A Slow, Wary Return for Georgian Refugees

Abstract: PEREVI, Georgia — On a day when Georgians streamed back to their homes from refugee camps, this mountain village was shrouded with fog, and its inhabitants wondered if they had been forgotten. Eteri Kusiani, who is ethnically Georgian, lay awake before dawn on Thursday listening to distant gunshots, and thinking about the handwritten note she had received from unknown Ossetians in the next village: “We will come at night and take your husband,” who was lying beside her, “if he does not make himself accountable.” About 1,000 ethnic Georgians live in Perevi, which is just outside separatist South Ossetia. On Thursday, hours before the deadline for Russian troops to pull back to the enclave, they were still trapped behind a heavily reinforced Russian checkpoint where a communication station, troop carriers and heavy ammunition were hidden under camouflage. Hogs meander down the unpaved road that runs through Perevi, and the great-power politics of Russia and Georgia seem impossibly remote. The war’s aftermath started subtly for Ms. Kusiani, with Ossetians at the door gruffly demanding more than two gallons of her homemade honey. But then the note came, accusing her husband of transporting wounded Georgian soldiers in his ambulance, and everything began to look much darker. “Certainly we lost the war,” said Ms. Kusiani, sadly, wrapping herself in a bathrobe. “We lost hope of reclaiming our territories. How could we call it a success? People have died. Houses have been destroyed.” “The only hope I have,” she said, “is to run from this place and build a house in another place.” Emotions were mixed all over Georgia on Thursday, as families vacated the tent cities where they have lived for weeks or months. Though government officials urged refugees to wait until their villages have been cleared of unexploded ordnance, it was impossible to stop them. They tied towering bundles to the tops of taxicabs and headed off down the road. Returnees disembarking a bus in Nikozi were startled by three Russian troop carriers, which roared through town with Russian flags flying. One soldier was taking pictures with his cellphone. With a deep sigh, Leila Maznishvili started down the road to her house, waving her cane at trees that had been splintered by tanks. “Georgian? Russian? How do I know?” she said. Her house is between Georgian and Russian checkpoints. “That’s how we lived before,” she said, “and that’s how we will live now.” About 4,000 refugees left camps in Gori on Thursday, leaving 20,000 behind, said Lado Vardzelashvili, the representative of Georgia’s president, Mikheil Saakashvili , in Shida Kartli. Refugees have been banned from returning to Ergneti, a village near Tskhinvali, until sappers declare it free of bombs and mines. Amnesty International released an analysis of satellite images on Thursday showing that 100 civilian dwellings were shelled during the Georgian bombardment of Tskhinvali that began late on Aug. 7. The more surprising finding, though, was a second one: the organization found that Georgian villages around Tskhinvali were heavily damaged by South Ossetian attacks from Aug. 10 to 19 — after most of the hostilities were over. The ethnic Georgian village of Tamarasheni, for instance, was unharmed on Aug. 10, but nine days later, 152 buildings had been damaged. The organization “is concerned that Russian forces failed to take effective measures to protect civilians and their property from such abuses in areas under their control,” according to a press release. Many refugees who had fled villages seemed undaunted by the prospect of finding damage on their return. The Odiashvili brothers, whose family has farmed in Tkviavi for 10 generations, were in high spirits as they packed up. Asked whether they would feel safe in the village, just south of the enclave’s border, one said he felt “99 percent” safe, and David, who is 44, said the real figure was closer to 98 percent. “We need to go and be on our earth,” said David Odiashvili. “We don’t know what Bush, Saakashvili and Medvedev know,” he said, referring to the Georgian leader and his American ally and the Russian president, Dmitri A. Medvedev. “We are just peasants. When they started the war, they didn’t consult us.” He added that he fully expected the Russians to pull out from South Ossetia before long. “If Russia stays in South Ossetia, it means Georgia will have a war again, and it will be a world war,” he said, with cheerful confidence. “European Union monitors will be shot, and Bush will tell Medvedev what he really thinks.” Ms. Kusiani, who remained behind Russian lines in Perevi, felt no such certainty. These days, Ossetians will not let Georgians graze cattle in the best fields, or pick mushrooms, gather berries or cut wood, she said. There was no history of violence between villagers here before August, and she tried to be polite when the three Ossetians came to her door asking to buy honey, until one of them pointed a gun at her children and said, “Now we’ll see how much honey you have.” Though the Russians may pull out, the thought gives her little comfort. It is her neighbors who scare her.

Georgia (Georgian Republic)
Immigration and Refugees
Politics and Government
Saakashvili Mikheil


2 More Solar Companies Get U.S. Loan Backing

Abstract: Undeterred by the bankruptcy filing of a California solar company that got $535 million in federal loan guarantees, the Energy Department is issuing two more large loan guarantees, albeit to companies that look like safer bets. The department will announce Thursday that it has completed a $150 million loan guarantee to 1366 Technologies, a company with a new way to make the silicon wafers used in solar cells. The company, based in Lexington, Mass., is the star pupil of the department’s Advanced Research Projects Agency — Energy, or ARPA-E, which makes grants to entities with radical ideas with great potential value; 1366 appears well on the way to being the first of the project recipients to reach commercial application. The company casts the wafers from molten silicon, cutting costs in half. The conventional method is to slice the wafers from a big block, turning half the silicon into dust. While Solyndra, the company that filed for bankruptcy, tried to sell a markedly different product, 1366 offers a commodity product made in a different way with lower production costs. Jonathan M. Silver, the head of the Energy Department’s loan guarantee program, said, “It’s a process innovation, not a product innovation. They can produce silicon wafers with much less material and many fewer steps.” The price at which 1366 will sell its product is not clear, but Mr. Silver said he expected the company to continue to drive down the market price of solar cells. On Wednesday, the department announced a guarantee for 80 percent of a $344 million private loan to be taken out by SolarCity, which installs and owns rooftop solar systems and sells the electricity generated by them. The company plans to operate up to 160,000 rooftop installations at military bases around the country, mostly on apartment buildings and houses. That would be a huge expansion of rooftop solar systems; there are nearly 160,000 residential and nonresidential installations in the United States today. SolarCity said the plan would create about 750 construction jobs over five years. The company intends to employ veterans or relatives of active-duty personnel to do much of the work, at up to 124 military bases in 33 states. SolarCity said it would install 371 megawatts of generating capacity.

Solar Energy
1366 Technologies
SolarCity Inc
Energy Department


Washington Fuss Over White House Hanukkah Party

Abstract: WASHINGTON — At the first Hanukkah party in the Obama White House, a Jewish student choir will sing in sweet harmony, the two young children of a soldier deployed in Iraq will light a 19th-century silver menorah from Prague and President Obama and his wife, Michelle, will greet more than 500 guests in a celebration that is expected to spill from the State Room to the East Room. But to the dismay of some administration officials, the plans for next week’s party — one of the hottest holiday events for the nation’s Jewish elite — have been overtaken by feverish debate over the size of the guest list, the language on the invitations and what this says (or does not say) about Mr. Obama’s relationship with Jews. President George W. Bush, who began the tradition of White House Hanukkah parties, invited 600 people to his last party, administration officials say. But rumors spread wildly, first in the Israeli press and then locally, that President Bush had invited 800 people and that the Obamas were planning to invite only 400. (Administration officials say they have invited 550 people.) The invitations have also caused some consternation because they make no mention of Hanukkah, inviting guests to “a holiday reception” on Dec. 16. In an opinion article published by JTA, the Jewish news agency, Tevi Troy, a former Bush administration liaison to Jewish groups, warned that the Obama White House had given Jewish Americans “a number of reasons to fear that it takes its votes for granted.” Mr. Troy cited as examples the administration’s call for a freeze on Jewish settlements in the West Bank and the decision to honor Mary Robinson, the former president of Ireland, who has been accused by some Democratic lawmakers of anti-Israel bias. Mr. Troy said the reduced guest list created “a nagging sense that there may be a studied callousness at work here.” His commentary, published on Nov. 23, and an article a week earlier in The Jerusalem Post, touched off a flurry of news articles, blog postings and kitchen table discussions. This week, the Israeli newspaper Yediot Achronot published photographs of President Bush lighting a menorah and Mr. Obama standing with Santa Claus alongside an article headlined, “Obama Downsizes Hanukkah in the White House.” Rabbi Levi Shemtov, who is overseeing the process of making the White House kitchen kosher for the party, said he was besieged with questions about the issue on a recent trip to Israel. “I usually get asked when I came and how long I’m staying; this time, all anyone wanted to know was whether I was getting invited to the White House Hanukkah party,” said Rabbi Shemtov, who heads the Washington office of the American Friends of Lubavitch, which lobbies for the Lubavitch movement. Rabbi Shemtov, who has attended Hanukkah parties at the White House, said he raised an eyebrow when he received his invitation, but noted that the Bush administration once sent invitations out with Christmas trees on them. “This is all one big overblown latke,” the rabbi said. “I feel that we need to save our communal kvetching in reserve for when it’s more called for and really matters,” he continued. Jewish Democrats accused Republicans of using the party for political ammunition. Advisers to Mr. Obama described the focus on the guest list as disappointing. “Hanukkah is a wonderful holiday to celebrate, but that’s not the whole ballgame, by any means, in terms of outreach to the Jewish community,” said Susan Sher, one of the president’s two liaisons to Jewish groups. Ms. Sher noted that Mr. Obama held the first White House seder, invited the leaders of more than a dozen Jewish organizations for a wide-ranging discussion at the White House in July, held a conference call with 900 rabbis in August and videotaped a message to Jews for the High Holy Days in the fall. Administration officials also noted that White House records showed that Mr. Bush never had more than 584 guests at his Hanukkah parties. Most years there were fewer than 500, they said. Josh Block, a spokesman for the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, the pro-Israel lobby, which has disagreed with aspects of Mr. Obama’s policy toward Israel, praised his outreach and said what mattered was that he would continue to hold the party. Mr. Troy, who said he was astonished by the reaction to his article, agreed. He said the Obamas were “doing what they need to do in terms of outreach.” As for the party, he is not expecting an invitation. “The people who are invited will have a great time,” he said. “And a lot of people who didn’t get in will grumble. But you won’t hear any grumbling from me.”

