Muddling the Legacy of Thatcher

Abstract: LONDON — In the deluge of conflicting passions that surrounded the funeral of Margaret Thatcher last week, a little-noticed news item said something about her legacy and something more about the soul of the land she divided in death almost as much as in life. The story was this: Prime Minister David Cameron faced a rebellion within his Conservative Party against a proposal to ease restrictions on the scale of extensions that may be built without official permission in back of the homes that the English are said to regard as their castles. In the annals of urban planning, that might seem a pretty mundane footnote. But not here. This is a land with finely-honed Nimby — “not in my backyard” — reflexes, where planners spend months, or years, seeking to overcome objections to all manner of new development by those living nearby: The new structure will block “ancient light”; it will strain amenities; overload parking facilities; change a neighborhood’s character; obstruct the prospect of a church spire. But the new measure threatened to make matters worse, augmenting Nimbyism with a newer sense of “Imbyism” — an explosion of unregulated “in my backyard” building that, as one of the Conservative rebels, Zac Goldsmith, put it, “will guarantee disputes” across the garden fence as grumpy neighbors, shorn of the power to object, contemplate new edifices jutting up to 26 feet, or about 8 meters, into the next-door yard, twice the current permissible size. “This does nothing to foster warm and tingly feelings about new developments in a community,” the blogger Isabel Hardman wrote for the conservative Spectator weekly. In turn, such disputes could amplify the chronicles of what headline writers call neighbors from hell, often on public housing projects, where loud, drunken, mean and malevolent tenants are often depicted in tabloid accounts as tormenting and intimidating quieter folks with late-night parties, loud music, serial telephone calls and more. One man was recently accused of programming his radio to switch on and off throughout the night to bombard neighbors with white noise. Stories relating to the matter slipped through neighbors’ front-door mailboxes do not bear repeating in polite society. Indeed, earlier examples of changes to the garden chic of British suburbia have brought their predictable crop of scandals. According to a recent survey by a leading insurance company, the number of British homes boasting hot tubs in the yard has risen in recent years from practically 0 to as many as 1 in 10 or 20. Reports have accumulated of misbehavior in those same tubs, witnessed by affronted but nonetheless eagle-eyed neighbors — an extreme example, perhaps, of Imbyism on both sides of the garden fence. Mrs. Thatcher’s role in all this is tangential. As her ceremonial funeral unfolded in London last week, residents of one Yorkshire mining village burned her in effigy, blaming her for crushing blue-collar labor union power and ruining job prospects for future working-class generations, even as others benefited from her radical rewriting of the British social contract. One of her grass-roots changes, in fact, was to permit tenants in social housing to purchase their homes, greatly expanding private ownership and, in part, helping fuel a boom in house prices as credit became ever cheaper — under successive Labour governments — until the bubble burst with the financial crisis of 2008. For those homeowners, though, and for the newly empowered middle class that Mrs. Thatcher sought to nurture, the dream has contracted. Quite apart from the government’s austere response to its debt-fueled budgetary woes, housing — public and private — is now in short supply. State welfare benefits to tenants in public housing are being cut. The soaring cost of private rentals has far outstripped salaries. Tight credit makes it difficult for first-time buyers to purchase houses and apartments. “Why is it that the middle classes feel so threatened? Why have their homes and way of life and retirements become virtually unaffordable?” David Boyle, an economist, wrote in The Sunday Times of London. “Why are we wondering again whether the distinctive lifestyles of the English middle classes can survive?” The government’s program to ease planning restrictions was designed as a small part of the answer. But, as opposition to the project mounted within the coalition government, the minister in charge of it, Eric Pickles, retreated, offering citizens a potential veto on their neighbors’ building plans, drawing battle lines between Nimbyists and Imbyists. As much as the housing crisis itself, the government’s retreat showed just how much Britain has changed since Mrs. Thatcher’s era and how much her Conservative heirs are struggling to rekindle the clarity of vision that suffused her 11 years in power. “The ceremony that hushed central London” during her funeral, the columnist Jonathan Freedland wrote in the liberal Guardian newspaper, “was a farewell to Margaret Thatcher — but also to the 1980s.” “Maggie is out for ever now, her era gone with her.”

Margaret H Thatcher
Great Britain
Labour Party Great Britain
David Cameron


Carmelo Anthony’s Shot Hits Air, and Knicks’ Chances Evaporate

Abstract: INDIANAPOLIS — A cold rain was falling outside Bankers Life Fieldhouse on Wednesday morning when the Knicks arrived for their shootaround. Carmelo Anthony opened a door, ducked his head inside the arena and then shuffled across the court in socks. Some teammates were quietly warming up. Anthony eventually retrieved his sneakers. It was a muted scene on a raw day, and one that seemed fitting for a team in decline. The Knicks are desperate these days — desperate for chemistry, desperate for positive feelings, desperate for some wins at the end of a dismal month. “We have to want this,” Anthony said. About 11 hours later, as if to punctuate one of his worst games of the season, Anthony launched an air ball as time ran out on the Knicks’ 108-105 loss to the Indiana Pacers. With their season beginning to spiral down the drain, the Knicks revealed some toughness, some chemistry and even some competence. But another opportunity slipped away, and Anthony — after shooting 5 of 20 from the field, after being whistled for a late technical foul, after failing in his attempt to send the game to overtime — took the blame. “Everybody fought out there tonight,” Anthony said. “Me, on the other hand — it was just a tough night for me. I don’t think I have any excuses for that.” Moral victories mean little to the Knicks (24-35) at this late stage of the season, and they could not compensate for a poor effort by Anthony, who finished with 14 points. Others tried to provide help. Kristaps Porzingis scored 22 points, Jose Calderon had 20, and Kyle O’Quinn added 19 off the bench. “It’s always easier when everybody’s involved,” Calderon said. But amid so much chatter about the playoffs and so many pledges about improving their communication, the Knicks, losers of 13 of their last 15 games, are quickly emptying their supply of time and hope. Paul George scored 25 of his 27 points in the second half to lead the Pacers (31-26), who outscored the Knicks by 48-22 in the paint — a growing trend for the Knicks. Kurt Rambis, the Knicks’ interim coach, was more concerned with his team’s 14 turnovers. “If we could have taken care of the ball, despite everything else that happened in the ballgame, we would’ve given ourselves a much better chance,” he said. Rambis said he had tried to find favorable matchups for Anthony by playing him more at power forward rather than have him deal with George — a quicker, more athletic forward. But there was a physical cost, Rambis said, as Anthony spent much of the evening grappling with the 6-foot-11 Myles Turner. “You end up wrestling a much bigger guy,” Rambis said, “and sometimes that can wear you out.” The Knicks moved the ball against the Pacers. They went up by 5 points early in the fourth quarter before George went to work, hitting midrange jumpers and earning trips to the foul line. His 3-pointer gave the Pacers a 102-99 lead. Anthony was whistled for a technical foul with less than two minutes remaining after he threw an elbow at Turner. George made the free throw and then sank a baseline jumper to push the lead to 6. “We got tangled up a little bit,” Anthony said when asked about the play that resulted in the technical. The Knicks responded with back-to-back baskets from Calderon and Anthony, cutting the lead to 2 with 29.6 seconds left. The Knicks had an opportunity after the Pacers’ Monta Ellis misfired on a 16-foot jumper, but Porzingis launched a 3-point attempt that bounded off the back of the rim with 3.9 seconds remaining. “It felt good when I released it,” Porzingis said. “It feels terrible knowing how hard we worked to get to that spot.” After Turner went 1 of 2 from the free-throw line, Anthony got one final look — but his heave sailed long. It has been a tough stretch for Anthony. On Monday, he showed his frustration by leaving Madison Square Garden just minutes after a blowout loss to the Toronto Raptors. (He is usually among the last players to leave.) On Tuesday, he declined to speak with reporters after practice. Before Wednesday’s game, he addressed his recent behavior. “It hits you sometimes, and you don’t know how to react to it,” Anthony said. “The best thing to do is get yourself away from it for a little bit, step out of it and relax, decompress and remove yourself and look at it from the outside looking in sometimes.” As for his relationship with Phil Jackson, the team president, and the strategy for the future, Anthony said: “I’ll have my opportunity to talk to him. I don’t think that’s the way to go at this point. It’s about winning games at this point. But I’ll have my opportunity to talk to Phil about that.” REBOUNDS Jimmer Fredette, the 6-foot-2 guard who signed a 10-day contract with the Knicks on Monday, did not play. Kurt Rambis, the team’s interim coach, indicated that Fredette had not done enough at Tuesday’s practice — which Rambis described as a “rough, aggressive, defensive practice” — to distinguish himself and potentially work himself into the rotation.

Basketball
Carmelo Anthony
Knicks
Pacers


Developing a Taste for Human Blood

Abstract: Domestic mosquitoes love human blood, but that is an evolutionary adaptation: At one time they actually preferred furrier animals. What accounts for the change in taste? A new study in Nature suggests that the culprit may be an odor receptor called Or4. Carolyn McBride, an evolutionary biologist at Princeton who led the research, said that to study the insects’ evolution, her team conducted an elaborate experiment using domestic mosquitoes and a wild species still found in sub-Saharan Africa. They confirmed the mosquitoes’ odor preferences by exposing them to pantyhose that had either been worn on a person’s arm or wrapped around a guinea pig for 24 hours. Then they crossbred thousands of wild and domestic mosquitoes and analyzed the genes on the antennas of the grandchildren. One gene, for the odor receptor Or4, stood out in the hybrid mosquitoes. Then the researchers transferred Or4 into smell neurons of a living fly and exposed it to different chemicals that make up human body odor. The fly responded strongly to one chemical in particular, known as sulcatone. “It smells a little fruity,” Dr. McBride said. “And it’s present in unusually high levels in humans.” Guinea pigs do not carry sulcatone, and when the researchers tested cows, sheep, chickens and horses, they found very low levels of the chemical or none at all. Levels can also vary in humans, said Dr. McBride, who worked on the study while at Rockefeller University. “It’s possible that plays a role in whether individual humans are more or less attractive to mosquitoes,” she said.

