Obama Plan Would Give Poor Easier Access to Solar Energy

Abstract: WASHINGTON — The Obama administration on Tuesday announced an initiative to help low- and middle-income Americans gain access to solar energy , part of a series of steps President Obama is taking to tackle climate change, according to administration officials. The administration said it intends to triple the capacity of solar and other renewable energy systems it installs in federally subsidized housing by 2020, make it easier for homeowners to borrow money for solar improvements and start a nationwide program to help renters gain access to solar energy, the officials said. The actions were announced in Baltimore by Brian Deese, Mr. Obama’s senior adviser for climate issues, and Representative Elijah E. Cummings, the Democrat who represents the city. Mr. Deese, in a conference call with reporters, called the moves “part of a bigger-picture effort to try to drive innovation” toward cleaner, low-carbon energy solutions. Also unveiled on Tuesday were commitments totaling more than $520 million from charities, investors, states and cities to pay for solar and energy-efficiency projects for lower-income communities. Mr. Cummings said that he routinely received calls at his congressional office from constituents who could not pay all their utility bills. He said the programs would not only help the planet, but also save money for those who could not otherwise gain access to renewable energy. “The difference in a monthly bill of $10 or $15 means a lot to the people who live on my block,” Mr. Cummings said.

Solar energy
Renewable energy
Brian Deese
Barack Obama
Environment


American Sues Former Nazi Official, but Some Don’t See a War Criminal

Abstract: BERLIN — Please do not call Mark Gould a Nazi hunter . He finds the phrase demeaning. Mr. Gould prefers this description: a 43-year-old college dropout from Los Angeles who says he made a lot of money in finance, became interested in Nazi memorabilia and ended up on an undercover odyssey where he posed as a neo-Nazi to befriend a former Waffen SS officer and recorded many of their conversations with the plan to someday expose the man’s role in the Third Reich. But an alternative description might read like this: a man on a self-appointed mission to expose an aging Nazi — one who has published an autobiography and has never been accused of war crimes — and hoping, in the process, to publish a book and land a movie deal. Whatever the subtext, on Saturday Mr. Gould revealed having posed as a neo-Nazi to the former SS officer, the 97-year-old Bernhard Frank, once a trusted aide to Heinrich Himmler, the second most powerful man in Nazi Germany. Mr. Frank looked at his accuser and through the confusion of age and betrayal asked, “Are you my enemy or my friend?” according to a transcript of the encounter provided by Mr. Gould. “I am your enemy,” Mr. Gould said, leaning in toward Mr. Frank. “I am your enemy.” Mr. Gould announced Tuesday that he and his cousin, Burton Bernstein, were filing a federal civil lawsuit against Mr. Frank in Washington that would claim that the former Nazi officer was responsible for orders issued on July 28, 1941, that spurred troops from the SS, or Schutzstaffel, the Nazi special police, to kill their ancestors in an attack on the village of Korets, in Ukraine. Mr. Gould says he can provide documentary proof that Mr. Frank had a central role in the administration of the earliest days of the Holocaust as a desk officer who facilitated the machinery of Nazi death. This charge, however, has been dismissed by other experts on the Holocaust as overstated. The suit will close out the unusual journey of a self-styled historian with unorthodox techniques, and follow his staged friendship with a former Nazi officer who confided in one taped interview that Himmler “was a good man” and that the Jews “dug their own grave” by oppressing the Germans. “My enemy, why?” Mr. Frank demanded, according to the transcript. “Because you killed my family,” Mr. Gould replied. Mr. Frank has not been in hiding, and he is not regarded as a war criminal by the authorities in Germany who are responsible for policing the Nazi past. Indeed, four years ago Mr. Frank published a book here about his Nazi career, called “As Hitler’s Commandant — From the Wewelsburg to the Berghof,” complete with photographs of himself as a dashing young officer in uniform. He has also appeared on German television in shows about the Third Reich. During the Nazi era, he served as a librarian at Wewelsburg Castle, the ideological training ground for the SS. He subsequently occupied a senior position on Himmler’s administrative staff, keeping what was called the war diary. He co-signed some of Himmler’s orders and later served as a commander at the eastern front. He eventually was made commander of Obersalzberg, the site of Hitler’s mountain retreat, the Berghof. Toward the end of the war, Mr. Frank was ordered to arrest and kill Hermann Göring, an order which he defied. All that is in Mr. Frank’s book. Kurt Schrimm, chief of the Federal Archives Central Office for the Investigation of Nazi Crimes in Germany, said that Mr. Frank’s name appeared in the archives, but never in connection with war crimes. Other Nazi experts also said that Mr. Frank was not linked to war crimes. In a telephone interview from his home in Frankfurt, Mr. Frank said he knew nothing about the Holocaust, a statement that seems doubtful given his administrative role in Himmler’s office. “I’ve never done statements concerning the Holocaust, because I just don’t exactly know much about it,” Mr. Frank said. “You have to be careful with statements. Do you understand?” Asked about Mr. Gould, he said at first that he was not sure who he was, and then added: “I have the feeling that he sells my words different, with a different value, so unreliable.” His voice was weak and cautious. “Was Mr. Gould friendly?” he was asked. “Well, what seller, who wants to sell something, is not friendly,” he replied. Mr. Gould, unlike many accusers of Nazis, is not Jewish. He says he has an “extended Jewish family,” because his mother married a Jewish man who adopted him. He tells of a rough and tumble upbringing in Texas marked by fighting, heavy drinking and drug use, and said he was in rehabilitation by the time he was 18, dropped out of college and started selling stock. He said he realized he could make money selling lists of investors, created his own company and moved to Los Angeles with his girlfriend, with whom he had three daughters. He was speaking to a coin dealer one day for business when he saw that the man was also selling a Nazi flag. Mr. Gould bought the flag and started buying up World War II memorabilia, which he stored in his Los Angeles apartment. One day, he said, he purchased the gun Göring had surrendered to the Americans. Then, he said, he learned the weapon had been turned over to an American soldier, who was a Jew. He said that inspired him to film members of the team who had arrested Göring. He then decided to take his video camera to Germany. He realized quickly, he said, that he could penetrate deep into the neo-Nazi community if he presented himself as a wealthy sympathizer. “I have been living underground for a long time now,” Mr. Gould said one day, seated in an office in Berlin. He has grown his hair long now, a backlash against the years he had to remain clean-cut as a neo-Nazi. “I lived in that world. I saw things in a National Socialist point of view. I compartmentalized my life.” His road to Mr. Frank’s home is impossible to verify. He suggests that intelligence agencies here helped him cover his tracks in exchange for inside information on the neo-Nazi movement, but that claim also could not be verified. It remains unclear where the money came from for all of his work, and some experts he met over the years said they chose not to be involved with him because they were dubious about his tactics — including hidden cameras — and skeptical of his goals. Mr. Gould says he was secretive over the years because he did not want to reveal Mr. Frank’s identity. There are also some academics in the United States and officials in Israel who have verified meeting Mr. Gould in Los Angeles and in Tel Aviv, and being impressed with his work. “I think Mark is an unconventional guy who has done courageous and lonely work,” said Stephen D. Smith, executive director of the Shoah Foundation Institute at the University of Southern California and founder of The Holocaust Center in Britain. After reviewing the material, he said he thought Mr. Gould’s work raised an important question of how society defined culpability. “Of all the Nazis that have surfaced over the years, Bernhard Frank sends the biggest shiver down my spine,” Mr. Smith wrote in an essay. “Not because he was an outright killer, but because he was active right in the heart of darkness, at the epicenter of the Holocaust, at the scene of the crime. For some reason we let him get away with it.” Mr. Gould swept into Germany last week to complete his project. He was traveling with his companion, Danica Bernard, and a nephew. The three entered Mr. Frank’s home on Saturday. Mr. Frank was with his nurse and a friend. According to the transcript, Mr. Frank kept shouting, “Nothing, nothing, nothing,” waving a hand and at one point feigning going to sleep. Mr. Gould was excited, and the cameras were rolling. “You’ll be dead soon,” he said before he left. “And the whole world will know.”

War Crimes Genocide and Crimes Against Humanity


Massachusetts: Report Faults Agency in Death of Toddler Found on Beach

Abstract: A report released on Wednesday by the Office of the Child Advocate of Massachusetts criticized the state’s Department of Children and Families for its handling of the case of Bella Bond, the 2-year-old found dead on a beach in Boston this year. The report said that neglect reports filed in 2012 and 2013 about Bella’s mother, Rachelle Bond, should have received a higher-level response, and that those cases were closed prematurely. The report also said caseworkers failed to gather current information on Ms. Bond and did not adequately assess her parenting ability. The state had previously taken two other children of Ms. Bond’s children from her care because of her long history of arrests and drug use. Ms. Bond’s boyfriend, Michael P. McCarthy, has pleaded not guilty to killing the toddler, and Ms. Bond pleaded not guilty to covering up her death.

