally negligent homicide in a crash that killed her boyfriend. G.M. determined that the crash was caused by the faulty switch. No, both said, they would not, but they would be happy to help in other ways. In previous appearances on Capitol Hill, which included two hearings in the House, Ms. Barra was primarily apologetic for the company’s repeated failures to repair vehicles with defective ignition switches that G.M. has tied to 13 deaths and 54 accidents. Before April’s hearings, she met with the families of victims; this time, she refused. But now that G.M. has overhauled its safety procedures, issued dozens of subsequent recalls, and initiated a broad compensation program for crash victims and their families, Ms. Barra seemed more confident that the company would weather its self-inflicted crisis. “We are going to fix our mistakes and we are going to be a better, stronger company,” she said. Still, Ms. Barra left knowing much more work has to be done to rebuild G.M.'s reputation. She agreed that G.M. needed to do more to overhaul its safety procedures, particularly in how it responded to federal regulators. Ms. Barra, however, would not back down on other topics. When asked why G.M. would not broaden its compensation program to include accident victims in other models with ignition problems, she insisted there were “distinct differences” from the small cars covered by the program. On most compensation questions, Ms. Barra deferred to another witness, the lawyer Kenneth Feinberg, who is administering the program. In his testimony, he said G.M. had put no financial limits on how much money he could award to injured people or the families of fatal accident victims. Those eligible, though, will be limited to those affected by the faulty switch in 2.6 million older cars. Other witnesses at the hearing included Rodney O’Neal, chief executive of the supplier Delphi, which made the faulty switch, and Anton Valukas, the former federal prosecutor who conducted the internal investigation that G.M. released in April. But their comments were a sideshow compared with the intense questioning that Ms. Barra and Mr. Millikin faced. Mr. Millikin, a G.M. employee for 37 years, was besieged with criticism from the start. “It is clear that the culture of lawyering up and Whac-a-Mole to minimize liabilities in individual lawsuits killed customers of General Motors,” said Senator Claire McCaskill, Democrat of Missouri and chairwoman of the subcommittee. Video Nearly a decade ago, Rhonda Erickson’s son died in a car accident. It is now known his is one of the 13 deaths tied to General Motors’ ignition switch malfunction. She called the failure of G.M.'s legal department under Mr. Millikin “stunning,” and asked how he could be unaware that his staff knew of multiple lawsuits about defective switches in which people died and punitive damages were likely. Mr. Millikin said he did not know about the problems until after the recall was ordered in February. He offered no explanation why some of G.M.'s most experienced lawyers kept such sensitive information from him. At least five of the 15 employees dismissed by G.M. were corporate lawyers, including the lawyer who supervised all its product liability cases. “Lawyers have consistently brought safety concerns to my attention, including some of the lawyers who were let go,” Mr. Millikin said. “For some reason that did not happen here.” Like Ms. Barra, Mr. Millikin resisted some calls for changes in the company’s practices. In one testy exchange with Mr. Blumenthal, Mr. Millikin said he would not recommend several measures that the senator suggested, including unsealing confidential liability settlements or advising G.M. to waive all its legal immunity from pre-bankruptcy lawsuits. As Mr. Blumenthal questioned him, Mr. Millikin repeatedly answered, “We will not.” When Mr. Millikin was finished, Mr. Blumenthal suggested Mr. Millikin should be fired. “This company is not well served by your continuing,” he said. But Ms. Barra, as she has done on repeated occasions, defended Mr. Millikin. “Michael Millikin is a man of incredibly high integrity,” she said. “He’s the person I need on this team.” At the hearing’s conclusion, Ms. McCaskill said the Senate planned to hold another session looking at the role of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, the auto safety regulator, in the crisis. She did not, however, suggest that Ms. Barra and her G.M. colleagues would be called back to Washington. About a dozen G.M. accident victims and their families attended the hearing. Michael Weston of New York was badly injured in 2005 when his Saturn Ion stalled and crashed. After the testimony, he said he felt G.M. was still not being held totally accountable for its safety problems. “You have people whose lives have been wrecked by this, who will never be the same,” he said.