Mosquito
Nature Journal
Evolution
Blood
Livestock


Cuba-Florida Swimming Quest Ends

Abstract: Penny Palfrey, 49, abandoned a quest to become the first woman to swim unaided from Cuba to the Florida Keys, unable to close the gap on the last 26 miles of more than 100. Her support team said the Florida Straits’ tricky currents pushed her too far east. She was hospitalized, receiving intravenous drips and pain medication.


A Chiseled Bodybuilder, Frail Clients and a Fitness Story for the Ages

Abstract: With his enormous muscles bulging beneath a small T-shirt, Martin Luther King Addo guided one of his most dedicated clients through a squat exercise inside his tiny Manhattan gym. “You can do it, Shirley,” he said. Shirley Friedman, a silver-haired 90-year-old standing 4 feet 9 inches, shifted into another gear, bending at the knees for multiple repetitions. “I never did this stuff before, but he gives you the confidence that you can do it, if you’re up to it,” Mrs. Friedman said afterward. “He’s not a phony. Got me?” Mr. Addo, who honed his muscles using a mango tree as a pull-up bar and concrete blocks for dumbbells, is a two-time former winner of the Mr. Ghana bodybuilding championship. Years ago, his chiseled physique, bowling ball biceps and camera-ready smile brought him fame across his homeland in West Africa. Today Mr. Addo uses his imposing muscles and hard-won expertise to help frail seniors like Mrs. Friedman restore their balance, mobility and strength. He works out of a storefront gym that he opened last summer inside Southbridge Towers, a housing development in Lower Manhattan that is home to many older adults. The walls are decorated with posters of Mr. Addo shirtless and flexing. “Ask me how to build a Rock Solid foundation,” says one that features him in nothing but tiny yellow trunks. On a recent afternoon, Mary Killoran, 86, was willing herself through a kettlebell dead lift. Mrs. Killoran, a retired medical transcriber, has lived alone since 1971 in an apartment overlooking the East River. A few years ago she suffered a bad fall and began using a walker. Mr. Addo, 44, taught her exercises like balance lunges and stretching techniques. Gradually, she regained her balance and traded the walker for a cane. Now, she drinks a protein shake each morning and strolls to the World Trade Center and back — twice a day. She works out about three times a week, but stops by the gym even on off days to visit Mr. Addo. He helps her “be more cheerful, so you don’t have to be depressed,” she said. Mr. Addo, too, says the seniors energize him. Raised within the Ashanti tribe, Mr. Addo was always taught that improving the lives of one’s elders is of the highest virtue. “They remind me of my grandmothers and aunties back home,” he said. Mr. Addo’s life changed when he was a teenager in the mid-1980s and first saw “Commando,” starring Arnold Schwarzenegger. He was living with his grandmother in the village of Asafo, in Ghana’s western countryside, and he watched, spellbound, as Mr. Schwarzenegger pushed Chevrolets around and hauled tree trunks on his shoulder. Mr. Addo decided at that moment to pattern his life after Mr. Schwarzenegger’s. He studied American muscle magazines and built a gym in his aunt’s backyard. By age 24, Mr. Addo was enormous, an Ashanti He-Man doll come to life, and he knew he “finally had the muscle” to enter bodybuilding competitions. In 1995 and 1996, he won the Mr. Ghana title and became a national celebrity, starring in television commercials. He flexed his muscles whenever he was in a crowd, making girls giggle, said Samuel Kissiedu, a former sports reporter in Ghana. “Everybody talked about his strength, his power,” Mr. Kissiedu said. Video When a former champion bodybuilder from Ghana opened a small gym in an affordable housing development in lower Manhattan, 90-year-old Shirley Friedman became a dedicated client. Credit Credit Chang W. Lee/The New York Times But Mr. Addo’s dream was to live in America — “the land of gold and great opportunity,” as he put it — and follow in Mr. Schwarzenegger’s footsteps. In 1999, Mr. Addo arrived in New York City. He became certified as a personal trainer and worked in clubs like Equinox and Gold’s Gym. All along, his goal was to open his own club, said Camille Agro, a former client at Dolphin Fitness who befriended Addo. Ms. Agro lived in Southbridge Towers, a middle-income cooperative that offered free yoga and knitting classes. Mr. Addo started teaching a weekly fitness class there, and it became popular, especially among older women. (A one-hour personal training session costs $60, and monthly memberships are $30.) A few years ago, an 850-square-foot storefront by the main courtyard became available, and Mr. Addo jumped to claim it. He announced the club’s grand opening on a Facebook page he created. “Glory be to God!!” he wrote. Mr. Addo hung up plaques of his bodybuilding achievements and a signed, framed photo of Mr. Schwarzenegger as governor wearing a suit and tie. The gym quickly “became like a little home” to Mr. Addo, Ms. Agro said. Mr. Addo sees his work as more than just improving older people’s fitness. He set up a computer for them to use, and organized a holiday party and a trip to a Ghanaian restaurant in Brooklyn. Mr. Addo’s clients vary in age and shape, but they skew older and female. There’s Elizabeth Birnbaum, 72, a retired librarian, who loves Mr. Addo’s inspirational speeches on the connection between physical and mental health. There’s Diane Harris Brown, 66, who attends his Monday classes and has Parkinson’s disease. And there’s Carmen de Lemos-Chiarandini, 77, a former associate research professor and scientist, who had fallen three times in two months before she came to Mr. Addo. Two months later, after working on her balance and posture, she was able to rise from her chair without using her hands. She has not fallen since. But Mrs. Friedman might be his most loyal client. She has private training sessions twice a week, attends a suspension training class, and, she said proudly, “I also do the boot camp.” She lives by herself in a one-bedroom apartment around the corner from the gym. A native of Brooklyn, she worked as a medical technologist at a Manhattan hospital and moved into Southbridge Towers when it opened in the early 1970s. She has had trouble lifting her shoulder since a mugging two decades ago, when a man ripped her purse from her shoulder, damaging her rotator cuff. (She said she chased the assailant into the subway; a city worker later returned her purse, and Mrs. Friedman mailed him a reward check.) She thought she was “too old” to work out. But Mr. Addo made her comfortable, and after a few months of stretching, massage treatments and suspension training, her shoulder’s range of motion had improved remarkably, she said. On Mrs. Friedman’s 90th birthday in March, Mr. Addo ended class early for a party. About 25 people, including many women of Mrs. Friedman’s generation, gathered as Mrs. Friedman beamed and blew out the candles on a cake provided by Mr. Addo. Eventually, Mr. Addo wants to open more fitness studios and go into acting, like Mr. Schwarzenegger. Lately, there has been a buzz in the gym about his arms, which have grown from very large to simply colossal. He recently confirmed that he is training for the National Amateur Bodybuilders Association’s Mr. Universe contest next year. Pete Molinelli, a court officer who lives in Southbridge Towers, said that the building’s seniors used to be “just kind of shut in.” And then Mr. Addo arrived. “All of a sudden, it’s like there are all these new people in the neighborhood,” Mr. Molinelli said. “But no, they’ve been here forever. Addo brought them out.”

Health clubs,gyms,fitness centers
Old age,elderly,senior citizens
Ghana
Exercise,Fitness
Shirley Friedman
Martin Luther King Addo
Manhattan
Bodybuilding


Bank Takes Environmental Step Into Rural Town

Abstract: METTAWA, Ill. — HSBC , the giant London-based bank, has moved its North American headquarters to a sprawling facility that it bills as carbon neutral in this hamlet about 30 miles north of Chicago. The 560,000-square-foot building, a five-story, H-shaped structure, was developed for more than $100 million on 29 acres with easy access to Interstate 94, between Chicago and Milwaukee. HSBC North America Holdings, one of the 10 largest financial services companies in the United States, selected Mettawa from a list of 50 possible sites in the Chicago area, said Mike Brown, senior vice president for corporate real estate. “We had overgrown our former headquarters in Prospects Heights,” 11 miles to the south, “which we occupied since 1979,” he said. The new headquarters will enable HSBC North America to bring 3,000 employees under one roof in a relocation that is expected to be completed this month. They had been scattered among six sites in the Chicago area. The interior of the new building has many striking features. The amenities include a health club; a nondenominational prayer room; and nearly 80 meeting rooms, each with a spectacular photograph creating a geographic theme, and all equipped for teleconferences with offices around the world. Emergency medical care, dry cleaning and banking services are also offered. The bank, with the assistance of the developer and architect, is seeking gold certification from the United States Green Building Council for the building’s environmental initiatives. These include collecting roof water for flushing toilets; using Prairie-style, drought-resistant landscaping to reduce the need for watering; and relying on light-guided window treatments, which track the sun’s position to trim the need for heating and air-conditioning. In addition, parts of the roof are planted with vegetation, and all of the electricity used in the building is bought from renewable or non-carbon-emitting resources, including wind farms. To reduce waste, paper cups and plates are not allowed in the cafeteria, except at the Starbucks stand. Employees who drive fuel-efficient vehicles are given preferred parking. Mettawa, once predominantly a horse farm, was chosen in part because of its open space and rural setting. The village, with only 500 people and an area of about five square miles, is so small that it does not have a village hall; officials meet in the St. Basil of Ostrog Serbian Orthodox Church. Mettawa’s operating budget is less than $1 million, mostly from building permits and sales taxes from the CDW Corporation and an Interstate 94 rest stop. The recent opening of two hotels is expected to raise the town’s revenue. “Whatever surplus we have, we set aside to purchase land to preserve green space,” said the mayor, Barry L. MacLean. The sprawling, steel-glass HSBC complex with composite granite facing was built to the bank’s specifications by Hamilton Partners, a developer based in Itasca, Ill., which owns and manages 12 million square feet of office buildings, mostly in the Chicago area, but also in Denver and Salt Lake City. Construction on the headquarters began in April 2006. But HSBC, which signed a 13-year lease with Hamilton, will soon have the Swiss bank UBS as its landlord. The property has been under contract to be purchased by UBS Realty Investors, with closing set for July 10, according to Michael Rolfs, a partner at Hamilton. The UBS unit confirmed the pending purchase but declined to give the price. Under its lease with Hamilton, HSBC has the option to renew the lease, for two five-year terms. Mr. Brown of HSBC said that the terms of the lease would continue unchanged after the sale. Hamilton, which once owned 90 acres in Mettawa, also built the 160,000-square-foot CDW building in 2000, Mr. Rolfs said. It later sold it to a group of private investors. It also sold six acres to White Lodging of Merrillville, Ind., which built the 130-room Marriott Residence Inn and the 170-room Hilton Garden Inn here. The hotels, the village’s first, opened in May. The HSBC building is guarded by two bronze lions, each weighing 2,250 pounds. They are reproductions of a pair that has stood outside the HSBC branch in Hong Kong since 1935. The company traces its beginning to the Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Corporation, which was established in 1865 to finance the growing trade between China and Europe, principally England. The parent company has offices in 83 countries and 10,000 branches. Stephen Wright, president of Wright Heerema Architects of Chicago and the principal designer, said his design team used the Green Building Council’s LEED rating system as a guideline for sustainability. LEED stands for leadership in energy, environmental design. “The unique shape and orientation of the building, for instance, is an outgrowth of our goal to maximize southern exposure and minimize the east and west exposure,” Mr. Wright said. “We want to control the sun.” Mr. Wright was one of the architects who designed the previous headquarters. “We didn’t have the technology then as what we have now,” he said. The technology gives HSBC employees the ability to individually adjust the air flow under their feet. Such features, he said, enhance productivity. HSBC also has a policy allowing its employees to work as many as two days a week at home to enable them to save time and money on commuting. Nearly 20 percent of the workers sometimes work at home. To try to achieve the company’s goal of reducing waste by 85 percent, employees, from the chief executive on down, are required to empty the trash totes that hang under each desk after work. In addition, glass, plastic and aluminum are deposited in separate receptacles for recycling. Printers are programmed to print on both sides of the paper. Instead of working at night, cleaning crews are scheduled to work during the day to cut down on lighting costs. It is not only the rules for workers in the building that make it stand out. Mr. Wright, who has been an architect for 35 years, said the HSBC structure raised the bar for green and smart buildings. “This is the most sophisticated environmentally sensitive building we’ve ever designed,” he said.