Murders and Homicides
Bella Bond
Child Abuse
Rachelle Bond
Boston
Massachusetts


Waukesha Plan for Lake Michigan Water Raises Worries

Abstract: WAUKESHA, Wis. — This city, once famous for its bubbling natural springs, sits about 17 miles from the shore of Lake Michigan. So when the state and federal authorities began demanding that the city address a growing contamination problem in its aquifer, the answer seemed simple: Get water from the big lake. Surely, city leaders imagined, the needs of Waukesha, with a population just over 70,000, would be but a drop from the gigantic Great Lakes bucket, which amounts to one-fifth of the earth’s fresh surface water. That little drop, however, has stirred up a colossal struggle. Waukesha has run smack into a landmark 2008 compact that prohibits large amounts of water from the five Great Lakes from being pumped, trucked, shipped or otherwise moved beyond the system’s natural basin without approval from the governors of each of the eight states that touch a lake — unless it is in a product like beer or soft drinks. Waukesha, despite being so close to Lake Michigan, is about a mile and a half outside the lake’s natural basin. In a wetter era, the city’s plan to build a $200 million pipeline to tap into Lake Michigan might have fallen on more sympathetic ears. But it faces a daunting obstacle now: historic drought in the West, which has made officials in the Midwest more protective than ever of their increasingly valuable resource. “Obviously I have concerns about the usage of the Great Lakes in any capacity,” Gov. Rick Snyder of Michigan said in an interview, adding that he was closely watching the Wisconsin city’s request and had yet to decide how he would vote. A single governor can veto a diversion of water. Image Waukesha, despite being close to Lake Michigan, is about a mile and a half outside the lake’s natural basin, complicating the prospects of getting water from it. Credit Andrew Nelles for The New York Times “To some degree, it’s like, where do you draw the line?” Mr. Snyder said. “It shouldn’t be done just as an ad hoc thing or a political thing. It should be based on sound science and good economics and what’s best for the long term. The Great Lakes are one of the world’s most precious assets.” If national drought conditions and the economic and political pressures that follow worsen over time, some Midwestern water experts fear that the lakes’ existing protections might ultimately weaken. Waukesha’s quest for water — the first proposal for such a diversion outside the Great Lakes basin in years — is seen by some as a first major test of the compact , its strength and its limits. “The background conditions are changing as we speak, so you cannot say the compact is forever, in a vacuum,” said James M. Olson, an environmental lawyer in Michigan and the president of the advocacy group For Love of Water . “It’s a dynamic playing field when we’re talking about water, climate change, food and energy. We have to be vigilant.” If Waukesha, a suburb of Milwaukee, is allowed to take Great Lakes water, some advocates say that could also open the door for at least eight other “thirsty” communities in states like Indiana, Ohio and Wisconsin that are just outside the basin boundaries in counties, like Waukesha’s, that include portions of a basin. Last month, a coalition of conservation organizations announced objections to Waukesha’s plan , in part because it includes plans to supply Great Lakes water not only to city residents but also to portions of four nearby communities that the groups say have not demonstrated a need for a diversion. Waukesha has said state rules require the expansion. “If they would stick with their own town, then we wouldn’t have this problem,” said Marc Smith, the policy director of the National Wildlife Federation, who said that the outcome in Waukesha was about more than just that city’s water supply. “Everyone is watching this,” Mr. Smith said. “We don’t want the first test of the compact to show that it doesn’t work.” In Waukesha — where the water woes have led city officials to ban daytime lawn sprinklers, hand out $100 rebates to homeowners who replace toilets that use high water volume, and teach every sixth grader in the public schools about water conservation — worries that dry Western states might one day try to pipe into Great Lakes water seem absurd. “Look,” said Daniel S. Duchniak, Waukesha’s water utility manager, “people need to start understanding that by giving Waukesha water, it doesn’t open the door to California.” Farther west, no one is currently looking to solve the drought by pumping in water from the Midwest, officials say. Leaders in California are already pressing regions of the state to rely less on imported water, so the notion of a new water supply from out of state “would be politically unacceptable,” said Nancy Vogel, a spokeswoman for the California Natural Resources Agency. Image Gary Lohman at Hobo Spring in Waukesha last month with his daughter Andrea Becerra and her son, Connor, 2. The city was once famous for its springs. Credit Andrew Nelles for The New York Times “Besides,” she said, “there are extreme legal, environmental and financial hurdles.” But there is a history of Western states looking elsewhere for water. In the 1960s, a California company proposed a North American Water and Power Alliance to divert water from numerous sources — the Great Lakes were to be a connecting channel — to feed the West. Another plan would have redirected water into the Canadian prairies and the Southwestern United States. The ideas fell apart amid vehement objections, doubts about their feasibility and complaints about their presumed costs (in the hundreds of billions of dollars at the time). But more proposals followed. In the 1980s, Congress asked the Army Corps of Engineers to examine the feasibility of moving water from the Great Lakes to dry parts of the Midwest. And in 1998, a Canadian business wanted to carry water in tanker ships from Lake Superior to Asia. The company, the Nova Group, received a permit from a Canadian province to export 158 million gallons of water a year before news of the plan became public. The proposal was withdrawn in the backlash that followed. As recently as 2007, Bill Richardson, then the governor of New Mexico and running for president, seemed to suggest that the Great Lakes ought to be shared with drier regions, noting that “states like Wisconsin are awash in water.” Image “People need to start understanding that by giving Waukesha water, it doesn’t open the door to California,” said Daniel S. Duchniak, Waukesha’s water utility manager. Credit Andrew Nelles for The New York Times His remarks helped seal what some once considered unlikely passage of the compact in Congress a year later. “A lot of people behind the compact always are concerned that these blueprints will be pulled out of the dustpans and get revived in times of crisis,” said Peter Annin, a director of a water center at Northland College in Ashland, Wis., and the author of “The Great Lakes Water Wars.” “If you could send it to Asia from the Great Lakes, where can’t you send it?” So far, the compact has proved ironclad. New Berlin, a suburb of Milwaukee, received a small diversion in 2009, but that was seen as fairly routine because part of the suburb sits within the lake’s basin, a circumstance contemplated in the compact as a relatively simple exception. The strength of the compact is offering hope to some officials in the Midwest who see Great Lakes water not just as something to cling on to, but also as a powerful draw for a region that has had much of its population head to the Sun Belt. Donald K. Carter, who studies the future of cities at the Remaking Cities Institute at Carnegie Mellon University, said he believed that water-rich Great Lakes cities like Chicago and Cleveland may find an unexpected renaissance in an era when water might replace oil as the most contested commodity. Image A worker helping to install new 24-inch water pipe as part of a plan by the city to improve its potable water infrastructure. Credit Andrew Nelles for The New York Times “The Sun Belt cities will become the shrinking cities of the 21st century,” Mr. Carter said. “The Rust Belt will become the Water Belt.” But for now, here in Waukesha, time is short. For years, the city has been facing growing concerns about contaminants. Water levels have dropped in city wells, and the deep aquifer — depleted from years of regional use — shows high levels of radium, a naturally occurring element thought to be dangerous to people, and other contaminants. The city has agreed to provide water that meets federal standards for radium by June 2018. In May 2010, the city filed its request for water from Lake Michigan. The compact contains an exception that allows places that fall outside the basin to apply for water if they are part of a county that, at least partly, sits inside the basin. The city asserts that if it is allowed to pipe some 10.1 million gallons of water daily to Waukesha — “one-millionth of 1 percent of the volume of the Great Lakes,” it says — it will treat and return most of that water to the lake. The state’s Department of Natural Resources is expected to issue a final decision late this year on whether to send the city’s request on to the governors around the lakes. “We cannot continue pulling from this aquifer,” Mayor Shawn Reilly said. “I don’t see any alternative that has less environmental impacts. It’s perplexing to me that environmental groups would be opposed.”

Water
Lake Michigan
Waukesha
Great Lakes
Wisconsin
Drought
Conservation of Resources


Matt Harvey Roughed Up by Padres

Abstract: SAN DIEGO — Matt Harvey, a young pitcher with the mien and aura of an honor student, received the next lesson on his major league syllabus: how to fail. Harvey gave up seven extra-base hits and two home runs Sunday at Petco Park, a stadium known for its generosity to pitchers, as the Mets fell to the San Diego Padres , 7-3. It was the most trying outing yet for Harvey, a 23-year-old rookie who had pitched precociously in his first two starts. “His stuff is good, and he knows that,” Manager Terry Collins said. “He’s learning now that you’ve got to locate it.” The defeat attached a lukewarm coda to the Mets’ 11-game trip, which they finished 6-5. All things considered, it was an encouraging stretch for the Mets, who had lost 12 of the 13 games that preceded it. But the Mets remained below .500, falling to 53-56, and as they teeter on the fringes of playoff contention, Harvey’s education should be one of the team’s more compelling story lines. Before the game, Collins was asked if Harvey’s innings limit this season — around 170 — might affect his use. Collins said that it would not, that Harvey would pitch through good starts and bad ones and would emerge stronger for it. “If he’s going to learn to pitch here, he’s going to have to learn to pitch through some rough outings,” Collins said, a proclamation that proved foreboding. “The faster he learns how to do it, the better it’s going to be for us all.” The learning process began quickly Sunday. Whether Harvey could use his changeup confidently and effectively has emerged as one of the central questions since his debut July 26. Harvey threw three changeups in the first inning, and he was punished on two of them. Everth Cabrera pulled a changeup into right field for a double, and a few pitches later, Chase Headley lofted another changeup over the scoreboard in right field for a two-run home run. Harvey coaxed three outs from the Padres after allowing a leadoff triple to Will Venable in the second, but he began to stumble again with two outs in the third. He walked Headley, who took second on a passed ball. Carlos Quentin doubled into the right-center field gap. Then Yonder Alonso blasted a two-run home run to straightaway center field. “It was one of those days where I couldn’t find the strike zone, and when I did, it wasn’t quality,” Harvey said. “I wasn’t executing the way I had the last two starts.” Harvey described with academic precision the problems he experienced. He was allowing his back leg to dip, eliminating much of the downward movement of his pitches. He corrected the flaw and recovered for the last two innings, but his final line was nevertheless the most unsightly of his brief career: five innings, five runs, eight hits, one walk and five strikeouts. In his first two starts, he gave up a total of two earned runs, seven hits and six walks while striking out 18 in 111/3 innings. Harvey has absorbed a series of jarring lessons about big league hitters. “Down there, you can get away with stuff — not all the time, but more often than not,” Harvey said of the minors. “Up here, if you make a mistake, they’re going to hit it. Today they did.” Jason Marquis, the Padres’ 33-year-old right-hander, had a much more comfortable afternoon. He gave up three runs over six and one-third innings, facing the minimum number of hitters through the first five as he subdued them with his sinker. He allowed a leadoff hit to Ruben Tejada, who extended his career-high hitting streak to 11 games. But Tejada was caught stealing, and Marquis set the Mets down in order until the sixth. Mike Baxter, who had five walks the previous night, walked to start the inning, and one out later Ronny Cedeno, pinch-hitting for Harvey, crushed a two-run homer into the left-field seats. Jason Bay further cut the Padres’ lead in the seventh when he lifted a sacrifice fly to center field, but San Diego’s Quentin restored the three-run advantage when he sent a solo shot over the left-field fence. Mark Kotsay’s pinch-hit double in the eighth increased the Padres’ final lead to 7-3. Harvey will make his next start Friday. The outing will be his first time pitching at Citi Field, and Collins was already looking ahead to it, with every reason to believe that Harvey, lessons learned, would be better. “He did all right,” Collins said. “I know on Friday, he’ll be real good.” INSIDE PITCH Johan Santana pitched three scoreless innings during a rehabilitation start in Brooklyn. He threw 38 pitches during the game and then threw three more simulated innings on his own, bringing his total to 90. He is expected to pitch for the Mets on Saturday ... The Class AAA debut of the pitching prospect Zack Wheeler was rained out Sunday in Buffalo. He was rescheduled to start Monday at Syracuse.

