Intensified by Climate Change, ‘King Tides’ Change Ways of Life in Florida

Abstract: FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. — In an enclave of a city known as the Venice of America, where dream-big houses look out over a maze of picturesque canals, the comparison to the Venice of Italy no longer seems so appealing. On Monday morning, shortly after November’s so-called supermoon dropped from view on Mola Avenue, it was easy to see why. The tide swelled on command. Seawater gurgled audibly up through manhole covers and seeped from the grass. Under a sunny sky, the water drowned docks and slid over low sea walls. By 8:15 a.m., peak tide, this street in the Las Olas Isles neighborhood was inundated, just like the Venice across the pond. Sergio Lafratta, an independent business consultant who moved in just three months ago, stood shirtless in tall waders, watching the saltwater seep into his new lawn. “There goes my grass again,” Mr. Lafratta said. His grass squares floated away down the street. His wife, Marilia, a psychologist, stood on the doorstep in her pajamas and chimed in. “We spend too much money to live here,” she said. “We knew about this” — the flooding — “but we didn’t think it would be this bad.” In South Florida, which takes rising sea levels seriously enough to form a regional compact to deal with global warming, climate change is no abstract issue. By 2100, sea levels could swell high enough to submerge 12.5 percent of Florida’s homes . These so-called king tides , which happen frequently, are the most blatant example of the interplay between rising seas and the alignment of the moon, sun and Earth. Even without a drop of rain, some places flood routinely. Monday’s planetary dance was particularly notable: The moon was both full and at its closest distance to the Earth since 1948. The closer the moon, the stronger the gravitational tug on the oceans, the higher the tide. Rising sea levels exacerbate the flooding, scientists said. In much of South Florida, including Broward County and Fort Lauderdale, finding short- and long-term fixes to the challenges of flooding caused by rising seas is a priority. A new position now exists to deal with it: resiliency chief or sustainability director. Video Monday’s supermoon, with its strong gravitational pull, created high tides that flooded some South Florida coastal towns. Credit Credit Scott McIntyre for The New York Times Pumps and backflow valves have been put in place. Roads will be or have been elevated (most famously in Miami Beach, which invested $400 million to deal with flooding). Sea walls are being raised. Counties are also beginning to rethink building codes. Taken together, the costs will be enormous. In the next five decades, the seas could rise two to three feet, said Jennifer Jurado, Broward County’s chief resiliency officer. Already, life on Mola Avenue has changed considerably, depending on the moon cycle, the month, the wind and the rain. Residents are already gearing up for the next king tide . It arrives next month. Adapting to the “new normal,” as some call it, is a requirement now. Sherry Harris kicks off her heels and splashes to her car to go to work. The Lafrattas, both originally from Brazil, pore over tidal charts for the first time in their lives. “No wake” signs warn cars to slow to a crawl so the brackish water does not inundate lawns. Residents know to park on high ground. Garbage cans are kept safely away from the curb, or they wind up bobbing up and down the road like wayward buoys. “I forgot them one time,” Mr. Lafratta said, “and there was garbage everywhere.” People who live here have complained to city officials for years but said they might wind up having to pay for some of the fixes themselves (one proposal asks for $20,000 from each resident). Already, many have to elevate their sea walls because they sit on private property. Raising the roads may also cost them. All of these options inevitably give rise to should-we-or-shouldn’t-we squabbles. And even as new multimillion-dollar mansions rise from the saturated ground, those who live on Mola fret about property values. “Flood?” said Michael Asser, poking fun at the situation after he opened his front door to a waterlogged reporter. “What flood? The city says there is no flood.” “It’s been going on 25 years, but each year it’s worse,” he added. “When I first came here, during spring tides, you had a splash here, a splash there.” Does he ever think about selling? “I’ll probably have to stay here forever,” he said. Miami Standing in front of the whimsical garden outside his Coconut Grove house, Dr. Karl H. Muench, a physician and professor of medicine at the University of Miami, said he and his neighbors got lucky this week. The forecast called for widespread king tide flooding, but West Fairview Street dodged the worst of it on Tuesday. Image A so-called supermoon rose over Miami Beach on Monday, contributing to tidal flooding in many areas. Credit Scott McIntyre for The New York Times “It can come up to here,” he said, pointing to the edge of his property. “I’ve had to wade home knee-deep from a block away; I didn’t want to bring my car into the saltwater.” A stone’s throw away, a canal threatened to spill over a sea wall as a manatee frolicked by a small bridge. But the water held back, reaching the brim. Instead, it seeped up through the storm drains and pooled onto Fairview. Miami-Dade County was largely spared the tide cycle this week: Miami Beach’s pumps and elevated roadways easily dealt with the incoming water (save for an inundated parking garage where an octopus swam ). Other problem pockets near the Miami River and in Shorecrest got minimal flooding. It was an example of the unpredictability of nature, which can make planning and preparing for floods tricky business. Last month, when the wind was churned up by a passing hurricane, the king tide was much worse. And last year, residents said, it was spectacularly bad. Erratic as the weather can be at times, Dr. Muench, 82, who has lived in this graceful neighborhood of banyan trees and salt-sprinkled air for 40 years, said he was certain about one thing: Global warming is the culprit for the shin-high water that regularly covers the road in front of his house. “There has been a definite, gradual increase since the onset of information about global warming,” he said. “In my mind, there is no question about the relationship. The canal is rising because the ocean is rising.” Dr. Muench said he fretted about President-elect Donald J. Trump’s position on global warming. In a much-circulated 2012 post on Twitter, Mr. Trump said the concept was “created by and for the Chinese in order to make U.S. manufacturing noncompetitive.” Now that Mr. Trump has chosen Myron Ebell to lead his Environmental Protection Agency transition team, Dr. Muench’s concerns have deepened. Mr. Ebell has helped lead the charge against the scientific consensus that global warming exists and is caused by people. James Murley, Miami-Dade County’s chief resilience officer, said the rising sea level did not cause king tides, “but it amplifies these events.” Claudia Falero was drying her French bulldog inside her gleaming house as it drizzled outside. When she and her husband bought the house seven years ago, the flooding took them by surprise. “It wasn’t something advertised,” she said, laughing. The couple’s letters to city officials have gone unanswered, she said. Residents say they hear that the road may get elevated, the sea wall fixed. So far, though, it is just talk. “It gets you mad,” Ms. Falero said, “because you pay taxes, and nothing is getting done.” Key Largo Shirley Borg gripped the steering wheel of her Honda Accord, traveling at a turtle’s pace through saltwater a few inches deep that was rising all over her street. The homeowners here on Adams Drive know the drill: Drive slowly to keep the splash down, or drive quickly and risk ruining your car. “I just replaced the wheel bearings because the seals were broken from saltwater,” she said. “I asked, ‘How does that happen?’ And they said, ‘Do you go through a lot of brackish water?’ Oh, yeah.” Image Narelle Prew, who lives in the Twin Lakes neighborhood of Key Largo, skipped over a puddle as she walked her chihuahua, Lexy, on Tuesday. Credit Angel Valentin for The New York Times The Florida Keys have a unique problem: Unlike areas farther north, which have barrier islands and then the mainland, the Keys are made up solely of a chain of low-lying islands built on porous limestone. Stopping the water from rolling into neighborhoods here is not an easy task. Sea walls, for example, do not work. Patience is a requirement nowadays on some Keys roads. Ms. Borg has lived in Twin Lakes, a waterfront community, for 11 years, and floodwaters are now a regular feature of the neighborhood. They vary, like everywhere else in South Florida, depending on moon cycles, and they are compounded by poor infrastructure and rising sea levels. “The first seven years, we only flooded twice,” Ms. Borg said on Tuesday. Last year, 10 inches of water outside often trapped residents in their homes. Ms. Borg’s car sits five inches off the ground, so do the math. In 2015, she went carless for two weeks — not even flatbed truck drivers wanted to chance it. Some people in her neighborhood left their cars somewhere else and commuted, Florida Keys style, by boat. Others lost their cars altogether; saltwater is particularly corrosive to engines and metal. Climate change is on many of their minds. And, like Dr. Muench, they worry — not just about the incoming president, but also about Florida’s governor, Rick Scott. Some former state environmental employees accused Mr. Scott, a Republican, last year of banning the phrase “climate change” in conversation and on documents, a charge he has said is untrue. “A climate change denier?” quipped Benjamin Klitzkie, standing in his driveway on Tuesday morning as the water encroached. “I got a house for you in Key Largo.” Mr. Klitzkie bought his home on Shaw Drive in 2011, but worries about his investment. Houses on the street are still selling — one is listed for $729,000 — but what if the water keeps coming? Recently, he said, it approached a neighbor’s front gate. County officials are meeting regularly with homeowners to discuss raising the road and other improvements. They have stopped issuing building permits on the street, Mr. Klitzkie said. “It’s sinking,” he said. “And the seas are rising.” Rhonda Haag, Monroe County’s sustainability director, said officials had done an analysis of some county roads. The conclusion was that elevating them, including on Shaw Drive, would be the best option. But it is expensive — raising one road six inches costs $1 million for a third of a mile — and complicated. “And we do recognize the fact that we will lose certain places sooner rather than later — some of the natural areas first,” Ms. Haag said. For Frank Garces, an insurance adjuster who moved here less than two years ago, it cannot happen fast enough. He said he never used to give global warming a second thought. “Now,” he said, “I’m researching moon phases and tides.”

Climate Change
Global Warming
Oceans and Seas
Flood
Florida
Fort Lauderdale Florida
Florida Keys
Miami


Democratic Republic of Congo: Arrest of Rebel Leader in Hundreds of Rapes

Abstract: Lt. Col. Sadoke Kokunda Mayele, the chief of staff of the Congolese rebel group Mai Mai Cheka, was arrested by United Nations peacekeepers on Tuesday and accused of coordinating a series of attacks between July 30 and Aug. 2 in which 303 civilians were raped in 13 villages in Walikale, according to Leo Salmeron, spokesman for the United Nations peacekeeping operations in North Kivu Province.