Office Buildings and Commercial Properties


On Rodeo Drive, Tourists Outnumber Christmas Shoppers

Abstract: BEVERLY HILLS, Calif. — There they were, a gaggle of contestants from the National American Miss pageant and their mothers, scrambling in front of the fountain at the foot of Via Rodeo, the entrance to one of the grandest stretches of shopping in the nation: Rodeo Drive. They were splashing by the fountain, exchanging cameras for group pictures and admiring the grand stairway leading onto a plaza, the holiday decorations, the other people — doing everything, in fact, but shopping. “Not even thinking about it,” Lara Ricks said as her daughter, Emery, jumped on the lip of the fountain. “I don’t have enough money,” Ms. Ricks, who is from Sacramento, added as Emery and the other contestants, who had filled seven tour buses, enjoyed this latest stop on their tour. Rodeo Drive is certainly bustling as the holiday shopping season begins. But let there be no doubt: People come here to gawk more than to buy. This might be the place where the notion of “window shopping” was perfected: the crowd is more likely to whip out cameras than wallets. Not that any of the store owners were worried. This is indeed a rarefied strip of shopping — imagine an even more gentrified Fifth Avenue — that caters to the most affluent of the affluent. And it is not a place where stores look to high volume as a way to post big Christmas profits. Peeking in the windows along the drive, which resembles a Hollywood set, it was easier to catch a glimpse of a security guard (who typically dashed away at the sight of a camera) than a customer. And posted prices? Do you have to ask? “We serve a high-end clientele,” said Korosh Soltani, the managing director of the David Orgell store , where watches start at $100 and go as high as $400,000. “And we are expecting good things. We are the oldest business on Rodeo Drive. We have 51 years on Rodeo Drive.” Yet even here, two “for lease” signs were spotted on empty storefronts. But there was a yellow Rolls-Royce convertible parked in front of the Bijan Designer for Men store, where shopping is by appointment only. “Rodeo Drive is an international destination,” said Steven Geller, a salesman at David Orgell. “You have a 50-50 mix of tourists and locals.” During a stroll the other day, many of the people here were tourists, and English was rarely heard. But enough of the visitors have money, particularly — a comment on the global inequities of the time — those from China. Store owners talk about learning Chinese phrases and opening their doors early to accommodate the Chinese tour buses, whose passengers can easily drop $90,000 in two-hour visit. Still, considering the pedigree of stores — Van Cleef & Arpels, Tiffany & Company, Harry Winston — it was hard to take issue with Rene DeSilva, 25, of Sydney, Australia, who was racing up the street, stopping only to take pictures, when she realized this was probably not the place to pick up Christmas presents for the family. “We only have 10 minutes,” she said breathlessly. “And it is a bit pricey. I wish I had a spare 10 grand to spend here.”

Beverly Hills (Calif)
Shopping and Retail
Rodeo Drive (Beverly Hills Calif)


Amid Japan Reconstruction, Generational Rift Opens

Abstract: ONAGAWA, Japan — At age 39, Yoshiaki Suda, the new mayor of this town that was destroyed by last March’s tsunami, oversees a community where the votes, money and influence lie among its large population of graying residents. But for Onagawa to have a future, he must rebuild it in such a way as to make it attractive to those of his generation and younger. “That’s the most difficult problem,” Mr. Suda said. “For whom are we rebuilding?” The reconstruction of Onagawa and the rest of the coast where the tsunami hit is a preview of what may be the most critical test Japan will face in the decades ahead. In a country where power rests disproportionately among older people, how does Japan, which has the world’s most rapidly aging population, use its dwindling resources to build a society that looks to the future as much as to the past? The clashing generational interests are perhaps most striking here in Onagawa, a town of 8,500 residents whose average age of 49.5 is above the national average of 45. The evolving debate over the shape of Onagawa’s reconstruction underscores how older Japanese, more attached to their land and customs, are wielding disproportionate influence and swaying local governments into issuing reconstruction blueprints at odds with Tokyo ’s stated goal of creating long-term sustainable communities. The debate here centers on the future of Onagawa’s rapidly aging and depopulated fishing villages, which, reachable only by twisting mountain roads, dot peninsulas that spread east and south of the town center here. Three other villages, located on two nearby islands, depend on a ferry that runs only three days a week for access to the mainland. So after the tsunami destroyed all 15 of the fishing villages that make up part of Onagawa, Nobutaka Azumi, then the mayor, proposed a reconstruction plan that seemed sensible enough: consolidate the villages. Having just a few centralized communities would save the town money, Mr. Azumi said, and perhaps increase their chances of long-term survival. But the village elders fought back, saying they wanted the government to rebuild their ancestral villages so that they could spend their last years there. Younger residents, many of whom supported consolidation but were vastly outnumbered, were left grumbling among themselves. After the mayor persisted, he was pushed out of office by Mr. Suda, who was backed by opponents of consolidation. Mr. Suda now says that all the villages will be rebuilt, including a hamlet with just 22 inhabitants and an island village whose residents are on average 74 years old. “There were 15 locations, so there will be 15 locations,” Mr. Suda said. “We’re moving forward under the premise that there will be no centralization, though I’m thinking of asking them one last time if this is really O.K., whether their young relatives are in agreement.” In Tokyo, reconstruction officials say they are aware that the voices of young people are not being heard on the ground. “It’s an extremely difficult problem,” said Yoshio Ando , an official at Reconstruction Headquarters. But the governing Democratic Party — as sensitive to the power of aging rural voters as its predecessor, the Liberal Democratic Party — contributed to the problem. National ministries are overseeing most of the tsunami-hit area’s large reconstruction projects out of a recently approved $120 billion budget. But Tokyo is handing $25 billion directly to regional and local governments to refashion their communities, a boon to politically connected construction companies. The thinking is that local officials understand their communities best, but local politicians and bureaucrats are also less likely to make tough decisions like sacrificing some villages to make others stronger — and to lower the reconstruction costs that are likely to sap already strained financial resources. Mr. Ando said that Tokyo was counting on local governments to come up with plans that were in keeping with the affected zone’s demographic realities. “Local governments may be unable to persuade their residents, but the national government is not considering going in and doing so forcibly,” Mr. Ando said. “To put it negatively, we’re passing the buck. To put it positively, it’s not for the national government to judge.” After the disaster, even as debris from the tsunami was still being cleared, Onagawa’s officials addressed head-on what other local governments barely whispered: rebuilding communities that had been dying before the tsunami made no sense. “I understand that you want to remain in your villages, but what will happen in 10 years?” Mr. Azumi, the former mayor, asked in May, according to the minutes of a meeting. In several meetings Mr. Azumi pleaded, unsuccessfully, with villagers to consider moving to consolidated towns on higher ground. All the district and fishing union leaders of the 15 villages — mostly men around 60 years old — opposed consolidation. Though several villages were within walking distance of one another, some leaders said consolidation would create emotional stress and complicate the management of fishing rights. “Each village has its own way of doing things,” Kiichiro Abe, 59, the leader of the fishing union in Oura, population 217, said in an interview by the sea. “The people in this village want to live with their own people, and so do the people in the next village.” Hisashi Kimura, 57, the leader of Tsukahama, a village of 156 people, had a different explanation for people’s reluctance to move: “They want to die in the villages where they were born.” But the younger people in the villages, who were in the minority and who, as Confucian culture dictates, tend to defer to their elders, quietly started telling town officials that they favored centralization, said Toshiaki Yaginuma, the leader of the local government’s reconstruction team. Larger towns, they said, would mean livelier communities and more classmates for their children. A resident of Oura, Katsuyuki Suzuki, 33, said he wanted to move to a bigger community for his 3-year-old daughter. He did not see how each village’s customs were so different that residents could not live together, especially if it meant reconstruction would be faster and cheaper. “I mean, we wouldn’t be sleeping in the same place — we would have our own houses,” Mr. Suzuki said. Still, he had not yet shared his thoughts with his parents, who are against centralization. “I try to avoid saying unnecessary things,” he said. Indeed, just as the young residents deferred to older ones at public meetings, they did the same inside their homes, where three or four generations typically live together. The youngest fisherman in Oura, Hiroaki Suzuki, 21, who is not related to Katsuyuki Suzuki, said that he wanted to live in a centralized community away from the sea. Rebuilding in Oura, he believed, would make it harder for him to find a wife, a widespread problem in fishing villages. “If we build a home in a place where a tsunami could come again, there’s no way that someone would come here to be my wife,” he said. His parents believed that centralization would brighten their son’s future. But they found it difficult to express their support at public meetings or to their own parents. Hiroaki’s father, Katsuhiro, said: “I want to tell our grandpas and grandmas, This is hard to say, but after 10 years, I’m afraid that there will be no one left in all the villages that will be rebuilt.”

