Payoffs Beyond the Emotional From Your Team’s Postseason Run

Abstract: BASEBALL fans have many reasons for bonding with their teams. My case is simple. I was born and raised in Flushing. If I were from Kansas City, I would undoubtedly be rooting for the Royals, but I come from Queens and can’t stop loving the Mets , even when it hurts. And it often does. Even with Friday night’s victory, after thousands of disappointments, I won’t be shocked if they don’t win this World Series, even though I desperately hope that they do. My emotional stake in the team is huge, but I wish all Mets fans were able to hold a financial stake in the team, too, because it would add sweetness to this moment, regardless of how the Series ends up. Major League Baseball franchises are more than just beloved ball clubs that fans blindly adore; they are also financial assets, and from a purely financial standpoint, getting to the World Series is a very big deal. Privately owned baseball teams aren’t traded on the stock market, but if they were, Mets stock would be soaring. When a team like the Mets goes to the playoffs, there is a measurable “postseason effect,” said Vince Gennaro, author of “Diamond Dollars: The Economics of Winning in Baseball” and director of the Master of Science in sports management program at Columbia University. This effect, he said, amounts to a significant increase in revenue and prestige that enhances the value of any team. Part of this is what he calls “the activation of a latent fan base” — the joy felt in Flushing and throughout the battered Mets universe. The effect is most potent for sad-sack teams that haven’t been in contention for years yet are located in major markets — just like the New York Mets. “For the Mets,” he said, “the postseason effect will be very strong.” Conversely, the more frequently a team makes it to the postseason, the less powerful the effect of going to the postseason will be, he continued. “For the Yankees to make the postseason, for example, as they did again this year as a wild-card team, is nice for them, but it’s not unexpected,” he said. “Then there are the Royals,” he said. “They made it to the World Series last year, and that was a huge thing for them. Doing it again is great but not as great as doing it the first time in a long time.” For the Mets — a team that was not only awful on the field but besmirched in the minds of many fans because of its owners’ losses in the Madoff fraud scandal — this postseason should represent a return to financial clover, Mr. Gennaro said. “This is a very big change for them,” he said. It’s a reminder that there is no fundamental reason for the Yankees to outshine the Mets every year — though that has been the case for most of my lifetime. “If the Mets have a good team, and they do, they can outperform the Yankees,” he said. That matters financially. There are short-term and long-term aspects to the postseason effect. The immediate effects are fairly obvious and wonderful for Fred Wilpon and Saul B. Katz, principal owners of the Mets. “It means more cash flow, maybe $20 million a year more, just from all of those extra postseason games,” said Andrew Zimbalist, a prominent sports economist based at Smith College, who has been studying the finances of baseball for decades. Postseason appearances can mean multiples of that amount over the next few years because fans are more inclined to spend money on a team that has become a real contender. That is likely to translate to increased ticket sales at higher prices, more advertising revenue, more beer and soda sold at the ballpark and more money for television rights, baseball hats, uniforms and bobblehead dolls. The team’s entire brand takes on a glow. “The most important thing may be the team’s increased cachet,” he said. Although prestige is less easily measured than other markers of an ascendant reputation, it may matter the most for a team’s market value. “If the world were entirely rational, this wouldn’t matter and getting to the World Series — or winning the World Series — wouldn’t matter in calculating the value of a team like the Mets,” Mr. Zimbalist said. “After all, a baseball franchise is around for years and years. Its cash flow may go up and down a bit — it makes it to the World Series one year, it doesn’t in another year — but this should be roughly measurable and predictable, and it should have a steady long-term value.” That’s where cachet comes in. Valuing financial assets isn’t based entirely on measurable items like cash flow and costs. Especially when you’re talking about a sports franchise, he said, the value of a team is partly emotional. That’s true in the estimation of rank-and-file fans, Mr. Zimbalist said, as well as for the relatively small number of fans with the financial wherewithal to afford a professional baseball team. “The buzz of the postseason is priceless,” he said. But of course, some people put a price on it, using the best numbers that are available. Based partly on comparable sales in recent years, Mr. Zimbalist estimated that the value of the Mets franchise has risen from $1.35 billion in March to somewhere in excess of $2 billion now. If the team were on the market, it might fetch something on the order of the amount paid for the Los Angeles Dodgers, which sold for a cool $2.15 billion in 2012. These estimates are very rough, he said. Baseball teams aren’t bought and sold that often. The Mets, as far as I know, aren’t for sale. And with some exceptions, teams aren’t required to file financial statements with the Securities and Exchange Commission, as companies like Apple and Walmart are. Forbes estimates the prices of baseball teams every year, and Mr. Zimbalist, who is also a consultant to Major League Baseball, said that those estimates were “probably the best you will find in the public domain.” Before the start of the baseball season, Forbes said the Mets were worth about $1.35 billion, compared with $700 million for the small-market Royals and $3.2 billion for the New York Yankees, the most valuable team in baseball. “The Mets,” he said, “have really increased in value.” The turn in the Mets’ fortunes is based on pitching and fielding and hitting but also on the sheer coolness of the team, he said. “It’s the entire postseason, the likelihood of better revenues in future seasons, the prestige of the team, the coolness factor for a potential owner — all of that,” he said. Mets fans can’t easily profit from this directly. They can buy bonds that were sold to help finance the Mets’ stadium, Citi Field — and, in fact, the price of those bonds has already risen. The bonds are rated as junk, however, and buying them might be as risky as counting on the Mets to win. Going regularly to the ballpark can be an expensive proposition, but fans can defray some of their expenses by reselling postseason tickets, which are typically available to regular-season ticket holders. “Those packages are like options to buy postseason tickets,” Mr. Gennaro said. Such regular-season ticket packages are likely to sell more briskly if Mets fans believe the team is likely to make it to the postseason again next year. As much as I hate to say it, that’s not a sure thing, and buying season tickets with the notion of reselling postseason tickets later isn’t a smart way to finance a comfortable retirement. The only dividend for most of us will be emotional, and the emotions aren’t entirely positive. Still, I wish all Mets fans a very happy postseason effect.