White House (Washington DC)
Hanukkah
Jews and Judaism
Obama Barack


Jockey Out of Intensive Care

Abstract: NEW YORK (AP) — Jockey Ramon Dominguez has made enough progress in the recovery from a fractured skull that he was transferred out of intensive care. Dominguez was injured when his mount Convocation stumbled and fell in a race Jan. 18 at Aqueduct, pitching the rider onto the winterized inner track. He was moved on Thursday from the neurological ICU at New York-Presbyterian Hospital/Weill Cornell Medical Center to a medical step-down unit, an intermediate location between the ICU and a regular inpatient room. “Ramon’s doctors say he is recovering well, and we’re beginning to discuss his rehab options,” wife Sharon said in a statement. There are no target dates for when Dominguez will be released from the hospital, nor a career-resumption timetable for the three-time defending Eclipse Award winner as the nation’s leading jockey. Dominguez set the North American record last year when his mounts earned $25.5 million.

Horse racing
Ramon A Dominguez
Horse Jockeys and Trainers


National Briefing | California: Reporter Suspended Over Relationship

Abstract: Mirthala Salinas, a broadcaster in Los Angeles who covered politics for Telemundo and became romantically involved with Mayor Antonio R. Villaraigosa, was suspended Thursday for two months without pay. Her suspension followed an investigation into whether the ethical standards of the station, KVEA-TV, had been violated because of her relationship with the mayor. The station’s news director was also suspended, its general manager reassigned and the station’s group president reprimanded.

Suspensions Dismissals and Resignations
Telemundo
Villaraigosa Antonio


Obama Walks a Fine Line With Egyptian President

Abstract: CAIRO — Tanks and barbed wire had surrounded Egypt ’s presidential palace and crowds of protesters were swarming around last week when President Obama placed a call to President Mohamed Morsi . Mr. Morsi and his allies in the Muslim Brotherhood stood accused of a sudden turn toward authoritarianism, as they fulminated about conspiracies, steamrollered over opponents, and sent their supporters into a confrontation with protesters the night before that call; the clash left seven people dead. But Mr. Obama did not reprimand Mr. Morsi, advisers to both leaders said. Instead, a senior Obama administration official said, the American president sought to build on a growing rapport with his Egyptian counterpart, arguing to Mr. Morsi that it was in his own interest to offer his opposition compromises, in order to build trust in his government. “These last two weeks have been concerning, of course, but we are still waiting to see,” said another senior administration official, speaking on the condition of anonymity to avoid aggravating relations with Egypt. “One thing we can say for Morsi is he was elected, so he has some legitimacy.” He noted that Mr. Morsi was elected with 51 percent of the vote. As Egyptians vote Saturday on the draft constitution, the results may also render a verdict on Mr. Morsi’s ability to stabilize the country and the Obama administration’s bet that it can build a workable partnership with a government guided by the Brotherhood — a group the United States shunned for decades as a threat to Western values and interests. White House officials say that as Egypt’s first democratically elected president, Mr. Morsi has a unique chance to build a credible democratic process with broad participation, which is the surest source of stability. But critics of the Brotherhood have cited Mr. Morsi’s strong-arm push for the Islamist-backed charter as vindication of their argument that Islamist politics are fundamentally incompatible with tolerance, pluralism and the open debate essential to democracy. They say that his turn to authoritarianism has discredited the Obama administration’s two-year courtship of Egypt’s new Islamist leaders. Some say they suspect the White House may envision the trade-off it offered to the ousted president, Hosni Mubarak: turning a blind eye to heavy-handed tactics so long as he continues to uphold the stability of American-backed regional order. And by muting its criticism, the Obama administration shares some of the blame, said Michael Hanna, a researcher at the Century Foundation in New York and an Egyptian-American in Cairo for the vote. “Silence is acquiescence,” he said, adding about Mr. Morsi: “At some point if you are so heedless of the common good that you are ready to take the country to the brink and overlook bodies in the street, that is just not O.K.” Mr. Obama’s advisers, though, say that in Egypt the dual goals of stability and democracy are aligned, because in the math of the revolution Egyptians will no longer accept the old autocracy. As for Mr. Morsi, administration officials and other outside analysts argue that so far his missteps appear to be matters of tactics, not ideology, with only an indirect connection to his Islamist politics. “The problem with Morsi isn’t whether he is Islamist or not, it is whether he is authoritarian,” said a Western diplomat in Cairo, speaking on the condition of anonymity because of diplomatic protocol. What is more, the leading opposition alternatives appeared no less authoritarian: Ahmed Shafik, who lost the presidential runoff, was a former Mubarak prime minister campaigning as a new strongman, and Hamdeen Sabahi, who narrowly missed the runoff, is a Nasserite who has talked of intervention by the military to unseat Mr. Morsi despite his election as president. “The problem with ‘I told you so’ is the assumption that if things had turned out differently the outcome would be better, and I don’t see that,” the diplomat said, noting that the opposition to the draft constitution had hardly shown more respect than Mr. Morsi has for the norms of democracy or the rule of law. “There are no black hats and white hats here, there are no heroes and villains. Both sides are using underhanded tactics and both sides are using violence.” Critics of the draft constitution say it does not adequately protect freedom of expression or women’s equality. Under a more conservative Islamist government, certain provisions could give new power to Muslim religious authorities to exert over law and society. The draft document retains a longstanding provision declaring the principles of Islamic law to be the main source of legislation. A new clause broadly defines those principles in accord with Sunni Muslim traditions. Critics say that could someday be used to the disadvantage of non-Muslim lawmakers or jurists. But White House officials say that although the charter may be vague, it does not impose a theocracy. “The question will be, how does the next Parliament implement what is in the constitution, and what is their vision for Egypt?” said Tommy Vietor, a spokesman for the National Security Council. Critics fault some of Mr. Morsi’s Islamist allies for rallying his supporters with calls to defend Islamic law. Critics say invoking religion unfairly demonizes their opponents, most of whom are also observant Muslims, and widens the polarization that has paralyzed Egyptian politics. But Mr. Morsi has not joined their calls. Other scholars of the Brotherhood say Mr. Morsi’s recent strong-arm tactics may have more to do with the history of the Islamist political movement. He grew up in the Brotherhood when it was an outlawed secret society under the Mubarak police state, concerned most of all with survival and prone to see persecution around every corner. White House officials defended Mr. Morsi, arguing that he was learning from his mistakes. Afraid that the courts might dissolve the constitutional assembly or even remove his powers, Mr. Morsi badly overreached with a decree putting himself above the courts until ratification of a new charter. But he has steadily retreated in the face of pressure from the street. And after the deadly mistake of turning to their Islamist supporters for protection of the palace, the Brotherhood has carefully kept all its rallies far from its opponents to avoid any further violence. Looking past the referendum, White House advisers say they are urging Mr. Morsi to spend any political capital he gains on reaching out to his opponents, to build the legitimacy for his government and the political process. Mr. Morsi’s advisers say a “national dialogue” committee he convened is still working on such proposals. Under current Egyptian law, the president is allowed to fill about a third of the seats in the upper house of Parliament, known as the Shura Council, and one idea is that he could appoint political opponents, evening out the balance. The chamber is the sole legislature until parliamentary elections, handling delicate matters like the election laws. “Our point to him is going to be, as the democratically elected president of Egypt who has just passed a constitution, the onus is going to be on you to try to heal this divide,” the White House official said. “And we will look for concrete measures of that, like a willingness to appoint people to the Shura Council.” “And we are saying the same thing to the opposition,” he added. “They have got to be willing to participate.”

Middle East and North Africa Unrest (2010- )


Wisconsin Couple Sentenced in Death of Their Sick Child

Abstract: CHICAGO — A Wisconsin couple were sentenced to jail time on Tuesday for failing to seek medical attention for their ill daughter, renewing a debate in some circles over whether states should allow parents to practice spiritual treatments. The parents, Dale and Leilani Neumann, were ordered to spend 30 days in jail each year for the next six years and were placed on 10 years’ probation. Mr. Neumann, 47, and Ms. Neumann, 41, who live in Weston, in central Wisconsin, had been convicted of second-degree reckless homicide in August. Their daughter, Madeline Kara Neumann, 11, died from untreated diabetes on March 23, 2008, the authorities said. When the girl became ill and could no longer walk or talk, her parents prayed for her instead of taking her to a doctor, prosecutors said. Her parents could have faced as much as 25 years in prison. While on probation, the Neumanns must take the two surviving children who live with them to the doctor if they are seriously injured or sick, said Judge Vincent K. Howard of Marathon County Circuit Court, and the children must undergo periodic health checks. Defense lawyers for the Neumanns said they planned to appeal the conviction because state law is not clear on the issue of spiritual treatment. Prosecutors had asked for a three-year sentence. “I would have liked to have heard from both the defendants that they were sorry for what occurred and heard them accept some measure of responsibility,” said LaMont Jacobson, an assistant district attorney. Several state lawmakers, meanwhile, have said they plan to introduce legislation to settle the issue. One bill, for instance, would remove religious exemptions for charges of neglect and abuse, while another would broaden the religious exemption to apply to other types of cases. Shawn Peters, a lecturer at the University of Wisconsin at Madison who has studied the nexus of religion and the law, said the Neumanns’ sentencing was not unusual. Experts said there had been at least 50 convictions in the United States since 1982 in cases where medical treatment was withheld from a child for religious reasons. “The sentences tend to be halfway punishments where you have relatively mild penalties imposed on parents who are found to be legally guilty of having caused a child’s death,” Mr. Peters said. “It underscores how uneasy we are both politically and culturally when it comes to regulating religious conduct even when the consequences are disastrous.” Mr. Peters said the case also pointed out the ambiguities of state laws regarding such matters. “Wisconsin is not unique,” Mr. Peters said. “Lots of states have similarly murky laws in this area that need to be clarified.”