Japan Earthquake Tsunami
Japan
Liberal Democratic Party Japan
Democratic Party Japan
Onagawa Japan
Urban Planning


Suit Against Staten Island Doctor Is Going to Trial

Abstract: The Italian patient traveled to Staten Island in pursuit of a miracle cure, making the same desperate pilgrimage as 200 of her countrymen to receive a special type of cancer treatment. Like the others, the patient, Giuseppa Bono, was wooed with materials boasting “success rates” of over 90 percent, paid $17,500 upfront for a course of stereotactic radiosurgery at Staten Island University Hospital and died less than two years after the treatment, according to court documents. But unlike the others, Ms. Bono may not have had cancer, her lawyers say. That is why her wrongful-death claim, among more than 20 in a six-year-old lawsuit against the hospital and its employees, became the only one to make it to trial. With the trial in United States District Court in Brooklyn to begin on Tuesday, what was to be a showdown between a controversial cancer doctor and the families of his former patients has been sharply scaled back through a series of pretrial rulings. Judge I. Leo Glasser, who is overseeing the case, reduced the number of defendants, limited the number and scope of the charges and, last week, barred the testimony of certain key plaintiff’s witnesses. The two remaining defendants are Dr. Gilbert S. Lederman and Dr. Philip J. Silverman, former oncologists at the Staten Island hospital. The case will now rest largely on whether the jury believes that Ms. Bono actually had the pancreatic cancer for which she was treated. Lawyers for her family said that the defendants had not had evidence she had cancer and had not seen a biopsy before administering radiation treatment. Lawyers for the doctors said that she had undergone surgery and chemotherapy for cancer while in Italy and had declined a biopsy because the results could be inconclusive. As a result of the court rulings — some of which resulted from missteps by lawyers representing patients’ families — the jury is unlikely to hear many details about the unusual migration of Ms. Bono and the other Italian patients to Staten Island. The hospital opened a satellite office in Naples in late 2001 to recruit patients for Dr. Lederman’s treatment, which involved an aggressive course of highly targeted radiation to treat a variety of types of cancer. In videos and literature promoting the method, Dr. Lederman declared that his technique was “a treat, not a treatment,” according to the lawsuit. (In 2008, Dr. Lederman and another doctor paid $880,000 to settle a lawsuit by a former patient who charged that his advertisements overstated the effectiveness of the treatment. Dr. Lederman denied wrongdoing.) The Naples office was run by an Italian, Salvatore Conte, who was paid a commission for each patient and was given business cards that identified him as a medical doctor even though he was not one, according to his signed affidavit. New patients were told to submit medical records to see if they were eligible, but Mr. Conte said that Dr. Lederman had been “willing to accept any patient.” Ms. Bono, a mother of three, helped run a fishing business in Sicily. She died in May 2002, which was 15 months after her treatment by Dr. Silverman, who worked under Dr. Lederman. Lawyers for the two doctors said they would show not only that Ms. Bono had cancer, but also that the treatment had improved her condition and extended her life. Dr. Lederman declined to comment. The case has attracted wide attention, in part because of the well-documented legal troubles of Dr. Lederman, who became the subject of headlines around the world when he was sued by the widow of George Harrison of the Beatles. Among the accusations were that he forced a dying Mr. Harrison to autograph a guitar for his son and that he violated patient confidentiality by making a number of media appearances to discuss the musician. He settled the suit, but his handling of the case also led to censure and a fine from the State Health Department and to his departure from the hospital.

Lederman Gilbert S.
Staten Island University Hospital
Suits and Litigation
Cancer
Hospitals
Doctors
Naples (Italy)


Cleric Spars With Prosecutor at Terror Trial

Abstract: Under a prosecutor’s rigorous cross-examination, the British cleric who has been testifying at his own terrorism trial in Manhattan turned combative and defensive on Tuesday. The cleric, Mostafa Kamel Mostafa, even tried to pose his own questions to the prosecutor, accusing him of taking his statements out of context and telling him at one point to “try to concentrate.” “Mr. Mostafa, we do need to obey the rules of cross-examination, all right?” the judge, Katherine B. Forrest of Federal District Court, said. “Don’t make speeches,” she added. Prosecutors have accused Mr. Mostafa of helping to orchestrate the 1998 kidnapping of 16 American, British and Australian tourists in Yemen by a militant group there; of planning to create a terrorist training camp in Bly, Ore.; and of assisting Al Qaeda in Afghanistan. The government has said that one of his motivations for conspiring in the kidnapping was to pressure Yemen to release five Britons, including Mr. Mostafa’s stepson, who had been arrested some days earlier. Prosecutors have said Mr. Mostafa, 56, provided the Yemeni group with a satellite phone and received calls the day before the abductions ; they say he also spoke on the phone and offered advice to the group’s leader, Abu Hassan, after the hostage-taking was underway. Four tourists died when they were used as human shields by their captors during a Yemeni rescue operation. In direct testimony over three days, Mr. Mostafa, a former imam at the Finsbury Park mosque in North London who was known for his impassioned statements against the United States, seemed calm and almost self-assured as he responded to a defense lawyer’s questions, denying repeatedly the charges against him. Mr. Mostafa, also known as Abu Hamza al-Masri, had acknowledged in direct testimony that he provided the phone to the group and agreed to serve as its “mouthpiece,” issuing statements on the group’s behalf. But he denied knowing the group’s plans to kidnap the tourists, claiming he felt “betrayed” when he learned of the abductions. On Tuesday, under cross-examination by the prosecutor, John P. Cronan, Mr. Mostafa repeatedly tried to dissociate himself from the group’s kidnappings. “I’m their mouthpiece; I’m not their spiritual leader,” Mr. Mostafa said. “What they say, I pass on.” Mr. Mostafa at one point challenged Mr. Cronan to state the day of the week that the hostage-taking had occurred. “Sir, I will be asking the questions of you,” Mr. Cronan replied. When Mr. Mostafa persisted with his question, Judge Forrest stepped in. “The way it works, he will ask you. You won’t ask him,” she said. The day was full of testy exchanges. Mr. Cronan asked Mr. Mostafa about a statement he once made that the 2000 bombing of the destroyer Cole in Yemen, in which 17 American sailors died, was “a good thing,” something for Muslims “to rejoice” about. Mr. Mostafa acknowledged making the statement, but when Mr. Cronan likened the killings of the sailors to the deaths of the four hostages in Yemen, Mr. Mostafa rejected the comparison. “U.S.S. Cole is a battleship,” he said. The hostages, he said, were “not aware” of what was going on. Mr. Cronan cited statements of approval Mr. Mostafa had made about the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, including one in which he had said, “Everybody was happy when the planes hit the World Trade Center.” Mr. Mostafa said that he had called for an investigation into the trade center’s collapse to determine, as he put it, “how much of 9/11 belonged to Al Qaeda and how much of 9/11 belonged to the previous administration.” He appeared to suggest that the government was “not after justice” in his case. “You are after conviction,” he said. The defense rested its case midafternoon, and closing arguments are expected to be held on Wednesday.