In Selection Mess, Paterson Dug Hole Deeper

Abstract: ALBANY — When Gov. David A. Paterson began consulting with his aides about picking a replacement for Hillary Rodham Clinton, they had one overriding message: First do no harm to yourself. The potential benefits of any choice were few and fleeting, they said. But the potential costs of mishandling it — to the governor’s stature, to his political authority and even to his election chances — were immense. Two months later, some of Mr. Paterson’s own advisers say their worst fears have been realized. A process that they had hoped would elevate the governor, demonstrate his statesmanship and introduce him to the nation instead damaged his credibility and divided his party. Its final days were by turns intensely secretive and astoundingly public, culminating with personal attacks on Caroline Kennedy from the governor’s camp that astonished the state’s political establishment. In the aftermath, many top Democrats and even friends of Mr. Paterson see his governorship as reeling and troublingly disorganized. They believed that this was to be his defining year, one in which he could move beyond the unusual circumstances of his ascension to high office and prove he could lead the state through a perilous fiscal crisis. Some were unusually open in questioning the approach — and judgment — of the governor and the people around him. “If we have royalty, it’s the Kennedys,” said Assemblyman Peter M. Rivera, a Bronx Democrat and chairman of the Assembly’s Puerto Rican/Hispanic Task Force. “The way she was treated, the backbiting and the attacks, it was insulting,” he said, adding that the extended selection process “was reflective of individuals who are not ready for prime time” and “demeaning to a lot of people.” Even as Mr. Paterson declared at a news conference on Friday that his selection for the Senate seat, Representative Kirsten E. Gillibrand , was “an extraordinary New Yorker” he chose after thoughtful consideration, he found himself apologizing for the process. “In retrospect, I wish I had not showed all of you the wrestling match,” he said. Before the governor had even announced that he had selected Ms. Gillibrand, the pick ignited turmoil within the party, especially among more liberal downstate Democrats. Representative Carolyn McCarthy, an ardent gun-control activist who was elected to Congress after her husband was killed in a gunman’s rampage on the Long Island Rail Road in 1993, said Friday that she would start raising money next week for a potential primary challenge to Ms. Gillibrand, a centrist Democrat endorsed by the National Rifle Association. Though Mr. Paterson assembled a large crowd on the stage, it was as notable for who was absent as for who was present. The vast majority of the state’s congressional delegation stayed away, signaling how much resistance there could be to Ms. Gillibrand’s elevation. Similarly, almost none of the other top contenders for the job came. Note was also taken of the absence of Attorney General Andrew M. Cuomo, a potential primary challenger to the governor who was passed over for the post. One Democratic political consultant, who requested anonymity to candidly assess the governor’s performance, said Mr. Paterson had inadvertently pulled off something staggering: alienating three of the most powerful political families in state and national politics at the same time. “He’s managed to anger, in one fell swoop, the Kennedys, the Cuomos and the Clintons,” the consultant said, arguing that Ms. Kennedy’s family would be furious at the governor over the leaks against her, Mr. Cuomo at being passed over for the job, and Mrs. Clinton at the governor’s willingness to consider Ms. Kennedy in the first place after she endorsed Barack Obama in the presidential race last year. “That’s a pretty good trifecta,” the consultant added. (Mr. Cuomo and Mrs. Clinton, it should be said, issued press releases on Friday effusively praising Ms. Gillibrand.) Some basics of appointment protocol and discretion appeared to have been abandoned; Mr. Paterson talked openly, sometimes playfully about the field of candidates, frequently teasing during radio and television interviews that he had made up — or was changing — his mind. Representative McCarthy said the governor “obviously ticked off an awful lot of people.” “He’s going to be upset with me, I understand that, but this was not done correctly,” she added of the selection process. She said that Mr. Paterson exacerbated the situation by indicating he knew whom he wanted to pick days before he revealed the choice. “It wasn’t fair to any of the candidates who were out there,” she said. Assemblyman Rory Lancman, a Queens Democrat, said, “The way he handled this process feeds into the perception of him lacking discipline.” “A year after he came into office, the governor hasn’t made himself into the leader of our party,” he added. “When the governor himself is sending six different messages a day, it’s impossible to unify the party.” Mr. Paterson allowed that he had been perhaps too open about his thinking over the last weeks. “I think that I may have just, in an attempt to be as transparent as possible, publicly gone through the back and forth of my decision,” Mr. Paterson said. “If that in any way confused anyone, I was not trying to mislead anyone.” H. Carl McCall, the former state comptroller and a Democratic candidate for governor in 2002, defended Mr. Paterson’s handling of the appointment, pointing out that Ms. Kennedy’s own uneven performance and the intense worldwide scrutiny of her bid were factors beyond the governor’s control. “I think that to look at his governorship in the light of this situation would be terribly unfair,” said Mr. McCall. Mr. Paterson certainly received plenty of national attention, but not the kind he wanted. “That’s No Way to Treat a Kennedy!” was the headline of The Drudge Report, while The New Republic asked in one of its blog headlines, “How Big a Clown Is David Paterson?” In light of his recent stumbles, the question for the governor now is how diminished he has been by the process, and whether his weakness will embolden rivals and potentially prevent him from winning election in his own right next year. Clearly, if this was to be a pivotal year, it has not begun well for the governor. The first sign of trouble seemed to be in his State of the State speech Jan. 7, an annual address that opens the legislative session and sets the tone for the entire year. Despite clocking in at more than an hour long — no easy task, given that the governor is legally blind and must memorize his speeches — Mr. Paterson offered few new ideas. In a year when the state faces a $15 billion deficit, his signature proposal was to tax nondiet sodas and ban trans fats in restaurants, steps borrowed from Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg and the state of California. The day after the speech, after it was pilloried by some editorial boards, Mr. Paterson was himself making excuses for it, explaining that he had felt dizzy and ill. The governor’s efforts to jump-start the budget process — by releasing his own spending plan early — seem to have generated little momentum, too. Some wonder if, months after the departure of his top aide Charles O’Byrne, who resigned after it was revealed he had failed to pay taxes, Mr. Paterson still does not have steady hands around him to help him lead. Still, some of his allies maintain confidence in the governor, and point out that he is often underestimated. Asked whether Mr. Paterson would be able to reassert himself and bring the party behind his choice by next year, June O’Neill, the state Democratic chairwoman, said she was not worried. “There’s a long time between now and the next election in 2010,” Ms. O’Neill said. “It’s a lifetime in politics.”

Paterson David A
Gillibrand Kirsten E
Senate
New York State
Democratic Party
Kennedy Caroline


North Korean Gymnast’s Selfie Goes Viral, but Her Bio Is Sparse

Abstract: SEOUL, South Korea — In a selfie that has spread quickly online, the North Korean gymnast Hong Un-jong smiles brightly as a South Korean competitor at the Rio Olympics, Lee Eun-ju, 17, holds up her smartphone and snaps a picture of them hugging. The picture of them taking the selfie ricocheted across social media, and it was cited as an example of the power of sports diplomacy and the Olympic spirit bringing together two countries perpetually on the brink of war. But it also stood out because it was unusual for a North Korean athlete, intentionally or not, to draw such attention to herself; the North Koreans tend to stick to themselves, even at international competitions. And very little of Hong’s biography has been shared with the outside world, despite her winning a gold in the vault at the 2008 Olympics in Beijing and her hero status in a country that reveres its sports stars, particularly in the era of its leader, Kim Jong-un, who is known to be an avid basketball fan. Image Hong Un-jong won the gold medal in vault at the 2008 Olympics in Beijing. Credit Chang W. Lee/The New York Times Hong, 27, was expected to earn a second gold at the London Olympics four years later. But in late 2010, the North Korean women’s gymnastics team was barred from international competition for two years, including the London Games, for repeatedly falsifying the birth date of one of its veteran competitors: Hong’s sister, Su-jong. It turns out the North Korean delegation had submitted three birth years for Hong Su-jong at various international competitions. At least one of the birth dates, March 9, 1989, would have made her too young to qualify for the Athens Olympics in 2004, where she competed in the team and all-around events. It would also make her Hong Un-jong’s twin. Most of what is known about Hong Un-jong back home comes from a book rarely seen in the West, “Olympic Champions Who Bring Glory to the Motherland,” published in Pyongyang in 2014 by the Kumsong Youth Publishing House. It profiles 13 Olympic gold medalists, including Hong. There does not seem to be a discrepancy about Hong’s age in the book, but it raises one about another competitor profiled, Om Yun-chol, a weight lifter who won a silver medal Sunday in Rio and gold in London in 2012. His official Rio profile lists him as 24, born Nov. 18, 1991. The book, however, cites his birth year as 1990. Image The North Korean weight lifter Om Yun-chol won silver at the Rio Games on Sunday in the men’s 56-kilogram (123-pound) division, failing to successfully defend his gold medal from the London Games in 2012. Credit Goh Chai Hin/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images While it could be a mistake, that age would have made Om one year too old to compete in the world junior championships in 2011 . And without competing in that international event, he would not have qualified for the London Olympics. The age discrepancy appears to have gone unnoticed. The information on Hong seems more straightforward, yet illuminating. She was born in the port city of Tanchon in South Hamgyong province in the far north and raised in the industrial city of Hamhung, and is described in the book as the baby of the family, the youngest of three children. She and her sister were spotted for their agility on the uneven bars by a coach who approached their father about putting both girls into intensive training. He initially refused, saying they were a musical family, not athletes. But the coach won him over, the book says. Hong was 6. Within a few years, the sisters were sent to the capital, a day’s journey by train, for round-the-clock coaching. There, in Pyongyang, the Hong sisters were taken under the wing of one of North Korea’s most famous gymnastics coaches, Kim Chun-pil. A Stunning Leap, and a Quiet Trot 16 Photos View Slide Show › Image Doug Mills/The New York Times Un-jong had “the right physique as well as passion and ability,” the unnamed author notes in the six-page profile. “But her willingness to do her best was lacking.” Initially homesick and missing her mother, the young Un-jong stayed up crying at night and was a mess at training. Kim, the coach, stepped in as a surrogate mother, cooking her chicken, rabbit soup and medicine, and cooling her down with cold compresses, the story goes. She got over her homesickness and focused on training. The coach believed in tough love. “Un-jong, aren’t you aware of why we train when everyone else is sleeping?” she demanded to know. “We have the burden of winning a gold medal for our nation.” Hong made her way up the ranks in national and international competitions. She was 19 when she was sent to Beijing. For two years, she had been practicing a vault made famous by the Chinese world champion Cheng Fei. That day in Beijing, Hong beat Cheng on her turf, with the vault that bears her name, bringing home North Korea’s first Olympic gold in gymnastics. Image Hong Un-jong of North Korea, center, beat the Americans Simone Biles, left, and MyKayla Skinner, right, in women’s vault at the 2014 world championships in Nanning, China. Credit Kazuhiro Nogi/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images The North Koreans treated it as a political victory. The book recounts how she was praised on state television as a patriot for defeating “a great rival,” though China is often assumed to be the country’s main ally. Hong went on to win a string of gold medals in the vault, including one at a World Cup championship in 2010, before the team was barred from competition. The profile makes no mention of any frustrations she might have harbored about being barred at the peak of her career. Since the ban was lifted, Hong Un-jong has quietly reasserted herself as a top contender in the vault, earning a bronze at the worlds in 2013, gold in 2014 and silver last year. She goes into Sunday’s finals in second place, just behind Simone Biles, the heavily favored American. The book does not say anything about the consequences athletes face if they come home empty-handed. But the reaction earlier in the week of Om, the weight lifter, suggests that second is not good enough. He won silver in Rio, failing to defend his title, and the high-ranking official who flew in from Pyongyang for the Olympics did not bother to attend his medal ceremony. “I don’t think I can be a hero to my people with a silver medal,” a dejected Om told reporters. In comments posted online in South Korea, there was speculation that if Hong failed to win gold, her internationally lauded selfie would not suffice in keeping her safe. “Off to the coal mine,” one South Korean imagined North Korea’s leader telling his star athlete when she returned home.