GM
Automobile safety
Mary Barra
Reparations
Ken Feinberg
Senate
Congress
Michael Millikin
Recalls and Bans


Pakistan Hangs Inmate Said to Have Been Tortured Into Confessing

Abstract: ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — A man whose lawyers said he had been tortured into confessing to murder, and who they said was a minor at the time of the crime, was hanged early Tuesday, despite pleas from rights groups in Pakistan and overseas. The case of the man, Shafqat Hussain, had become a cause célèbre in Pakistan, where rights groups portrayed it as a stark example of the country’s flawed judicial system as they renewed calls for abolishing the death penalty. Since lifting a moratorium on executions in December, Pakistan has put more than 200 people to death, according to Amnesty International , a human rights group. Mr. Hussain, a night watchman, was convicted in 2004 of killing a 7-year-old boy in Karachi, Pakistan’s largest city, after abducting him and demanding ransom. The conviction was based on Mr. Hussain’s confession to the police, but Justice Project Pakistan, a law firm specializing in human rights cases that took up Mr. Hussain’s case, said he had confessed only because he was tortured. Advocates for Mr. Hussain have also said that he was under 18 when he was sentenced to die, which would have made him legally ineligible for the death penalty. The Pakistani Interior Ministry said that it had investigated that claim and found that he was 23 at the time. Mr. Hussain was hanged in a prison in Karachi. He was allowed to see family members before the execution, prison officials said. Image Relatives of Shafqat Hussain in Muzaffarabad, the capital of the Pakistani-controlled portion of Kashmir, after his hanging on Tuesday in Karachi. Credit Amiruddin Mughal/European Pressphoto Agency Mr. Hussain’s execution was delayed four times, most recently in June , amid the controversy surrounding his case. The Pakistani Supreme Court ruled in June that it could not overturn his conviction and that it could not interfere in the matter of Mr. Hussain’s age, because that issue had not been raised by his lawyers at trial. Still, advocates for Mr. Hussain, including Pakistani politicians, had continued to press his case. The governments of Sindh Province, which includes Karachi, and the Pakistani-controlled part of the disputed Kashmir region, where Mr. Hussain was born, both urged the central government to review the case in recent days. “The trial of Shafqat Hussain sums up the structural flaws in our criminal justice system, where police torture and confessions under duress are the norm,” said Raza Rumi, a Pakistani analyst based in Washington who is a fellow at the National Endowment for Democracy. “Here is a case where a poor family was unable to pursue a criminal case that requires resources and access to influential people within the state.” Pakistan’s decision to end a six-year moratorium on the death penalty in December came after the country was roiled by an attack on a school that left about 150 people dead, most of them children. Officials initially said that only convicted terrorists would be executed, but within weeks, the authorities began putting other prisoners to death. “Shafqat’s execution speaks to all that is wrong with Pakistan’s race to the gallows,” Maya Foa, the director of the death penalty team at the international rights group Reprieve, said in a statement. “The government’s decision to push ahead with the execution despite calls to halt it from across Pakistan and around the world seems to have been more a show of political power than anything to do with justice,” Ms. Foa said.

Pakistan
Capital punishment
Shafqat Hussain
Karachi
Human Rights
Confessions
Amnesty International
National Endowment for Democracy