Harvey Matt
New York Mets
Baseball
San Diego Padres


Libyan Militia Selling Oil, Defying the Government

Abstract: CAIRO — A militia group that has blockaded Libya’s main oil ports for more than six months began on Saturday to sell the oil for its own accounts as the weak transitional government appeared powerless to stop it. The first unauthorized export of the oil — the lifeblood of Libya’s government and economy — may be the most ominous indication yet that the nation is at risk of coming apart at the seams. Until now, officials of the central government had played down the impact of the blockades by arguing that the militia was not stealing or wasting the oil, only holding it back for sale by the government at a later date. The militia leader who closed the ports, Ibrahim Jathran, a charismatic 33-year-old with close ties to Eastern Libyan tribes, has maintained that he was closing the ports not for personal profit, but to press the central government to crack down on oil-sector corruption and provide more resources to the long-neglected east. In the chaos that has followed the overthrow of Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi three years ago, control of the country’s oil revenue was always presumed to be the greatest leverage in the hands of the fledgling government in Tripoli. Its leaders hoped to trade shares of oil revenue for the loyalty of fractious tribes and regions, and the shared patrimony of Libya’s oil wealth could bind the country together. But those hopes and Tripoli’s power were upended Saturday when a tanker called the Morning Glory ignored the furious warnings of the central government and arrived at the major oil port of Es Seder to begin filling up with the first unauthorized shipment of oil. Ownership of the ship was unclear, though it was flagged under North Korea. Ali Zeidan, prime minister of Libya’s transitional government, has repeatedly threatened, without consequences, to use military force to reopen the ports or block any tankers coming for their oil. In January, a ship in the Libyan Navy reportedly fired shots to fend off a Maltese tanker headed for the same port, and in a news conference on Saturday Mr. Zeidan said that the Morning Glory was loading with oil, and called it an act of piracy. “The tanker will be bombed if it doesn’t follow orders when leaving,” Mr. Zeidan said. “This will be an environmental disaster.” But he also acknowledged that the military had already refused his orders to block the ship’s arrival. “The chief of staff was asked to deal with that and did not,” Mr. Zeidan said. “We took over a weak state and we were not helped to strengthen it. Everybody was working against us.” Geoff Porter, an analyst who advises oil companies and others, called Mr. Zeidan’s threats “nonsense.” “This isn’t even saber rattling — Zeidan’s scabbard is empty,” Mr. Porter said, adding, “and Jathran likely knows it.” The Eastern blockade has already helped drain the government’s revenues, contributing to severe blackouts and lines for gasoline in the capital. In another televised news conference, a regional leader speaking for the militia that controls the ports said it had lost patience with the transitional government. In Cyrenaica, the Eastern province, “We do not get any attention,” said Abd-Rabbo al-Barassi, leader of a self-proclaimed regional authority that is pushing for a highly federalized system. Mr. Barassi said the group was exporting the oil “in broad daylight,” not stealing it. “We would like to assure all of our fellow Libyans that we are still standing by our pledge to preserve the wealth of Libyans,” including setting aside shares of the proceeds for the two other provinces, to the south and the west. But he said that the group would distribute the revenue under a formula stipulated by a 1958 law passed under the former Eastern-based monarchy, that gave the East the biggest cut because it contained the most oil.

Ships and Shipping
Arab Spring
Oil and Gasoline
Muammar Kaddafi
Tripoli
Ali Zeidan
Libya


Mavericks Add Ellis to New Lineup

Abstract: The Dallas Mavericks have signed the free-agent shooting guard Monta Ellis, finishing off the final piece of their new starting lineup. It is reportedly a three-year contract worth $25 million to $30 million. Ellis will start alongside point guard Jose Calderon. The third new starter is center Samuel Dalembert. Ellis led the Bucks last season at 19.2 points a game, slightly below his career average.

Monta Ellis
Mavericks
Free agent
Basketball


Treasury Auctions Set for the Week of Feb. 7

Abstract: The Treasury’s schedule of financing this week includes Monday’s regular weekly auction of new three- and six-month bills and an auction of four-week bills on Tuesday. At the close of the New York cash market on Friday, the rate on the outstanding three-month bill was 0.15 percent. The rate on the six-month issue was 0.17 percent, and the rate on the four-week issue was 0.12 percent. The following tax-exempt fixed-income issues are scheduled for pricing this week: MONDAY Florida, $344.7 million of general obligation bonds. Competitive. TUESDAY Minnesota, $84.7 million of revenue bonds. Competitive. WEDNESDAY South Carolina, $389.7 million of general obligation bonds. Competitive. ONE DAY DURING THE WEEK Allegheny County, Pa., $124 million of general obligation bonds. PNC Capital Markets. California Health Facilities Financing Authority, $80 million of community health care bonds. Bank of America. Conroe, Tex., Independent School District, $84 million of lease revenue bonds. Raymond James. Maryland Health and Higher Education Facilities Authority, $83 million of debt securities. Bank of America. Memphis-Shelby County Airport Authority, $111 million of airport revenue refinancing bonds. Morgan Keegan. North Carolina Medical Care Center, $60.3 million of hospital revenue refinancing bonds. Morgan Stanley. Ohio, $170 million of infrastructure improvement general obligation bonds. Siebert Brandford Shank. Pennsylvania Higher Educational Facilities Authority, $150 million of University of Pennsylvania revenue bonds. Morgan Stanley. Puerto Rico, $85 million of public improvement refinancing bonds. Barclays Capital. San Bernardino, Calif., Unified School District, $71 million of general obligation bonds. Cabrera Capital Markets. San Joaquin County, Calif., Transportation Authority, $211.8 million of sales tax revenue bonds. J. P. Morgan Securities. Seattle, $107 million of limited tax general obligation bonds. Barclays Capital. Texas Department of Housing and Community Affairs, $59.3 million of residential mortgage revenue bonds. Morgan Keegan. Texas Transportation Commission, $149.3 million of central Texas turnpike system revenue refinancing bonds. Wells Fargo Securities.


‘Too Big to Fail’ Banks Thriving a Few Years After Financial Crisis

Abstract: Nearly eight years after the onset of the financial crisis, its unintended consequences continue to startle and amaze. For instance, who would have thought that many of the big European banks – among them Barclays, Credit Suisse, Deutsche Bank and UBS – would have new chief executives, two of whom are American, and be more or less in retreat from the global investment banking business? Who would have thought that the big banks would pay nearly $200 billion in fines and other considerations to various branches of federal and state governments and that not a single top Wall Street executive would be held responsible for perpetrating the wrongdoing represented by those huge fines? (The lone related exception is Kareem Serageldin, a former senior trader at Credit Suisse who inflated the value of his trading positions to receive a bigger bonus; he will be released from federal prison in March.) And who would have thought that nearly a decade after the start of the crisis some of those big banks, in particular JPMorgan Chase and Wells Fargo, would have year after year of record, or near-record, profits? These days, the “too big to fail” banks have less competition than ever, they get their raw material — cash from depositors — nearly free and they have never had more ways to make vast amounts of money. In other words, despite the endless complaining about how difficult Washington has made things for bankers, we have entered a new Golden Age of Wall Street, where competition is minimal, profits will continue to be high (as long as the economy continues its rebound) and regulation, while present as never before, can be “managed” as just another cost of doing business. No wonder the chief executives of JPMorgan Chase, Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley and Bank of America are in no hurry to give up their posts, much to the frustration of their direct reports. It’s another surprising consequence of the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression: Wall Street chiefs who stick around. Wall Street’s 4th Quarter Earnings Investors are eagerly awaiting guidance from management about when higher short-term interest rates will impact the banks’ bottom lines. Jamie Dimon, 59, has been chief executive of JPMorgan Chase for 10 years. He’s not going anywhere, as he has made abundantly clear. He seems reinvigorated after surviving throat cancer last year; his bank just reported its highest net income ever in 2015, of $24.4 billion. He also has seen the departure of a steady stream of potential successors to lead other institutions – among them, William Winters to Standard Chartered, Jes Staley to Barclays, Charles W. Scharf to Visa and Frank Bisignano to First Data. There’s little doubt the JPMorgan Chase bench is deep, but at the moment, there is no obvious Dimon lieutenant with Mr. Dimon’s stature, and it’s reasonable to think he prefers it that way. At Goldman Sachs, the leadership dynamic is slightly different. Like Mr. Dimon, Lloyd C. Blankfein, 61, has been chairman and chief executive a long time, since June 2006, when his predecessor, Henry M. Paulson Jr., left the company to become George W. Bush’s Treasury secretary. Mr. Blankfein steered Goldman through the worst of the financial crisis in impressive fashion — including years of record profits, since diminished — while also overcoming a tsunami of awful publicity. In September 2015, Mr. Blankfein announced that he had a “highly curable” form of lymphoma and, according to Gary D. Cohn, the Goldman president and chief operating officer who has been thrust into the role of Prince Charles for nearly a decade, Mr. Blankfein is “in the office every day” and “engaged.” The days he is not in the office, “he’s on the phone all day long,” Mr. Cohn said. Mr. Cohn has said his relationship with Mr. Blankfein has never been better, even though many have wondered how long he will wait for his chance to run Goldman. A few weeks ago, The New York Post reported that Mr. Blankfein, who has declined recent requests for interviews, made a rare appearance at the annual Goldman alumni event, where he seemed to be his “old jovial self” and reportedly said he intended to be running Goldman for “a long time to come.” At Morgan Stanley, 2016 ushered in an old-fashioned power play. James P. Gorman, 57, the bank’s chief executive for the last six years, conveyed to employees his intention to stay put for at least another five. He also announced that he was appointing Colm Kelleher the company’s sole president. (Mr. Kelleher, a year older than Mr. Gorman, is unlikely to succeed him if Mr. Gorman sticks around for the full five years.) Mr. Gorman’s decision led to the somewhat surprising departure of Gregory J. Fleming, 52, who ran Morgan Stanley’s wealth and asset management businesses. Many observers figured that Mr. Fleming would one day run Morgan Stanley, given its shift toward the more predictable earnings stream generated by managing customers’ wealth. But as The New York Times reported , the company seems to be struggling to find its strategic direction. In any event, Mr. Gorman is not going anywhere soon, and the succession picture at Morgan Stanley has become a cloudy one for the post-Gorman era. What is increasingly clear is that we have come to yet another fork in the road on Wall Street. Under new leadership, the big European banks are desperately looking for ways to make money outside of the capital-intensive businesses of trading and investment banking. The big American banks, however, will continue to rule the roost in investment banking, free of material competition in any business that requires capital, and, for the time being, without any meaningful change in leadership at the top. Given that the 2008 financial crisis started because Wall Street banks packaged shoddy mortgages on a withering number of American homes and then sold them as securities around the globe, this is a particularly surprising and unexpected outcome.