2016 Summer Olympics
Gymnastics
North Korea
Hong Un-jong
Lee Eun-ju
South Korea


Viable Economic Structure Eludes Worldwide Tour for Cycling

Abstract: MONTREAL — Quebec’s largest city is something of a cycling mecca, with a highly developed rent-a-bike system and an annual recreational tour that attracts about 20,000 riders. Sunday’s cycling crowd was substantially smaller, just 170 riders. But it included Ivan Basso, winner of this year’s Giro d’Italia; Samuel Sánchez, the 2008 Olympic road race champion; and the American veteran George Hincapie. Like Quebec City, the provincial capital, on Friday, Montreal was host to a race on cycling’s elite ProTour circuit . Entry in ProTour events is mandatory for the sport’s 18 top teams. And an abundance of points in the world rankings that largely determine cyclists’ market value ensures that the top riders attend and race seriously. “These are the best of the guys who aren’t at the Vuelta,” said Carsten Jeppesen, a director with the British-backed Team Sky , referring to the monthlong Vuelta a España in Europe. That the province of Quebec, which has a population of 7.5 million, has hosted the only two North American ProTour events is an anomaly partly related to the differences between organizers in the United States and the sport’s international governing body. But several prominent people in cycling, particularly from the United States, said that it is another result of the peculiar economic structure, which they say is holding cycling back throughout the world. The sport’s financial instability, many of them argue, has also been a factor in its unenviable doping history. “It’s sort of everybody against everybody,” said Bob Stapleton, the former telecommunications executive who owns the HTC-Columbia team. “You have seen the sport rally around a pragmatic and progressive fight against doping. The next step is to unify on a common economic approach.” Sunday’s 193.6-kilometer race (about 120 miles) included 16 ascents of Mount Royal, which looms over downtown Montreal. It was won by Robert Gesink , a Dutchman who finished sixth in the Tour de France . He managed to hang in a solo break to eclipse a chasing group of five riders by four seconds. Unlike other professional team sports, cycling has no formal league. Race organizers do not share television and advertising revenue generated by races with the teams that pay the riders’ salaries and provide their support staff and equipment. As a result, cycling teams are under pressure to achieve results that will attract sponsorship each year to cover their operating costs. In addition, entry to the Tour de France, the race that has come to dominate the sport over the past two decades, is largely assured only to the 18 teams that top the international rankings and form the ProTour. For many teams, dropping to 19th place would mean financial disaster. The teams’ shaky financial base extends to the riders, few of whom have contracts beyond two or three years. “It’s produce or die,” Stapleton said. “That is absolutely the nature of the sport.” He, like many others, argues that the desperation of teams for sponsors and riders for contracts has been a major factor behind doping. The ProTour, which began in 2005, was supposed to start the sport’s restructuring. By designating elite teams and elite races, the International Cycling Union hoped the sport would grow outside its traditional European base. Instead it has found resistance from organizers and squabbling among all of the players in the cycling community. European organizers resented the loss of control over entries to their events as well as attempts to place races in other continents on prime calendar spots. But Pat McQuaid, the cycling union’s president, said the concept had been an equally hard sell with organizers in the United States. Although he has discussed making the Tour of California, America’s premier event, part of the ProTour, McQuaid acknowledged that issues remained between race organizers and the cycling union. Among other things, ProTour status would greatly limit the number of American teams that could participate. Other American organizers, McQuaid said, have been put off by the cost of hosting a ProTour event, which can be steep given that that they must cover all of the teams’ participation expenses, including travel. Serge Arsenault, the organizer of the two Quebec races, said he expected to lose about 1 million Canadian dollars this year on a budget of 4.6 million Canadian dollars. Nor does he expect to turn a profit next year with the races, which he has agreed to stage for five years. Arsenault, who owns a cable television channel and a video production company, is no novice. During the 1980s and 1990s, he ran a similar professional event in Montreal. But it folded after European organizers demanded that it be moved to October, when the weather is too cold for racing in Montreal and hockey consumes television airtime. This time, Arsenault viewed his losses as an investment in a broader plan to restructure racing. His goal is to bring the top teams into his race as partners who will share some of the costs and receive a portion of the broadcasting revenue. It is, he said, a plan that is not popular with everyone, particularly the Amaury Sport Organization , which owns the Tour de France and other major European races. “We have to show the Tour that if they don’t try to control everything they will make more money as the sport grows,” Arsenault said Saturday on a train that transported the riders to Montreal from Quebec. Jonathan Vaughters, the chief executive of the company that owns the Garmin-Transitions team, would like the sport to go further, ultimately establishing teams as permanent franchises. A fixed group of teams with stable rosters participating in a truly worldwide series, he said, would attract multinational sponsors and increase fan interest. Stapleton said that some venture capital groups in the United States, which he declined to identify, had been considering financing a league-based system for cycling. It is not a radical concept for a pro sport, but any major revision will probably not happen quickly.

Bicycles and Bicycling
International Cycling Union
Quebec Province (Canada)
Tour of California (Bicycle Race)
Tour de France (Bicycle Race)
Vuelta a Espana (Bicycle Race)
Montreal (Quebec)


Are You There? It’s Me, Reality: Grit Returns to Young-Adult Novels

Abstract: Growing up on Long Island in the 1970s, I kept a copy of Judy Blume’s “Are You There, God? It’s Me, Margaret,” in its classic lavender-tinted paperback edition, tucked away in a closet in my playroom with the vague intention of returning it to the local library, someday. As months went by and I read and reread the novel upward of a half-dozen times, it became clear that I would never give it up. I imagined thousands of dollars of fines accruing and ultimately an arrest followed by some period of detention. Wasn’t the involvement of law enforcement the only proper response to an abject refusal to relinquish something so precious? Like Margaret Simon, I was an only child suspicious of suburban idyll. I consumed the book, as I would go on, in my 20s, to consume anything by Richard Yates or John Cheever, seeking assurances that a lawn was a poor means of generating certain existential satisfactions. The novel begins with its heroine forced to leave Manhattan, with all of its enrichments, when her parents decide to move to the suburbs (for all of the reasons parents have always decided to move to the suburbs). “Please help me God,” Margaret implores. “Don’t let New Jersey be too horrible.” For women who grew up in the 1970s and early ’80s — nurtured in the fictions of Ms. Blume , Paul Zindel and Norma Klein among others, writers for whom an urbane brand of social realism was the only reasonable métier — the arrival of the “ Twilight ” franchise a decade ago, with its enormous success, signaled a gloomy period of regression for the young-adult novel. The first of the “Twilight” books appeared in 2005, two years after Arnold Schwarzenegger became the governor of California amid sexual assault allegations that prompted relatively little of the outcry now bedeviling Donald J. Trump. A distinct product of Bush-era gender politics rather than a renunciation of them, the series ultimately has its heroine forfeit a chance to go to Dartmouth to stay home and tend to her half-vampire baby, one conceived after a night of violent sex that leaves her body bruised with a husband who is at least 100 years old. Now, though, the appetite for paranormal lunacy has abated, and issue-driven fiction set very much in a universe of urbanism’s chief concerns is having a renaissance. This week, “All American Boys,” a novel by Jason Reynolds and Brendan Kiely, an outgrowth of the Black Lives Matter movement, appears on The New York Times’s best-seller list for young-adult books . The story follows the beating of an innocent black child by a white police officer who thinks he has stolen a bag of chips. Image Mr. Kiely’s book, “All American Boys.” Credit Nicole Craine for The New York Times In a similar vein, “The Hate U Give,” to be released early next year, chronicles the story of a 16-year-old prep-school girl who witnesses a police officer shoot her unarmed best friend. A movie version of the novel, by Angela Thomas, is already in progress. And right now, prominently displayed at Barnes & Noble in Downtown Brooklyn, is “ Bright Lights, Dark Nights ,” a novel about racial profiling set against the backdrop of drugs and violence. The recent upheavals in the economy stemming from the financial crisis, the rise of racial tensions and the increased animosity toward immigrants that the current election cycle has fed and exposed have arguably made this new catalog inevitable. The world has intruded in the lives of children in so many ugly ways. Even an amused tone does not preclude political currency. Consider the coming book “June the Sparrow and the Million-Dollar Penny,” which is meant for children between 9 and 12. In it, an orphaned girl who lives along Central Park discovers one day while she is sitting in Gray’s Papaya that her fortune has been decimated in a Ponzi scheme. She is then forced to move from an apartment in the Dakota to an actual Dakota (South). Some of these books take place in unnamed cities so that they can feel universal to their readers. “The American Street,” highly anticipated and arriving this winter, is a novel set in Detroit but is meant to evoke Bushwick, Brooklyn, during the 1980s when it was a desolate and untamed place. The author, Ibi Zoboi, is Haitian and grew up in Bushwick, and she wanted to tell the story of an immigrant girl coming-of-age in a place where she must navigate a community plagued by crime and addiction. “I remember my upbringing of people coming here for jobs and then not getting those jobs,” Ms. Zoboi told me. “The immigrant’s story is not one of rags to riches automatically.” Gentrification made it too implausible to set the story in the Bushwick of today. “The house we grew up in was on the market recently for $2 million, and that really hurt,” she said. “We tried so hard to get out.” In some sense these new realist novels are even grittier than their predecessors from the 1970s, even though children, especially in New York where crime rates were so high, faced greater perils then. The classic young-adult novel of that period typically dealt with characters managing the fracture of American family life — divorce, a mother’s new boyfriend and so on — but those characters most often enjoyed the comforts of middle-class life. Norma Klein’s Manhattan was as sophisticated as any Woody Allen would devise. Children today may finally be resisting the elusive insulation we crave for them.