Mostafa Kamel Mostafa
Terrorism
Yemen
US
Al Qaeda
Hostage
Kidnapping


Mets Spring Training Chaplain Wears Many Hats, but Carries One Book

Abstract: PORT ST. LUCIE, Fla. — Tommy Neiman moved to St. Lucie County at age 1, after his father, Don, discovered a cache of gold from the Spanish galleons that wrecked along Florida’s eastern coast in the 17th century. The windfall enabled the family to buy a home. The way Neiman sees it, the events of his life, beginning with his father’s decision to wield a metal detector in that particular location, have been calibrated by God to serve a greater good. Neiman, who has served as the Mets ’ spring training chaplain since 1988, grew up playing baseball and harbored hopes of making it a career. But a shoulder injury in his second year at Indian River Community College helped stanch that dream. He left college and accepted a part-time job at the local morgue, where he was trained to prepare corpses for autopsies. By his count, he worked on 500 bodies during his year there. Soon after, in the fall of 1985, Neiman entered the firefighter academy and eventually joined the St. Lucie County fire department. Now Neiman, 49, is a lieutenant paramedic, shuttling to emergencies during multiple 24-hour shifts each week. While looking for a way to supplement his income, he began working odd jobs at the Mets’ spring training complex when it opened in 1988. Clint Hurdle, the manager of the organization’s Class A team, knew Neiman and asked him to help conduct a Sunday Bible study for his Christian players. Neiman has maintained his relationship with the Mets organization, serving what several players described as an invaluable role in the clubhouse. Teams at every level, with the help of an organization called Baseball Chapel , offer Sunday services for Christian players, who generally cannot attend church because of rigorous game schedules and dizzying travel demands. Baseball chaplains are not paid. R. A. Dickey, who has attended chapel services his entire career, said the traits most important in a chaplain were availability and “foundational biblical knowledge.” Neiman, Dickey said, excelled in both regards. Dickey said Neiman, who did not study at a seminary, tended not to delve into complex theological issues. Instead, Neiman’s primary strength, Dickey said, was drawing lessons from his own eventful life. “He is able to correlate a passage of Scripture with a life story of his own,” Dickey said. “Being in the field he is in, he’s exposed to a lot of different dramatic experiences, and based on those experiences, he is able to bring Scripture to life.” The Mets, like most teams, do not have an overtly religious clubhouse. Still, Christian faith plays an important role in the lives of several members of the team. Daniel Murphy has talked openly about his spiritual awakening this winter, one that helped him emerge from an emotional downward spiral induced by the second serious leg injury of his brief career. “When you end up in the valley, you only have one place to look, and that’s up,” Murphy said. “I’d gone through an injury, come back from it, and I had the same thing happen, and I realized I wasn’t at peace with my life.” He struggles daily, he said, to maintain the path of his reinvigorated faith. But he said Cali Magallanes, the Mets’ head chaplain during the season, and Neiman, who works with them a few weeks of the year, created a continuous support system. Neiman, naturally, has a deep well of experiences to draw from and has recounted several of them in the two books he has written. After 9/11, he flew to New York to conduct chapel services for firefighters there. Josh Stinson, who met Neiman in 2007, said, “The stories he tells from his paramedic runs, some of the stuff he sees, realizing he might be witnessing a person’s last breath, telling them the Lord, if they want him to, can still take them in — they are really powerful.” Stinson said Neiman often drew parallels between his ability to reach people in times of need and the comparable abilities of baseball players, who have a high public profile. Stinson and other Mets players said they did not want to impose their Christian beliefs on others, but were mindful that their behavior could be watched closely by those who might seek guidance. “He tells us we have this talent; we were put in this position for a reason,” Stinson said. “Especially in New York City, it’s an opportunity to set an example.” The Mets will head to New York soon enough. But when they return here next year, they will again find Neiman where he, too, believes he was placed for a reason.

New York Mets
Baseball
Fire Department (NYC)
Neiman Tommy


Democrats Say Economic Message Was Lacking

Abstract: WASHINGTON — For all the finger-pointing among Democrats over Tuesday’s election calamity, the White House, Congress and party establishment all share responsibility for weaknesses that the defeats laid bare, critics say, and should confront them as the 2016 contest takes shape. The problems are fundamental, involving questions of where Democrats focus their party-building efforts, what voters they talk to, and most crucial, what they say to those voters. Missing this year, many Democrats say, was a broad economic message to enthuse supporters and convert some independents. While the Democrats’ loss of their Senate majority owed much to the fact that they were defending so many seats in the Republican-friendly South and West, that dynamic only underscored the lost promise of Barack Obama’s famed 2004 declaration that there is no red and blue America, only a United States of America — a belief he reiterated, “for all the cynics who say otherwise,” on Wednesday. However naïve his pronouncement — both then and now — as a candidate in 2008 Mr. Obama built up organizations and hopes among Democrats even in conservative places like Alaska, North Dakota and Idaho. In February 2008, more than 14,000 people jammed a Boise State University hall to hear him speak. “They told me there weren’t any Democrats in Idaho,” Mr. Obama exclaimed. “But I didn’t believe them.” Yet during his presidency, the national party has set aside that build-it-and-they-will-come approach and allowed the 50-state strategy that Howard Dean, the former chairman, oversaw to wane, focusing instead on Democratic strongholds and battlegrounds. And rarely has Mr. Obama visited states that are not Democratic blue or swing-vote purple. “We’ve suffered from the neglect of the campaign committees out here,” said Larry LaRocco, a former Idaho congressman. He and other state Democrats had sought help from the national party for local Democrats, given hopes kindled by Idaho Republicans’ infighting and flawed candidates. Despite Tuesday’s Republican wave, Idaho Democrats did gain a state legislative seat and came close in other contests. “With some resources in here we could have a field day,” Mr. LaRocco insisted. But even he does not argue that conservative Idaho should be a party priority, only that to forfeit states and regions ensures Democrats cannot compete. More broadly, Democrats across the country are increasingly debating how or even whether they should be doing more to win voters largely lost since the 1960s civil rights era — men, and especially working-class white men. Some Democrats are resigned, if not content, to all but give up since white men are a shrinking share of the electorate, while the expanding ranks of single women and Latino, African-American and young voters strongly favor Democrats. But while that gives Democrats the edge in picking presidents, it hurts them in midterm elections because so many of their supporters skip voting in nonpresidential years, leaving a whiter, older and less female electorate that favors Republicans. The midterm drop-off of Democrats’ core supporters “has reached historic levels,” Ruy Teixeira and John Halpin, analysts at the left-leaning Center for American Progress, wrote after the election. When combined with white men’s overwhelming support for Republicans, the outcome, as on Tuesday, is Democrats’ defeat. In North Carolina, Colorado and Iowa — states where Democrats lost Senate seats after campaigns that emphasized abortion rights, birth control coverage and pay equity for women — support from female voters was disappointing, and swamped by men’s margins for the Republicans. In North Carolina, where more than a third of voters were white men, Senator Kay Hagan lost their votes by 42 points, 27 percent to 69 percent, exit polls showed. Senator Mary L. Landrieu got support from just 15 percent of white men who voted in Louisiana’s multicandidate contest, a result that helps explain why she is considered likely to lose a Dec. 6 runoff election against the Republican Bill Cassidy. But in Michigan, the Democrats’ Senate candidate, Representative Gary Peters, prevailed after a long campaign in which he aggressively appealed to white men, especially blue-collar voters and small-business managers. He won 50 percent of all male voters, and 44 percent of white men to 52 percent for the vanquished Republican Terri Lynn Land, an eight-point gap that nonetheless was much reduced from Mr. Peters’ 21-point disadvantage among white men last February in a statewide poll by the nonpartisan firm EPIC-MRA. Even before Tuesday’s results were in, some Democrats were complaining that the party had failed to develop a national economic message and policy agenda that would appeal both to white men and to women and minorities, as well as counter the Republicans’ own lack of an affirmative policy platform. Many blamed Mr. Obama, yet the president was all but banned from the campaign trail given his unpopularity. “Absent any clear or far-reaching national agenda and message to address people’s real economic concerns about jobs, wages and opportunity,” Mr. Teixeira and Mr. Halpin wrote late Thursday, “the Democrats essentially ceded control of the national campaign, opting to try their luck with a series of localized and targeted campaigns.” Another analysis released Friday, from Democracy Corps and the Voter Participation Center, which works to increase turnout among unmarried women — a quarter of the voting-age population — concluded that single women’s support fell short because they “did not hear issues important to them: an economic agenda for working women and men.” Democratic-leaning voters heard “random policies that you have to figure out that they add up to a big economic narrative,” the pollster Stan Greenberg of Democracy Corps said in an interview, citing the minimum wage and pay equity proposals as examples. “There were bits and pieces, but it was up to the voter to decide that it all added up to a big economic narrative.” “To me, the biggest mistake was not talking about health care,” he said. By failing to talk about the law and its successes — newly insuring millions of people, giving all insured Americans preventive-care benefits and consumer protections, and contributing to lower health care spending overall — Democrats allowed Republicans to define the president’s signature domestic accomplishment as a failure, virtually unchallenged. Democrats were in a defensive crouch, much like they were at times in the Reagan era, when Newt Gingrich led Republicans to take control of the House of Representatives in the mid-1990s and in the early years of George W. Bush’s presidency. Conservatives, by contrast, like Govs. Scott Walker in Wisconsin and Sam Brownback in Kansas, campaigned with conviction even at risk of defeat. “It seems like we’re always walking on eggshells,” Mr. LaRocco said, raising the question “What do we stand for?” The answer to that now becomes the defining challenge for anyone who seeks the Democrats’ 2016 nomination to succeed Mr. Obama.

Democrats
US
US Politics
2014 Midterm Elections
2016 Presidential Election
Voting
House races
Congressional elections
Senate races
Election


Vodafone Posts Return to Profit

Abstract: LONDON, Nov. 13 (AP) — The Vodafone Group , the cellphone company, returned to profitability in the first half, posted higher revenue and raised its dividend. Shares of Vodafone, rose $3.60, to $40.40. Vodafone earned £3.29 billion ($6.83 billion) for the six months ended Sept. 30, compared with a loss of £5.1 billion a year earlier. The company’s loss last year reflected a charge of £8.1 billion ($16.8 billion) related to the carrying value of good will in operations in Germany and Italy. Revenue rose 9 percent to £17 billion ($35.3 billion), ahead of market forecasts. Vodafone raised its full-year revenue forecast to at least £34.5 billion ($71.6 billion) and its operating profit to at least £9.5 billion ($19.7 billion). Vodafone reported adjusted net profit of £3.4 billion ($7.06 billion), compared with £3.44 billion in the period a year ago.