Subprime Mortgage Crisis,2008 Financial Crisis


Amazon’s Revenue Soars, but No Profit Is in Sight

Abstract: SAN FRANCISCO — Amazon’s third quarter followed a familiar script: it sold vast quantities of things, lost money while doing so, and investors were delighted. Revenue was $17.09 billion, the company said on Thursday, up 24 percent and about $400 million more than analysts predicted. But all that volume could not yield a profit. Amazon lost 9 cents a share, or $41 million, just as it had anticipated. Investors broke out the Champagne. In after-hours trading, the stock was up $29, or 8 percent, to $361. The stock is up nearly tenfold since 2008. Amazon is the subject of an increasingly bitter debate about whether all of its investing in warehouses and new ventures will ever lead to solid profits. The bulls think the company is building an unassailable position as the most important retailer in the country. The bears point to things like this week’s increase in the free shipping minimum to $35 from $25 as signs that Amazon must one day focus on the bottom line. For the moment, the bulls are very much in ascendance. Amazon had predicted that revenue in the third quarter would rise 12 to 24 percent. The results came in at the very top of that range. As for the loss, it was smaller than the 60 cents a share, or $274 million, the company lost last year. Much of the poor 2012 showing was related to an ill-fated investment in LivingSocial, a daily deals site. In a conference call with analysts, Tom Szkutak, Amazon’s chief financial officer, focused on what he called “a nice steady acceleration of growth” in North America since last year’s fourth quarter. But Mr. Szkutak was chary with specifics. Asked about a reference in the results to signing up “millions” of new customers for the $79 Prime shipping service, he merely said, “Prime is growing very fast.” The results will nevertheless raise expectations for the fourth quarter. Amazon said sales might rise as little as 10 percent or as much as 25 percent compared with the fourth quarter of 2012. And it warned it might once again lose money. “Amazon is the teacher’s pet of Wall Street,” said Sucharita Mulpuru, an analyst with Forrester Research. “There is no other company in the entire world that has the consistently abominable rate of profitability they do and yet has the stratospheric valuation they do.” Amazon has about 100 fulfillment centers — what in the old economy were called warehouses. It has streamlined the process of opening these centers, but it is still a huge expense. In the last 90 days, the company said, it began using eight million square feet of new warehouses. There is more to come. Amazon said this week that it would open new fulfillment centers in Hillsborough County and Lakeland, Fla., and in Baltimore.


Gannett Sweetens Offer for Tribune Publishing

Abstract: In an industry where hostile takeovers are rare, Gannett is not giving up its pursuit of Tribune Publishing, sweetening its bid on Monday just weeks after its first offer was resoundingly rejected. Gannett, publisher of USA Today, has been making an aggressive push to buy Tribune’s portfolio, which includes The Chicago Tribune and The Los Angeles Times, as circulation and advertising revenue for traditional newspapers are in a sharp and seemingly irreversible decline. Its latest move was perhaps to give Tribune a proposal it could not refuse. Gannett raised its cash bid 22 percent, to $15 a share, from the $12.25 a share Tribune rejected on May 4. Gannett’s stock gained 2.2 percent after the higher bid was announced on Monday, while Tribune’s shares soared 23 percent and closed almost a dollar below the offer price. The deal, which includes the assumption of Tribune’s debt, is now worth about $864 million, up from $815 million last month. “It is evident from our discussions with Tribune shareholders that there is overwhelming support for the companies to engage immediately regarding our proposed transaction,” John J. Louis, Gannett’s chairman, said in a statement. Tribune said its board was contemplating the latest offer. Price is only one factor for Tribune. Pride is another. Over the last year, Tribune’s shares have fallen, weighed down by management turnover, accounting weaknesses and an acquisition that was thwarted by regulators. The investor and entrepreneur Michael Ferro acquired a 16.5 percent stake in Tribune Publishing in February through his Chicago-based private equity firm, Merrick Ventures. He acquired the shares at $8.50 each, well below both of Gannett’s offers. Mr. Ferro, a relative newcomer to the media industry, quickly installed Justin C. Dearborn, another media outsider, as chief executive. Gannett pounced shortly thereafter. Instead, Tribune has drawn the battle lines. In a presentation last week, the company said it was “opposed to a steal – Gannett’s proposal is an opportunistic attempt to take advantage of a depressed Tribune stock price and a company in the midst of a strategic transformation.” The presentation was filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission on Friday. It also adopted a so-called shareholder rights plan, also known as a poison pill, to make its shares less attractive to a buyer. Mr. Ferro and Mr. Dearborn, both of whom have a background in technology, have been focused on investing in areas such as artificial intelligence to raise revenue. Tribune’s executives have been promoting a strategy called Tronc, which involves pooling assets and using technology to extract more value from advertisers. But Gannett is taking a different approach. It has been consolidating newspaper companies to extract costs and streamline operations. It has said it believes the takeover will be better for Tribune shareholders than the Tronc. Combining the two companies would expand Gannett’s portfolio to nearly 120 newspapers. “By not engaging constructively with Gannett and continuing to pursue an unproven strategy based on its Tronc platform, we believe Tribune is jeopardizing its shareholders’ investment and disregarding their best interests,” said Robert J. Dickey, Gannett’s president and chief executive, in the statement Monday. When Tribune rejected the first bid a few weeks ago, it said the offer “understates the company’s true value and is not in the best interests of our shareholders.” The company has not indicated yet whether it would be more amenable to Monday’s bid. In a separate statement Monday, Tribune said it would “thoroughly review Gannett’s revised proposal.” Gannett raised its bid after “further review” that gave the company greater confidence in its ability to extract operational benefits from the transaction. Its analysis was based on publicly available financial statements, including Tribune’s latest earnings report, which showed more cash and less debt. “We like the general strategy that Gannett has outlined over the next several years to be a consolidator in the industry,” said Tony Scherrer, director of research and co-portfolio manager at Smead Capital Management. His firm oversees $2.4 billion in assets and owns about 5 percent of Gannett shares. “Tribune Publishing has some waterfront assets that they can put into their portfolio and use their top-notch management capabilities to extract value from these assets.” Gannett was also maneuvering to take the matter to shareholders. Because it missed the window to nominate its own directors to Tribune’s board, the company sought another route instead. To increase pressure, Gannett decided to solicit so-called withhold votes, encouraging Tribune shareholders to boycott their votes for the director nominees. Methuselah Advisors is advising Gannett, as is the law firm Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom. Goldman Sachs and Lazard are providing financial advice to Tribune Publishing, with Kirkland & Ellis on the legal side.


Justin Gatlin Wins at Golden Grand Prix Event

Abstract: Justin Gatlin of the United States clocked 10.02 seconds to win the 100 meters at a Golden Grand Prix event in Kawasaki, Japan. Gatlin crossed the finish line 0.19 of a second ahead of Japan’s Ryota Yamagata and Ramon Gittens of Barbados, who clocked 10.26. ■ The Italian Alex Schwazer made a triumphant return from a doping ban to win the 50-kilometer event at the world racewalking team championships in Rome. Schwarzer’s victory secured him a spot in the Olympic Games in Rio de Janeiro. (AP)