Books
Teens
Children
Judy Blume
All American Boys
The Hate U Give


Truth, Fiction and Lou Dobbs

Abstract: The whole controversy involving Lou Dobbs and leprosy started with a “60 Minutes” segment a few weeks ago. The segment was a profile of Mr. Dobbs, and while doing background research for it, a “60 Minutes” producer came across a 2005 news report from Mr. Dobbs’s CNN program on contagious diseases. In the report, one of Mr. Dobbs’s correspondents said there had been 7,000 cases of leprosy in this country over the previous three years, far more than in the past. When Lesley Stahl of “60 Minutes” sat down to interview Mr. Dobbs on camera, she mentioned the report and told him that there didn’t seem to be much evidence for it. “Well, I can tell you this,” he replied. “If we reported it, it’s a fact.” With that Orwellian chestnut, Mr. Dobbs escalated the leprosy dispute into a full-scale media brouhaha. The next night, back on his own program , the same CNN correspondent who had done the earlier report, Christine Romans, repeated the 7,000 number, and Mr. Dobbs added that, if anything, it was probably an underestimate. A week later, the Southern Poverty Law Center — the civil rights group that has long been critical of Mr. Dobbs — took out advertisements in The New York Times and USA Today demanding that CNN run a correction. Finally, Mr. Dobbs played host to two top officials from the law center on his program, “Lou Dobbs Tonight,” where he called their accusations outrageous and they called him wrong, unfair and “one of the most popular people on the white supremacist Web sites.” We’ll get to the merits of the charges and countercharges shortly, but first it’s worth considering why, beyond entertainment value, all this matters. Over the last few years, Lou Dobbs has transformed himself into arguably this country’s foremost populist. It’s an odd role, given that he spent the 1980s and ’90s buttering up chief executives on CNN, but he’s now playing it very successfully. He has become a voice for the real economic anxiety felt by many Americans. The audience for his program has grown 72 percent since 2003, and CBS — yes, the same network that broadcasts “60 Minutes” — just hired him as a commentator on “The Early Show.” Many elites, as Mr. Dobbs likes to call them, despise him, but others see him as a hero. His latest book, “War on the Middle Class,” was a best seller and received a sympathetic review in this newspaper. Mario Cuomo has said Mr. Dobbs is “addicted to economic truth.” Mr. Dobbs argues that the middle class has many enemies: corporate lobbyists, greedy executives, wimpy journalists, corrupt politicians. But none play a bigger role than illegal immigrants. As he sees it, they are stealing our jobs, depressing our wages and even endangering our lives. That’s where leprosy comes in. “The invasion of illegal aliens is threatening the health of many Americans,” Mr. Dobbs said on his April 14, 2005, program . From there, he introduced his original report that mentioned leprosy, the flesh-destroying disease — technically known as Hansen’s disease — that has inspired fear for centuries. According to a woman CNN identified as a medical lawyer named Dr. Madeleine Cosman, leprosy was on the march. As Ms. Romans, the CNN correspondent, relayed: “There were about 900 cases of leprosy for 40 years. There have been 7,000 in the past three years.” “Incredible,” Mr. Dobbs replied. Mr. Dobbs and Ms. Romans engaged in a nearly identical conversation a few weeks ago, when he was defending himself the night after the “60 Minutes” segment. “Suddenly, in the past three years, America has more than 7,000 cases of leprosy,” she said, again attributing the number to Ms. Cosman. To sort through all this, I called James L. Krahenbuhl, the director of the National Hansen’s Disease Program , an arm of the federal government. Leprosy in the United States is indeed largely a disease of immigrants who have come from Asia and Latin America. And the official leprosy statistics do show about 7,000 diagnosed cases — but that’s over the last 30 years , not the last three. The peak year was 1983, when there were 456 cases. After that, reported cases dropped steadily, falling to just 76 in 2000. Last year, there were 137. “It is not a public health problem — that’s the bottom line,” Mr. Krahenbuhl told me. “You’ve got a country of 300 million people. This is not something for the public to get alarmed about.” Much about the disease remains unknown, but researchers think people get it through prolonged close contact with someone who already has it. What about the increase over the last six years, to 137 cases from 76? Is that significant? “No,” Mr. Krahenbuhl said. It could be a statistical fluctuation, or it could be a result of better data collection in recent years. In any event, the 137 reported cases last year were fewer than in any year from 1975 to 1996. So Mr. Dobbs was flat-out wrong. And when I spoke to him yesterday, he admitted as much, sort of. I read him Ms. Romans’s comment — the one with the word “suddenly” in it — and he replied, “I think that is wrong.” He then went on to say that as far as he was concerned, he had corrected the mistake by later broadcasting another report, on the same night as his on-air confrontation with the Southern Poverty Law Center officials. This report mentioned that leprosy had peaked in 1983. Of course, he has never acknowledged on the air that his program presented false information twice. Instead, he lambasted the officials from the law center for saying he had. Even yesterday, he spent much of our conversation emphasizing that there really were 7,000 cases in the leprosy registry, the government’s 30-year database. Mr. Dobbs is trying to have it both ways. I have been somewhat taken aback about how shameless he has been during the whole dispute, so I spent some time reading transcripts from old episodes of “Lou Dobbs Tonight.” The way he handled leprosy, it turns out, is not all that unusual. For one thing, Mr. Dobbs has a somewhat flexible relationship with reality. He has said , for example, that one-third of the inmates in the federal prison system are illegal immigrants. That’s wrong , too. According to the Justice Department , 6 percent of prisoners in this country are noncitizens (compared with 7 percent of the population). For a variety of reasons, the crime rate is actually lower among immigrants than natives. Second, Mr. Dobbs really does give airtime to white supremacy sympathizers. Ms. Cosman, who is now deceased, was a lawyer and Renaissance studies scholar, never a medical doctor or a leprosy expert. She gave speeches in which she said that Mexican immigrants had a habit of molesting children. Back in their home villages, she would explain, rape was not as serious a crime as cow stealing. The Southern Poverty Law Center keeps a list of other such guests from “Lou Dobbs Tonight.” Finally, Mr. Dobbs is fond of darkly hinting that this country is under attack. He suggested last week that the new immigration bill in Congress could be the first step toward a new nation — a “North American union” — that combines the United States, Canada and Mexico. On other occasions, his program has described a supposed Mexican plot to reclaim the Southwest. In one such report , one of his correspondents referred to a Utah visit by Vicente Fox, then Mexico’s president, as a “Mexican military incursion.” When I asked Mr. Dobbs about this yesterday, he said, “You’ve raised this to a level that frankly I find offensive.” The most common complaint about him, at least from other journalists, is that his program combines factual reporting with editorializing. But I think this misses the point. Americans, as a rule, are smart enough to handle a program that mixes opinion and facts. The problem with Mr. Dobbs is that he mixes opinion and untruths. He is the heir to the nativist tradition that has long used fiction and conspiracy theories as a weapon against the Irish, the Italians, the Chinese, the Jews and, now, the Mexicans. There is no denying that this country’s immigration system is broken. But it defies belief — and a whole lot of economic research — to suggest that the problems of the middle class stem from illegal immigrants. Those immigrants, remember, are largely non-English speakers without a high school diploma. They have probably hurt the wages of native-born high school dropouts and made everyone else better off. More to the point, if Mr. Dobbs’s arguments were really so good, don’t you think he would be able to stick to the facts? And if CNN were serious about being “the most trusted name in news,” as it claims to be, don’t you think it would be big enough to issue an actual correction?