Europe Remains Ahead of U.S. in Creating Smart Cities

Abstract: BARCELONA, Spain — The streets here offer a glimpse of what the future may have to offer. Alongside the city’s world-famous architecture and pristine sandy beaches, sensors attached to trash cans now alert workers when they need to be emptied. The irrigation systems built into Barcelona’s parks monitor soil moisture and turn on sprinklers when water is needed. And drivers can use a smartphone application to find the nearest available parking spot in the labyrinthine streets. “It’s crucial that these new technologies are useful to our citizens,” Xavier Trias, Barcelona’s mayor, said in his stately offices, which date from the 15th century. “It’s an important change. We have to create a sustainable system.” Barcelona is among a number of European cities adopting new forms of technology aimed at improving services. More important, the investments, including neighborhoodwide high-speed Internet connections and electricity charge points for cars and motorbikes, offer ways to cut energy use and generate income. The push mirrors efforts in cities including San Francisco and Boston, which have spent millions of dollars to upgrade their infrastructure. Other projects have appeared elsewhere, notably Masdar City , a planned high-tech habitat created from scratch in Abu Dhabi. Yet analysts say Europe, despite being hard hit by the recent financial crisis — and in part because of it — remains a step ahead of the United States in creating efficient, so-called smart cities that combine traditional services like electricity networks with 21st-century technology like Internet-connected home appliances. “Europe has embraced the concept more than the U.S.,” said Bas Boorsma, a director at Cisco Systems who helps cities upgrade their infrastructure. “It will always require partnerships between the private sector and government, and Europe does that better.” Given Europe’s economic doldrums (which bring the mixed blessing of less industrial pollution), many of the Continent’s governments have shifted from an emphasis on big renewable energy projects to saving money, while enlisting the private sector and exploiting the growing business possibilities of smartphones and tablets. Mayors in places including Copenhagen and Hamburg hope to cut their cities’ energy and water use and waste by upgrading municipal services so they can monitor how services are delivered and pinpoint where savings can be found. In Barcelona, where the unemployment rate remains above 20 percent, the city expects to cut its water bill by 25 percent this year after installing sensors in local parks. The annual savings are expected to total almost $60 million. “We were wasting a lot of water,” said Julia Lopez, coordinator of Barcelona’s smart city program. “We can now control the system directly from an iPad.” The infrastructure upgrades have led to agreements between cities and some of the world’s largest technology companies, including IBM, Hewlett-Packard and General Electric. By deploying their technology in citywide pilot projects, these companies say they can test new business models and other services that might have worldwide appeal. Image READY FOR PICKUP A “smart” waste collection system saves space and sends a signal when containers are full. Credit Lindsay Mackenzie for The New York Times In January, Google reached a $3.2 billion deal to buy Nest Labs, which makes energy-saving devices like Internet-connected thermostats and smoke detectors. Nest says its products, designed by former Apple engineers, can cut household heating and cooling bills by around 20 percent by monitoring people’s habits and adjusting the thermostat automatically. Growing corporate interest is inspiring new alliances across the Atlantic. The European technology companies Philips and Ericsson, for example, are working with Verizon Wireless on a pilot project in the United States that will combine energy-efficient street lighting with mobile phone infrastructure. This year, Philips and Ericsson plan to start selling their new product to city governments. The idea is to provide cities a source of income through rentals of streetlights to carriers that want to expand their cellphone coverage. The companies also expect that the energy-efficient streetlights will offer savings of about 50 percent compared with traditional lighting. “We’re trying to solve the problem of how to make cities more sustainable,” said Hans Vestberg, Ericsson’s chief executive. “These projects are key for cities that want to remain globally competitive.” While cutting electricity use and garbage collections has environmental benefits, policy makers say that economic returns, not carbon dioxide reductions, are now driving many cities’ plans. Two years ago, for example, Amsterdam’s planners changed how they funded technology projects intended to improve city services. Amsterdam had previously subsidized upgrades in the local electricity network and other infrastructure but had seen little improvement in city finances. In response, its policy makers started investing in local start-ups that were creating businesses using advanced technical infrastructure, through a 70 million euro, or $96 million, fund. They also fostered partnerships among local businesses to take advantage of previous investments. Among them were Ajax, a soccer team, which paid a nearby hospital to generate electricity for its home matches by installing solar panels on the hospital roof. “The financial crisis helped us to think differently,” said Ger Baron, Amsterdam’s chief technology officer. “We don’t subsidize anymore. We invest.” Across Europe, cities are opening their infrastructure to companies eager to offer new services that provide revenue for the city and offer potential environmental benefits. In London, the start-up Citymapper used access to the city’s transport data to create a smartphone application that helps people navigate the complicated bus and subway networks. Azmat Yusuf, the company’s founder, said that since Citymapper started in 2011, usage of London’s iconic red buses jumped significantly, creating additional revenue for local government and cutting the number of cars on the streets. The app is now available in New York, Berlin and Paris. And last year in Barcelona, Jaume Mayor, a local entrepreneur, created WeSmartPark , a service aimed at making it easier for drivers to find parking spaces. Mr. Mayor said drivers spent up to 20 percent of their time looking for places to park, even as many spaces across the city remained empty during the day when residents were at work. With his 10-person team, Mr. Mayor created a system to allow individuals to rent out their private parking spaces by installing sensors that record when they are available. The information is transmitted in real time over local mobile networks, and customers can book the spaces hourly through a smartphone app. So far, Mr. Mayor has signed up 1,500 parking spaces across the city, including some at shopping malls and hospitals. He also has almost 100,000 users, or roughly 6 percent of Barcelona’s total population. “We’re using the resources that we already have, but getting more use out of them,” Mr. Mayor said. “Because people are driving less to find parking spaces, Barcelona as a city is getting a direct benefit.”