Baseball
Souvenir
Franchising
Mets
World Series
Sports


Duncan and Spurs Rout Thunder in Game 1

Abstract: Tim Duncan scored 27 points, and the host San Antonio Spurs took advantage of Serge Ibaka’s absence to dominate the paint, beating the Oklahoma City Thunder, 122-105, on Monday night in the opener of the Western Conference finals. Manu Ginobili added 18 points and Kawhi Leonard and Danny Green had 16 each. Tony Parker did not appear to be limited by a hamstring injury, finishing with 14 points and 12 assists. Kevin Durant scored 28 points and Russell Westbrook added 25 for the Thunder. Oklahoma City’s remaining starters, Nick Collison, Thabo Sefolosha and Kendrick Perkins, combined to score 5 points. The Thunder struggled without the defensive presence of Ibaka, who will miss the remainder of the postseason after suffering a calf injury in the Thunder’s series clincher against the Los Angeles Clippers. San Antonio had 66 points in the paint and shot 58 percent from the field. The Spurs fed Duncan early with Ibaka out, and the veteran responded by scoring 12 points in the first quarter, making six of his seven shots. Despite missing his first four shots, Westbrook continued to bull his way into the lane, and it paid off as the game wore on. LOTTERY NIGHT The draft lottery is Tuesday, a night some teams appeared to be aiming toward for months during a season with plenty of talk about tanking. The winner gets the No. 1 pick in next month’s draft, when a player like Andrew Wiggins or Jabari Parker might make this season’s misery worth it.

Basketball
Spurs
Oklahoma City Thunder
Tim Duncan
Serge Ibaka
Playoffs


Trane’s Parent Will Shed Units

Abstract: The American Standard Companies said yesterday that it would sell its well-known plumbing fixture business and spin off a unit that makes automotive braking systems. Then, the company said, it will rename itself Trane, after its signature brand of air-conditioning systems. Shares closed up $3.86, to $53.25. While American Standard, based in Piscataway, N.J., is best known for its kitchen and bath products, the Trane operation brought in $6.8 billion, or 60 percent, of its sales in 2006. The new Trane company will retain the right to use the American Standard brand. The vehicle control systems business, which posted $2 billion in revenue in 2006, will be spun off into a publicly traded company to be called Wabco. American Standard shareholders will be issued one Wabco share for every three American Standard shares owned. American Standard said it would also sell its bath and kitchen business, which generated $2.4 billion in revenue in 2006. The proceeds would be used to pay down debt and buy back Trane common stock. The breakup, which does not require shareholder approval, is to be completed by early fall.