Britain Urges Saudis to Free Grandfather Facing 350 Lashes

Abstract: LONDON — For more than a year, an asthmatic 74-year-old grandfather and former oil executive has sat in a prison in Jidda, Saudi Arabia , accused of violating the country’s strict prohibition on alcohol after the authorities found bottles of homemade wine in his car. The case of the former executive, Karl Andree, a Briton who has lived in Saudi Arabia for 25 years and is a cancer survivor, has now become a matter of geopolitical controversy amid an outcry over the sentence he faces: 350 lashes, a punishment that his family says could kill him. The British government said Tuesday that it was canceling a program to train prison officers in Saudi Arabia and that Prime Minister David Cameron would make a personal appeal for clemency, as Mr. Andree’s case continued to draw attention on social media. “We are actively seeking his release as soon as possible,” the Foreign and Commonwealth Office said in a statement. Officials later announced that Mr. Cameron also planned to make a personal request, in writing, for a review of the case. Mr. Andree’s family has been pleading with the government to intervene. Simon Andree, Mr. Andree’s son, told BBC Radio 4 that he feared that his father would not survive the flogging. “He’s had cancer three times,” he said. “He suffers from severe asthma. He’s an old, frail man, and I just fear that this lashing sentence is a death sentence for him.” Image Karl Andree, 74, has been in a Saudi prison for over a year and faces 350 lashes because bottles of wine were found in his car. Kirsten Piroth, Karl Andree’s daughter, told the BBC that family members had abandoned earlier assumptions that Mr. Andree would be spared the whip because of his age and health. “I just want him home now,” she said. According to news reports, he was arrested in the port city of Jidda in August 2014 after the authorities found alcohol in his car. Saudi Arabia’s legal code is based on a strict Wahhabi interpretation of Islamic law, though it is not uncommon for foreigners to consume alcohol covertly. The Saudi Embassy in London could not be reached for comment. The kingdom has previously defended its judicial system, saying that it conforms with Islamic law and that it is applied equitably. The case of Mr. Andree comes as Britain’s relations with Saudi Arabia face renewed scrutiny. On Tuesday, the British government announced that the Justice Ministry would not be proceeding with a program to train Saudi prison staff members. The justice secretary, Michael Gove, told Parliament that the government would scrap the agreement, which is worth 5.9 million pounds, or about $9 million. The leader of the opposition Labour Party, Jeremy Corbyn , had called on Mr. Cameron to scrap the contract on the grounds that Britain should not be aiding a country whose justice system allows for lashings, executions and beheadings. In a speech at the party’s annual conference, Mr. Corbyn also called on the government to intervene to secure the release of Ali Mohammed al-Nimr, a Saudi who faces beheading over reportedly taking part in antigovernment protests when he was 16 or 17. The son of a prominent dissident, he was arrested in 2012. The United Nations last month called on Saudi Arabia to prevent Mr. Nimr’s execution, after a court upheld his sentence. Saudi Arabia’s judicial system has long been the subject of criticism from human rights groups, which have accused the country of holding unfair trials and dispensing disproportionate sentences, including the execution of juvenile offenders. Image Prime Minister David Cameron of Britain plans to make a personal appeal for clemency. Credit Andy Rain/European Pressphoto Agency In a report issued in late August, Amnesty International said Saudi Arabia executed at least 175 people over the previous 12 months. Under the country’s justice system, offenses including drug dealing, arms smuggling, murder and other violent crimes are punishable by death, usually by beheading in a public square. Offenses that can be punishable by flogging include meeting members of the opposite sex who are not close relatives; adultery; driving, if a woman is behind the wheel ; and homosexuality. Saudi Arabia’s justice system is administered by deeply conservative clerics applying Shariah law , and they often hand down harsh punishments for acts not considered crimes in many other countries. But not all of these punishments are carried out, especially when they are likely to elicit sharp international criticism. A Saudi blogger, Raif Badawi, was arrested in 2012 and sentenced to 10 years in prison and 1,000 blows, to be administered weekly for several months, for running a liberal website. But after his public caning early this year led to widespread international condemnation, the corporal portion of his punishment was suspended, although he remains in prison. Much about the inner workings of the Saudi justice system remains opaque, but analysts suspect that the royal family, which works hard to uphold the kingdom’s image and its close alliances with the United States and other Western nations, intervenes in cases likely to cause repercussions. The new leader, King Salman, has reinforced close ties to religious conservatives, and his willingness to pursue even the cautious overhauls of his predecessor remains unclear. James Lynch, deputy Middle East and North Africa director at Amnesty International, said Tuesday that flogging violated the prohibition of torture and other ill treatment under international law. “It can never be justified,” he said. “Saudi Arabian authorities must not carry out such brutal and degrading punishment.” He noted that this year, Mr. Badawi was taken out of a Saudi prison cell and publicly flogged, while Mr. Nimr was “presently sitting in another Saudi cell awaiting execution despite his youth” and serious concerns about the legitimacy of his conviction.

Karl Andree
Saudi Arabia
Great Britain
Corporal punishment
Sharia
Human Rights
Criminal Sentence
UN
David Cameron
Alcohol


Life Lessons Should Count on Top Court

Abstract: WASHINGTON — Senator Lindsey Graham, the engaging South Carolina Republican, lectured the Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor last week that if he had made a comment like hers that a “wise Latina woman” often reaches better conclusions, it would have a been a career-ender. The cable-news commentators concurred and the nominee, playing the create-no-waves confirmation game, expressed regret. Actually, her remark was rational and Mr. Graham’s analysis flawed. Suppose, for example, he had said: “I would hope that a wise, white Southern male with the richness of growing up in South Carolina would more often than not be more sensitive on the issue of race relations than a white Northerner who hasn’t lived that life.” While some might have disagreed, most of his constituents would have agreed, and his future would be as bright as ever. The Sotomayor hearings followed the now-predictable pattern of partisan-edged questions with evasive answers, where little is learned about either the jurist or the law. Almost none of the questions were unfair or even that tough; compared with earlier confirmation sessions, it was tame stuff. What endures, however, is the spectacle of middle-aged, white Republicans lecturing the first Latin female nominee about the irrelevance of race, gender and life experiences for a judge. Even Mr. Graham, one of the more enlightened lawmakers — a strong immigration advocate and a thoroughly modern Republican — didn’t get it. Others, especially the committee’s top-ranking Republican, Senator Jeff Sessions of Alabama, were fixated not on Judge Sotomayor’s 17-year record on the federal bench — she would have the most extensive judicial background of any justice in the past 100 years — but on a few of her speeches suggesting she has been shaped by her experiences and ethnic heritage. Instead of raising doubts about the nomination, the Sessions obsession only reinforced the picture of a narrow Republican Party uncomfortable with differences and resisting diversity. The political context is that only four of the 17 female senators are Republicans and white males make up almost 90 percent of the party in that chamber. It isn’t much better in the House of Representatives, where 59 of the 256 Democrats, or almost one-quarter, are women and only 18 of the 178 Republicans are women. Of the 43 blacks in Congress, all are Democrats. Of the 26 Hispanic members, 22 are Democrats. With Hispanics the fastest-growing slice of the American electorate, the hectoring of Judge Sotomayor seems politically inexplicable. All judges are influenced by how they were raised; the law and the Constitution aren’t mechanical templates, unaffected by perspectives and even prejudices. Why was segregation the law of the land for so long? Imagine in 1967 criticizing Thurgood Marshall, the great civil rights lawyer who became the first African-American on the high court, for believing that his background would have an impact on his role. Of course it did. Republicans have recognized that reality in the past. Justice Samuel Alito cited his own family’s immigrant past: “I have to think about people in my own family who suffered discrimination because of their ethnic background or because of religion or because of gender.” The poster person for identity politics was Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, who took the bench in 1991. Mr. Thomas’s origins as a struggling young black man from Pin Point, Georgia, became the Republican narrative in his contentious confirmation fight: “I can walk in the shoes of the people who are affected by what the court does.” In short, his life’s experiences. When in this past term the Supreme Court ruled against a strip search of a 13-year-old girl, is there any doubt that Ruth Bader Ginsburg, the only woman on the court, brought a perspective unfamiliar to the other eight? Personal stories have long been championed as a requisite for the judiciary by conservatives and liberals alike. In the 1960s, those unhappy with the criminal-rights decisions by Chief Justice Earl Warren’s court would argue that it would be different if any of the justices ever got mugged. Experiences were a virtue, they argued. The court ought to reflect diversity of background, profession, perspective. A shortcoming in recent years has been the absence of anyone with an extensive record in elected office — Sandra Day O’Connor served for a time as a state legislator — who might better appreciate the effects of decisions on real-life politics. An example: In 1997, the court unanimously decided that a civil suit for sexual misconduct against President Bill Clinton could continue, rejecting the president’s argument that such actions should be delayed until his term of office was over. In Clinton v. Jones, Justice John Paul Stevens deemed it “highly unlikely” that such a lawsuit would “occupy any substantial amount of petitioner’s time.” A few nights later, the late Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan, a political historian of unsurpassed wisdom, said this decision was naïve, reflecting the lack of anyone familiar with the way politics works. Of course, the ruling led to further hearings, which led to the Monica Lewinsky scandal, which occupied more than a “substantial amount” of the petitioner’s time. A judge with a more seasoned understanding of the real world of politics might have understood this. The Supreme Court is well served with intellectual opposites like Antonin Scalia and Stephen Breyer, both of whom reflect where they come from. Judge Sotomayor may not achieve that intellectual pinnacle, but with the bright mind and ready charm she demonstrated last week and with her unique perspectives and personal biography, she will add to the richness of the court’s deliberations. She is expected to be confirmed with support from close to half the Senate’s Republicans, mirroring the backing Chief Justice John Roberts received from Democrats four years ago. Instead, unfortunately for Republicans, the dominant memory of those sessions will be of white guys lecturing a Latin woman about ethnicity.