Energy Efficiency
Urban area
Europe
Barcelona
London
Infrastructure,public works


New York Court Rules for Immigrant in Fight to Become Lawyer

Abstract: His legal fight to become a lawyer lasted three years. This week, Cesar Vargas, a Mexican-born 31-year-old New Yorker, became the first immigrant in the state without legal status to be approved to work as a lawyer. An appellate panel of the State Supreme Court approved his application to the bar on Wednesday, overturning a 2013 decision by a committee that had denied his application based on his immigration status but had asked the court to rule. In its decision, the state judiciary did what the Legislature in Albany has not been able to do: establish at least a modicum of immigration policy change. The decision could be a test case, not only for the city, but also for the country, affecting hundreds of would-be lawyers and empowering immigrants who arrived as children to the United States and have been granted a reprieve from deportation. “This wasn’t just about one person; this was about countless other students across New York State and across the country,” Mr. Vargas said. “This is a precedent I wanted to make. I think this is really great momentum that is going to extend to other policies.” Mr. Vargas , who has been granted the deferred action allowing him to work, is the third unauthorized immigrant lawyer to become eligible to practice law after court decisions in California and Florida in 2014. But in those states, the legislatures have also enacted laws paving the way for the licensing of unauthorized immigrants. In Albany, a bill to allow unauthorized immigrants to practice law died last year. The State Supreme Court’s Second Judicial Department of the Appellate Division wrote in its opinion that it found “no legal impediment or rational basis for withholding the privilege of practicing law in the state of New York from undocumented immigrants who have been granted DACA relief,” the five-member panel said in its opinion, referring to the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals. “We find that Mr. Vargas’s undocumented immigration status, in and of itself, does not reflect adversely upon his general fitness to practice law,” the opinion said, adding, “Mr. Vargas did not enter the United States in violation of the immigration laws of his own volition, but rather came to the United States at the age of 5 at the hand of his mother.” The first thing Mr. Vargas did upon receiving the news on Wednesday was call his 70-year-old mother, Teresa Galindo, on Staten Island. She was the one who had brought her son from Puebla, Mexico, for a better life. “I told her, ‘Hey, we did it,’ ” Mr. Vargas said, recalling the joyful conversation. “Her son was going to be a licensed lawyer very soon.” But there was a bit of doubt, even amid the celebration. Mr. Vargas was in court in Des Moines, where he was defending himself against charges of trespassing after he was arrested when he protested speeches by several elected officials, including Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey. The event, Mr. Vargas said, was “quasi-public.” Mr. Vargas said he had no regrets about attending the conference and was confident it would not jeopardize his bar application. He said in an interview on Wednesday night that the appellate division was well aware of what happened: He had already submitted updates on the arrest and a pending court appearance. “In the end, if you are really going to be an advocate, you can’t hide and you can’t just wait in the shadows,” he said. After graduating from City University of New York Law School, Mr. Vargas passed the New York State bar in 2011. He has interned with a State Supreme Court judge, at the Brooklyn district attorney’s office and with a congressman. He first applied to the bar in 2012. Since then, unable to practice law, he has turned to advocacy, becoming a national leader in the immigration reform movement. Although Mr. Vargas’s application to the bar was approved, like any lawyer, he still needs final approval from the state bar’s Committee on Character and Fitness, and to record 50 hours of pro bono work. “This decision now provides a road map for all the other states,” said Jose Luis Perez, deputy general counsel of LatinoJustice PRLDEF , which represented Mr. Vargas.