American Standard Companies
Mergers Acquisitions and Divestitures


Donald Trump’s Wealthy Cabinet Picks to Undergo Financial Scrutiny He Didn’t Face

Abstract: WASHINGTON — For the billionaires, the multimillionaires and the plain well-off people whom President-elect Donald J. Trump is choosing for his cabinet, the first step to office will be the sort of grilling he didn’t face — on potential business conflicts of interest and, for some, tax returns — courtesy of the Senate sleuths who have taken their toll in the past. President Obama’s first Treasury secretary, Timothy F. Geithner, was nearly derailed in 2009. His first choice for secretary of health and human services, Tom Daschle, did not make it through that year. Now the billionaires Betsy DeVos, Linda McMahon and Wilbur L. Ross Jr., and the multimillionaires Rex W. Tillerson, Ben Carson, Elaine Chao, Steven Mnuchin, Representative Tom Price, Andrew F. Puzder and Todd Ricketts can expect much of the same scrutiny. “With the president-elect flouting a 40-year bipartisan tradition of disclosure and transparency, we think it’s more important than ever to ensure that senior officials across government aren’t operating under a different tax code than everyone else,” warned Senator Ron Wyden of Oregon, the senior Democrat on the Senate Finance Committee, which has upended its share of nominees. After nearly two centuries in which Senate reviews were cursory at best, that confirmation process has become increasingly arduous, regardless of party, and especially in the committees that require nominees’ tax returns. Outsiders, Insiders and Multimillionaires in Trump’s Cabinet President-elect Donald J. Trump’s cabinet and top staff are shaping up to be a mix of wealthy Washington outsiders, Republican insiders and former military officers who have been critical of the Obama administration. Dean Zerbe, a former counsel to the Finance Committee, had some advice for Mr. Trump’s nominees facing that panel: Do not copy the president-elect’s defiance on disclosure. “The committee will say, ‘Bless your heart. Now send us your tax returns,’” Mr. Zerbe said. Senate Democrats will be pressing in January to make the scrutiny even broader. They propose that all committees make nominees privately submit their three most recent federal tax returns. Three committees — Finance, Budget, and Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs — already do so. Together they have responsibility for examining five cabinet-level officials before confirmation: the secretaries of Treasury, health and human services, and homeland security, and the president’s trade representative and budget director. For Democrats, the tax-disclosure proposal is a way to underscore Mr. Trump’s refusal to release his returns, despite a four-decade tradition of presidential candidates doing so. More to the point, they will have ample opportunity to press home their contention that a number of his cabinet choices have wealth and backgrounds at odds with his populist pitch. “He is building an administration that looks a whole lot like himself,” said Senator Patty Murray of Washington, the senior Democrat on the committee that will handle the nominations of Ms. DeVos , who married into the Amway fortune, as education secretary, and Mr. Puzder, a fast-food executive, to be labor secretary. Those nominations will go to a committee that has not previously required nominees to file tax returns along with other financial disclosures. So will those of Mr. Tillerson, chief executive of Exxon Mobil; Mr. Ross, an investment titan chosen for secretary of commerce ; Mr. Trump’s choice for deputy commerce secretary, Mr. Ricketts, the heir to the Ameritrade fortune; the pick for transportation secretary , Ms. Chao, a wealthy former labor secretary and the wife of the majority leader, Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky; Mr. Carson, a retired neurosurgeon; and Ms. McMahon, a billionaire professional wrestling impresario, who was picked to lead the Small Business Administration. The Finance Committee chairman, Senator Orrin G. Hatch, Republican of Utah, has served notice that Trump nominees “will undergo the same bipartisan vetting process as the nominees from previous administrations,” and will not get a public hearing until the committee staff’s private examination — including a review of the nominees’ tax returns from the past three years — is complete. Image Linda McMahon at Trump Tower in Manhattan last month. Ms. McMahon, a billionaire professional wrestling impresario, was chosen by Mr. Trump to lead the Small Business Administration. Credit Sam Hodgson for The New York Times The Finance Committee