In Albanian Feuds, Isolation Engulfs Families

Abstract: SHKODER, Albania — Christian Luli, a soft-spoken 17-year-old, has spent the past 10 years imprisoned inside his family’s small, spartan house, fearful he will be shot dead if he walks outside the front door. To pass the time, he plays video games and sketches houses. Since he is unable to attend high school, Christian’s reading level is that of a 12-year-old’s. A girlfriend is out of the question. He would like to become an architect, but he despairs of a future locked inside, staring at the same four walls. “This is the situation of my life. I have known nothing else since I was a boy,” Christian said, looking plaintively through a window at the forbidden world outside. “I dream of freedom and of going to school. If I was not so afraid, I would walk out the door. Living like this is worse than a prison sentence.” Christian’s misfortune is to have been born the son of a father who killed a man in this poor northern region of Albania, where the ancient ritual of the blood feud still holds sway. Under the Kanun, an Albanian code of behavior that has been passed on for more than 500 years, “blood must be paid with blood,” with a victim’s family authorized to avenge a slaying by killing any of the killer’s male relatives. The Kanun’s influence is waning, but it served as the country’s constitution for centuries, with rules governing a variety of issues including property ownership, marriage and murder. The National Reconciliation Committee, an Albanian nonprofit organization that works to eliminate the practice of blood feuds, estimates that 20,000 people have been ensnared by blood feuds since they resurfaced after the collapse of Communism in 1991, with 9,500 people killed and nearly 1,000 children deprived of schooling because they are locked indoors. By tradition, any man old enough to wield a hunting rifle is considered a fair target for vengeance, making 17 male members of Christian’s family vulnerable. They, too, are stuck in their homes. The sole restriction is that the boundaries of the family home must not be breached. Women and children also have immunity, though some, like Christian, who physically matured at an early age, begin their confinement as boys. Family members of the victim are usually the avengers, though some families outsource the killing to professional contract killers. Blood feuds have been prevalent in other societies, like mafia vendettas in southern Italy and retaliatory violence between Shiite and Sunni families in Iraq. Appalachian bootleggers in the 19th century also took up arms to defend family honor. But the phenomenon has been particularly pronounced in Albania, a desperately poor country that is struggling to uphold the rule of law after decades of Stalinist dictatorship. Blood feuds all but disappeared here during the 40-year rule of Enver Hoxha, Albania’s Communist dictator, who outlawed the practice, sometimes burying alive those who disobeyed in the coffins of their victims. But legal experts in Albania say the feuds erupted again after the fall of Communism ushered in a new period of lawlessness. Nearly a thousand men involved in feuds have escaped abroad, some of them applying for asylum. But even then, dozens of people have been hunted down outside Albania and killed by avenging families. Ismet Elezi, a professor of criminal law at the University of Tirana, who advises the government and the police on how to tackle the problem, said recent changes to Albania’s penal code — including sentences of 25 years to life in prison for those who kill in a blood feud and stiff penalties for individuals who threaten to retaliate — had helped diminish the practice. Yet he noted that some still gave greater credence to the Kanun than to the criminal justice system, often with devastating social consequences. “The younger generation is no longer looking to the older generation’s codes of behavior,” he said. “But blood feuds are still causing misery because the men stuck inside their homes can’t work, the children can’t go to school and entire families are cut off from the outside world.” Alexander Kola, a mediator who works to resolve blood feuds, said the most common cause of feuds was disputes over property or land. He noted that feuds could also erupt from seemingly minor affronts. He recalled a recent case in which a dozen men had been forced indoors after a male family member killed a shopkeeper who refused to sell his child an ice cream cone. In another case, a feud exploded when a sheep grazed on a neighbor’s land, precipitating a deadly fight. Sociologists here said the feuds had inverted traditional gender roles in rural Albania, as the women became the breadwinners of the family while the men were forced to stay home and do the housework. Christian’s mother, Vitoria, 37, said she had ordered him to remain indoors from the age of 7 after her husband and his brother killed a man in their village following a drunken argument. She said her other son, Klingsman, 7, was attending school but would soon be forced to join his brother’s life of confinement. Her husband and brother-in-law are serving 20-year prison sentences for murder. “I live in constant fear and anxiety that Christian will be killed, that they are hunting my children,” said Ms. Luli, who relies on charity to support her, the two boys and their two sisters. “I just wish the other family would kill someone in our family so that this nightmare would finally be over.” She said she had sent a mediator to try and seek forgiveness from the other family, but to no avail. The family of the victim, Simon Vuka, declined to comment. But Mr. Kola, who is mediating the case, said that the family was not prepared to forgive the feud because the victim had two young sons who had been left fatherless. “Many victims’ families feel that imprisoning all the men in the killer’s family inside their homes is a better revenge than killing them.” Mr. Kola, a former gym instructor who studied conflict resolution in Norway, said he tried to reconcile feuds by identifying influential friends or relatives of the victim who could implore the family to forgive and forget. He said the plea for forgiveness was often accompanied with an offering of gold coins or other gifts from the killer’s family. “I tell the families of the victims that forgiveness is more important than revenge,” he said. Christian, lanky and stoic with a maturity beyond his years, said he blamed his father, his uncle and an outmoded code of behavior for destroying his life. He said it was unfair that he was being punished for the sins of his relatives. His only contact with the outside world comes once a month when a group of nuns who do charity work in the community form a protective circle around him and whisk him into a car for a 30-minute trip to a nearby community center. He said he fantasized about escaping Albania, but his family was too poor to send him abroad. He could arm himself and flee, but he fears that the risks could be deadly. “The Kanun is full of idiot rules for another age,” he said. “It is totally unfair and senseless.” Blood feuds have affected the young as well as the aging members of the Albanian population, some of whom go without adequate health care because they cannot leave their homes. Sherif Kurtaj, 62, has been forced to live with an untreated back tumor and rotten teeth because he has been trapped inside his house for the past eight years, ever since his two sons killed a neighbor he said ridiculed the boys because they were planning to emigrate to Germany. He said he needed life-saving surgery, but feared that if he went to the hospital, he would die from an avenger’s bullet. Mr. Kurtaj said his two sons, both of whom face 16-year prison sentences, had been on the run since the killing. Even if they turned themselves in, he lamented, he would still be forced to remain indoors. He said his friends were too afraid to visit for fear of being accidentally shot. He said the feud had made him completely dependent on his wife. “I am a Kanun man, and I was raised to be the man of the house. But now my wife is everything to me.” Mr. Kurtaj could file a complaint under Albanian law against the family of the victim for threatening to kill him; such an offense carries a prison sentence of up to three years. But Mr. Kurtaj said he was afraid it would only bring reprisals. “The Kanun must be obeyed,” he said. “The blood needs to be avenged.”

Albania
Families and Family Life
Third World and Developing Countries
Sociology


At Gyms, Older Members and More Efforts to Cater to Them

Abstract: IT’S 8:30 on a Tuesday morning at Island Fitness in Coronado, Calif., and the gym’s ambience is about to be transformed almost as markedly as was the 98-pound-weakling-turned-muscle-man in the old comic book ads. The last of the morning workout crowd that started arriving shortly after the club opened at 5:30 is hustling out the door to work, and a second shift— a half-dozen women — is arriving for an exercise class. The club manager, Larry Indiviglia, has laid out a circuit of exercises on the 30-foot by 20-foot outdoor patio of the gym, which is across the street from the historic Hotel del Coronado. The elastic resistance tubing, three-pound dumbbells, and stability and medicine balls would not challenge Charles Atlas, but they are just right for these retired or semiretired women. As they begin their 30-minute regimen, the atmosphere at the club shifts. The music changes to the Beatles and the Beach Boys from the Black Eyed Peas, and the attire gives way to loose, comfortable pants and blouses, from halter tops or skin-tight spandex. The conversation changes, too. “It’s a lot of ‘do you remember driving this kind of car?’ or ‘did you used to watch that TV show?’ ” said Dolores Forsythe, 63, who is in the class. “Your typical 20- or 30-year-old wouldn’t know what we were talking about.” The younger gym members “can do different things and want to do different things,” said Sharon Sherman, 58. “This is just a more familiar, comfortable, social group.” Island Fitness, with about 200 members, is a relatively small gym housed in what was once a machine shop. But the 8:30 women’s class and the 9:30 stretching class for older men that follows it are emblematic of a changing dynamic at fitness clubs coast to coast. Call it the graying of the gym: membership among adults 55 and older rose to 10.5 million in 2008, from 1.5 million in 1987, making this group the fastest-growing segment of the health club population, according to annual surveys by the International Health, Racquet and Sportsclub Association, an organization based in Boston that represents many of the nation’s 30,022 health clubs. Whether they have been prodded by their physicians or spurred by research showing the many benefits of physical activity for older adults, people in their 50s and 60s are joining gyms and jolting the workout culture. “You go back several years, people had the image of a muscular young guy flexing in the mirrors,” said Joe Moore, chief executive and president of the association. “That’s just not the culture in most clubs today.” Now, Mr. Moore said, instead of a near-empty gym at midmorning, older members are likely to be found working out. Classes are often geared for less-agile bodies or emphasize concepts like balance training, a skill that is particularly important for older adults. “For the first time, we have a cohort of people who are just getting ready to retire and have an expectation of being physically active,” said Wojtek J. Chodzko-Zajko, an exercise scientist and expert in fitness at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Many older Americans, he noted, grew up in a culture of exercise, from the aerobics movement inspired by Dr. Kenneth Cooper in the 1960s to the weight-lifting craze after “Pumping Iron” in the 1970s and back to aerobics with Jane Fonda videos in the 1980s. Of course, not every one is burning up the gym with enthusiasm — even among those who do join. Leigh Anne Richards, general manager of MetroFitness in Montgomery, Ala., says she teaches morning classes four days a week that are attended mostly by older women. “They’re hard to please,” she said. “Some want to basically lie on the floor, while the others want to really move.” As for the music, she added, “of course, no rap, and preferably ’60s hits.” Those hits provide the soundtrack for the women’s morning circuit class at Island Fitness. The men’s stretching class has a different beat; one participant brought in his collection of Stan Getz jazz CDs, and Mr. Indiviglia agreed to use them. “Later in the afternoon, when the after-work crowd comes in, we’ll shift back to adult contemporary, the current hits,” he said. “But for the older folks, I’ll take requests.”