Currency Swap Wins Saratoga’s Grade I Hopeful

Abstract: SARATOGA SPRINGS, N.Y. — She grew up around Saratoga Race Course, watching runners thunder off the final turn and learning to put them through their paces in the misty predawn mornings. For Terri Pompay, a lifetime invested in thoroughbred racing — first as a youthful fan, then as an exercise rider, briefly as a jockey, and finally as the head of an established stable — reached its finest moment Monday. Her horse Currency Swap dashed across the finish line in the 107th running of the Hopeful Stakes, back at Saratoga, where it all began. “I don’t even know how to describe it,” said a breathless Pompay, greeting her horse in the winner’s circle on a rainy closing day of the Saratoga meeting. “I’m so excited; this is my hometown. I was at the track as much as I could get here — when I could sneak out and get here, I was here.” It was the first Grade 1 victory for Pompay, a 50-year-old trainer who joins a small group of women who have won top-level stakes at Saratoga. (Linda Rice won the 2000 Hopeful with City Zip.) It was the second victory in two starts for Currency Swap, who made his debut with an impressive eight-length score Aug. 6 here. That win earned him a 98 Beyer speed figure, tied for fourth among juveniles this year. “He’s so special, this horse; I’m just so proud that he came through,” Pompay said of Monday’s race. “It’s always a jump when you break your maiden and then go in a stake, and it was a really nice group of horses. I went through the past performances dozens — more than that — hundreds of times during the past few days. You could make a case for any one of them moving up.” But none of the nine other runners did. Currency Swap was taken in hand on the outside by Rajiv Maragh behind early fractions set by the 68-1 shot Trinniberg of 21.91 and 45.14 seconds. Still five lengths behind at the head of the stretch, Currency Swap closed rapidly, fought to overhaul the tenacious leader, and prevailed by three-quarters of a length to return $5.80 on a $2 bet to win. Big Blue Nation was three and three-quarter lengths back in third. The final time was 1 minute 26.16 seconds for seven furlongs over the sloppy track. Pompay stabled with the trainer Bob Barbara when she shipped in from Monmouth Park last weekend; Barbara’s own Hopeful contender, JC’s Pride, was pulled up by jockey Jose Lezcano and taken off in a van, although the trainer reported he showed no signs of injury and was “moving around fine” once he returned from the racetrack. So the first-place finisher and the last-place finisher of the season’s final stakes race returned to the same barn together, where it was all systems go with plans for Currency Swap’s future. Seth Klarman, a co-owner, said the Oct. 8 Champagne Stakes at Belmont Park might be a logical next step. According to Pompay, resting until the Breeders’ Cup Juvenile at Churchill Downs on Nov. 5 is also a possibility. Along with the $150,000 winner’s share of the $250,000 Hopeful purse, Currency Swap earned a guaranteed spot in the Juvenile. “This is just the start; we can go forward from here,” Pompay said. “We’ll make sure he comes back good, then decide if we need another race or extra time. I definitely think he’s just going to get better. He’s got scope, and when added distance comes, I think he’s going to love that, too.”

Horse Racing
Saratoga Race Course
Jockeys Drivers and Trainers
Pompay Terri


Bomb Kills 2 Lebanese Soldiers Near Border With Syria

Abstract: BEIRUT, Lebanon — Two Lebanese Army soldiers were killed and two were wounded on Friday when their convoy was hit by a roadside bomb outside the town of Arsal, near the border with Syria. The town was the scene of battles that erupted last month between the army and militants from the group Islamic State and the Nusra Front, which is affiliated with Al Qaeda. A Syrian refugee doctor said he had treated the wounded soldiers in a field clinic in Arsal. The attack came a day after the army detained three men — two Syrians and one Lebanese — in connection with the beheading of two Lebanese soldiers who were among a group held prisoner by the militants since last month’s battles. The Lebanese suspect, originally from Arsal, was accused of carrying out the second of the two beheadings, according to army officials. The army did not detail his role in its official news release in an effort to tamp down potential sectarian reactions: The slain soldier was a Shiite, and the accused is a Sunni. On Friday, the Nusra Front said in a statement that it had killed a third soldier among its Lebanese captives. Syrian refugees have tripled Arsal’s population during the war in Syria, which has inflamed Lebanon’s web of sectarian and political tensions.

Terrorism
Lebanon
Al Nusra Front
ISIS,ISIL,Islamic State
Murders


A New Fashion Catches On in Paris: Cheap Bicycle Rentals

Abstract: PARIS — They’re clunky, heavy and ugly, but they have become modish — and they are not this season’s platform shoes. A year after the introduction of the sturdy gray bicycles known as Vélib’s, they are being used all over Paris. The bikes are cheap to rent because they are subsidized by advertising, and other major cities, including American ones, are exploring similar projects. About 20,600 Vélib’ bicycles are in service here, with more than 1,450 self-service rental stations. The stations are only some 300 yards apart, and there are four times as many as there are subway stations, even in a city so well served by its metro system. In the first year, the city says, there have been 27.5 million trips in this city of roughly 2.1 million people, many of them for daily commutes. On average, there are 120,000 trips a day. And on July 27, at the conclusion here of the Tour de France , 365 lucky Vélib’ riders will be chosen to ride along for a while and cross the finish line. There are a Vélib’ Web site, Vélib’ fashions and a Vélib’ blog ( http://blog.velib.paris.fr/blog ); one recent posting discussed the best way to ride with a skirt. A kind of Vélib’ behavior has emerged, especially at the morning rush, with people swiftly checking for bikes in the best condition: tires inflated, chains still attached, baskets unstolen. Natallya Ghyssaert, a 34-year-old doctor, has an annual subscription for 29 euros (about $46), which lets her use a bike whenever she wants for 30 minutes at a time without extra charges. She uses a Vélib’ two or three times a day, saying, “I love it; you can see Paris, you can exercise and stay out in the light of day.” The Vélib’ — a contraction of vélo for bike and liberté — can also be rented for a day or for a week, with a 150 euro (about $239) deposit taken from the user’s credit card if the bike is not returned. Usage fees over 30 minutes can rise steeply: two hours costs 7 euros (about $11). But 96 percent of all rides are less than 30 minutes, because bikes can be returned to any station. No one knows quite how many trips by car or taxi are thereby avoided, but the “eco-friendly” nature of the Vélib’ has been much promoted in a country where juice companies warn of the risks to “our fragile planet” in lavish brochures on thick paper. Benjamin Tomada, 30, a cook parking his Vélib’ near the Music Hall restaurant where he works, said: “I have a car but I don’t use it. It’s always better to take a bike than the metro.” Still, there have been significant problems with traffic congestion and safety, vandalism and theft. At least 3,000 of the bikes have been stolen — nearly 15 percent of the total, and twice original estimates. Some have been seen in Romania or found in shipping containers on their way to Morocco. Wearing helmets is not compulsory in France, and three people have died on their rented Vélib’s, hit by buses or trucks. The Vélib’ program in Paris was conceived by the Socialist mayor, Bertrand Delanoë, and the 10-year contract was won by JCDecaux, a major French public relations and advertising company with good political contacts, after defeating a rival bid from Clear Channel. The deal is supposed to be good for Paris, but it promises to be extremely lucrative over time for JCDecaux. Decaux got to erect 1,628 billboards to rent; it invested nearly $142 million to set up the rental bike system and the billboards, and must provide maintenance and replace stolen bikes; the city of Paris gets the proceeds from the usage of the bikes plus some royalties from Decaux. So far, according to Rémy Pheulpin, the company’s executive vice president, it has put up 1,500 billboards in a year and expects to make about $94 million a year from them. The company stands to begin turning a considerable profit if not next year, then in the third year of its 10-year contract. The city has received $31.5 million from subscribers and users of the bikes, plus an additional $5.5 million a year, fixed in the contract, from advertising royalties, according to Céline Lepault, the Vélib’ project manager for City Hall. Mr. Pheulpin, whose company built similar but much smaller programs in 10 other cities, like Lyon and Rouen, said the company had learned that there were several keys to success: allowing subscriptions, so people get the sense that the bikes are free once they have paid their up-front fee; making sure the bike stations are ubiquitous and keeping the system “user-friendly.” In fact, the system is easy to use, with instructions in various languages, and bikes can be taken and returned quickly — so long as there are bikes available in good repair. But as many American tourists have discovered, only credit cards with built-in chips, common in Europe but unusual in America, are accepted by the terminals. A Decaux subsidiary repairs the bikes — some 1,500 a day. The bikes are heavy, to try to prevent theft of key parts like gears, chains and electronic sensors, which measure time of rental. While an average bike weighs 33 pounds and is used for 124 miles a year, Mr. Pheulpin said, the three-gear Vélib’, specially designed and built by a French company in Hungary, weighs nearly 50 pounds and is built to be used more than 6,000 miles a year. Each bike costs $3,460. As for safety, both the city and Decaux argue that bicycle accidents in Paris have risen only 7 percent compared with a 24 percent increase in bicycle use since early 2007. “Bicycles become fashionable, and the more bikes there are in a city, the safer it is, and the more the city will give space to bicyclists,” Mr. Pheulpin said. The city and Decaux, after criticism following the latest death on June 23, say they will start a new safety advertising campaign in September. Vélib’ users are supposed to follow road rules, stop at red lights and stay off the sidewalks, but many do not. Drivers in already congested Paris, never particularly bike-friendly, are not particularly happy with the bikes that further clog the streets or with Mr. Delanoë’s effort to reduce car traffic by 40 percent by 2020. In 2001, Yves Contassot, then deputy mayor for the environment, said of motorists: “It is only by making them live in hell that we’ll get drivers to renounce their cars.” Motorists remember. Wide bus lanes were set up on major through streets like the Boulevard Montparnasse — considered too wide, termed “XXL” in the press. While nothing like Amsterdam, Paris is also building more bike lanes, as well as reducing parking spaces by putting Vélib’ stations in their place. “This is what the French call a ‘false good idea,’ ” said Ronald Koven, who drives a car here. “The traffic jams are far worse, and because of them, the pollution is, too.” Ms. Ghyssaert, the doctor, says she feels safe on the bicycles, “except in some bustling neighborhoods where there are too many cars.” She is not always so careful, she admitted. “I use the bike to dodge in and out of traffic, and I know that the drivers are irritated to see so many Vélib’s.” Helmets would be a good idea, she said, offering a very French solution: “The city should get further subsidies and give Vélib’ subscribers vouchers to get helmets from big stores.”