considers nominees to three cabinet-level offices (Treasury, trade, and health and human services), while other committees have jurisdiction over one or two. So far Mr. Trump has made his selections for two of the three spots: Mr. Price, Republican of Georgia and an orthopedic surgeon, to be secretary of health and human services ; and Mr. Mnuchin, a former Goldman Sachs partner turned hedge fund operator and Hollywood financier , to be Treasury secretary. For the very wealthy Mr. Mnuchin especially, the multipage questionnaire that the Finance Committee uses for its review illustrates the hoops a nominee must jump through to pass muster. It includes listing all jobs held since college, all business relationships, political activities and contributions, any legal or ethics issues, and a precise accounting of financial net worth for the nominee, a spouse and dependents. Nominees must answer whether they have paid all local, state and federal taxes, including those for household employees — a common tripwire. To gauge potential conflicts of interest, the questionnaire also asks for “any investments, obligations, liabilities or other relationships” and any business dealings and lobbying activities in the past 10 years that could be problems, as well as for an explanation of how those potential conflicts will be resolved. Separate opinions are required from both the federal Office of Government Ethics and the ethics officer of the agency a nominee would lead. Even as Mr. Trump resists a complete break with his far-flung businesses, a nominee before the Finance Committee must answer whether he or she, if confirmed, will “sever all connections with your present employers, business firms, associations or organizations.” If not, the nominee must provide details of how those connections will be handled. The questionnaire must be notarized — providing false answers is potentially a federal crime — and the nominee’s tax returns attached. The documents are not made public, though information may come out in hearings or be leaked, often by senators. Neither Mr. Daschle’s nor Mr. Geithner’s tax returns were made public, but their offenses were widely aired. When Senate aides discover problems, a nominee is given a choice: Agree to a public report on the infraction and pay all taxes, penalties and interest, or quietly withdraw. Donald Trump’s Cabinet Is Complete. Here’s the Full List. A list of appointees and nominees for top posts in the new administration. “Those are the not-very-attractive options a nominee was given,” said Mark Patterson, a Democrat who was the staff director for the Finance Committee in the late 1990s and the chief of staff at the Treasury Department from 2009 to 2013. Mr. Zerbe, who was on the staff of the Finance Committee during most of President George W. Bush’s administration, recalled of a few subcabinet nominees, “They’d fade away so as not to be embarrassed.” He said common transgressions included taking questionable deductions for home-office expenses. But high-level nominees often cannot escape embarrassment. Mr. Daschle, a former Senate Democratic majority leader who was a member of the Finance Committee, withdrew his nomination in 2009 after it was revealed that he had to pay $140,167 in back taxes and interest for infractions including improper deductions and failing to report as income a chauffeur-driven car that an employer had made available. At the same time, Mr. Geithner won confirmation though he was found to have failed to pay payroll taxes during three years at the International Monetary Fund, which as an international organization did not withhold taxes for employees as domestic employers do. Lael Brainard, now a Federal Reserve governor, waited more than a year to be confirmed as Treasury under secretary for international affairs while she and the Finance Committee haggled over discrepancies in her returns. Such close scrutiny of nominees, now taken for granted, is relatively recent in the history of the Senate’s exercise of its constitutional confirmation power. Not until the 1950s is there evidence of committees examining a president’s picks, Betty K. Koed, the Senate historian, said. The first record of a committee hearing on a nominee was in 1953: In just over an hour, the steel magnate George Humphrey, the sole witness, answered questions about his stock holdings and went on to be confirmed as Treasury secretary two days later. Starting in 1981, the Finance Committee began receiving reports on nominees from the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the new Office of Government Ethics. Eventually it became the first panel to require nominees’ tax returns.