Neumann Dale
Wisconsin
Neumann Leilani
Child Abuse and Neglect
Medicine and Health
Children and Youth
Sentences (Criminal)
Religion and Belief


J. P. Morgan Sets Up Link to Investors at Fidelity

Abstract: AMONG the knocks on J. P. Morgan Chase's investment bank has been that it lacks a retail brokerage network to distribute new shares of stock for companies it helped take public. There have long been whispers that the bank might buy such a business in a huge deal. But yesterday, J. P Morgan signaled it was taking a different approach: a strategic partnership with Fidelity Investment's brokerage arm that gives millions of individual investors access to the same new equity and fixed-income offerings the bank's institutional clients have long received. "We feel this completes our distribution capability," said Scott Harrington, head of United States equities sales and trading at J. P. Morgan. "We are not left with any holes." The arrangement gives J. P. Morgan exclusive access to Fidelity's brokerage customers for all new initial public offerings and follow-on stock deals it helps lead, effectively ending an arrangement between Fidelity and Lehman Brothers Holdings that was in place for the last seven years. J.P. Morgan will also become the primary provider of fixed-income products to Fidelity customers, though Lehman and others can compete in that space. No money changes hands, J. P Morgan said. For J. P. Morgan, the partnership expands the company's reach beyond big institutional clients to individual investors without the risk of bungling a big deal. The company sold its online brokerage unit, BrownCo, to E*Trade Financial last year. Goldman Sachs has had an agreement with Charles Schwab, to sell initial and follow-up stock offerings. And competitors like Merrill Lynch and Morgan Stanley have served these customers through their own large networks of financial advisers for years. Retail investors can help big banks win new underwriting business because they are attractive to newly public companies. Individual investors tend to hold onto shares longer than large money managers and hedge funds, which are often quick to take their gains. J. P Morgan's arrangement also stands in contrast to the strategy of Citigroup, its rival across Park Avenue. Under James Dimon, J. P. Morgan has concentrated on bolstering its ability to manufacture new financial products. Citigroup, on the other hand, has refashioned itself as a distributor of financial products through a series of streamlining deals, like the swap of its asset management business with Legg Mason, led by its chief executive, Charles O. Prince III. The Morgan partnership will give Fidelity's brokerage customers new products and potentially greater access to initial public offerings. Under its arrangement with Lehman Brothers, its premium customers were eligible to receive shares of 25 public offerings over the last two years. Lehman Brothers will continue to provide Fidelity investors with research reports and fixed-income products said Steve Austin, a Fidelity spokesman. "We don't anticipate doing any I.P.O.'s with Lehman going forward," he added. Kerrie Cohen, a Lehman Brothers spokeswoman, declined to comment. J. P. Morgan's distribution announcement came as the bank's top executives held a presentation for investors and analysts about the state of the company. While nearly all of its six main divisions have been plagued by inconsistent performance, the investment banking group has been under particularly harsh pressure to improve its results. At the conference, J. P. Morgan's new co-heads of investment banking vowed to earn $4 billion a year by sometime in 2007 while correcting past mistakes. After a recent management shake-up, they have restructured the investment banking division to improve the coordination and accountability of their traders. But they noted that a "brain drain" of bankers to hedge funds and persistent troubles from past mergers are complicating their efforts. "When you do a bunch of mergers you make compromises," said Steve Black, the co-chief executive of the investment bank. "It's been tougher to be J. P. Morgan Chase than to be Goldman Sachs or Lehman Brothers." Amid a sell-off in financial stocks yesterday, shares of J.P. Morgan fell 44 cents, or 1 percent, to $41.14. J. P. Morgan once had a distribution arrangement with Charles Schwab that was similar to the one announced yesterday, but that relationship ended in 2001. Talks with Fidelity began late last year, and the deal may lead to broader use of the Fidelity distribution channel down the road. Besides the equity offerings, the arrangement allows J. P. Morgan nonexclusive access to sell products like derivatives, structured products and municipal bond deals.

FIDELITY INVESTMENTS
MORGAN J P CHASE & CO
LEHMAN BROTHERS HOLDINGS INC
STOCKS AND BONDS
BROKERS AND BROKERAGE FIRMS
MARKET PLACE (TIMES COLUMN)


Relying on Trust, Not Control, of Employees

Abstract: Nicolas Beau is the international director for watches at Chanel. Q. Tell me about your family background. A. I was born in 1963 in Neuilly-sur-Seine, a suburb of Paris. My father was from a military family and became an engineer. My mother stayed at home. I was the oldest of three children. No one in my family ever worked in the luxury industry. My father wanted me to become an engineer, but I was mostly interested in traveling and sports. Q. What was your educational background? A. After high school, I attended the I.S.G. business school (Institut Supérieur de Gestion) in Paris. Its international program allowed me to spend a year in the United States and five months in Japan. I was not a very dedicated student, just good enough to pass every year. Skiing was my youthful passion. Q. What was your first job? A. My first job was with Salomon, the ski company. In the 1980s, Salomon had acquired Taylor Made, a golf brand, and was looking to develop that business in Australia. I had learned to play golf early on, and jumped on the opportunity to move to Australia. I fell in love with the industry, played a lot of golf and met some great people. In 1988, I was transferred to England and roomed with a friend who worked for Cartier. My first exposure to the world of luxury came from attending Cartier events with my roommate. The following year, I returned to France and applied for a job at Cartier. Q. Why did you leave sports for the luxury industry? A. I was truly attracted to craftsmanship. Watching things being made by hand fascinated me, in any métier. I love a beautiful table setting as much as a great meal. Acting on pure instinct, I accepted a position in Cartier’s tabletop division, which covered tableware, silverware, crystal and china. No one really wanted a job in a luxury brand back then. Most business school graduates applied to large companies like Procter & Gamble, rarely to luxury brands. Q. What did you do during your five years at Cartier? A. I started as a product manager in charge of developing new tabletop products. I visited factories and worked directly with the craftsmen. The job confirmed my passion for beautiful objects well made. It wasn’t a great big adventure —- we were just running a business — but I loved it. The business was growing, and every year was different from the previous. It is great when your life changes every year. Three years later, I joined the team of Alain Dominique Perrin, Cartier’s president, as a staff member in business development. Cartier was part of the Richemont Group (then, Vendôme), which had acquired Piaget, which in turn owned the watchmaker Baume et Mercier. I was asked to help reposition Baume and develop key markets. My wife is Swiss, and we were happy to relocate to Geneva. We spent six years there, and I focused exclusively on Baume, working closely with watchmakers. That is how I acquired my watchmaking culture and developed a true passion for watches. Image Nicolas Beau helped create Imagine Chanel, a team that runs an in-house training program for new managers on the culture of the company. Credit Chanel Q. In 2002 you left the Richemont Group and joined Chanel. Why leave? A. At the end of 2001, I was appointed managing director of Richemont France, a new organization covering France and Benelux, and returned to Paris in part because I was fed up with life in Geneva. I was given responsibility over all the Richemont watch brands except Cartier. By then, I was beginning to feel focusing exclusively on watches was too restrictive for me. I needed some fresh air. When the call came from Chanel, I knew very little about this “ladies’ brand,” and, apart from my wife wearing Chanel No. 5 perfume, I had never stepped into a Chanel boutique and had no experience of the brand. Still, I felt that Chanel would be an escape route, an opportunity to explore wider avenues in luxury that included fashion, perfumes and beauty. Q. How do you manage cross-cultural teams at Chanel? A. Fourteen years ago, when I joined Chanel as international director of watches, we were a small team, and I knew nearly everyone by name in all of Chanel’s divisions. Today, I manage teams internationally, and the company has grown exponentially. With very fast growth, a business takes on an entrepreneurial aspect. As a manager, you must evolve rapidly, work on intuition and depend heavily on the quality of the people you recruit. Because I have been traveling nearly every month for the past 30 years, I have gotten to know different cultures well. For management purposes, it helps to communicate and not impose your views in a multicultural environment. I always consider the opinions of those outside my own culture. Q. How do you ensure that multinational teams understand the identity of Chanel? A. Given our rapid growth, we realized that it was important to pass on the culture of Chanel to everyone in the company. In 2009, we created Imagine Chanel, which is a team that runs an in-house training program for new managers on the culture of Chanel. The goal is to help them to understand who Gabrielle Chanel was, who we are as a company and what we do. With so many newcomers into the company, there was a real risk that we all have a different vision of that culture. Even veteran managers participate to better understand their own divisions. It makes the job of a manager across cultures much easier. Q. What is your style of leadership? A. I work mostly on trust. I am not a controlling leader. In our division, we have a timetable, and as long as deadlines are met, I trust my teams to manage their own work. I have come to believe that respect and trust can be found in people who appreciate the chance they have been given. I accept mistakes but not dishonesty. I have difficulty dealing with someone who is untruthful. Q. What has been the greatest influence on your leadership style? A. My grandfather was a big influence. He had founded an electrical engineering firm in Normandy at the end of World War II, and hired only people with just a high school diploma. They had to be good at their job, and it was immaterial that they had no secondary degree. He became successful by trusting his employees. The other influences on my style were Perrin, the charismatic president of Cartier, who was always willing to give me a chance, and also Alain Wertheimer and his brother Gérard (controlling shareholders of Chanel) because of their trust in the teams and their long-term vision. Q. What is the best advice you have ever received? A. I am very serious and am often told to smile more. But I am a shy person and must work on being more engaging. Q. What is the difference between a good leader and great leader? A. A great leader has the vision and ability to anticipate changes. Q. What advice would you give a young person starting out? A. Go around the world three times before starting to work. That is what I tell my two sons, who are 21 and 15. I spent the first few years of my professional life living abroad. It is greatly enriching and even more important today.