Bicycles and Bicycling
Paris (France)
Renting and Leasing
Advertising and Marketing


Political Strife in South Sudan Sets Off Ethnic Violence

Abstract: KHARTOUM, Sudan — He sat among tens of thousands of terrified people crammed into the United Nations compound, most of them women and children, taking notes about their desperate rush to safety. Like them, he had come seeking protection. “They came to my house,” the man, Biel Boutros Biel, a human rights activist, said of the South Sudanese security forces. “I knew they were coming after me.” After President Salva Kiir announced that his government had headed off a coup attempt by his former vice president last week , South Sudan was tossed into uncertainty and upheaval. Hundreds are believed to have been killed in the capital, Juba, with thousands more fleeing into the bush to escape the violence. The former vice president, Riek Machar, has denied any involvement in a coup attempt, accusing the president of using the unrest as a pretext to crack down on his opponents. But while both sides debate what ignited the fighting, the aftermath has taken on a life of its own, revealing longstanding tensions in a fledgling new nation that international officials worry could ultimately tear it apart. “Today, that future is at risk,” President Obama said in a statement on Thursday. “South Sudan stands at the precipice. Recent fighting threatens to plunge South Sudan back into the dark days of its past.” Image Young men sat in a vehicle at the United Nations Mission in South Sudan compound in Juba as ethnic tensions remained high. Credit Tony Karumba/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images Events are unfolding fast. United States aircraft sent to evacuate Americans came under fire on Saturday, wounding four soldiers. Rebels are believed to have taken control of some of the country’s oil fields and alliances are shifting. Like many conflicts in this tenuous nation, the fighting has taken on an ethnic dimension, human rights workers say. Mr. Machar, the former vice president removed over the summer when Mr. Kiir summarily dismissed his entire cabinet, is a Nuer. The president belongs to the majority Dinka ethnic group. In the capital, South Sudanese forces have targeted members of the Nuer ethnic group, killing many and detaining others, including soldiers, lawmakers and students, rights workers and refuge seekers say. But outside the capital, in Jonglei State, the reverse has occurred as well, with Nuer militiamen targeting Dinka, descending on United Nations compounds where thousands of civilians have fled for safety and carrying out attacks on oil facilities that have resulted in what the Security Council called “the heavy loss of life” among workers. “We are deeply concerned that ethnically based attacks on all sides will lead to revenge attacks and more violence,” Daniel Bekele, Africa director at Human Rights Watch, said in a statement. Image Women jostled to get water at the United Nations compound in South Sudan, where thousands have sought refuge from violence. Credit Tony Karumba/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images Other observers have said that politics, not ethnicity, are driving the conflict. “It is a power struggle,” said Zacharia Diing Akol, an analyst at the Sudd Institute in Juba. “Ethnicity is an afterthought.” South Sudan became independent in 2011 when it broke away from its neighbor to the north, Sudan, after decades of civil war. Now, critics accuse South Sudan’s president, Mr. Kiir, of being an autocrat who oversees a government marred by corruption, mismanagement and a lack of freedom. Opponents of Mr. Machar, on the other hand, see him as an opportunist who changed sides during the civil war against Sudan to gain advantages for himself and his fellow Nuer. Mr. Machar, a British-educated former rebel with a Ph.D., was a senior member of the Sudanese People’s Liberation Army, the military wing of the party Mr. Kiir now leads, as it battled Sudan’s government in Khartoum. He split from the movement in 1991 and formed his own group, which signed a peace agreement with the Sudanese government in 1997. During this period, Mr. Machar’s group fought against the South Sudanese rebels. But he later defected from Khartoum and rejoined the Southern rebel forces. When South Sudan seceded in 2011, Mr. Machar was made vice president until Mr. Kiir fired him along with the entire cabinet in July. The United Nations said that the upheaval in recent days had forced 20,000 people to seek refuge at its compound in Juba, raising humanitarian concerns. Image Residents left Juba, South Sudan, with their belongings. Hundreds are believed to have been killed in the capital. Credit Tony Karumba/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images “There is no food, no water, and medical services are limited,” said Mr. Biel, the rights activist. “This is not a place to be.” Diplomats have responded with great concern. On Friday, the United Nations Security Council issued a statement expressing “grave alarm and concern regarding the rapidly deteriorating security and humanitarian crisis in South Sudan resulting from the political dispute among the country’s political leaders, which threatens serious implications for the long-term security and stability of South Sudan, as well as for the neighboring countries and other peace and security challenges in the region.” There are fears that the growing instability will have an impact on an already delicate economy. About 200 oil workers in Unity State to the north have sought refuge at a United Nations base there, and the Chinese oil company operating there, CNPC, has begun removing its workers. A descent into civil war in South Sudan would have serious local and regional consequences. “In the coming days, refugees are likely to reach Uganda, Kenya and Ethiopia,” said Casie Copeland of the International Crisis Group. “South Sudan has become a critical player in the broader East African economy, with substantial regional and international investment.” Many groups have called for greater international involvement. “The international community needs to double down on diplomatic engagement to facilitate a political resolution to the crisis,” said Akshaya Kumar, Sudan and South Sudan policy analyst at the Enough Project. But at the United Nations compound in Juba, Mr. Biel remained skeptical about a quick resolution. “If I was at home, I would not be alive,” he said. “The whole nation is now suffering.”

South Sudan
Military
Salva Kiir Mayardit
Riek Machar
Juba South Sudan
UN Security Council
Human Rights
International relations
Coups D'Etat


Tribune Will Cut Hundreds of Jobs as Businesses Weaken

Abstract: CHICAGO (AP) — Employees at the Tribune Company were notified Wednesday that hundreds of jobs would be cut at The Chicago Tribune, The Los Angeles Times and other publications — the first cutbacks since the investor Samuel Zell took the company private last year. In separate memos, the Tribune publisher Scott C. Smith said 100 jobs would be cut, and his counterpart at The Times, David D. Hiller, said 100 to 150 jobs would be eliminated. Both newspapers reported a total of 400 to 500 cuts companywide, focusing on corporate staff and the company’s newspapers, including Newsday in New York, The Orlando Sentinel, The Baltimore Sun and The Hartford Courant. A spokesman for the Tribune Company, Gary Weitman, declined to comment on that figure. Job cuts in Chicago are expected to come from The Tribune, as well as Hoy in Chicago, RedEye, Chicago Magazine and online products like ChicagoTribune.com , according to a Chicago Tribune media group spokesman, Michael Dizon. The group has about 3,000 employees. He said it was unclear just how many cuts would come from simply not filling current openings, layoffs or from voluntary or involuntary severance packages. In Los Angeles, Mr. Hiller said the cuts would be made in much the same way: attrition, voluntary buyouts and layoffs. Both publishers’ memos cited economic problems at the papers, with Mr. Smith, for example, telling employees that total revenue from the Chicago media group was down 5 percent in January and that “ad revenue was down double digits, a continuation of the trend late last year.” He also said cash flow had dropped more than the 8 percent it fell in 2007. And Mr. Hiller said the economic picture was “well worse than was forecast” late last year, when Mr. Zell took the company private in an $8.2 billion buyout. Mr. Zell, who has said he was not interested in widespread cost-slashing, wrote that the “weak economy and significant declines in advertising volume at our newspapers” have hurt cash flow. “Unfortunately, I can’t turn this ship from its course of the past 10 years within just a few months,” he wrote. “Further, while I will do everything in my power to drive, pull and drag this company forward, I can’t promise we won’t see additional position eliminations in the future, if we continue at our current rate of cash flow decline.”

Tribune Company
Layoffs and Job Reductions
Chicago Tribune
Newspapers
Los Angeles Times


Novak Djokovic to Meet Rafael Nadal in Indian Wells Semifinal

Abstract: INDIAN WELLS, Calif. — Novak Djokovic dominated both tiebreakers to beat Jo-Wilfried Tsonga, 7-6 (2), 7-6 (2), at the BNP Paribas Open on Friday, setting up a semifinal against Rafael Nadal featuring two players who own a combined seven titles in the California desert. Nadal defeated Kei Nishikori, 6-4, 6-3, connecting on 89 percent of his first serves in a match played in 91-degree heat under a relentless sun. Nadal is a three-time winner at Indian Wells. Serena Williams rallied after squandering a 3-0 lead in the second set to beat Agnieszka Radwanska, 6-4, 7-6 (1), and reach the final for the first time since 2001, when she won before boycotting the event for 14 years. Williams hit 41 winners and had 29 unforced errors to 18 winners and just 10 unforced errors by Radwanska, who fell to 0-10 in her career against Williams, the world’s top-ranked player. Radwanska had chances to break Williams in the fifth and seventh games of the first set, when she led, 3-1. But Williams earned breaks in two of the last three games to take the set, smacking a forehand winner off Radwanska’s second serve on the last point. Trailing, 3-0, in the second, Radwanska won three straight games to tie it up. Williams’s backhand volley went to the side, giving Radwanska a 6-5 lead. But Williams hit a forehand crosscourt winner on the run to tie it at 6-6, forcing the tiebreaker, which she won with another forehand. Victoria Azarenka faced Karolina Pliskova in the other women’s semifinal. Djokovic crushed Nadal, 6-1, 6-2, to win the Qatar Open in January in one of the most lopsided matches in their long rivalry, which Djokovic leads, 24-23. “It’s a game of cat and mouse, in a way, mentally, who is going to be on top first,” Djokovic said. Shadows had begun creeping onto the main stadium court by the time Djokovic outlasted Tsonga, who has lost to Djokovic, the world’s top-ranked player, in 13 of their last 14 meetings. Djokovic, a four-time champion at Indian Wells, improved to 20-1 this year heading into Saturday’s match against Nadal, who is 12-4. Djokovic capitalized on a slew of errors by Tsonga in the first tiebreak. Djokovic was leading, 3-1, when Tsonga reeled off three straight errors, including two off his forehand that extended Djokovic’s lead to 6-1. Tsonga was down, 6-2, and serving to stay in the tiebreak, but he netted a backhand to lose it. Djokovic led, 5-4, in the second set and had two match points on Tsonga’s serve in the 10th game. But Tsonga pulled out a big serve to hold at 5-5. Tsonga came up with another crucial hold at 6-6 with a forehand winner and another serve that Djokovic could not handle, forcing another tiebreak. Leading, 6-2, Djokovic closed out the match on his second serve, which Tsonga returned wide. “He didn’t give one point in those tiebreaks, which was not my case,” Tsonga said. Nadal trailed, 3-1, before winning five of the next six games to take the opening set in 45 minutes. He got an early break in the second to build a 4-2 lead. He made a forehand error that allowed Nishikori to break back and trail, 4-3. But Nadal quickly recovered in the next game to break Nishikori and won the match on his serve with a forehand down the line. “He started so quick, hitting all the balls very well, very aggressive, and serving great,” Nadal said. “Then he started to miss some first serves, and I was returning very well the second-set serve, returning very aggressive. That was so important.” The resurgent Nadal has reached one final — losing to Djokovic in Doha — and three semis this year.