US Politics
Appointments and Executive Changes
Donald Trump
Betsy Devos
Linda E McMahon
Wilbur L Ross Jr
Steven T Mnuchin
Elaine L Chao
Ben Carson,Benjamin S. Carson


U.S. Jury Convicts Man Charged in a Britain Bomb Plot

Abstract: A 28-year-old Pakistani man who represented himself at trial was convicted on Wednesday in Federal District Court in Brooklyn of supporting terrorism and conspiring with Al Qaeda to bomb a shopping center in Manchester, England. The conviction of the man, Abid Naseer, adds to an evolving understanding of where the current crop of terrorists comes from. Like Mohammed Emwazi, the hooded Islamic State fighter nicknamed “Jihadi John,” Mr. Naseer was a middle-class student in Britain who, prosecutors said, became increasingly involved with Al Qaeda over time. Well educated, charismatic and from a family he described as “wealthy,” Mr. Naseer, 28, declined to be represented by a court-appointed lawyer during the two-week trial. “I wanted the people to hear my voice and hear my story,” he told the jury. Mr. Naseer listened to the verdict without any visible reaction. He rose and clasped his hands together, blinking frequently, as the jury left the courtroom. Asked by Judge Raymond J. Dearie if he had anything else to say, he requested 60 days to file post-trial motions. Judge Dearie gave him 30 days and did not set a sentencing date. Mr. Naseer faces up to life in prison. Afterward, James E. Neuman, Mr. Naseer’s court-appointed legal adviser, said that Mr. Naseer planned to appeal the verdict. All of the jurors, whose identities the court kept secret, declined to speak to the news media. Loretta E. Lynch, the United States attorney for the Eastern District of New York, said in a statement that the verdict would send a “powerful message” to terrorists. Prosecutors argued during the trial that Mr. Naseer had helped organize a plot to bomb the shopping center in April 2009. He was arrested in Britain that month, and the plot was not carried out. In the course of planning the bombing, prosecutors said, Mr. Naseer had updated his Qaeda handler via email, using code words like “marriage” for the plot, and women’s names for specific types of bombs. Image Loretta E. Lynch, the United States attorney for the Eastern District of New York, said the verdict would send a “powerful message” to terrorists. Credit J. Scott Applewhite/Associated Press Mr. Naseer testified that he did not know that the person with whom he was corresponding was a Qaeda operative, and that he had simply been discussing his love life with an Internet friend. Still, the email address Mr. Naseer was contacting was the same one that a prosecution witness, Najibullah Zazi, was in touch with. Mr. Zazi, who previously pleaded guilty to participating in a Qaeda plot to bomb the New York City subway system, said that the email address belonged to his handler and that he had been told to use the code word “marriage” when talking about the planned subway bombing. That proved difficult for Mr. Naseer to counter. In the final email that Mr. Naseer sent to his purported Qaeda handler before being arrested, he said that his marriage was set for a range of dates in April and that he expected many guests. By then, prosecutors showed, Mr. Naseer had broken up with his girlfriend and was no longer speaking to her, making it unlikely that he was planning a wedding. Some of the claims he made during his testimony appeared dubious as well, including a contention that he had no opinion about Al Qaeda despite having grown up in Pakistan as the group was gaining prominence there. The government’s case, too, had weaknesses. British intelligence officers who tracked Mr. Naseer for several weeks in March and April 2009 were expected to provide key evidence against him. Instead, they testified about watching him go grocery shopping and taking the bus around Manchester. Representing himself, Mr. Naseer won a point or two against the seasoned prosecutors trying his case. He was calm as he questioned witnesses, and during two days of testifying on his own behalf, was logical and focused. Lacking the legal training or rhetorical flourishes of a trained lawyer, though, he repeatedly missed chances to highlight problems with witnesses or evidence and to emphasize those flaws for the jury. Still, given that he was preparing for court from a jail cell, he appeared engaged in the proceedings and seemed to follow the court’s rules. British authorities released Mr. Naseer and his alleged co-conspirators after his 2009 arrest because of a lack of evidence. He was indicted in the United States in 2010 under a law that allows the federal government to pursue terrorism cases even when they occur outside of the country, and was extradited here in 2013.