Cesar Vargas
Lawyers
Illegal Immigration
New York
Immigration
DACA


North Carolina: An Apology for Slavery

Abstract: The State Senate expressed regret for the practice of slavery and apologized for official actions that promoted legalized discrimination over four centuries. “When you dehumanize a human being, it’s one of the worst things that you can do,” Senator Larry Shaw, Democrat of Fayetteville, said before senators unanimously approved a symbolic resolution. The resolution acknowledged the state’s “profound contrition for the official acts that sanctioned and perpetuated the denial of basic human rights and dignity to fellow humans.” The resolution now goes to the House. Maryland lawmakers approved an apology for slavery last week, and lawmakers in Georgia and Missouri are considering similar legislation. In February, the Virginia General Assembly voted unanimously to express its regret for that state’s role in slavery.


News From the Advertising Industry

Abstract: Accounts ■ Pizza Hut, Plano, Tex., part of Yum Brands, named the Chicago office of McGarryBowen, New York, part of the Dentsu Network division of Dentsu, as its creative agency. Spending was estimated at $240 million. The assignment had been handled since 2009 by the Martin Agency, Richmond, Va., part of the Interpublic Group of Companies. ■ Chobani, New Berlin, N.Y., hired Droga5, New York, as its lead creative agency and Weber Shandwick, part of the Interpublic Group of Companies, to handle tasks like public relations. Billings were not disclosed. Boathouse, Boston, had most recently created campaigns for Chobani, which is known for frequently changing creative agencies. FleishmanHillard, part of the Omnicom Group, had been the public relations agency for Chobani yogurt. Chobani is grappling with product problems centered on consumer complaints about mold and containers bloating and swelling; the company voluntarily recalled some yogurt made at its plant in Twin Falls, Idaho. ■ Lowe Campbell Ewald, Warren, Mich., part of the Interpublic Group of Companies, was awarded two creative accounts, from Atkins Nutritionals, Denver, owned by the Roark Capital Group, and the Detroit Lions football team. Atkins had previously worked with Goodness Mfg., Los Angeles, part of Trailer Park; the company has spent about $20 million a year on advertising but could increase its budget. Spending was not disclosed for the assignment from the Lions, which hired the agency for the 2013-14 season. The team has not previously worked with an agency for the tasks that Lowe Campbell Ewald will handle, which include brand strategy and enhancing the experience that fans have at the team’s stadium, Ford Field. ■ Bank of New York Mellon Corporation, known as BNY Mellon, chose TBWA Worldwide, part of the Omnicom Group, to handle its worldwide creative account. Spending was estimated at $30 million. The assignment had previously been handled by another Omnicom agency, Doremus, New York. The account will be run from the TBWA New York office and also use resources from the agency’s London office. People ■ Katie Butler joined Eric Mower & Associates as director for EMA Insight, which specializes in search, strategy, planning and analytics. Ms. Butler, who is based in the Mower office in Charlotte, N.C., succeeds Dave Bulger, who left, the agency said, to start a marketing company. Ms. Butler had most recently been executive vice president for creative strategy and planning at JWT/OgilvyAction North America. Miscellany ■ KSL Media, New York, a media services agency founded in 1981 that had been one of the largest independents in its field, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection on Sept. 11 with the United States bankruptcy court for the central district in California; the agency also has an office in Los Angeles. The petition listed the agency’s liabilities as more than $50 million and its assets as between $10 million and $50 million. Creditors listed in the petition with the most money owed them included the cable channels Comedy Central, ESPN and FX. KSL, which also operated subsidiaries that included TV10’s, specializing in 10-second commercials, worked for marketers like PetSmart; its largest client, Bacardi, which spent more than $130 million a year, left KSL in May for Mindshare, part of the GroupM unit of WPP. AgencySpy, part of MediaBistro, reported that KSL’s chief executive, Hank Cohen, and president, David Sklaver, had unexpectedly left the agency last month. A reporter who called KSL in New York on Friday reached a recording that said the number “has been disconnected or is no longer in service”; pressing the prompt on the voice mail at the Los Angeles office to reach an operator generated repetitions of the general recording for the office. ■ Carton Donofrio Partners, Baltimore, which was founded in 1964 as Richardson, Myers & Donofrio, said it was making plans to close, affecting 24 employees. In a statement, Ellen R. Moore, chief executive, said that the majority owners of the agency, the Donofrio family, cited changes in the advertising industry as a reason for the decision, along with family health matters; Ms. Moore became chief executive in 2010 when Chuck Donofrio stepped down after given a diagnosis of early onset Alzheimer’s disease. ■ Chinn Creative, Laurel, Md., was acquired and absorbed by the Jacob Tyler Creative Group, San Diego. Financial terms were not disclosed. Chinn Creative becomes a Tyler office and Michael Chinn of Chinn Creative becomes managing director. Tyler said it planned to move the office to Washington in 2014.