Woods Wins Memorial and Has Wind at His Back Heading to Open

Abstract: DUBLIN, Ohio — If there were any doubts remaining about his comeback, the state of his game or his chances in the United States Open later this month, Tiger Woods buried them all under the pristine grass at Muirfield Village Golf Club on Sunday in the final round of the Memorial Tournament. Coming from four strokes off the pace, Woods broke clear of a four-way tie for the lead with birdies at the final two holes for a round of 65 and a one-stroke victory over Jim Furyk , who shot a 69. It was a dominating final round — four strokes better than any of Woods’s eight closest pursuers — in a victory as convincing as it was complete. Woods shot a 12-under-par 276 in a ball-striking clinic at the tournament hosted by his boyhood hero, Jack Nicklaus . He hit every fairway in his best driving performance since the 1998 Masters , putted with confidence and hit crisp iron shots. In a startling final burst, he fired a 9-iron to within 9 feet of the hole and made birdie at the 17th hole, then hit a 7-iron to a foot from the hole at No. 18 to set up a final birdie. “I knew I could do this,” said Woods, who at age 33 has 67 PGA Tour wins. “It was just a matter of staying with it and giving it time to come around. I just hadn’t been as consistent as I wanted to be. Now, here we are. “This is how you have to hit it in order to win U.S. Opens.” He would get no argument from anyone on that point, including Nicklaus, the man whose records Woods has had in his sights since he was growing up in Cypress, Calif. As Nicklaus was introducing Woods at the trophy ceremony on the 18th green, he could not help but comment on what he had just seen from Woods, whose 14 major championship wins are second — for the moment — to Nicklaus’s 18 on the career list. “I suspect that No. 15 will come for Tiger Woods in about two weeks,” Nicklaus said. “If he drives the ball this way and plays this way, I’m sure it will. And if not, it will surprise me greatly.” When it came down to it, it was no surprise when Woods went out and blew the doors off the rest of the field. The player who had the closest look at it was Michael Letzig, a 29-year-old in his second year on the PGA Tour. Letzig, who is looking for his first win and who happened to be paired with Woods, was left awestruck. Letzig got off to a rocky start, bogeying three of his first five holes, just trying to get out of Woods’s way while Woods was birdieing three of his first five. Letzig settled down and managed to shoot a 75, but he was still shaking his head after the round. “Today was unreal,” Letzig said. “I don’t even know how to describe it. It was the best golf I’ve ever seen.” Mark Wilson and Matt Bettencourt, who began the day tied for the lead at nine under, did not see any of it, but they heard it and felt it as the roars for Woods from up ahead rolled across Muirfield Village like the sound of artillery fire. “I didn’t pay attention, to be honest,” said Wilson, who shot a 73 and finished tied for third with Jonathan Byrd at eight-under-par 280. “I heard some roars, and I looked over and saw Tiger eagled 11.” That was about the time Wilson and Bettencourt slipped from view. They were tied at 10 under, a shot behind Byrd, who had holed out an 82-yard wedge shot for eagle at the seventh hole to grab the lead. Woods hit his second shot with a choked-down 5-wood 253 yards, through the green on the 567-yard, par-5 11th. His ball was sitting down in the rough, 44 feet from the hole, and par was looking likely. But Woods had other ideas. He slid a 60-degree wedge under the ball and popped it quickly up in the air, landing it softly on the green. The ball began rolling like a putt and went in the middle of the hole, precipitating an explosion of exuberance. “I was just trying to add loft,” Woods said, explaining why his right hand left the club on the shot. “Just trying to get the blade working underneath the ball as fast as I possibly could.” The eagle put Woods in second behind Byrd, who widened his lead with a birdie at the 12th. But Byrd stumbled with a three-putt bogey at the 13th and a double bogey at the 14th. When Woods birdied the par-5 15th, the tournament appeared to be over. That was a deceptive cadence, though, just a momentary pause for Woods’s bogey at the par-3 16th to set up the finishing fireworks for a suitable climax. A birdie-birdie finish to win, two great iron shots following excellent tee shots and the putts to polish them off. That is the Tiger Woods that had been missing, and it is the one who goes into Bethpage State Park for the Open on a roll, the man to beat once again.

Golf
Woods Tiger
Furyk Jim
Nicklaus Jack
Letzig Michael
Wilson Mark


Sandy Alderson’s Ascension With Mets May Not Please All

Abstract: Three weeks shy of his 63rd birthday, Sandy Alderson would appear to be at the perfect stage of life for the task of running a Mets organization that has been simultaneously — and sorely — lacking in youthful discipline and adult erudition. By career standards, Alderson is old, but — unlike the Knicks’ Donnie Walsh, who is pushing 70 — not old enough to be thinking of his new general manager’s role as a last lap around the block before settling into a rocking chair. “He has a four-year contract; he’d probably like a 14-year contract,” his wife, Linda, said to the question of whether her husband was in this for the long haul. But nor is Alderson a man on the professional make. He didn’t have to take the Mets job to establish a legacy or to support his family. When he moved to New York several years ago to work for Commissioner Bud Selig, Alderson was already financially endowed enough to choose a prime slice of Manhattan real estate at 49th Street and Second Avenue. It happened by pure coincidence to be the building in which the Mets owner Fred Wilpon already had a few rooms with a view. The point is, the Mets needed Alderson a heck of a lot more than he needed them. As he said when formally presented Friday at Citi Field, he wasn’t exactly e-mailing his résumé around the major leagues and waiting breathlessly by the telephone. “This is not a job I would have taken anywhere,” he said. Alderson took it because he was intrigued by the location and the resources — at least what he imagines those Bernie Madoff-challenged resources to be — and because Selig promoted him to Wilpon for the chore of putting the Mets’ tattered house in order. And that is not only going to involve rearranging the furniture. It will also require a man with the self-assurance and leverage to deal with the hierarchal hazards that have contributed to or caused at least some of the Mets’ instability over the past decade. So the best news for the demoralized and possibly dwindling faithful is that Alderson in all likelihood will not be too preoccupied with the complicated dynamic that occurs when a father (Fred) builds a business and subsequently empowers an eager and ambitious son (Jeff) to oversee it. Alderson, a grandfather, is a Harvard-trained lawyer with a championship pedigree and an unmistakable presence when he steps into a room. If that isn’t enough to stake his claim to power, he is a former Vietnam-tested Marine whose father, John, was an Air Force pilot, who served in World War II and who, at 87, plays a mean game of softball. Somehow it is difficult to imagine Jeff Wilpon’s not thinking twice about interfering with or usurping an Alderson operation based on his birthright — or at least with Alderson being as acquiescent as Omar Minaya was for the sake of midcareer preservation. Oh, but we all had that wrong, Jeff Wilpon said, when asked Friday how his role and influence might change now that someone with Alderson’s credentials has come on board. “It hasn’t changed,” he said. “The former general manager reported to me. The new general manager will report to me. What your perception of my role is and the fans’ perception of my role is not correct.” But longtime whispers — including reports this week that Jeff wasn’t popping Champagne over Fred’s collaboration with the commissioner to move Alderson from his troubleshooting position in the Dominican Republic to the melting pot in Flushing — run contrary to the claim. It is always fascinating to watch the Wilpons, side by side, as they field reporters’ questions, awkwardly trying to strike the proper balance of organizational control. With the Yankees, George Steinbrenner was strictly a one-man show until it became an act of physical surrender to Hank and Hal. Charles Dolan handed James the keys to the Madison Square Garden kingdom and blithely left his son to make of it the mess that he has. In recent years Fred Wilpon has seemed to be the parent who preferred to stand not too far away and proudly watch his son ride his bicycle without training wheels. But Junior crashed the two-wheeler with Minaya riding on the handlebars, and Poppy had to consult with another elder, Selig, to try to make the Mets matter again. Alderson has come with a few issues of his own to address. His 1989 World Series title in Oakland and three American League pennants carry a steroid taint thanks to Jose Canseco and possibly Mark McGwire. But what baseball achievements of the performance-enhancement era do not? In addition, what kind of manager Alderson will pursue was a favored topic Friday. To the delight of those championing Wally Backman’s candidacy , he said, absolutely, he would consider someone who might turn over the buffet table now and then to get his point across to the team. The far more important matter was putting a strong man at the head of the table and giving him the organization’s blessings. Alderson can’t make the Wilpons spend money the way the Steinbrenners do. But if the former Marine turned lawyer turned baseball man has the star power to make his new bosses sign the checks and get out of the way, then he is as good a man as any for the job.