Tennis
Indian Wells Masters,BNP Paribas Open
Novak Djokovic
Rafael Nadal
Serena Williams


Sheets Flap and Towels Hang Out

Abstract: In the Hunts Point neighborhood of the Bronx, a family’s assortment of blue jeans bobbed like invisible people dancing on a puppet string. At 181st Street and Audubon Avenue in Manhattan, yellow panties shamelessly waved to Washington Heights. And outside a bathroom window two stories above Bailey Avenue in Kingsbridge Heights, another Bronx neighborhood, was a more mundane tableau: a white washcloth, a red towel. As the temperature goes up, so does the quantity and the variety of items fluttering in the air across New York, where clotheslines hung outside apartment buildings, a hallmark of tenement life a century ago, have stubbornly defied the elements, the ages, the landlord and the fluff ‘n’ fold. This year, it seems, immigration , environmentalism and the penny-pinching of recession have combined to make the lines a more familiar sight in both lower-income and gentrifying neighborhoods, as well as in suburbs, where sheets and towels blowing in a breeze are a sign that summer has arrived. In buildings with satellite dishes, in apartments with high-tech and high-speed appliances, residents still open their windows, pin their laundry to a line and send it squeakily out into the sunshine, which takes about five hours to do what a coin-operated dryer does in 45 minutes. Some do it to save money, others to save the planet — there’s a nonprofit group called Project Laundry List that promotes clotheslines as a way to reduce climate change . Many simply prefer the feel and smell of clothes slowly dried by sun and air, or the freedom from hauling smelly baskets downstairs or down the block. Environmental benefits are the reason Eric Thomas, 32, a freelance copy writer, strung up five lines in his apartment in Prospect-Lefferts Gardens in Brooklyn, even though his doorman building has a laundry room in the basement. “I’m no longer scrambling for quarters, but that’s less important to me than the energy,” he said. Bernadette Schill, 71, the owner of the white washcloth and red towel in Kingsbridge Heights, said that hanging the wash outside is just part of her routine. “I don’t even think about it,” she said. “Go put it on the line.” In her hilly working-class neighborhood, with no shortage of 8-minutes-per-quarter Laundromats, many others were opting to use the free air instead. There were 10 clotheslines strung from pulleys outside the windows of her four-story, nine-unit building at 3060 Bailey Avenue and the one next door. In 1909, clotheslines were as much a part of the defining look of the city as the front stoop. The sails of linens and laundry stretching across historical photographs impart a strange nautical aspect to the buildings, as if they rested not on the street but on the sea. A century later, there are still plenty: short ones at the corners of buildings high above Mount Hope in the Bronx and long ones that run from back windows to tall poles behind brownstones in Carroll Gardens, Brooklyn. Some lines are high enough that when bare, they can be confused with telephone and power wires, others low enough that the logos on T-shirts are readable. One recent afternoon, Angel Martinez, the superintendent of a red-brick walk-up at 744 Coster Street, in the South Bronx, walked into his narrow kitchen, carefully avoiding stepping on Mimi, his pet ferret, where he faced two options: a small automatic dryer, and two clotheslines — one stretching outside to the living room window, one to the bathroom window. On this 66-degree day, his lines were empty except for a white bath mat hung the night before. He inherited the lines, just as he inherited the narrow kitchen: they were there when he moved in years ago. “We started to use it,” said Mr. Martinez, 51. Why? “Because it’s there.” Among the many provisions and restrictions in the city’s code covering housing maintenance, clotheslines are not mentioned. Yet many tenants worry that the practice will get them into trouble, and they are often vague, when pressed, as to the ownership of the clothes dangling outside their apartment windows. Some in rent-controlled and rent-stabilized apartments have gotten into disputes with their landlords over the removal of clotheslines, claiming it amounted to a reduction in building services. One landlord in the Bronx, the Fordham Bedford Housing Corporation, which manages nearly 100 buildings, including 3060 Bailey Avenue, often removes clotheslines when renovating windows. But “people hook them back up again,” said John M. Reilly, the group’s executive director. “I’m sure sometimes they get a little help from the building’s super.” In a typical setup, hooks are drilled into the building at the edge of the window frame, pulleys are attached to the hooks and the lines — cotton, plastic, wire— are fed through. Many hardware stores sell the equipment (plastic pulleys can be had for $2.99), but installation is another matter. One woman in a brownstone in Carroll Gardens recalled the time she nervously climbed an old metal pole in the backyard to fix her jammed line, three stories up. The New York clothesline has its own methods and manners, seasons and supplies, ethnic distinctions and class divisions. In working-class neighborhoods, they are often banners marking buildings as home to poor immigrants. In gentrifying areas, they mark the turf as home to energy-conscious or frugal hipsters. People use the lines at all hours of the day and night, in any weather short of a downpour. Strong winds or broken lines have been known to scatter people’s wash around the block or into tree branches. Summer is the high season, but on a cold gray October morning in the Fordham section of the Bronx, a lone pair of pants dangled from a line at the back of 2650 Bainbridge Avenue. Over the decades, clotheslines have occasionally helped kill New Yorkers and, just as frequently, have helped rescue them. In the late 1800s and early 1900s, lines were often taken down and used by the despondent as a means of committing suicide. On July 30, 1910, a 7-year-old boy named Isidore Bloom, who was playing near the roof of his five-floor apartment building in Chinatown, lost his balance and fell. Four of the building’s five clotheslines snapped on his way down, but the fifth did not, and Isidore held on. Ms. Schill’s clothesline, which runs diagonally from her bathroom window to her living room window, has not done such noble service. But it has kept her family in fresh clothes. Years ago, she had another clothesline outside the bathroom, one that stretched to the building next door. Ms. Schill shared the line with the woman in the opposite apartment, an unlikely connection on the thinnest of strings. The other woman died, and eventually the line was removed. Ms. Schill misses that clothesline sometimes. And her neighbor, too.

Housing and Real Estate
Fashion and Apparel
Windows
Weather
New York City


Former Party Official Says Spain’s Leader Knew of Slush Fund

Abstract: MADRID — The former treasurer at the heart of a slush-fund scandal that has undermined Spain’s governing Popular Party accused Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy on Friday of knowing “from the beginning” about the party’s illegal payments. Luis Bárcenas, the former party treasurer, made the claim against Mr. Rajoy a day after posting bail and leaving a jail near Madrid, where he had been awaiting trial on charges including tax fraud and bribery. His accusation, made to reporters outside Spain’s national court, came as the party gathered for a convention to prepare for a critical election year. Mr. Bárcenas left prison on Thursday afternoon after a judge allowed him to post bail of 200,000 euros, almost $225,000, saying he no longer presented a flight risk pending his trial. He had been held since June 2013, after the Swiss authorities revealed that he had amassed millions of euros in Swiss banks and other offshore accounts. He was accused of running a slush fund to channel corporate kickbacks to senior party officials. In February 2013, shortly after the publication of ledgers prosecutors say were used by Mr. Bárcenas and other former treasurers to manage the parallel payments over two decades, Mr. Rajoy made a televised address to denounce what he called “apocryphal” documents. In that address, Mr. Rajoy did not directly condemn Mr. Bárcenas, but insisted that there was no connection between the discovery of money hidden by Mr. Bárcenas in Switzerland and the Popular Party’s own funds. Mr. Rajoy separately sent Mr. Bárcenas text messages, published by the newspaper El Mundo, urging him to “be strong” in the face of the corruption allegations. However, after Mr. Bárcenas was jailed and stopped denying the existence of a slush fund, the relationship between him and his party soured. Since then, it has essentially turned into the prime minister’s word against the former party treasurer’s. Asked on Friday to respond to Mr. Bárcenas’s comments, Carlos Floriano, a senior official from the Popular Party, told Spanish national radio, “This gentleman deceived us.” Mr. Rajoy did not respond on Friday to Mr. Bárcenas’ latest accusation. A spokeswoman for the government said no member of the government had been charged in the case and it was up to the judiciary to rule on the matter. Part of the problem for the Popular Party is that it has found itself at the confluence of separate corruption investigations, including one into political kickbacks that forced Mr. Bárcenas to resign as treasurer in 2009. Earlier this month, the prosecutor handling that case presented formal charges against 41 suspects, led by Mr. Bárcenas, for crimes including tax fraud, bribery and falsification of documents. The prosecutor is seeking a sentence of 42 ½ years in prison for Mr. Bárcenas and shorter prison sentences for two other former treasurers of the Popular Party. Mr. Rajoy and the most-senior members of his administration have yet to be threatened directly by the corruption allegations. In November, however, Ana Mato was forced to resign as Spain’s health minister after being accused by a judge of having benefited financially from the illegal business dealings of her husband at the time while he was mayor of Pozuelo, a suburb of Madrid. On Friday, Mr. Bárcenas also told reporters that the ledgers he says were used to run the party slush fund were accurate. In this parallel bookkeeping, he said, “there isn’t a single entry that doesn’t correspond to a real amount.” The corruption scandal centering on Mr. Bárcenas has spotlighted the opaque financing not only of the Popular Party, but also that of Spain’s other leading parties, which have been mired in major fraud cases of their own. The main opposition Socialist Party, which governs Andalusia, Spain’s largest region, is expected to call early elections even as Socialist politicians are suspected of involvement in a scheme that siphoned off public money set aside for unemployment programs. In Catalonia, the region’s governing Convergence party is also struggling to distance itself from the party’s founder, Jordi Pujol, who is set to go on trial alongside other members of his family. Mr. Pujol admitted in July that he had committed tax fraud . The Pujol affair comes ahead of a critical election in September in Catalonia that secessionist politicians are hoping will accelerate the region’s drive toward independence, despite strong opposition from Madrid.

Spain
Mariano Rajoy
Luis Barcenas
Bribery and Kickbacks
Corruption
Popular Party Spain