Appointments and Executive Changes
advertising,marketing


Michael J. Kennedy, Lawyer for Underdogs and Pariahs, Dies at 78

Abstract: Michael J. Kennedy, who as a criminal lawyer championed lost causes and deeply unpopular defendants — including John Gotti Sr., Huey P. Newton and Timothy Leary — and finally won freedom for Jean S. Harris, the convicted killer of Dr. Herman Tarnower, the Scarsdale Diet doctor, died on Monday in Manhattan. He was 78. The cause was complications of pneumonia, which developed while he was being treated for cancer, his wife, Eleanora, said. A steadfast defender of the underdog and the First Amendment, Mr. Kennedy represented radicals including Rennie Davis, Bernardine Dohrn and Mr. Newton, co-founder of the Black Panther Party. His clients also included the Native American protesters at Wounded Knee, S.D., the family of the rogue real estate heir Robert A. Durst; Mr. Leary, the LSD guru; and Mr. Gotti, the mob boss. He also represented High Times magazine from its inception (and was later an owner) and shared its agenda to decriminalize marijuana possession. As matrimonial counsel for Ivana Trump in 1991, Mr. Kennedy publicly rejected as insufficient a divorce settlement — trumpeted by her husband, Donald J. Trump — in which she was to receive more than $10 million and their Connecticut home and Manhattan apartment. The settlement was renegotiated. Mr. Kennedy prided himself on membership in a reviled circle of radical lawyers from the 1960s on, including William M. Kunstler, Gerald B. Lefcourt and Michael E. Tigar, who could often afford to represent shunned clients at a discount because of the hefty fees they collected from defending organized crime figures. (Mr. Kennedy was said to have been paid $250,000 in the mid-1980s Pizza Connection drug-smuggling case; his client, a former Sicilian Mafia don, was convicted.) Mr. Kennedy was so aggressive as a guardian of constitutional rights that he sometimes needed a lawyer himself. In 1968, he was ejected from a congressional hearing investigating the violent demonstrations during the Democratic National Convention in Chicago. The next year he was held in contempt with three other lawyers by Judge Julius J. Hoffman for failing to appear at the trial of eight leaders of the previous summer’s protests, including Mr. Davis. Mr. Kennedy was even the stuff of fiction. The actor Raul Julia consulted with him before playing the defense lawyer Sandy Stern in the 1990 movie version of Scott Turow’s novel “Presumed Innocent.” Michael John Kennedy was born in Spokane, Wash., on March 23, 1937, the son of Thomas Kennedy and the former Evelyn Forbes. He was sent to a Jesuit boarding school when he was 4. He earned his bachelor’s degree from the University of California, Berkeley, and he graduated from the University of California Hastings College of the Law, in San Francisco. Image Mr. Kennedy, right, at a news conference in 1982 with his client Bernadine Dohrn and her fellow former Weathermen member William C. Ayers, whom Ms. Dorhn married that year. Credit David Handschuh/Associated Press His first marriage, to Pamalee Hamilton, ended in divorce. In addition to his wife, the former Eleanora Baratelli, who worked with him as a trial consultant, he is survived by their daughter, Anna Safir; two children from his first marriage, Lisa Kennedy and Scott Hamilton Kennedy , an Oscar-nominated documentary filmmaker; and five grandchildren. Mr. Kennedy immersed himself in radical causes from the start, representing Cesar Chavez and his migrant farm workers’ union in their rent strike against California landlords who charged exorbitant rents for barely habitable shacks. In New York, as staff counsel for the National Emergency Civil Liberties Committee, he represented conscientious objectors, draft resisters and deserters, clogging the legal system by entering not guilty pleas and demanding trials. His clients included two Columbia University students — both of whom, he proudly pointed out, became judges — who were being disciplined for trying to shut down Columbia’s law school to protest the war in Vietnam. In 1980 he negotiated the surrender of Ms. Dohrn, the Weather Underground leader, after she eluded the law for more than 10 years. Federal charges against her had been dropped. She pleaded guilty to aggravated battery and bail jumping stemming from violent antiwar protests and was fined $1,500 and placed on probation for three years. In 1982, Mr. Kennedy persuaded a Brooklyn jury weighing charges against five men accused of conspiring to smuggle weapons to the Irish Republican Army that the Central Intelligence Agency had sanctioned their gunrunning. “It is up to the government to prove that the C.I.A. was not involved with the defendants,” Mr. Kennedy declared, “not our burden to prove that it was.” In 1993 he persuaded Gov. Mario M. Cuomo to grant clemency to Mrs. Harris , the former private school headmistress who in 1980 killed Dr. Tarnower in what she said was a botched suicide attempt but which prosecutors proved was vengeance by a woman scorned. She had suffered at least two heart attacks in prison. And the following year, he stunned fellow lawyers by arranging for his client, Ricardo S. Caputo, to explain in a television interview — before he surrendered to the police — why he had killed several women. The tactic apparently helped spare him the death penalty. Speaking of Mr. Tigar, Mr. Kennedy might just as well have been referring to himself when he said in 1995 : “He understands that the way we measure the value of our justice system is how it treats society’s pariahs. It’s easy to treat the popular people well.”