Alderson Sandy
Wilpon Fred
Wilpon Jeff
New York Mets
Baseball


Curtis Roosevelt, a White House Charmer as a Child, Dies at 86

Abstract: Curtis Roosevelt, who with his sister, Eleanor, charmed Americans in the mid-1930s as Buzzie and Sistie, the towheaded children who lived in the White House with their grandparents Franklin D. and Eleanor Roosevelt, died on Monday at his home in St.-Bonnet-du-Gard, France. He was 86. The cause was a heart attack, said his wife, Marina Roosevelt. Mr. Roosevelt was the son of Anna Roosevelt, the president’s eldest child and only daughter. He became a United Nations official and a Greenwich Village reform Democrat in a movement that challenged the entrenched party machine in New York beginning in the mid-1950s. He claimed credit for enlisting his maternal grandmother, the former first lady, early on to help lead the reform movement in New York State. “I went to her and persuaded her to get involved,” he told The New York Times in 1964. But it was as a child that he became well known. To Depression-weary Americans, he was Buzzie, the younger of the siblings who experienced what newsreels and fan magazines depicted as a fairy-tale existence frolicking at the White House. When they were not vacationing at the Roosevelt family’s estate at Hyde Park, N.Y., overlooking the Hudson River, Buzzie, Sistie and their divorced mother lived in the White House for several years. The children snuggled with the president while he interrupted a bedside conversation with Dean Acheson, then the under secretary of the Treasury, about the daily price of gold to read the funnies to them. They invited Shirley Temple over for lunch. They were treated to an impromptu concert by the contralto Marian Anderson, who sang “Comin’ Through the Rye” accompanied by their great-grandmother Sara Delano Roosevelt’s out-of-tune piano. Their grandmother Eleanor championed Anderson’s efforts to break barriers for black artists. For Christmas in 1944, Curtis Roosevelt got a large model submarine from his grandfather, a gift that had been given to the president by Charles de Gaulle, by then the head of the provisional French government during World War II. When Eleanor protested that gifts from heads of state should not be given away, the president replied that de Gaulle was “just the head of some French committee or another.” Curtis Roosevelt told The Los Angeles Times in 1994 that “when we moved into the White House, I didn’t have a feeling I was moving into some place into which we didn’t belong.” In his memoir, “Too Close to the Sun: Growing Up in the Shadow of My Grandparents, Franklin and Eleanor,” published in 2008, he added, “I found nothing out of the ordinary about an imposing house with a large, gracious staff.” In this fairy tale, though, not all the characters lived happily ever after. In his memoir, Mr. Roosevelt revealed that his mother “usually spoke about us but not to us, over our heads, as if we were not there.” The person he loved the most, he wrote, was his nursemaid. As for his grandmother Eleanor Roosevelt, he found that her charitable instincts did not necessarily begin at home. While acknowledging her “genuine desire to be of service” and “the broad concern she evinced” for other people, he wrote that “empathy eluded my grandmother when it came to family members, or anyone else for whom she felt responsibility.” The woman he called “grandmere” may have “felt strongly that too much loving attention could actually inhibit a child from achieving the independence needed as he or she matured,” Mr. Roosevelt wrote. But, he added, “This seems to me a veneer, an intellectual cover for my grandmother’s difficulty in being close to others.” Mr. Roosevelt grew up apart from his father, Curtis Bean Dall, a Wall Street broker who lost his seat on the stock exchange and much of his fortune when the market crashed in 1929. For Curtis, President Franklin D. Roosevelt, whom he called Papa, was his “father figure,” he wrote. Image Mr. Roosevelt, center, in 2005, when he met in the Netherlands with the grandsons of Stalin (left) and Churchill. Credit Ermindo Armino/Associated Press He remarked to The Los Angeles Times, “It’s amazing to see the great lengths Roosevelt went through to create the illusion he could use his legs,” which were withered from the polio he had contracted as an adult. Curtis Roosevelt survived a mild bout of polio as an adult. Curtis Roosevelt was told unequivocally, however, to forget about comparing himself with the president. “I had owned that, when I grew up, I wanted to be like Papa,” he wrote. “Mummy looked at me very seriously, as if I had said something quite rude and offensive, and then she said with finality: ‘You can never be like Papa. Who do you think you are?’” Curtis Roosevelt Dall was born in Manhattan on April 19, 1930, when Franklin Roosevelt was still governor of New York. The Dall family had moved in with Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt in their townhouse on East 65th Street after the stock market crash in 1929. Not long after Roosevelt was elected president in 1932, Curtis’s parents separated, acrimoniously, which may have been why their son was rarely called Curtis. “Even my nickname was a way to create distance from Dad,” he recalled. He and his sister lived in the White House from 1933 to 1935, until their mother, by then divorced, married John Boettiger, a reporter for The Chicago Tribune, whom she had met during the presidential campaign. The siblings were guarded by the Secret Service and were so coddled that when Buzzie went to school for the first time, he had never before unbuttoned his own shirt or flushed a toilet, according to his memoirs. The family briefly lived in Manhattan while his stepfather worked for the Motion Picture Producers and Distributors of America, the so-called Hays Office, which enforced a moral code for the movies. They left for Seattle when Mr. Boettiger was named publisher of The Post-Intelligencer there; his mother became an assistant editor. Curtis legally changed his name to Roosevelt, from Dall, when his mother divorced Mr. Boettiger to remarry again. Mr. Dall, too, remarried, as did Mr. Boettiger, who later committed suicide. In the mid-1950s, Mr. Dall became a founder of the right-wing Liberty Lobby. As Mr. Roosevelt put it, he himself “married in the family tradition — four times.” He married Marina Ayles in 1985. Besides his wife, Mr. Roosevelt is survived by a daughter, Julianna Roosevelt, from his first marriage, to Robin Edwards; his sister, Eleanor Seagraves, who had a career as an educator and librarian; a grandson; and a half brother, John Boettiger. As with Ms. Edwards, his marriages to Ruth Sublette and Jeanette Schlottmann ended in divorce. After serving in the Army and attending Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles, Mr. Roosevelt received a master’s degree from Columbia University in public law and government. Mr. Roosevelt worked in advertising and was vice president for public affairs of the New School for Social Research in New York and the United Nations chief of liaison with nongovernmental organizations. He recently completed another memoir, “Upstairs at the Roosevelts.’ In 2005, Mr. Roosevelt met with two other grandsons of the Big Three leaders of World War II, Josef Stalin of the Soviet Union and Winston Churchill of Britain. He, Winston S. Churchill and Yevgeni Dzhugashvili gathered at Maastricht in the Netherlands to review the legacy of their grandfathers’ 1945 conference at Yalta. “History had my family in its grip,” Mr. Roosevelt once said, “and I had no choice but to go along for the ride.”

Obituary
Curtis Roosevelt
Eleanor Roosevelt
Franklin Delano Roosevelt
UN


In Bid for BP’s Stake of Venture, Russia Seeks to Bolster Energy Assets

Abstract: MOSCOW — Igor I. Sechin, chief executive of Rosneft and confidant of the Russian president, Vladimir V. Putin, is the most powerful oilman you’ve never heard of. And Mr. Sechin, a former military spy who is awkward in front of cameras, long preferred it that way. But he might not be able to remain in the shadows for much longer. In recent months, Mr. Sechin has struck a series of bold deals with Western oil companies to develop Siberia and Russia’s Arctic waters, and he is on the prowl for more. The man nicknamed “The Scariest Man on Earth” because of his espionage background is now at economic conferences and visiting boardrooms in New York and Berlin as he seeks to build up Rosneft, the Russian state oil company. On Tuesday, Rosneft announced that it had begun negotiations on what would be its biggest deal ever: to buy the British oil giant BP ’s share of its Russian joint venture. BP estimates that its stake in the venture, TNK-BP , is worth about $30 billion. The deal, if consummated, would help Mr. Putin and Mr. Sechin consolidate their control over Russia’s valuable energy assets, the linchpin of the nation’s economy, at a time when the Russian industry is facing stiff challenges to finding new sources of oil to replace aging fields. It would also cement Rosneft’s position as the biggest publicly traded oil company in the world as Mr. Putin begins his third presidential term. Rosneft already claims the largest proven oil reserves of a listed company, though other, nonpublic state companies such as Saudi Aramco have far more. The company’s production of 2.4 million barrels per day now surpasses BP’s output of 2.3 million, including its portion from TNK-BP, and Exxon Mobil’s level of 2.2 million. If Rosneft acquires BP’s stake in TNK-BP, its daily output would rise to 3.3 million barrels per day — more than the country of Iraq and well ahead of other public companies. “Rosneft believes that an acquisition of BP’s interest in TNK-BP would be in the best interest of both Rosneft’s and BP’s shareholders and would lead to further development of TNK-BP,” Rosneft said in a statement. Rosneft said it approached BP only after BP had announced interest from another potential buyer in June. For its part, BP said it “welcomed today’s announcement by Rosneft of its interest in commencing negotiations.” BP is also negotiating a possible sale to its Russian partners, a group of Soviet-born billionaires that include Len Blavatnik, who lives in New York, and two Russian-based partners. But BP will be hard pressed to turn down the state company’s bid, in no small part because of the presence of Mr. Sechin, who was deputy prime minister until May. Mr. Sechin declined to be interviewed. But his recent actions seem to signal a desire on the part of the Kremlin to work with Western companies to more fully develop Russia’s oil and gas resources while also ensuring that the government retains control over the assets. For BP, the Russian joint venture has provided a gusher of cash, generating $19 billion over nearly a decade. But BP and its Russian partners have clashed repeatedly over whether and how to expand. And last year, the Russian partners, including the oligarch Mikhail Fridman, successfully blocked a separate deal that BP had struck with Rosneft to explore Russia’s Arctic waters. That maneuver embarrassed Mr. Putin, who had publicly championed the BP-Rosneft alliance. BP, oil analysts say, wants to sell its TNK-BP stake in part as a means to divorce from its partners and make a new alliance with Mr. Sechin, who is said to be an opponent of Mr. Fridman. Any sale of BP’s stake in TNK-BP is at least three months away, the period that BP must, under its shareholder agreement, negotiate on the buyout offer from its current partners. Further muddying any possible deal are allegations of fraud from a former TNK-BP employee against the company’s management, which emerged Tuesday in a London court. The former director of logistics accused one of the Russian shareholders, German Khan, who is also a manager, of funneling hundreds of millions of dollars in bribes to Russian officials in the guise of subcontracts. TNK-BP lawyers denied the allegation as wholly unsubstantiated, Bloomberg News reported. Renaissance Capital, a Russian investment bank, suggested in a research report last week that the oil sector would be partly nationalized in Mr. Putin’s third term, with state control rising to more than 50 percent from 33 percent today. The appointment of Mr. Sechin, a longtime aide to Mr. Putin, to the chief executive position at Rosneft telegraphed the government’s intentions, the report suggested. Thane Gustafson, senior director of research for Eurasia energy at IHS, said that an acquisition of TNK-BP could help Rosneft gain valuable expertise in techniques to extract oil from shale fields, which have driven a boom in American oil and gas production but have been barely tapped in Russia. Mr. Sechin, with one foot in the world of intelligence services and the other in business, is positioned like no other official in Russia to orchestrate a major overhaul of the oil industry — with Rosneft, as has so often been the case, the principal beneficiary. Mikhail B. Khodorkovsky, in an interview in 2005, blamed Mr. Sechin for his arrest and the dismantlement of his company, Yukos, and its absorption into Rosneft. “There is no question that Sechin has proven himself loyal and competent,” Mr. Gustafson said. Kremlinologists say Mr. Sechin leads a faction of former military and security service veterans known as the “siloviki,” or men of power, who are skeptical of close partnership with the United States. He has, though, negotiated deals with Western companies, including Exxon Mobil, to explore for oil in the Russian sector of the Arctic Ocean. Mr. Putin hired Mr. Sechin as an aide in his office in the St. Petersburg city administration in 1993, when Mr. Putin was a deputy mayor. The two former spies have worked together since, through a succession of jobs including at the F.S.B., the successor agency to the K.G.B., where Mr. Putin was director in the late 1990s. Over the years, Mr. Sechin has handled both delicate and personal matters for his boss. When Mr. Putin’s wife, Lyudmila, was in a car accident in 1994 and had to be taken to the hospital, she told a journalist later, she called Mr. Sechin to take care of the Putins’ daughter Katya because Mr. Putin was busy with work. Mr. Sechin is a contentious figure for foreign investors, though he is said to be far more gregarious and easygoing in private than at public functions. William F. Browder, the chief executive of Hermitage Capital and formerly the largest portfolio investor in the Russian stock market, was expelled from Russia in 2005 after advocating for greater transparency at state-controlled energy companies such as Gazprom and Surgutneftegaz. Mr. Browder blamed Mr. Sechin for arranging this expulsion by designating him a national security threat, ineligible for a visa. The purchase of the BP stake in TNK-BP would catapult Mr. Sechin, who served in the Angolan civil war in the Soviet military intelligence service, or the G.R.U., into the ranks of the most important figures in the world of oil, with a thumb on the scale of prices. Generally, Western oil companies have been eager to strike deals with him despite the unpredictable nature of dealings with the Russian government. One senior Western oil company executive, who requested anonymity to preserve business relationships with the Russians, recalled a meeting where Mr. Sechin said flatly that foreigners investing in Russian oil shouldn’t expect a game of cricket. “You have to remember, this is Russia,” he recalled Mr. Sechin telling him. “There are different rules.”