Dobbs Lou
Immigration and Refugees
Leprosy (Hansen's Disease)
Illegal Immigrants
Economic Conditions and Trends
Television
Cable News Network
Southern Poverty Law Center


Official Assurances Fail to Stem Rush of Withdrawals at British Bank

Abstract: LONDON, Sept. 17 — Terry Mays and his wife, both retirees, decided during the weekend that a promise by the Bank of England to provide emergency financing for Northern Rock, the troubled British mortgage lender that has most of their savings, was not enough to calm their nerves. The couple joined hundreds of other Northern Rock customers Monday as lines formed for a third day in front of branches where people waited to withdraw their savings. “I don’t think the bank will collapse — but we just don’t have the nerves,” Mr. Mays said, surrounded by a group of depositors who had traveled with him to the central London branch from a southern one after being told that the wait there would be at least six hours. “I took some financial advice over the weekend, and I’m taking the money out to get peace of mind. We’re relying on this money for our pension.” Panicky customers have withdrawn £2 billion ($4 billion), since the bank acknowledged Friday that it could no longer raise money because of the credit squeeze that has constrained global markets after a meltdown in the market for subprime loans in the United States. So far, assurances from Northern Rock’s chief executive, Adam J. Applegarth, and the chancellor of the Exchequer, Alistair Darling, that deposits were securely backed by the Bank of England have failed to impress depositors. In a bid to shore up confidence, Mr. Darling announced on Monday that the government would guarantee all deposits in Northern Rock even if the bank should collapse and would extend similar guarantees to any other troubled financial institution that approached the government. No other bank or institution had yet approached the Bank of England, he added. Unlike other banks that have been bailed out because of direct exposure to subprime mortgages, Northern Rock was the first to fall victim directly to the global credit squeeze, because it relied heavily on raising money in the capital markets. Shares in Northern Rock slumped 36 percent Monday, to a seven-year low, dragging European banking stocks lower across the board as jittery investors began scrutinizing banks to determine which ones might have a similar business model. Alliance & Leicester and Bradford & Bingley, two Northern Rock rivals that also tap the capital markets, fell 31 percent and 15 percent respectively. Large financial institutions, including HSBC Holdings, Société Générale of France and Deutsche Bank of Germany also declined, leading a 1.5 percent drop of the European Dow Jones Stoxx 600 index. The FTSE 100 in Britain fell 1.7 percent, and the CAC 40 in France fell 1.8 percent. The overnight rate that British banks charge to lend pounds to one another soared 60 basis points on Monday, to 6.47 percent, the highest level in more than a month, according to the British Bankers’ Association. Citigroup, Credit Suisse and Merrill Lynch cut their earnings estimates for several European banks Monday, including Northern Rock. Credit Suisse and Merrill said the bank was likely to be bought. “We think the game is over for Northern Rock in its present form,” a Merrill analyst, John-Paul Crutchley, wrote in a note to investors. The sight of hundreds of Britons lining up to make withdrawals after the unexpected and speedy decline of Northern Rock has also prompted questions about whether the robust British economy — supported in large part by a heated housing market — would suffer in the aftermath of the subprime mortgage crisis in the United States. The pound fell below $2 for the first time in nearly three weeks. Some economists said that the Northern Rock experience could dent consumer confidence and eventually have an effect on British economic growth. Members of Britain’s opposition Conservative Party said Monday that Prime Minister Gordon Brown had ignored warnings of a “looming debt crisis” for the last four years when he was chancellor of the Exchequer and that he had encouraged consumers to take on record debt. In recent years, British mortgage lenders began offering loans exceeding the value of the properties on which they were based. The easy availability of credit helped prop up property prices and fueled speculation in the real estate market. Mervyn A. King, the head of the Bank of England, also came under pressure to explain why the bank bailed out Northern Rock only days after refusing to inject liquidity into financial markets on the ground that such action encouraged “excessive risk-taking.” Northern Rock opened at 8 a.m. Monday, one hour earlier than usual, to deal with the expected wave of withdrawals. It had to increase the bandwidth on its Web site, which had struggled with the volume of people trying to get access. Patricia Carlton, a retiree who joined the line at noon Monday at a Northern Rock branch in London, said she decided to withdraw her money after watching the morning news and seeing lines forming at the bank branches. “I hate to take out the money, but I just don’t want to risk anything,” she said, adding that she did not yet know what she would do with it.

Mortgages
Banks and Banking
Northern Rock Plc
London (England)


French Bill on Armenian Genocide Is Struck Down

Abstract: PARIS — The French Constitutional Council on Tuesday struck down a draft law that would have criminalized the denial of an Armenian genocide by the Ottoman Turks, legislation that has soured relations between France and Turkey . The controversy over the bill is likely to persist, however. President Nicolas Sarkozy , who backed the legislation, vowed to submit a new bill with revised language. He has in the past indicated that he would push to see that denial of an Armenian genocide is made a crime even if the council ruled against the draft law. Mr. Sarkozy offered no indication on Tuesday as to how he thought a new bill might overcome the objections of the council, which ruled that “the legislature did unconstitutional harm to the exercise of freedom of expression and communication” in approving the legislation. After passage of the bill in the French Senate last month, dozens of lawmakers from across the political spectrum submitted appeals to the council, insisting that the legislation violated free speech rights and that it was not the place of the legislature to impose its own explanation for the hundreds of thousands of Armenian deaths that began in 1915, amid the chaos of World War I and the collapse of the Ottoman Empire . The government in Ankara, Turkey’s capital, shared that assessment, and hailed the council’s decision on Tuesday. Turkish leaders will meet to consider the lifting of economic sanctions imposed because of the bill and the reinstatement of political and military cooperation with France, Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu told reporters on Tuesday. It remained unclear how Turkey might react should Mr. Sarkozy submit a new bill. “We consider the annulment of the legislation by the Constitutional Council as a step that complies with the principles of freedom of expression and research, the rule of law and international law in France,” the Turkish Foreign Ministry said Tuesday evening in a statement. The ministry urged France to treat the “conflict between Turkey and Armenia in a just and scientific manner,” in order to contribute to its resolution “rather than deepening it.” Among the penalties Turkey imposed because of the bill was the cancellation of the annually issued permission for French military planes to use Turkish airspace. The Turkish government has long maintained that an Armenian genocide did not occur, and considers suggestions to the contrary to be an affront to Turkish identity. Turkish law treats the public affirmation of an Armenian genocide as a crime. Historians widely believe that about 1.5 million Armenians were systematically killed by Ottoman Turkish troops. Turkey maintains that no more than 500,000 Armenians died, with many of them victims of starvation or exposure, and not targeted killings. A French law from 2001 recognizes the Armenian genocide as fact, but calls for no sanctions for those who contest it. The draft law struck down on Tuesday would have punished denial of the genocide with up to one year in prison and a fine of up to 45,000 euros, or more than $60,000. The council that ruled on Tuesday evaluates the constitutionality of French laws; its members include former presidents of France. Mr. Sarkozy was prohibited from signing the genocide bill into law while the council deliberated. A statement released by Mr. Sarkozy’s office said he “measures the immense disappointment and the profound sadness of all those who had welcomed with recognition and hope the adoption of this law.” The Turkish government and the news media had lambasted the French legislation and its backers, accusing French lawmakers of racism and charging that the writing of history was well beyond the bounds of their mandate. Some Turkish officials suggested Mr. Sarkozy had backed the draft law in an effort to pander to the Armenian electorate; Mr. Sarkozy is up for re-election this year. In a Twitter message on Tuesday, Turkey’s deputy prime minister, Bulent Arinc, praised the French council for declining to “indulge political concerns” in its decision.

War Crimes Genocide and Crimes Against Humanity


F.C.C. Says It Will Move Forward on Broadband Plan

Abstract: WASHINGTON — The chairman of the Federal Communications Commission told a Congressional panel on Wednesday that a recent court ruling that the agency lacked authority to regulate the Internet should not prevent it from carrying out its plan to broadly expand the country’s high-speed Internet service. But the chairman refused to say if the commission would try to reclassify Internet service as a utility similar to telephone service to overcome the court decision, a move that some Democratic senators supported but that several Republican senators strongly warned against. Julius Genachowski , the F.C.C. chairman, said in testimony before the Senate Commerce Committee, that the agency’s lawyers were still considering the effect of the court case, Comcast v. F.C.C., on the commission’s effort, known as the National Broadband Plan. The broadband plan seeks nationwide adoption of high-speed Internet service, greater availability of high-speed connections for wireless devices and subsidies for rural broadband service. Last week, a federal appeals court threw some of those plans into question, ruling that the F.C.C. had overstepped its authority when it tried to enforce a commission rule that required companies to give broadband users equal access to all Internet content. The commission said it thought that it could pursue its goals and abide by the court ruling. It does not plan an appeal. Mr. Genachowski said he thought that the court decision did not inhibit the F.C.C. from protecting consumers in their use of communications networks, “whether traditional networks or newer data networks.” But he acknowledged that the agency was still studying how it could carry out its goals, one of which would extend universal Internet service to rural areas using the Universal Service Fund, which helps pay for phone service in sparsely populated areas. He predicted that the agency would still be able to undertake those efforts, saying they were “consistent with the Communications Act,” and similar to what the F.C.C. has done “for quite some time.” Some Republican senators sharply disagreed. Senator Mike Johanns of Nebraska said he thought the court’s ruling was “very specific in saying you don’t have the authority” to enforce equal-access standards. “I don’t agree with that,” Mr. Genachowski replied. He said that the commission thought it could take steps to protect consumers from discriminatory Internet policies — an indirect reference to its equal-access efforts — “and I assure you that anything we do in all of the areas concerning communications will have solid legal authority.” Some consumer advocates have urged the commission to reclassify Internet service from its current designation as a communications service, over which the F.C.C. has limited regulatory authority, to a category like telephone service, which the agency has the clear authority to regulate. The F.C.C. itself moved to deregulate Internet service by moving it to its current status during the Bush administration. It could, therefore, reverse that decision without seeking the approval of Congress. Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison of Texas, who is the committee’s ranking minority member, warned against such a move. If it did so without the authorization of Congress, she said, “the legitimacy of the agency would be seriously compromised.” Several times, Mr. Genachowski ducked direct questions as to whether the F.C.C. was considering moving the regulatory designation of Internet service from one category to the other. “I have instructed our lawyers to take the recent decision seriously,” he said, “and evaluate what our options are.” Senator Byron L. Dorgan, a North Dakota Democrat, encouraged such a strategy. “I love the free market, but it needs a referee,” he said. Other senators were more restrained in their support of the idea. Senator John Kerry, Democrat of Massachusetts, said in a statement that while he was reserving judgment on whether the F.C.C. should reclassify broadband services, “because I want you to explore all options,” he added that he thought the commission had the legal authority to do so “if it wishes.” In the meantime, he added, “ I do not believe broadband either should or needs to go without F.C.C. oversight.”