Health Clubs
Retirement
Age Chronological
Elderly


In the Bronx, Blight Gave Way to Renewal

Abstract: The cream-colored limousine pulled to a stop on Charlotte Street. It was not so much a street but a remnant of one, lined with barren lots, abandoned buildings and eight-foot-high piles of bulldozed bricks. President Jimmy Carter stepped from the limousine and walked around, his hands in his pockets, trailed by reporters, officials and Secret Service agents. One day after discussing nuclear disarmament at the United Nations, Mr. Carter had decided to take a sudden trip to the urban slums of the South Bronx. A stretch of Charlotte Street near Boston Road was the motorcade’s second stop of the day. “See which areas can still be salvaged,” President Carter told Patricia Roberts Harris, the secretary of the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development, as The New York Times reported. “Maybe we can create a recreation area and turn it around.” The president’s visit to the South Bronx on Oct. 5, 1977, was 30 years ago today. No formal ceremonies will mark the anniversary. On Charlotte Street these days, the tranquil rhythm of neighborhood life is its own quiet tribute. Walk on Charlotte Street now and you will find suburban-style ranch houses with small yet pampered front lawns. One resident keeps a hammock in the backyard; another dotes over his apple, pear, peach, plum and cherry trees. Robert Mitchell, 69, a retired bus driver, spends his days relaxing with his wife, Artie Mae Mitchell, also 69. The framed photos on the wall over the dining table tell the story of their lives; a plate over the kitchen sink tells the motto: “Worry is like a rocking chair. Keeps you busy, but never gets you anywhere.” Change is the everlasting story of New York City, but few streets have illustrated the city’s capacity for destruction and rejuvenation like Charlotte Street. On the desolate land that Mr. Carter walked 30 years ago are houses like the Mitchells’, now worth $500,000. Early one recent evening, you could hear the sounds of a water sprinkler, birds chirping, the low rattle of the elevated train in the distance and little else. Mr. Carter’s visit did not revive the area by itself, but people in the South Bronx say it created a much-needed spark and drew the world’s attention to a borough that was not only burning, as Howard Cosell famously informed viewers during a World Series game that October, but seemed to be dying, too. “What I recall more than anything else was the uncertainty,” said José E. Serrano, the Bronx congressman whose district includes Charlotte Street and who was a state assemblyman in 1977. “Of not knowing when the building was going to burn, when the landlord was going to cut back services, when you find yourself in a building that the landlord totally walks away from. The housing stock was going to waste and abandon.” Charlotte Street had been a working-class Jewish enclave in the years before World War II. By the 1970s, it was the victim of arson fires, rampant crime, a lack of city services and abandonment and neglect by landlords. It had almost become invisible: Part of the street was taken off the city map in 1974 and did not reappear until a decade later, according to the Bronx borough president’s office. It took years for an informal coalition of neighborhood activists and clergy, community development groups and local, state and federal officials to rebuild Charlotte Street and other areas of the South Bronx. Thousands of residences were developed using public subsidies, city-donated land and tax abatements. After his trip, Mr. Carter was criticized for the slow pace of renewal. In 1980, during his presidential campaign, Ronald Reagan stood on Charlotte Street and said Mr. Carter had not fulfilled his promises. Mr. Reagan was one of several political figures to use the street as a backdrop over the years. President Clinton went there twice: in 1997 and again in 2005. Tour groups still visit the street. Lloyd Ultan, the Bronx borough historian, often takes people there, but he has had trouble locating the exact area on Charlotte Street near Boston Road where Mr. Carter walked in some of the iconic photographs. There was too much rubble and emptiness back then. “It’s difficult to pinpoint a spot in the desert,” Mr. Ultan explained. Residents on Charlotte Street have become used to living on what amounts to one of the most popular tourist attractions in the South Bronx. David Ramos, 20, and his brother Joshua, 16, live on Charlotte Street with their grandparents, and in a hallway of their house they keep a framed picture of them shaking President Clinton’s hand in 1997. When Mr. Clinton returned in 2005, he wrote a message to Joshua in a corner of the photo: “Good to see you again.” “It’s hard to visualize this with no houses,” David Ramos said. “That’s hard to believe.” Today, Charlotte Street feels not so much like the southern Bronx but Long Island. Now primarily a mix of Asian, African-American and Latino families, it is a sleepy three-blocks lined with clean sidewalks and white-painted wrought iron fences. There are worn welcome mats at the front doors and pink flamingo and chipmunk ornaments in the yards. The Mitchells moved into their prefabricated house in 1985. The single-family homes were part of the Charlotte Gardens development, the construction of which was overseen by the South Bronx Development Organization, an agency created by the city. The Mitchells bought their house for $52,600 and paid off their mortgage in 11 years. They live there with two of their four children, content and proud of their space on historic Bronx land. “We have the suburb in the city,” Mr. Mitchell said. “And it’s been that way from day one.”


Profit Surges at MGM Mirage

Abstract: LAS VEGAS (AP) — The casino giant MGM Mirage reported soaring fourth-quarter profit Thursday, including a hefty gain related to a foreign investment in its CityCenter project, which is under construction on the Las Vegas Strip. The company said net income surged to $872.2 million, or $2.85 a share, in the period that ended Dec. 31, compared with $201.6 million, or 69 cents a share, a year earlier. The company, which owns several Las Vegas Strip resorts including Bellagio, the Mirage and Mandalay Bay, said earnings from continuing operations jumped to $870.8 million, or $2.85 a share, from $199.1 million, or 68 cents a share. Quarterly revenue rose 4 percent, to $1.93 billion, from $1.85 billion a year earlier. The results beat expectations of analysts polled by Thomson Financial, who expected net income of 55 cents a share on revenue of $1.92 billion. J. Terrence Lanni, the company’s chairman and chief executive, told analysts in a conference call that a major element in the fourth-quarter performance was the completion on Nov. 15 of a joint venture giving Dubai World, the investment arm of the Dubai government, a 50 percent stake in the CityCenter mega-resort being built on the Las Vegas Strip. The project, now estimated to cost more than $8.1 billion, is expected to open in late 2009. MGM Mirage shares fell 25 cents to $64.34.


Michigan: Detroit Debt Deal Clears More Hurdles

Abstract: The Detroit City Council on Friday approved the creation of a regional water authority, pushing forward an integral part of the city’s plan to exit bankruptcy. A deal Detroit reached last week with Oakland, Wayne and Macomb Counties creates a regional authority, but allows Detroit to maintain control of its local system. The authority must now be approved by at least one of the counties. The Council also approved another part of the plan, in which the bond insurer Syncora Guarantee will receive options to acquire six vacant lots, take control of a public parking garage and extend its lease on a tunnel to Canada.


The Sun That Did Not Roar

Abstract: This is the height of the 11-year solar cycle, the so-called solar maximum. The face of the Sun should be pockmarked with sunspots, and cataclysmic explosions of X-rays and particles should be whizzing off every which way. Instead, the Sun has been tranquil, almost spotless. As W. Dean Pesnell, the project scientist for NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory , dryly noted, “We’re not having much of a solar maximum.” A week ago, a solitary sunspot blemished an otherwise blank yellow disk. In the ensuing days, a few more specks appeared, but even a small explosion, or coronal mass ejection, last Thursday seemed like the halfhearted effort of a slacker star. “The truth of it is there isn’t a lot going on,” said Joseph M. Kunches, a space scientist at the Space Weather Prediction Center . “It’s been a bit of a dud. You look at the Sun today and you say, ‘What?’ ” For those who depend on Dr. Kunches’s work, like satellite operators and power companies, that is actually good news. One of the worries in our highly technological 21st-century civilization is that a direct hit on Earth by a gargantuan solar storm could disable satellites and overwhelm wide swaths of power grids . A quiet Sun makes that much less likely. For scientists trying to understand the dynamics in the interior of the Sun, it has been a humbling experience enlightening them about how much they do not know. “If there’s anyone who has figured it out, I haven’t heard, that’s for sure,” said Douglas Biesecker, a physicist at the Space Weather Prediction Center and the chairman of a panel that had issued predictions about the solar cycle. They do have a basic understanding. Inside the Sun, flows of electrons and protons generate magnetic fields that undulate on roughly an 11-year schedule. The roiling of the fields create regions that are cooler and darker — sunspots. The twisting magnetic fields within sunspots periodically snap, releasing enormous amounts of energy in solar flares and coronal mass ejections. But some solar cycles are ferocious while others remain calm. Why the cycle is 11 years is another mystery. This cycle, No. 24 since scientists started counting, has been befuddling from the start. Some expected an active cycle, similar to the ones of the recent past. Others predicted that this one would be quieter than usual; those predictions looked prescient as the lull of solar minimum stretched longer and deeper than expected. In 2008, the Sun was spotless on 266 days — the blankest in half a century. The following year, when the percolating of sunspots should have picked up, the Sun was blank for 260 days. Solar activity picked up in 2010 and especially 2011. Then the number of sunspots started dropping again. That was not necessarily surprising. In some previous cycles the Sun’s northern hemisphere became active first, and scientists expected a second peak in sunspots as the southern hemisphere entered its active period. The southern hemisphere indeed began to perk up, but then leveled off and has remained that way for the past year, leading to more head-scratching. “In all honesty, it really feels like the Sun can’t make up its mind,” Dr. Biesecker said. “It’s just this flat mesa, and it’s not budging.” If there is no second peak, and solar maximum actually occurred two years ago, then Solar Cycle 24 would be extremely odd — late to start and early to end. “What would surprise me is if it didn’t pick up over the next year,” Dr. Pesnell said. How far back do have scientists have to look back to find a solar maximum quite as weak? As far back as Chicago Cubs fans do for a World Series championship. Cycle 14 in the early 1900s was similarly quiet. (The Cubs won the 1908 World Series, about a year after the maximum of that solar cycle.) This time, solar scientists have Sun-watching satellites providing reams of data for them to analyze. “For the first time, we’ll be looking at a solar cycle that’s really different from the ones we’ve seen before,” Dr. Pesnell said. Dr. Pesnell says it has already become apparent that the flow patterns within the Sun are more complicated than had been supposed. Despite the minimal sunspots, the Sun is still going through the rest of its cycle as usual. Its magnetic field is on the cusp of flipping, as expected. At solar maximum, the magnetic fields at the poles essentially disappear for a brief time, and when they re-emerge, they are pointing in the opposite direction. If you had a compass on the Sun’s north pole and it were pointing north before solar maximum, it would be pointing south after solar maximum. (Actually, the compass would vaporize.) The north pole has already flipped; the south pole is behind but last month scientists at Stanford’s Wilcox Solar Observatory said they expected the transition to be complete soon. “We do see indications that solar maximum is about now,” Dr. Pesnell said.