Sechin Igor I
Oil (Petroleum) and Gasoline
Rosneft
BP Plc
TNK-BP
Mergers Acquisitions and Divestitures
Russia


North Korea Says It’s Facing Its Worst Drought in a Century

Abstract: SEOUL, South Korea — North Korea is in the midst of a severe drought, its state news agency reported, raising fears of worsening food shortages in the impoverished country, where child malnutrition is a persistent problem. “The worst drought in 100 years continues in the D.P.R.K., causing great damage to its agricultural field,” the Korean Central News Agency said in a report late Tuesday, using an abbreviation for North Korea’s formal name, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea. There was no evidence that the drought was the worst in a century. But United Nations officials recently expressed growing concern about the lack of rain. In April , the United Nations called for $111 million to fund its humanitarian operations in North Korea, saying that 70 percent of the country’s 25 million people were “food insecure.” Much of the Korean Peninsula has had unusually dry weather in recent weeks, at a crucial time for rice farming when seedlings are transplanted. Rice is a staple for both Koreas. Humanitarian officials have warned that North Koreans, especially children, nursing mothers and other vulnerable people, are likely to suffer worse food shortages than in most years because of the drought. The North Korean report on Tuesday said that more than 30 percent of the country’s rice paddies were drying up. The Unification Ministry of South Korea said last week that crop production in the North could fall by 15 percent to 20 percent from last year if the drought continued into early July, depriving rice seedlings of the water they need to take root and grow. Decades of deforestation and soil erosion, as well as government mismanagement, have left North Korea particularly vulnerable to drought and floods. A famine in the late 1990s killed hundreds of thousands of people by the North Korean government’s own admission; other estimates put the death toll at up to three million. That famine set off an outflow of North Korean refugees that continues today. North Korea still faces chronic food shortages, even as it has improved its farming methods with help from international experts. The World Food Program and other agencies have called for humanitarian aid every year, noting that almost a third of North Korean children under five are stunted because of malnutrition . But donors have given less during the past decade as the North has continued its nuclear weapons program and as attention has been drawn to its human rights abuses. The North’s refusal to allow adequate monitoring of aid distribution has also put off some donors, who fear that aid would be misallocated. South Korea was once the North’s largest source of humanitarian aid, but it has cut back its support drastically since the 2010 sinking of one of its naval ships , for which the South blamed a North Korean torpedo attack.

North Korea
Drought
Korean Central News Agency
UN
Rice
Food
Shortages


‘The Jamz’ Tests the Potency of an Indie Television Launchpad

Abstract: Has indie television finally arrived? A new sitcom called “ The Jamz ” and Terence Gray are about to find out. For more than a decade, Mr. Gray has worked to establish an annual marketplace where major TV networks come to watch pilot episodes created by independent writers and producers — in other words, a small-screen version of the Sundance Film Festival . His event, called the New York Television Festival , aims to give TV aspirants a career lift while providing networks with access to fresh yet curated ideas. But the television festival, which begins its 11th run on Monday, is still waiting for its “Sex, Lies and Videotape” moment — a breakout hit, the discovery of a singular talent, a public bidding war among potential distributors. (“Sex, Lies and Videotape” put both its director, Steven Soderbergh, and Sundance on the map in 1989.) “It takes time,” Mr. Gray said. “I see an explosion of independently produced limited series.” “The Jamz” represents an effort to hurry that process along. Three years ago, two young comedy writers and performers in Chicago, Jim Kozyra and Chris Petlak, raised a few thousand dollars online for webisodes about life at a dysfunctional radio station. They put their resulting work on Vimeo and got nowhere; one episode drew 70 views. So they made a pilot for a full-fledged television series called “The Jamz” and submitted it to last year’s New York Television Festival, where it turned heads. In fact, Mr. Gray and an independent entertainment company called the Orchard decided to use “The Jamz” to try to prove that indie TV is viable. They taped four 30-minute episodes of “The Jamz” without first lining up a network home — the opposite of how the television industry typically works. Creative Artists Agency has in recent days started to shop “The Jamz” to networks. Adam Berkowitz, a senior Creative Artists agent and New York Television Festival board member, declined to discuss the early sales process except to say that there was “a definite marketplace.” Giving them confidence: ICM Partners this spring secured a two-season order from HBO for “Animals,” an independent animated series about lovelorn rats and gender-questioning pigeons. “Animals” got its start at the New York Television Festival as a pilot; the filmmaker brothers Mark and Jay Duplass then helped secure financing for full episodes, debuting them at Sundance in January and trying to lure a network buyer. Festivals have certainly helped the movie industry find unconventional gems, but an independent television boom has never materialized, in large part because series can be more difficult to size up. A film is basically a finished product, whereas a TV pilot is more of a road map for subsequent episodes. Networks, even as they struggle to find fresh programming, have not wanted to take a risk on show ideas from newcomers, preferring to rely on a tried-and-true process of developing pilots with experienced producers and established studios. Mr. Gray’s festival has so far been successful at identifying writers and producers with promise — 50 pilots will be shown at this year’s festival — and pushing networks to give them development deals or hire them to work on existing shows. “We see a major opportunity for indie television, but we are waiting to see how the rubber hits the road with ‘The Jamz,’ ” said Paul Davidson, the Orchard’s senior vice president for film and television. “Will this show resonate with buyers? Can we continue to replicate it on an annual basis?” The co-creators of “The Jamz,” Mr. Kozyra and Mr. Petlak, hope their series — they also star in it, along with the actress Kathy Najimy — might attract the likes of FX or Comedy Central. “The people at the top of the television industry are starting to realize the problem with the old model, which is that it lets a lot of talent slip through the cracks because there is restricted access,” Mr. Kozyra said.

TV
Festival
Creative Artists Agency
Comedy
Terence Gray
The Jamz


Just Another 17-Year-Old Who Has Her Own Label

Abstract: GABRIELLE ROSS may be dedicated to her music, but she’s not exactly a slick self-promoter. She was discovered, after all, on karaoke night at Broccoli Garden, a Chinese restaurant in Levittown. “I’m very into my career, but I’m also a down-to-earth girl from Long Island,” Ms. Ross, 17, who lives in Bellmore, explained before performing at a Patti LaBelle tribute in Harlem last month. “I don’t have psycho stage parents or anything like that.” What she does have is a string of accomplishments that most teenagers would trade coaching by Simon Cowell, Paula Abdul and Randy Jackson for. Last year Ms. Ross won Amateur Night at the Apollo Theater in New York, a yearlong competition in which she advanced through four levels in the adult category. And several months ago, after a producer handed a CD of Ms. Ross’s music to the composer Burt Bacharach, Mr. Bacharach handed back an original song for her to record, “Do You,” written with Carol Bayer Sager. Ms. Ross closed the show at the concert for Ms. LaBelle, held before an audience of 8,000 on a plaza next to the Adam Clayton Powell State Office Building, after performances by Doug E. Fresh and Freddie Jackson, among others. Her “Somewhere Over the Rainbow,” allowing her to channel Mariah Carey and Celine Dion, packed chair-rattling power. Planned performances include the Bellmore Family Street Festival on Sept. 29 and the Cutting Room in New York City on Oct. 2. “I don’t ever get nervous butterflies, I just get excited butterflies,” said Ms. Ross, who won the Apollo Theater contest with her rendition of “And I Am Telling You I’m Not Going,” from “Dreamgirls.” “I love getting the crowd to react. I love getting applause in the middle of a song when I hit a high note.” Big, dramatic notes may be unavoidable for an artist who counts Ms. Carey, Ms. Dion and Whitney Houston as heroines. Such moments can be found in Ms. Ross’s own pop- and rock-flavored songs; she has been writing “feelings-based, relationship-based” lyrics and music since she was 14, she said, and plans to release her debut album (not yet titled) on her own label, Family Records, later this year. Ms. Ross just graduated from Sanford H. Calhoun High School in Merrick, and, according to Ross family lore, has been singing on pitch since age 2. At 7, she started studying acting at the Stage, a school in Merrick, and at 11, she starred in “The Wizard of Oz” at the Usdan Camp for the Creative and Performing Arts in Wheatley Heights. Encouraged by her mother, Michelle Ross, to keep singing theatrical numbers, Ms. Ross gave “And I Am Telling You I’m Not Going” a whirl for a home recording. Not long after, her parents met Chris Curry, a founder of the New York City talent-coaching company So You Want to Be a Star, through a mutual friend at Broccoli Garden. “I was around 14 when my parents met Chris. They played him that recording of me, and he’s been part of our team ever since. He’s the one who advised me to try out for Amateur Night at the Apollo,” she said. Also part of Ms. Ross’s team as a consultant is Ron Alexenburg of Port Jefferson, a former president of CBS Records and Epic Records who signed Ms. LaBelle and Michael Jackson.. “He’s just like a family friend,” she said. Through Mr. Alexenburg, Ms. Ross met and wrote a few songs with the producer Ted Pearlman, who has worked with Ms. Houston and Ms. Dion. Mr. Pearlman was instrumental in getting “Do You” for Ms. Ross from Mr. Bacharach, Mr. Alexenburg said. “I took a long time to get involved with Gabrielle, because at this point in my career I have to be really dedicated. But Gabrielle has a quality in her voice — she can really sing,” Mr. Alexenburg said. “There are real feelings behind her songs. And she’s 17, but there’s no ‘spoiledness’ there whatsoever. I’m going to do everything I can to make sure she gets her dreams.”