Federal Communications Commission
Broadband
United States Politics and Government
Computers and the Internet
Regulation and Deregulation of Industry
Genachowski Julius


Parkour, a Pastime Born on the Streets, Moves Indoors and Uptown

Abstract: They are skateboarders without skateboards, urban acrobats who scale walls, hurdle mailboxes and leap between buildings in stunts that might give Spider-Man pause. Practitioners of parkour, a daring pastime born in the streets, have long seen public spaces as their playground, and parkour as the ultimate rebel’s game, one with no rules, league, equipment or winners. It started in France (the name is derived from the French word for “course”) and has spread around the world: Gaza , Tokyo , Rome and Miami are parkour towns. One thread binds them all: parkour takes place outdoors. Bringing it inside, purists argue, would be like asking swimmers to perfect the breaststroke on grass. But now, parkour has grown up, traded the pavement for padding and turned into a big business. Parkour gyms have opened across the country, from Los Angeles to Rochester , featuring juice bars, private classes and children’s birthday parties that cost $450 (cake not included). Specialized apparel companies sell tailored gloves for $34.50 and shoes for $60. An international organization offers special parkour insurance policies and charges $295 for teacher certification courses. “Parkour is definitely blowing up,” said Shem Rajoon, 27, an owner of Bklyn Beast , a parkour gym in East Williamsburg, Brooklyn, that opened this year. “I see it becoming something very mainstream.” While the gyms’ owners say they are broadening the activity’s appeal, and making it safer in the process, hard-core enthusiasts say parkour’s renegade soul is at risk. Image A parkour session at a gym. Credit Emily Berl for The New York Times “If you limit parkour to the indoor setting, you effectively nullify its very point,” said Dan Edwardes, 37, author of “The Parkour and Freerunning Handbook.” “The prevalence now of ‘parkour gyms’ in some countries, particularly the States, is worrying, as it means within a few years parkour will not exist anymore in its original form.” Parkour’s popularity has boomed in the YouTube era, as daredevils across the world record themselves leaping , and sometimes crashing , in a digital game of one-upmanship. Kudos go to the person who most creatively turns a parking meter into a diving board, a wall into a ladder. The gyms, with their padding and liability waivers, offer a more sanitized version of the urban landscape. Many gyms are decorated with urban costumes, adopting indoor graffiti, scaffolding and handrails to mimic the outdoors. On a recent Saturday at Bklyn Beast, children and adults leapt across a purple, springy floor, launching over vaults with abandon. They climbed fire poles and swung from monkey bars in front of walls tagged with spray paint. Elizabeth Bellis Wolfe, a 29-year-old lawyer, said she found parkour to be a far more exciting workout than another session on the treadmill. “It’s just scary enough that you’re thinking about being scared and in pain, but not so scary that you don’t want to do it,” she said. But as with any subculture on the verge of gaining wider popularity, purists scoff at what they see as the commodification of their beloved pastime. They argue that the gyms, with their foam pits and soft floors, are spoon-feeding tricks to the public, dumbing down the jazzlike improvisation that is central to parkour. Parkour Gyms Grow in Popularity 13 Photos View Slide Show › Image Chang W. Lee/The New York Times “It’s about using what is there and being creative with the space in front of you,” said Kaspar Schröder, 33, a Copenhagen filmmaker who directed the 2009 parkour documentary “ My Playground .” Many gym owners say they encourage their members to practice parkour inside and outside. And there are signs that even some hard-core parkour enthusiasts have taken to the indoors. In June, New York hosted the seventh annual PKNY Jam, a weekend-long event that brings together enthusiasts from across the country. This year, for the first time, it also included an indoor session at Bklyn Beast. Beyond the gyms, a flurry of groups is looking to capitalize on the trend. Red Bull started an annual freerunning contest in 2007. Video games like Assassin’s Creed and Infamous feature characters performing parkour tricks. The World Freerunning and Parkour Federation has seen increasing interest in its certification program, said Victor Bevine, one of its founders, with classes held in Miami, Boston, Dallas and Fairfield, Conn., and others scheduled in Los Angeles and San Francisco. The federation also began an insurance product in April tailored to parkour gyms that have certified teachers. When the federation was created in 2007, Bevine found “no one trying to support the overall growth of the sport on a global level,” he said. Now, that landscape is crowded. On a recent afternoon spent vaulting over chin-up bars in a Lower Manhattan park, Vanya Prokopovich, a 20-year-old lab technician from Ann Arbor, Mich., extolled outdoor parkour. “You feel free, and you feel such happiness,” he said. Then he added: “You just have to be close to the concrete. Inside, it doesn’t feel as natural.”

Parkour
Health clubs,gyms,fitness centers


Building Tiny Parks to Drive Sex Offenders Away

Abstract: LOS ANGELES — Parents who pick up their children at the bus stop in this city’s Harbor Gateway neighborhood say they often see men wearing GPS ankle bracelets and tell their children to stay away. Just up the street, 30 paroled sex offenders live in a single apartment building, including rapists and child molesters. More than 100 registered sex offenders live within a few miles. So local residents and city officials developed a plan to force convicted sex offenders to leave their neighborhood: open a tiny park. Parents here, where state law prohibits registered sex offenders from living within 2,000 feet of a school or a public park, are not the only ones seizing on this approach. From the metropolis of Miami to the small town of Sapulpa, Okla., communities are building pocket parks, sometimes so small that they have barely enough room for a swing set, to drive out sex offenders. One playground installation company in Houston has even advertised its services to homeowners associations as an option for keeping sex offenders away. Within the next several months, one of Los Angeles’s smallest parks will open here in Harbor Gateway, on a patch of grass less than 1,000 square feet at the corner of a busy intersection. But even if no child ever uses its jungle gym, the park will serve its intended purpose. “Regardless of whether it’s the largest park or the smallest, we’re putting in a park to send a message that we don’t want a high concentration of sex offenders in this community,” said Joe Buscaino , a former Los Angeles police officer who now represents the area on the City Council. While the pocket parks springing up around the country offer a sense of security to residents, they will probably leave more convicted sex offenders homeless. And research shows that once sex offenders lose stable housing, they become not only harder to track but also more likely to commit another crime, according to state officials involved with managing such offenders. “Putting in parks doesn’t just break up clusters — it makes it impossible for sex offenders to find housing in the whole city,” said Janet Neeley, a member of the California Sex Offender Management Board . “It’s counterproductive to public safety, because when you have nothing to lose, you are much more likely to commit a crime than when you are rebuilding your life.” Restrictions on where sex offenders can live, which have been passed in most states, have already rendered most residential areas in many cities off limits. The number of homeless sex offenders in California has increased threefold since 2006, when the latest residency restrictions were passed, and a third of sex offenders on parole are now homeless, according to reports from the Sex Offender Management Board. The others cluster in the few pockets where they are still allowed, like Harbor Gateway, a working-class neighborhood that stretches south of the main part of the city along Interstate 110. Because of continuing litigation over the residency restrictions, it is unclear exactly how many of the sex offenders living near the new Harbor Gateway park would have to leave the area, or when. Currently, all sex offenders, even those whose crimes were not violent or against children, must register for life in California, but only those on parole are prevented from living near parks and schools. About 3.5 percent of paroled sex offenders commit a new sex crime before the end of their three-year parole period, according to a 2008 Sex Offender Management Board report. The pocket park policy has been an unmitigated political victory for Mr. Buscaino, who easily won re-election to the City Council on Tuesday. The park’s groundbreaking last month became a neighborhood celebration, complete with a marching band and residents who loudly cheered Mr. Buscaino and other local officials. “I think it’s great,” said Patti O’Connell, 58, who lives a block from the park. “I just feel sorry for wherever they’re moving to. It’s scary that there’s sex offenders all around with all these little kids here.” And Mr. Buscaino is moving ahead with plans to squeeze even further the areas in Los Angeles where sex offenders can live. Two more pocket parks are planned for another neighborhood in Mr. Buscaino’s district, in hopes of breaking up a cluster of sex offenders who live there. He also hoped to bar sex offenders in Los Angeles from living near day care centers and after school programs, as other cities have already done. The park in Harbor Gateway will cost only about $300,000, because the city already owns the land. But one of the other new parks, which will be three acres, will cost the city about $6 million, including buying the land. Mr. Buscaino said he supported housing for sex offenders, but said the pocket park would improve the quality of life in Harbor Gateway. “Let’s house them, absolutely, but not in a high-population area like this one,” he said. Many of the sex offenders who live near Harbor Gateway have been placed there with the help of parole officers, precisely so they would not end up on the street. The landlord of some nearby apartments where dozens of sex offenders on parole live, who spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of retaliation, said that keeping paroled sex offenders together in transitional housing actually kept the community safer because it places controls on them even after they leave prison. The doors are locked by keypads so that officers can regularly check on the parolees, he said. Residents are under strict curfews and are not allowed to drink, use drugs or view pornography while living in the apartments. If they violate those rules, parole officers can send them back into custody. “People come out of jail, and they just become homeless,” the landlord said. “They have no food, no money, no anything. What’s the possibility then that they’re going to reoffend? They can add all the parks they want, but they still have to go somewhere.” In some urban areas, however, there is already nowhere left for sex offenders to legally live. In Miami, dozens of convicted sex offenders camped under a bridge, unable to find any other shelter, until the encampment was broken up several years ago. Another camp in Miami, where a dozen offenders slept on the sidewalk, was dispersed last year when Marc Sarnoff , a city commissioner, had three pocket parks built in the neighborhood. Mr. Sarnoff said he did not know where the offenders ended up. “There has to be a strategy in place so they don’t just live on the sidewalk,” Mr. Sarnoff said. “We need more resources in place so these guys don’t reoffend. But that’s beyond the city’s resources. It has to be at the state level.”