Obituary
Lawyers
First Amendment
Michael J. Kennedy


Spain’s Chief Justice, Dívar, Quits Over Trips

Abstract: MADRID — Spain ’s image suffered another blow on Thursday when the chief justice of the Supreme Court resigned after being accused by a fellow judge of claiming vacations as business expenses. The court’s chief justice, Carlos Dívar, also quit as leader of another institution, the General Council of the Judiciary, which acts as the administrator of Spain’s judiciary. Chief Justice Dívar’s expense scandal came to light while the judiciary was being strained by several corruption cases against politicians from the country’s main parties. The monarchy has also been tainted by the investigations, with the son-in-law of King Juan Carlos I becoming the first member of the royal family to appear in court, in February. Both cases have become a sore point while Spain is struggling with a recession and high unemployment. In the latest case, José Manuel Gómez Benítez, another judge and a member of the General Council, blew the whistle last month on Chief Justice Dívar’s trips and sought — unsuccessfully — to get the attorney general’s office to prosecute the chief justice on charges of misusing public money. But pressure on Chief Justice Dívar grew as the Spanish news media pursued their own inquiries into his expense claims over the past four years. Reporters unearthed as many as 32 long weekend trips, for which the chief justice claimed about $35,000 in business expenses, even though he had apparently spent that time in Marbella in southern Spain, and at other beach resorts. While Chief Justice Dívar dug in his heels, denying any wrongdoing, some of the officials he had supposedly met for business during his trips started denying that such meetings had taken place or refusing to confirm them. The Supreme Court had backed its chief justice, voting last week against pursuing any criminal sanctions against him and citing a lack of evidence. Chief Justice Dívar, 70, is a third-generation judge with conservative leanings, who nevertheless straddled Spain’s bipartisan political system. Javier Cremades, chairman of the law firm Cremades & Calvo-Sotelo, said, “Spain’s economic crisis has generated a healthy hypersensitivity toward the use of public funds and the privileges of the authorities.” Chief Justice Dívar’s resignation is “bad news for Spain because it projects a poor image of our most important institutions,” Mr. Cremades concluded. It is the first resignation by a leader of the Supreme Court, which celebrated its 200th anniversary this week, with Chief Justice Dívar presiding over the ceremony. But the Supreme Court also prompted international controversy in February when it convicted and suspended Baltasar Garzón, Spain’s most prominent crusading judge, for overstepping his authority in a wiretapping case. Manuel Conthe, an arbitration lawyer in Madrid for the law firm Bird & Bird, said Chief Justice Dívar should have resigned immediately to avoid further damaging the reputation of Spain’s legal system. Mr. Conthe, a former chairman of Spain’s stock market regulator, said Chief Justice Dívar’s ability to take advantage of the loose expense-monitoring rules applied by the General Council showed that it was “a politicized body that is in need of urgent reform.” Chief Justice Dívar announced his resignation on Thursday during a meeting of the General Council. At the end of May, he said he would not show “institutional irresponsibility” by caving in to outside pressure and resigning. Instead, he denied committing “any irregularity, neither judicial, nor moral, nor political.” Chief Justice Dívar also offered at the time to tighten oversight within the judiciary to ensure “absolute transparency in spending and budget” matters.