Music
Apollo Theater
Cowell Simon
Bacharach Burt


Opposition Puts World Cup Super-Combined Event in Peril

Abstract: Men’s World Cup ski racing arrives this weekend in the snow-covered village of Chamonix, France, where fans will see the sport’s endangered species: the super-combined event. Known as the super combi, it is composed of one downhill run, usually held in the morning, followed by an afternoon slalom run. The event was introduced to the World Cup in 2006, but it might not exist beyond next season. The notion to scrap the super combined was initially raised last season but resurfaced at meetings last month at which World Cup ski racing’s governing body discussed eliminating the event over the next few years. The competition schedule for 2012-13 was released last spring, and it features only one super-combined race. The proposed calendar for next season will be confirmed this spring. Some skiers and coaches say the event offers an unfair advantage to slalom skiers, is boring to watch and diminishes the battle for the World Cup overall title, which measures a skier’s performance over the season and is the sport’s top prize. Super-combined supporters, like Ivica Kostelic, a Croatian skier who leads the men’s World Cup super-combined and overall standings, argue otherwise. They also worry that if the World Cup eliminated the event, the Olympics might follow, taking away a medal event “Nowadays, the Olympics are getting bigger and bigger and we have more and more sports,” Kostelic said. “Soon there will be medals for snowman making and snowball fights. We must fight that we don’t lose this medal at the Olympics, and that’s why we need to have combined on the World Cup.” While the event has its roots in the traditional combined, the discipline featuring one downhill and two slalom runs, the current version — one run of slalom — was designed to level the playing field among competitors. The traditional combined, with its two-run slalom leg, was said to favor slalom specialists. The newer format has done little to quell critics. The Swiss skier Didier Cuche, who leads the World Cup downhill standings and has won World Cup titles in both speed and technical disciplines but never the super-combined or overall titles, says the event should be scratched. “The super combi favors certain racers, especially the slalom guys,” he said. “If the slalom guy has the courage to go downhill and is technically good, he can win the combined.” Cuche and others contend that successful super-combined skiers need only possess the bare minimum downhill skills to win the event and, therefore, the super combined is not an accurate test of the best overall skier. The bigger consequence is that winners of super-combined events accrue points toward the World Cup overall title. Opponents say super-combined skiers unfairly earn points toward ski racing’s crowning achievement largely because of the one event most racers do not participate in. Essentially, the super combined shrinks the pool of candidates battling for the overall title by eliminating some of the world’s best skiers from the running. “I think it should go away because it would be more interesting for the overall fight,” Cuche said. Increasingly, ski racers are moving toward specialization, either racing the speed events (downhill and super-G) or the technical disciplines (giant slalom and slalom). Rare is the racer who is a master of both. “There’s only one super combined left on the proposed calendar for next year — Wengen,” Gunther Hujara, the men’s race director for the sport’s world governing body, known as FIS , said about next season’s competition in Switzerland. “But this will be difficult to keep alive. If you have no combined racers, then we have no start list.” Because of the limited fields for the event, some say that super combined is dull to watch. “In terms of excitement, a lot of coaches, athletes and I tend to be on this side — think it’s not that exciting because you have a lot of athletes who aren’t really in the game,” said Sasha Rearick, the coach of the United States men’s ski team. In 13 years on the World Cup circuit, Kostelic has never won a downhill race. But he has nine super-combined victories and one overall title. On the other hand, in 18 years of World Cup racing, Cuche, largely considered one of ski racing’s greatest competitors, has 12 downhill wins, no super-combined victories and nary an overall title. Bode Miller is the rare skier who has thrived in all events. He has earned Olympic medals, World Cup titles and victories across all disciplines — including gold in the super combined at the 2010 Vancouver Games . Rearick said, “What FIS and the I.O.C. need to work out is, in order to keep it an Olympic medal, does it have to stay in the World Cup as a full globe?” Kostelic leads the World Cup overall standings and the super combined rankings. So should he be considered the king of the ski universe? “It’s a good test,” Rearick said. “Is it the perfect test? I wouldn’t say so. I think the perfect test for the best overall skier is the overall World Cup title. It’s accumulation of points throughout a whole season, in different snow, different course sets, different hills. That’s the best test for the best skier in the world.”

World Cup (Skiing)
Cuche Didier
Kostelic Ivica
Skiing
Alpine Skiing


Thai Protesters Ending Airport Blockades

Abstract: BANGKOK — Protesters began leaving Bangkok’s international airport on Wednesday, one day after Thailand’s Constitutional Court handed them a victory by disbanding the governing party and banning the prime minister from politics. The court ruling, which bars senior members of the People Power Party from politics for five years, prompted the protesters to declare an end to their debilitating weeklong blockade of Bangkok’s two civilian airports. The protests paralyzed cargo shipments and stranded tens of thousands of foreign travelers. Leaders of the People Power Party said they would reconstitute the government under another party name, Pak Pua Thai (the Party for Thais), and would call a session of Parliament on Monday to select a new prime minister. The party’s claim on parliamentary votes was not assured, however, and the antigovernment forces celebrated the ruling. The demonstrators, largely drawn from the elite and middle-class establishment, have been protesting for three years against leadership that they said remained loyal to Thaksin Shinawatra, the prime minister ousted in a coup in September 2006. Mr. Thaksin, whose five and a half years of rule were clouded by accusations of corruption, drew his strength by empowering the rural poor, a divisive approach in a country with one of the world’s deepest divides between rich and poor. The court ruling has added momentum to the protest movement’s hopes to dilute the hinterland’s rising electoral power. At Suvarnabhumi International Airport , the reaction when the court’s ruling was announced was euphoric. Demonstrators cheered and wept with joy in a throng outside the departure area, where hundreds of people had set up camps with sleeping mats, bedrolls and even tents. “I’m extremely happy that we have won over tyranny, over the Thaksin regime, which is corrupt and dictatorial,” said Dr. Chokchuang Chutinaton, a veteran of the protest rallies. Tonkla Maksuk, 49, a volunteer nurse with the People’s Alliance for Democracy, which has led the protests, said: “I’m glad. I feel relieved. It’s like something that we have been carrying is now gone. I feel that this is still a country of laws.” It was not clear when passenger and cargo service would resume at the enormous and normally busy international airport and a smaller domestic hub, Don Muang Airport, but the damage to Thailand’s agricultural export trade and tourist industry has been deep. Tens of thousands of foreign travelers were stranded. The unanimous ruling issued by the Constitutional Court to disband the ruling party represented an expanding activist role for Thailand’s judiciary, which has in effect been a political player since early 2006. The easing of the national crisis came three days before the 81st birthday of Thailand’s venerated monarch, King Bhumibol Adulyadej, an occasion on which he is expected to make his annual address to the nation. Despite the ruling, the threat of violence continued, with fears building of a possible backlash by government supporters. For the most part, the protests have proceeded peacefully, but an explosion at Don Muang early Tuesday killed one protester. The ruling disbanded not only the governing People Power Party but also two smaller coalition parties; the court found that they had committed fraud during the elections last December that brought them to power. It forced out Prime Minister Somchai Wongsawat , a brother-in-law of Mr. Thaksin’s. “It is not a problem,” said Mr. Somchai, an unassuming former judge who had seemed overwhelmed by the pressures of the job. “I was not working for myself. Now I will be a full-time citizen.” He spoke to reporters in the northern city of Chiang Mai, where he had conducted government business since returning from an overseas trip last Wednesday. He had been forced to move from Don Muang Airport , where the government had based itself after protesters surrounded the prime minister’s office in August. Under the court ruling, Mr. Somchai and 59 executives of the three parties are banned from politics for five years. Twenty-four of the banned executives are members of Parliament and will have to resign their seats. Officials from Mr. Somchai’s party said they would reassemble in a new political party, Pak Pua Thai (the Party for Thais), and would call a session of Parliament on Monday to select a new prime minister. Until a new government is formed, Deputy Prime Minister Chawarat Chanweerakun is to act as interim prime minister. The activist role of the courts in politics can be traced partly to a rare speech by the king to judges in April 2006. He called the political situation at the time “a mess” and said, “You’d better discuss with others what solutions are available; otherwise the country will be in jeopardy.” In May 2007, the Constitutional Court banned Mr. Thaksin and 110 other senior party leaders from participating in politics for five years, for election fraud. The court also forced the dissolution of Thai Rak Thai, the predecessor party to the party disbanded Tuesday. In September this year, Mr. Somchai’s predecessor, Samak Sundaravej, was forced out after less than eight months in office when the court ruled that he had unlawfully accepted payments to appear on television cooking shows while prime minister.