Rape
Probation and Parole
Parks
Real Estate
Housing
Los Angeles
Child Abuse
Homelessness


Paleontologists Challenge a Hogwarts Namesake

Abstract: The world seems awash in new dinosaurs these days. But all may not be as it seems. Two paleontologists argue in a new paper that two members of the family of dome-headed dinosaurs are not separate species, but rather younger growth stages of another dinosaur, Pachycephalosaurus wyomingensis. And they say there may be other similar cases of mistaken identity. John R. Horner of the Museum of the Rockies at Montana State University and Mark B. Goodwin of the Museum of Paleontology at the University of California, Berkeley, compared bone tissue and skull morphology of P. wyomingensis with those of Stygimoloch spinifer and Dracorex hogwartsia, announced in 2006 and named after the school in the Harry Potter books. They described their findings in PLoS One, an online open-access journal. Dr. Horner said that through earlier work on Triceratops he had come to realize that juveniles and adults could look very different, with bone being resorbed and redistributed as the animal ages. While the domed skull of P. wyomingensis is different from those of Stygimoloch, which has spikes and a small dome, and Dracorex, which only has spikes, “it was pretty easy to hypothesize that if the triangular bones on the back of Triceratops can resorb, the spikes on the back of Pachycephalosaurus can, too,” he said. Their work revealed that the bone tissue of both Dracorex and Stygimoloch was growing very fast, an indication that the specimens were juveniles, with Dracorex being the younger one. Dr. Horner said the different morphology of adults and juveniles was similar to what occurred among modern antlered animals, when the appendages changed with age and in some cases did not appear. “What the dinosaurs are doing,” he said, “is nowhere near as extreme as antlered animals.”

Dinosaurs
Paleontology
Science and Technology


Four-Run Ninth Propels Red Sox Past Indians

Abstract: Jacoby Ellsbury hit a game-ending two-run double on Joe Smith’s first pitch Sunday, capping a four-run ninth inning that lifted the host Boston Red Sox over the Cleveland Indians, 6-5. Boston won three of four against Cleveland, managed by Terry Francona in his first series back at Fenway Park since he left the Red Sox after the 2011 season. Francona led the Red Sox to World Series titles in 2004 and 2007. Ellsbury’s hit gave Boston its ninth win in 12 games. BLUE JAYS 6, ORIOLES 5 Munenori Kawasaki capped a four-run ninth with a two-run double that gave host Toronto a victory over Baltimore. Orioles closer Jim Johnson (2-5) recorded his fourth blown save in five chances. ANGELS 5, ROYALS 2 Josh Hamilton started a comeback when he homered leading off the seventh inning, and visiting Los Angeles beat Kansas City for its eighth straight victory. MARINERS 4, RANGERS 3 Jason Bay hit a two-out run-scoring single in the 13th inning, lifting host Seattle over Texas. Bay came through after he was robbed of a game-winning homer in the 11th, when David Murphy leaped above the fence in left-center field to catch Bay’s drive. TIGERS 6, TWINS 1 Max Scherzer pitched six solid innings to remain undefeated this season at 7-0, and Avisail Garcia broke the game open with a bases-loaded triple in the sixth, leading host Detroit over Minnesota. ATHLETICS 6, ASTROS 2 Bartolo Colon struck out a season-high nine in seven scoreless innings, and visiting Oakland completed a sweep of Houston. WHITE SOX 5, MARLINS 3 Dayan Viciedo and Alex Rios each threw out runners at the plate, and host Chicago beat Miami to sweep their weekend series. CARDINALS 5, DODGERS 3 Matt Carpenter drove in the go-ahead run with an infield single and Pete Kozma hit a three-run double against Clayton Kershaw, leading visiting St. Louis over Los Angeles. Seth Maness (4-1) got credit for the victory in relief of starter Shelby Miller, despite retiring only two of the six batters he faced. CUBS 5, REDS 4 Alfonso Soriano hit a tying two-run homer in the eighth inning and Welington Castillo had a go-ahead double in the 10th, helping visiting Chicago rally from a four-run deficit in a victory over Cincinnati. PIRATES 5, BREWERS 4 Wandy Rodriguez won his fourth consecutive start, Pedro Alvarez had a two-run double and Pittsburgh held off host Milwaukee. GIANTS 7, ROCKIES 3 Brandon Belt hit a tiebreaking two-run double in the fifth inning to back a shaky outing by Matt Cain, and host San Francisco rallied past Colorado. DIAMONDBACKS 6, PADRES 5 Patrick Corbin worked six innings, Martin Prado matched a career high with four hits and host Arizona beat San Diego. NATIONALS 6, PHILLIES 1 In a showdown of aces with disappointing records, Stephen Strasburg (3-5) and Cole Hamels (1-8) matched each other until host Washington scored five runs in the seventh inning against Philadelphia.

Baseball
Red Sox
Cleveland Indians
Jacoby Ellsbury


Protests Bring New Violence in Kenya

Abstract: NAIROBI, Kenya — Opposition protests resumed in Kenya on Wednesday, and as many people here feared, violence erupted across the country once again. The worst clashes were in Kisumu, Kenya’s third largest city and an opposition stronghold, where mobs of furious young men hurled stones at police officers, who responded by charging into the crowds and firing their guns. One of Kenya’s television stations broadcast images of a police officer in Kisumu shooting an unarmed protester who was dancing in the street and making faces at security agents. After the protester fell to the ground, the officer ran up to him and kicked him several times. Witnesses said the protester later died. “There’s been war since the morning,” said Eric Otieno, a mechanic in Kisumu. “The police are whipping women, children, everyone. We were just trying to demonstrate peacefully.” Eric Kiraithe, a spokesman for the Kenyan police, said the only people wounded by police officers were hooligans destroying property and robbing people. “What we are seeing are teams of young men trying to commit crimes,” Mr. Kiraithe said. “You cannot call this a demonstration.” Opposition leaders have vowed to carry on protests for two more days, and it seems that Kenya’s security forces, which have deemed all protests illegal, are cracking down harshly. On Wednesday afternoon, police officers in padded suits sealed off downtown Nairobi, the capital, and ordered everyone out, sending wave after wave of bewildered office workers trudging down the roads leading to the suburbs. Fourteen of Kenya’s leading donors, including the United States, issued a statement this week warning the Kenyan government that they were reviewing foreign aid in light of the crisis. The United States gives the country more than $600 million in aid each year. It seems that Kenya has been unable to get back to normal after a flawed election on Dec. 27 ignited unrest and violence that has already claimed more than 600 lives. Mwai Kibaki , the incumbent president, was declared the winner over Raila Odinga , a top opposition leader, but several election observers said the government rigged the tallying of the results to give the president a slim, 11th-hour victory. American diplomats in Kenya recently finished their own analysis of the voting results and concluded that the election was so flawed it was impossible to tell who really won. Outraged opposition supporters have attacked members of the president’s ethnic group, with many people killed by machete-wielding mobs. Most of the ethnic violence has diminished, though it has left more than 200,000 people displaced. On Wednesday, many protesters said that they would continue to wreak havoc until Mr. Kibaki stepped down. Judging by the amount of live ammunition and tear gas that was fired at demonstrators or near them, police officials seem increasingly determined to show that they will not back down. Opposition leaders are not budging either. “Nothing will stop us from mounting these rallies,” Mr. Odinga said. Kenya’s economy, which powers trade and industry across a large part of eastern Africa, is taking a beating from all this. Tourists, drawn by wildlife and white-sand beaches, are canceling trips in droves, leaving some of the biggest hotels in the country only 20 percent occupied, which could lead to layoffs. On Wednesday morning, protesters fought with the police in the streets of Mombasa, Kenya’s biggest port and a main artery to the rest of East Africa. Witnesses said that hundreds of demonstrators, many of them Muslims, tried to block traffic circles in the city center but that police officers in riot gear chased them away with tear gas. Previous unrest in Mombasa seriously disrupted food and fuel supplies, forcing several neighboring countries, like Uganda and Rwanda, to ration gasoline. Many Muslims in Kenya support the opposition because they believe that the Kenyan government, a close American ally, has persecuted members of their religion during counterterrorism operations. Many Kenyans are getting tired of the violence and disruptions and the cloud of uncertainty that hangs over the country. They had hoped that tensions would now decrease because the opposition had demonstrated that it could influence the government through its numbers in Parliament and did not necessarily need to take its grievances to the streets. On Tuesday night, the opposition party, which won more seats in Parliament than the president’s party in the December elections, used its muscle to install one of its own members as speaker, which could mean serious gridlock in Kenya’s government for the foreseeable future.

Kenya
Elections
Demonstrations and Riots
Politics and Government
Kibaki Mwai
Odinga Raila


General Dynamics’ Profit Rises, Supported by Gulfstream Gains

Abstract: General Dynamics said Wednesday that its Gulfstream unit received orders for more business jets in the third quarter than in any comparable period since mid-2008, another indication of recovery in the market for corporate planes. Jay L. Johnson, the General Dynamics chief executive, told analysts that one-third of the orders came from Latin America and Asia, and the increase reflected demand for two high-speed models being tested. General Dynamics, based in Falls Church, Va., does not release quarterly order numbers. But in another measure of how its business is starting to bounce back, the company said it delivered 23 Gulfstream planes in the third quarter, up from 17 in the year-earlier period. Its deliveries had peaked at 41 just as the economy collapsed in the last three months of 2008. Buoyed by the improvement in its aerospace business, General Dynamics, which is also a large military contractor, said its overall profit rose by 13.6 percent in the third quarter. It also raised its forecast for full-year earnings. Northrop Grumman , another military contractor, also reported a gain in third-quarter profit on Wednesday and increased its forecast. Analysts watch the sales of business jets as an indicator of how willing corporations are to spend money as the economy rises and falls. Heidi Wood, an analyst at Morgan Stanley, said in a research note on Wednesday that business jet flights had increased since late last year, and that a recovery “appears under way.” She said earlier this week that there was consistent demand for large planes, while the market for midsize and smaller ones remained “painfully quiet.” She added that the consensus at a trade show last week was that 2012 would be the start of a new sales cycle for new planes, after a glut of used jets was purchased next year. General Dynamics said its deliveries in the third quarter included 17 large planes and six midsize ones. Mr. Johnson said Gulfstream now expected to deliver 75 large jets and nearly 30 midsize aircraft this year, compared with 156 planes in 2008. Textron , the owner of the Cessna Aircraft Company, said last week that its orders had picked up somewhat in September, though Cessna shipped only 26 business jets in the third quarter, compared with 68 a year earlier. Cessna cut 700 jobs in September and slowed production. But Scott C. Donnelly, Textron’s chief executive, told analysts last week that Cessna expected a significant increase in deliveries in the fourth quarter. Cessna also unveiled plans last week for a larger and more advanced version of its Citation X plane, which can seat nine passengers. It expects the first delivery in 2013. Mr. Johnson, the General Dynamics chief executive, said his company’s new and faster large jet, the G650, which seats eight people, should be ready for delivery in 2012. He said it had already attracted 200 orders. Mr. Johnson said orders were also coming in for Gulfstream’s new G250 jet, which has a midsize cabin, and should be ready by late next year. “Our timing relative to the recovery in the midcabin market looks pretty good,” he said. And as tighter military budgets slow the company’s growth in combat systems and warships, “our aerospace business will be the growth engine through the near and intermediate time frames,” Mr. Johnson said. General Dynamics said its net income increased to $650 million, or $1.70 a share, in the third quarter, from $572 million, or $1.47 a share, a year earlier. Revenue rose 3.8 percent, to $8.01 billion. The company also increased its earnings forecast for the full year to $6.70 to $6.75 a share, from $6.60 to $6.65 a share. Northrop Grumman, based in Los Angeles, said its net income edged up to $497 million, or $1.67 a share, in the third quarter, from $490 million, or $1.53 a share, a year earlier. Sales increased 4 percent, to $8.71 billion. Northrop raised its full-year earnings guidance to $6.85 to $7 a share, from $6.60 to $6.80 a share. Northrop is exploring the sale of its $6 billion shipbuilding unit. It also might spin off the business to shareholders. Wesley G. Bush, Northrop’s chief executive, said the company was focused on improving its profit margins.