Spain
Corruption (Institutional)
Courts and the Judiciary
Suspensions Dismissals and Resignations
Divar Carlos


N.H.L. Lands Nearly $400 Million Deal With MillerCoors and Molson Coors

Abstract: The N.H.L. often boasts about improving business measures like higher TV ratings, increased use of its Web site and the success of the annual Winter Classic. Another area where the league has bettered itself — corporate sponsorships — is receiving a significant boost in a new beer deal with MillerCoors in the United States and Molson Coors in Canada worth nearly $400 million over seven years. It is the biggest corporate sponsorship in N.H.L. history. It is more than twice as much as what the incumbent sponsors, Anheuser-Busch in the United States and Labatt in Canada, which are owned by Anheuser-Busch InBev , will have paid through this season. The deal will be announced Tuesday. “Hockey and beer go together,” said Andy England, the executive vice president and chief marketing officer of MillerCoors . “Hockey fans are big beer drinkers. In fact, we have data that shows hockey fans are the biggest beer drinkers of any major sports league.” Under the deal, Molson Canadian will be the official beer of the N.H.L. in North America. Coors Light will have sponsorship rights in the two countries. Molson Coors owns 42 percent of MillerCoors, so it pursued the deal as a North American partnership. An agreement was reached soon after the Jan. 30 All-Star Game. Dave Perkins, the president of Molson Coors Canada, said the N.H.L. deal was designed to add to momentum built by Molson Canadian during last year’s Winter Olympics in Vancouver and through its “Made From Canada” ad campaign . “For me, Molson Canadian and hockey are synonymous,” Perkins said. He said that Coors Light was the No. 1 beer brand in Canada and Molson Canadian was No. 3. A beer sponsor is one of a league’s most important. Last May, Anheuser-Busch’s Bud Light brand replaced MillerCoors’s Coors Light as the N.F.L.’s beer sponsor. Months later, Anheuser-Busch sued Major League Baseball, claiming it had reneged on a deal to extend the sponsorship; one sticking point was apparently baseball’s desire for more money because of the terms of the brewer’s N.F.L. deal, which The Wall Street Journal reported as a six-year, $1.2 billion deal . The suit was dropped in December, and the sponsorship was extended. England said that MillerCoors’s interest in the N.H.L. was not triggered by the loss of the N.F.L. sponsorship. For the N.H.L., the new beer sponsorship demonstrates its progress in recent years, especially in reaching young, affluent, technologically savvy fans who love their ice-cold suds. From the 2008-9 to the 2009-10 season, the league says its sponsorship revenue grew 32 percent. Since this season began, the N.H.L. has renewed deals with Bridgestone, Cisco Systems and McDonald’s and signed new ones with Canadian Tire, Tim Hortons, BlackBerry, Discover (in the United States) and Hershey’s (in Canada). But the new beer deal is by far the biggest. “The investment they’re making will help us launch a lot of the marketing and promotional plans we’ve been developing and thinking about for quite some time,” said John Collins, the league’s chief operating officer. The money from Molson Coors and MillerCoors will be split among a rights fee to the league, spending with teams, TV advertising and the value of the breweries’ promotional campaigns.

National Hockey League
MillerCoors
Molson Coors Brewing Co
Anheuser-Busch InBev N.V
Molson Coors Canada Incorporated
Advertising and Marketing