Bangkok (Thailand)
Demonstrations and Riots
Airlines and Airplanes
Airports
Politics and Government
Thailand
Somchai Wongsawat
People Power Party


As ISIS Loosens Grip, U.S. and Iraq Prepare for Grinding Insurgency

Abstract: BAGHDAD — The Islamic State’s latest suicide attack in Baghdad, which killed nearly 330 people, foreshadows a long and bloody insurgency, according to American diplomats and commanders, as the group reverts to its guerrilla roots because its territory is shrinking in Iraq and Syria. Already, officials say, many Islamic State fighters who lost battles in Falluja and Ramadi have blended back into the largely Sunni civilian populations there, and are biding their time to conduct future terrorist attacks. And with few signs that the beleaguered Iraqi prime minister, Haider al-Abadi, can effectively forge an inclusive partnership with Sunnis, many senior American officials warn that a military victory in the last urban stronghold of Mosul, which they hope will be achieved by the end of the year, will not be sufficient to stave off a lethal insurgency. “To defeat an insurgency, Iraq would need to move forward on its political and economic reform agenda,” Lt. Gen. Sean B. MacFarland, the top American commander in Iraq, said in an email. A return to guerrilla warfare in Iraq, while the United States and its allies still combat the Islamic State in Syria, would pose one of the first major challenges to the next American president, who will take office in January. American public opinion has so far supported President Obama’s deployment of roughly 5,000 troops to help Iraq reclaim territory it lost to the Islamic State in 2014, but it is not clear whether political support would dissipate in a sustained effort to fight insurgents. For American diplomats and commanders, the specter of an insurgency resurrects some of the most bitter memories from the United States’ involvement in Iraq over the past 13 years. Officials voice concern about how that type of mayhem — which was led by an earlier iteration of the Islamic State and nearly crippled the Iraqi government when the United States had more than 100,000 troops in the country — could affect the stability of Iraq and the broader campaign to defeat the Islamic State, also known as ISIS or ISIL. In a recent visit to Iraq, Defense Secretary Ashton B. Carter acknowledged these looming challenges, noting that toppling the Islamic State in urban centers like Mosul “won’t establish control over the entirety of the territory,” and that the militants would “try to terrorize the population.” The Islamic State is increasingly fighting less like a conventional army than “a more terrorist-type force,” Gen. Joseph L. Votel, the commander of American forces in the Middle East, said last week. On the battlefield, the Islamic State has redoubled its use of suicide bombers and ambushes to attack Iraqi security forces. Despite losing about half the territory it seized in Iraq, it carried out the suicide attack in Baghdad this month, one of the deadliest bombings in Iraqi history. “When ISIS’s army is defeated in Mosul and elsewhere in Iraq, there will still be ISIS terrorist cells that will attempt to continue to carry out the kind of terrorist attacks we have seen in Baghdad and elsewhere in recent months,” Gen. David H. Petraeus, the former top American commander in Iraq, said in an email. Senior Iraqi officials agree. “Absolutely, Daesh will remain a potential threat to Iraq,” the country’s foreign minister, Ibrahim al-Jaafari, told reporters in Washington last week, using an Arabic term for the group. American military officials in Baghdad said that they had not seen the Islamic State mass more than 100 troops on the battlefield since December, when a group of several hundred attacked a base in northern Iraq. “We have seen more and more of their guys with vests on trying to run into Iraqi Army headquarters buildings or in the middle of a fight into a big group of soldiers,” said Col. Christopher Garver, the military spokesman in Iraq. Image Remnants of an Islamic State suicide bombing in Baghdad this month that killed nearly 330 people. It was the deadliest attack in Iraq since at least 2009. Credit Hadi Mizban/Associated Press After losing battles to the Iraqis, some Islamic State fighters have tried to blend back into groups of civilians who have fled the violence, according to Iraqi commanders. “We have hurt ISIS’ morale, but nobody can deny that ISIS still has its sleeper cells, and we expect anything from it,” said Lt. Gen. Abdul Wahab al-Saidi, the commander of Iraqi operations in Falluja. “A number of ISIS fighters were found among the displaced people in Falluja, and one of them even blew himself up,” he said. “They are criminal, and we must expect anything from the criminals because they would do anything.” The United States and other countries in the coalition countering the Islamic State are adopting a series of measures that they believe will help the Iraqis defeat the remnants of the group in the coming months. In recent weeks, specially trained American explosives experts, including a three-star Army general, and new bomb-detection devices have been sent to Baghdad to help stem suicide and car-bomb attacks. The Danes, who are part of the coalition, have begun training border patrol agents. The first class of 300 Iraqi border patrol agents completed a four-week training course on Wednesday, Colonel Garver said. The plan is to train five more similarly sized classes and use them to patrol the border with Jordan and Syria. The American-led coalition has focused intensely for months on the military campaign to retake Mosul — a dauntingly complex task. But the dozens of defense and foreign ministers meeting in Washington last week were equally concerned with the aftermath of the fight for Mosul and the city’s security, reconstruction and governance. Western and Iraqi officials are preparing plans to address the humanitarian needs of hundreds of thousands of Iraqi civilians displaced by the violence, and the importance of restoring local government in Mosul and other areas controlled by the Islamic State for the past two years. “The local governance plan has to be ready to go,” said Brett McGurk, Mr. Obama’s special envoy for combating the Islamic State. Even if the operations to take Mosul are ahead of schedule, there will almost certainly be a new American president in office by the time that operation is complete. And although it is not clear how committed that administration will be to the fight in Iraq, American commanders are planning for an enduring presence of forces to help the Iraqis. “After the defeat of ISIL in Iraq, the U.S. and our partners will need to retain a presence there that can help the Iraqis secure their borders and hunt the terrorist threats within them,” General MacFarland said.

Terrorism
ISIS,ISIL,Islamic State
Iraq
Syria
US Military
Barack Obama
Baghdad
Fallujah
Mosul
Islam


Sprint Nextel Is Said to Seek a New Chief

Abstract: Sprint Nextel’s board is seeking a new chief executive to burnish the company’s fortunes both on Wall Street and with investors who have grown increasingly impatient with the company’s less-than-stellar performance, according to people apprised of the executive search. Gary D. Forsee, Sprint ’s chief executive who oversaw the company’s merger with Nextel Communications in 2005, has been under pressure from the board to improve the company’s profitability. Analysts have noted that the benefits of the merger have been meager. In August, the company, based in Reston, Va., announced a sharp decline in second-quarter profit despite adding new subscribers. Its rivals added subscribers at a faster pace. Sprint’s stock price has been in decline, down 17.7 percent from its 52-week high to its close yesterday of $19.28. A spokesman for Sprint Nextel declined to comment. But according to people with knowledge of the search, who requested anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss it, the board stepped up its efforts to find a successor to Mr. Forsee after the company was unsuccessful in finding a replacement for Len J. Lauer, the company’s former chief operating officer. At the time of Mr. Lauer’s departure in August 2006, Sprint said he had left because of a change in the company’s organizational structure and that he would not be replaced. Sprint has in recent months tried to find a replacement for Mr. Lauer, but no candidates were interested, said several people in the executive search industry. At the time of Mr. Lauer’s departure, communications industry analysts said the well-regarded executive had left because of Sprint’s weak performance. It was not the only executive shake-up at the company. Last year, Timothy M. Donahue, Sprint’s former executive chairman, said he would resign earlier than expected to spend more time with his family. The board hopes to replace Mr. Forsee by December, but there were no internal candidates, said the people briefed on the search. Instead the board is looking for a candidate with a sales and marketing background who can help Sprint improve its image. Sprint, one of the nation’s largest communications companies, has lost ground in recent years to AT&T and Verizon Wireless, which have aggressively sought new customers. Shareholders have expressed their discontent, among them Ralph W. Whitworth, a founder of Relational Investors. The firm, based in San Diego, owns about 1.9 percent of Sprint’s shares. Mr. Whitworth has said that he was dissatisfied with how Mr. Forsee has managed the company. The real issue though, analysts have said, is that Sprint has not performed well since its 2005 merger with Nextel Communications. The Sprint and Nextel networks operated on different wireless technologies, which made it harder to merge operations. The company has been hurt, according to analysts, by its lack of attractive handsets as well as by accepting too many customers with weak credit. It has also suffered because of a high customer turnover rate, although the percentage of customers who switched to rival services decreased in August. Mr. Forsee has sought to improve the Sprint network as well as offer new services to customers, including a high-speed wireless network using new Wi-Max technology. Some in the industry has suggested that Sprint could be an acquisition target, although any merger with rivals would be critically reviewed because of antitrust concerns. The Wall Street Journal first reported on the search yesterday afternoon in an online report.

Sprint Nextel Corporation
Appointments and Executive Changes
Forsee Gary D
Cellular Telephones
Wireless Communications


Rodriguez to Have Hip Surgery on Monday

Abstract: TAMPA , Fla. — Alex Rodriguez of the Yankees will undergo surgery Monday in Vail , Colo., to repair part of the damage in his right hip and will miss six to nine weeks of play, his doctor and the team announced on Sunday. The procedure will correct a torn labrum and will address some of the underlying bone irregularity in the hip, Dr. Marc Philippon said in a conference call, but Rodriguez will probably need more extensive surgery after the season. Under the best-case scenario, that would mean that Rodriguez could return to the Yankees by early May and miss about a month of the six-month season. The option chosen on Sunday is the middle alternative that was discussed over the weekend by Rodriguez, the team and the doctor. At first, the Yankees and Rodriguez hoped he could start the season following the draining last week of a cyst caused by a torn labrum. But that option quickly was dismissed. The most aggressive correction would have been to undergo more extensive surgery to correct the underlying cause of the problem, but that likely would have kept Rodriguez idle for 12 to 16 weeks, Dr. Philippon said. Rodriguez will remain in Vail for rehabilitation, Dr. Philippon said, and there is a good chance that he could play much of the 2009 season without further problems. “We’re trying to return him rapidly to his high-level function,” Dr. Philippon said. “I firmly believe this approach will be successful.” Rodriguez, a slugging third baseman, is considered one of baseball’s best hitters and is one of the sport’s most controversial players. Last month, Rodriguez admitted to using performance-enhancing substances from 2001 to 2003 when he played for Texas . Those substances were not believed to be the cause of his current condition. Rodriguez had planned to play for the Dominican Republic in the World Baseball Classic but left that training camp last week to be examined for his hip discomfort. Brian Cashman , the general manager of the Yankees, said Sunday’s decision was “not only a legitimate option but the best option.” Rodriguez was not available for comment. Dr. Philippon said he was “almost 100 percent sure” that Rodriguez will need another surgery after the season.

Alex Rodriguez
Yankees
Hip
Surgery
Baseball


Djokovic Marries Longtime Girlfriend

Abstract: Four days after winning Wimbledon, Novak Djokovic married his longtime girlfriend, Jelena Ristic, in a private ceremony in Montenegro. Djokovic and Ristic, who met in high school, have been together for eight years and are expecting their first child this year.