Airlines and Airplanes
Company Reports
Defense Contracts
Private Aircraft
General Dynamics Corp
Northrop Grumman Corp
Textron Inc
Cessna Aircraft Co
Johnson Jay L


Germany Gleefully Leads List of World’s Top Recyclers

Abstract: The praise from a German friend was the first sign that I had gone native. “You see?” he said to his American wife, pointing to the sink where, without thinking, I was rinsing out the plastic yogurt cup I’d just emptied, unwrapping its cardboard sleeve and separating the foil from the lip of the container. “That is how to recycle!” What may sound like a lot of extra fuss over trash has become second nature among Germans, the world’s recycling champions. Image Black bins are for reserved for general waste, blue for paper, yellow for plastic and brown for composting. Credit Gordon Welters for The New York Times According to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development , Germans happily sort 65 percent of their waste into an array of color-coded bins to be collected for reuse or incineration. South Koreans come in second, recycling 59 percent of their refuse. The United States recycles 35 percent; that’s only slightly above the average for the developed countries that belong to the organization, but it is miles ahead of Turkey, where 99 percent of all trash ends up in a landfill. Of course, even in Germany, you’ll find recycling rebels. Instead of sorting, they just throw it all in a big can marked General Waste, and they scoff at their dutiful neighbors who lug out trash in separate bags bound for color-coded bins. Plastics and packaging are supposed to go in the yellow container; the blue one is for paper and cardboard. Glass waste gets two bins: white for the clear stuff, and green for colored glass. Image Recycling bins in a Potsdam train station. Part of Germany’s success is the ubiquity of the color-coded containers. Credit Gordon Welters for The New York Times Then there’s a brown bin for organic waste, which goes for composting. Since 2015, every community in Germany has been required by law to collect compost, for use in biogas plants or organic fertilizer; Germans generate 10 million tons of the stuff each year. Other Western European nations are almost as zealous as the Germans. Austria, Belgium, Switzerland, the Netherlands and Sweden all recycle at least half of their municipal waste , according to the European Environment Agency. One key to Germany’s success is that the color-coded collection bins are everywhere — train cars and station platforms, town squares and public parks, schools, even soccer stadiums. Most are labeled in English as well as German, to help foreigners figure out what goes where. And if that wasn’t enough, ordinary Germans are rarely shy about intercepting strangers on the verge of dropping a paper cup or empty soda bottle into the General Waste bin with a cry of, “Stop! That doesn’t go in there!”


A Pesticide Banned, or Not, Underscores Trans-Atlantic Trade Sensitivities

Abstract: LONDON — Syngenta , a Swiss chemicals company, produces one of America’s most popular herbicides. It is called atrazine, and 73.7 million pounds of the chemical compound were applied in the United States in 2013. It was used on more than half of all corn crops, two-thirds of sorghum and up to 90 percent of sugar cane. But Syngenta cannot sell atrazine to farms in its own backyard. The weed killer is banned as a pesticide in the European Union as well as in Switzerland over concerns that it is a groundwater contaminant. Syngenta, however, did not get the memo. Even though the European Union banned atrazine over a decade ago, the company has long insisted that the pesticide was not banned. On one corporate website, Syngenta points to “ anti-atrazine activists ” who “claim that ‘atrazine’ is banned in the European Union. This is patently false.” Another Syngenta-backed site, “ Saving the Oasis ,” also blames “anti-atrazine activists.” And another such site, AGSense , says, “We’ve known it all along, and now you know it too: Atrazine is not banned in the European Union.” The company has repeated its assertion to reporters. “It is not banned,” Ann Bryan, a spokeswoman for the company, said in an email, though she acknowledged that “countries in the E.U. currently do not use atrazine.” Companies are perhaps understandably sensitive about revealing too much about the gulf that exists between American and European regulation of pesticides and other chemicals. Generally speaking, the European approach incorporates the so-called precautionary principle and requires companies to establish that new chemicals are safe before they are put on the market. The American approach puts the onus on regulators to show some evidence of danger before taking action against new chemicals. Scores of chemicals that are banned or tightly restricted in the European Union are allowed in the United States. One recent analysis by the Center for International Environmental Law, a Washington-based advocacy group, found 82 instances of pesticides allowed in the United States but barred or restricted in Europe. This disparity can make selling products on one side of the Atlantic that are banned on the other uncomfortable, though few companies have tried a semantic maneuver quite like Syngenta’s. Image Credit Liz Grauman for The New York Times “The use of atrazine as a herbicide/pesticide is banned in the E.U.,” Mikko Vaananen, a spokesman for the European Chemicals Agency, said in an email, adding that it was still allowed as an intermediate substance used in industry to create new chemicals. European Union government documents, from formal filings to informal newsletters , also use the term “banned.” Sensitivity over regulatory gaps between the United States and Europe has flared during trans-Atlantic trade talks, which have been underway since 2013 in hopes of reaching a broad deal that they say could save businesses tens of billions of dollars a year. The talks are considered more of a priority for Europe, which is mired in deflation and high unemployment, than the United States, where the economy is recovering. But both sides have made reaching an agreement a cornerstone of trade policy. Finding commonalities in trans-Atlantic regulations is one of the main efforts of the talks, since much work has already been done to reduce tariffs. As a result, though, an increasing number of critics of the process are concerned that the outcome could favor corporations more than consumers. Advocacy groups have particularly focused on chemicals, given the disparities in policy. Government negotiators on both sides, however, call concerns misguided and say they have released documents and provided assurances aimed at clarifying their intentions. Trevor Kincaid, a spokesman for the United States trade representative, said in a statement: “We have made it clear privately and publicly, in Europe and the U.S. in multiple languages, and in a variety of formats: Neither one of us is looking to abandon our unique, high-standard, approaches to chemical regulation. Period.” Daniel Rosario, a spokesman for the European Commission , said in his own statement: “We have made clear since the beginning of the negotiations that neither full harmonization nor mutual recognition are feasible on the basis of the existing framework legislations,” adding, “It is therefore equally clear that we are not aiming at a convergence of E.U. and U.S. chemicals regulations.” Such statements have done little to quell critics of the talks. In a letter to trade officials last year, more than 100 advocacy groups accused American officials of “promoting an approach to regulatory cooperation that would export to the E.U.” an American regulatory approach that “has proved to thwart the timely promulgation of important regulations.” Baskut O. Tuncak, a senior lawyer at the Center for International Environmental Law, said that in his view the chemical proposals that have surfaced so far “reflect a lot of industry’s demands and their concerns with more protective E.U. policies.” He added that proposed changes could “slow or stop and possibly weaken efforts to develop stronger chemical regulation in either the E.U. or the U.S.” In some cases it is European companies that have benefited from American chemical policy, and few have been as vigilant in protecting their brands as Syngenta. Chemicals Permitted in the U.S. but Banned in the E.U. A sampling of pesticides and other chemicals used in the United States but prohibited in European Union countries. The company’s feud with Tyrone Hayes, a professor at the University of California, Berkeley, whose research it initially underwrote, has reached extraordinary levels , and its fight with Mr. Hayes was the subject of a lengthy New Yorker article last year. Mr. Hayes’s research found that atrazine chemically castrates male frogs and even changes the sex of some of them. “I’m not surprised at anything they say/do,” Mr. Hayes said in an email. In Europe, the principal concern with atrazine was that it was showing up in groundwater at concentrations above what was allowed. It was banned because of its “long-term persistence in the environment, together with toxicity for wildlife and possible link to effects on human health,” according to one recent publication from the commission. In the United States, atrazine is undergoing a periodic review process that is expected to wrap up in 2016. The Environmental Protection Agency said in a statement that the policy difference stemmed from Europe’s decision to set a limit “for all pesticides in water, regardless of the level of risk.” “The E.U. banned atrazine because of monitoring data showing that levels of atrazine might exceed” that limit, the E.P.A. said. Ms. Bryan of Syngenta said atrazine’s safety record had been established by thousands of studies and called it “one of the most closely examined pesticides in the world.” She added that Syngenta did not manufacture it in Europe. Critics cite Mr. Hayes’s work and other studies that have linked atrazine to birth defects and identified it as a contaminant of American drinking water. The company paid $105 million in 2012 to settle a class-action lawsuit from Midwestern water utilities over atrazine levels in the water supply. Asked several times to explain her company’s understanding of European Union policy, Ms. Bryan referred a reporter to a frequently asked questions page on the website of a government agency in Australia, where atrazine is also used. The passage said that atrazine was not banned in Europe. Asked about the passage and why it said atrazine was not banned in Europe, a spokeswoman for the Australian Pesticides and Veterinary Medicines Authority said her agency was reviewing it “to reduce confusion.”

International trade
Regulation and Deregulation
Pesticide
Defoliants and Herbicides
Syngenta
EU
Tyrone Hayes