Sun
Space
NASA
Solar Dynamics Observatory


Vote for Merkel Seen as Victory for Austerity

Abstract: BRUSSELS — As Angela Merkel savored the results of Germany’s national elections, newspapers on the left and right in Greece on Monday gave the same mournful assessment of what the result means beyond German borders. “Victory for the Queen of Austerity,” declared the front page of Ta Nea , a center-left daily. “Merkel victory atop the ruins of the South,” said the conservative Dimokratia . Bloggers, meanwhile, posted a cartoon that showed Ms. Merkel, a stethoscope around her neck, wagging her finger at a skeleton slumped in a blue chair and ordering, “Exercise, exercise, exercise to strengthen your muscles.” For months now, Europe has been waiting for the end of a German election campaign that, while focused almost entirely on domestic issues, stirred furtive hope among those outside Germany that, if re-elected to a third term, Ms. Merkel, despite having given no indication, would try a more energetic, and perhaps more economically stimulative, approach to leading Europe out of its extended slump. The waiting has now ended — and so, too, has any hint of a new approach. Instead of a respite from years of grinding budget cuts and tax increases in return for bailout funds, Ms. Merkel’s conservative Christian Democrats campaigned on holding the line against expensive commitments to reviving Germany’s neighbors. Her financial aides claimed that signs that Europe’s long recession had recently become less severe had proved that its austerity policies were working. Ms. Merkel’s electoral success — the Christian Democrats and their allies, the Christian Social Union in Bavaria, together won 41.5 percent of the popular vote — will bring “more of the same,” predicted Mats Persson, director of Open Europe, a London-based research group. For countries now on economic life support, this would mean yet more painful “exercise,” which in Greece has slimmed job prospects so significantly that over 60 percent of youth are now unemployed. Whatever coalition government emerges in Berlin from what could be weeks of haggling, Mr. Persson said, “there may be a little change of rhetoric, but the substance will remain the same.” “There will be a continued focus on austerity,” he said. Ms. Merkel said as much herself during a final day of campaigning on Saturday. “We have to continue on this course,” she told a rally in Berlin, denouncing the European policies of her main rival, Peer Steinbrück, who had called for a presumably mostly German-financed Marshall Plan to relieve what he called “a deadly dose of austerity.” Still, some outside Germany held out hope that a coalition with Mr. Steinbrück and his Social Democrats could moderate Ms. Merkel’s approach. “We should not forget that Merkel needs a partner,” said Hannes Swoboda of Austria, president of the Socialists and Democrats, a grouping of left-leaning forces in the European Parliament in Brussels. “Now is the time to get a more flexible policy. She could not be flexible before the election for fear of losing votes to the Alternative for Germany,” he said. He was referring to an upstart protest party that, campaigning on promises to scrap the euro and stop using German money to bail out Europe’s economic laggards, nearly crossed the 5 percent hurdle to enter Parliament. Ms. Merkel’s center-left opponents tried during the campaign to rally support for the idea of so-called eurobonds, which would effectively pool the debts of the 17 countries that use the euro. But even Mr. Swoboda says the new flexibility he expects from Ms. Merkel will not go that far. “This is not on the agenda,” he said. “Maybe in three or four years.” The idea of pooling obligations was raised at the start of Europe’s rolling debt crisis in 2009 and gained support among some economists. But, in a measure of Germany’s outsize role in decision-making in Brussels, it went nowhere once Ms. Merkel made clear that she opposed it. Asked about the possibility of Greece’s receiving more funds, Ms. Merkel said on German television immediately after Sunday’s election that her finance minister, Wolfgang Schäuble, was already committed to examining a further request, and that would almost certainly lead to a third bailout deal for Athens. Mr. Schäuble also appeared on television Sunday night, assuring Germany’s European partners that Berlin would play a “reliable” role in the Continent’s affairs. For much of Europe, particularly in countries that balk at what they see as efforts by Berlin to recreate European economies in its own image, Ms. Merkel inspires a mix of anxiety and grudging respect. Italy’s La Repubblica newspaper on Monday called her the “tranquil and fierce czarina that bewitched Germany.” The French newspaper Le Monde declared her “Chancellor of Germany, Chief of Europe.” With nearly a third of the euro zone’s economic output and the lowest unemployment rate after Austria — 5.3 percent in July compared with 27.6 percent in Greece and 26.3 in Spain, according to Eurostat, Europe’s statistical agency — Germany is Europe’s undisputed economic powerhouse, and also its paymaster. But having already contributed hundreds of billions of dollars to bailout funds for Greece, Ireland and others, Berlin is in no mood to relax its insistence that countries asking for help must undertake labor market and other reforms and accept the tough discipline of “fiscal consolidation,” economist-speak for austerity. Ifo Institute , an economic research institute in Munich, estimates that Germany has paid out nearly $600 billion, and has total bailout liabilities of $868 billion. “On the day after the election, it is going to shove back those eagerly outstretched hands like slamming down a window on an autumn storm,” predicted the newspaper Suddeutsche Zeitung. “No miracles are on their way, and there will be no presents under any Christmas trees.” Even before the election, it was clear that, barring a major upset, Berlin would stick to policies that Mr. Schäuble, in a commentary in The Financial Times, recently declared a great success. “The world should rejoice at the positive economic signals the euro zone is sending almost continuously,” Mr. Schäuble wrote. Officials in Brussels, the headquarters of the European Union, say they mostly agree with Mr. Schäuble’s upbeat analysis, though some questioned his “triumphalist” tone. The European Commission has in recent months slowed the pace of austerity, relaxing budget targets for a number of countries and stressing labor and other reforms as well as just cuts. But it insists it is sticking to its basic policy of forcing financial discipline. “For Europe, recovery is within sight,” José Manuel Barroso, the president of the union’s executive arm, the European Commission, said this month. Indeed, Europe has shown some faint flickering of a recovery, with the nations of the European Union recording overall growth of 0.4 percent in the second quarter, an anemic rate but still better than the previous six quarters of contraction. Greece is stuck in its sixth year of recession, but this has not stopped Prime Minister Antonis Samaras from declaring this month that “Greece is turning the page,” when the national statistics agency reported that the Greek economy shrank by “only” 3.8 percent in the second quarter, less than the expected 4.6 percent. It was the smallest contraction since Greek secured the first of two bailout packages from the troika of creditors — the European Commission, the European Central Bank and the International Monetary Fund. A big question now is whether Greece will need a third bailout after warnings from the monetary fund that Athens, despite belt-tightening, faces a funding shortfall of nearly $15 billion.

Euro Crisis
Election
Angela Merkel
Germany
Christian Social Union Germany
Christian Democratic Union Germany
Greece


For 2014 Races, G.O.P. Hunts Its Own

Abstract: Ross Ramsey, the executive editor of The Texas Tribune, writes a column for The Tribune. The elephant hunters in the Texas Republican Party have been doing a better job lately than the elephants. The elephants — mainstream Republicans, many of them incumbents — have been under attack since 2010. The Tea Party was the story that year, sweeping dozens of Democrats out of the Legislature and taking the Republican Party’s center stage. In the elections since, more of that fighting has taken place inside the party. The Democrats are out of the way, or as out of the way as redistricting has allowed, and now the best way for an ambitious Republican to take office is by knocking off another ambitious Republican. The challengers have asserted themselves. The establishment, while winning its share of races, particularly in the Legislature, looks weak. For all of their complaints about the populist wave in conservative politics, old-school Republicans don’t have the momentum. They are not holding their own in the most visible primary fights, and those elections are most likely to define the party as it moves out of an era dominated by Gov. Rick Perry. Naming the factions is tricky, because they all operate under the same banner. But it is safe to say that there is the sort of Republican who refers to the opposition as RINOs — Republicans in Name Only — and the sort who refers to the opposition without attaching a kind word, like “conservative,” to the least-compromising wing of the party. Political naming and name-calling resemble kindergarten if all the children wore business suits, went to town hall meetings and obsessed over their Twitter accounts. Each side has its lists of wins and losses; in truth, this month’s Republican primary results were mixed . A half-dozen establishment legislators lost their primaries to conservative challengers. The establishment fell short in efforts to knock off three Tea Party officeholders elected in 2010 and 2012. Some of the establishment’s prize elephants — State Representative Jim Keffer of Eastland was a top conservative target — successfully eluded the hunters. The top of the ticket is where the establishment is really taking a beating. Movement conservatives in Texas — a label that includes fiscal and social conservatives, Tea Partyers and the religious right — seem to be forming up behind Dan Patrick , a state senator running for lieutenant governor; Ken Paxton , a state senator running for attorney general; and Wayne Christian, a former state representative running for railroad commissioner. Each finished ahead of the establishment candidate in his race — in Mr. Patrick’s case, the incumbent lieutenant governor, David Dewhurst . Challengers are louder about counting coup than defenders, and the victories of challengers often look bigger, somehow, than defensive wins. The establishment successfully defended several incumbents, but failed to unseat any of its antagonists. The challengers are still short of the numbers needed to take over the Legislature, but they made enough gains to spook the survivors. Every Republican senator has probably given some private thought to State Senator John Carona ’s loss to Donald Huffines , and that kind of private thinking often leads to changed voting patterns. Do not forget the money. The establishment is frozen by caution. Some donors are switching sides after looking at the first-round results and deciding the challengers will win. The challengers are where they are because of their politics, sure, but they have serious financial backing from establishment-like donors. United States Senator Ted Cruz is where he is, in large measure, because of money from FreedomWorks and the Club for Growth . So it is with the conservative legislative candidates in Texas, who received direct and indirect help from groups like Empower Texans , which has sided with the most conservative candidates against the establishment. It is fashionable to say many of those candidates won without spending much for each vote. But a lot of money was spent on their behalf. For instance, in the last full report it filed before the primary, Empower Texans (also known as Texans for Fiscal Responsibility) had spent $480,833 on behalf of various campaigns around the state, much of it without actually donating to the candidates. If they win enough races and turn enough heads, the elephant hunters will be the new establishment.

Tea Party movement
Gubernatorial races
Conservatism in the United States
Republicans
FreedomWorks
Texas