Abid Naseer
Terrorism
Al Qaeda
Brooklyn
Manchester


Facebook to Offer Free Classifieds

Abstract: SAN FRANCISCO, May 10 — Facebook, the social networking Web site, is adding free classified ad listings, putting it into competition with dozens of established companies like Craigslist and many newspapers. Facebook, which has 22 million active users, more than half of them in high school or college, hopes that the new feature will offer yet another reason for users to return to its site regularly, instead of going elsewhere to conduct their Internet business. “We don’t try to lock people up or take more of their time, but we try to provide them with easier ways to do the things they want to do on the Internet,” said Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook’s founder, who noted that more than 60 percent of the site’s active users log in each day. “If we can provide people with efficient tools, they will use the site more.” Facebook, based in Palo Alto, Calif., is calling the new service Marketplace and plans to introduce it on Friday. It will allow users to create classified listings in four categories: housing; jobs; for sale, where users can list things like concert tickets and used bikes; and “other,” a catch-all that could include things like solicitations for rides home for the holidays. Facebook users who create classifieds can choose to show them only to their designated friends on the service, or to anyone in one of their “networks” — their high school, college, company or geographic region. They can choose to make the listings appear on their profile pages, and send them out on “news feeds,” the automatic updates that appear when users log in to the site. Mr. Zuckerberg created Facebook as an undergraduate at Harvard in 2004. It is now the nation’s sixth-most-visited Web site, according to the tracking firm ComScore. Its popularity is based partly on the privacy measures it offers. Only designated friends or people in users’ networks can see their full profile pages, in contrast to the chaotic freedom on MySpace, the site owned by the News Corporation that is Facebook’s main rival. The combination of social networking and classified advertising appears to be in vogue these days. MySpace, the largest social networking site, has offered classified advertising nearly since its introduction; Friendster, which has been surpassed by newer entrants to the market, also said this week that it was adding classifieds through a partnership with Olx.com . “The advantage of having classifieds linked to a social network is that you know something about the seller,” said Charlene Li, an analyst at Forrester Research. “You are less likely to buy a lemon from someone who is a friend of yours.” On Facebook, buyers will be able to see how they are connected to the seller — the series of links between the friends they share. “There are no anonymous listings, and we give you a very clear path to see how you can trust the other person you are conducting business with,” Mr. Zuckerberg said. Although the Facebook Marketplace is free, it could eventually create some revenue for the company, which has reportedly shunned acquisition offers in the past from Yahoo. Mr. Zuckerberg said he planned to one day allow sellers to pay to more widely promote their listings on the site. He also noted that the service could create new opportunities to serve up related ads around certain kinds of listings. Many established companies are likely to be paying attention to the new service. Most notably, Craigslist, which is based in San Francisco and offers classified ads for more than 300 cities that are largely free. Job sites like Monster.com and CareerBuilder, which have services aimed at college graduates, are also likely to take notice, as are dozens of other online classified ventures and car-trading sites. Traditional media like college newspapers, which rely to a varying degree on classified ads, may be threatened as well. “If Facebook can provide a larger audience at a lower price than traditional media, people will shift their advertising dollars,” said Daniel A. Jauernig, chief executive of Classified Ventures, a joint venture of five media companies including the Tribune Company and the Washington Post Company.

Facebook.com
Computers and the Internet
Classified Advertising


Gemologist Wins Wood Memorial, Securing Place in Derby Field

Abstract: They say good stallions stamp their foals, and on Saturday, Gemologist flashed the same resolve that once characterized his sire Tiznow in consecutive victories in the Breeders’ Cup Classic in 2000 and 2001. Undefeated but not seriously tested in four previous starts, Gemologist emerged as one of the leading Kentucky Derby contenders after he resolutely turned back Alpha down the stretch of the Grade I $1 million Wood Memorial at Aqueduct. Javier Castellano mapped out a pinpoint trip on Gemologist. After breaking very alertly, Castellano allowed others to set the pace, and they raced in third down the backstretch. As the field of eight straightened for the stretch run, Gemologist swept to the lead, and Castellano looked behind him as they crossed over to the rail to pass The Lumber Guy and My Adonis. But what appeared to be a runaway turned into a rousing finish. Alpha, who had lost ground while being pinched back during the first turn, stormed down the center of the track and nearly pulled even with 100 yards left. Gemologist dug in, showing a determination he had not had to call on before, and pulled away by a neck at the finish. Gemologist gave the trainer Todd Pletcher his second Wood Memorial victory — and some payback from last year. He won the race with Eskendereya in 2010, but last year, Uncle Mo disappointed as the 1-10 favorite. Pletcher and Gemologist’s owner, WinStar Farm, combined to win the 2010 Kentucky Derby with Super Saver. They will now set their sights on another classic win in a 3-year-old division that lacks a clear favorite. Hansen, last year’s 2-year-old champion, is set to run next Saturday in the Blue Grass Stakes at Keeneland. Another Derby favorite, Union Rags, disappointed with a third-place finish in last weekend’s Florida Derby. The top two finishers were the only ones in an untested Wood field who had won a graded stakes before Saturday. Gemologist had to finish first or second to tally the required graded-stakes earnings to make it into the field of 20 for the Derby. The $600,000 first-place check more than guaranteed his trip. The winning time of 1 minute 50.96 seconds in the mile-and-an-eighth race was not sensational — more than three seconds short of the stakes record — but it is not likely to detract from the way Gemologist won. Pletcher said he thought Gemologist is still maturing and is peaking at the right time. “I think he can,” Pletcher said of Gemologist’s improving. “He’s still waiting a little bit. Javier said he was still looking around a little bit. He’s still learning.” Gemologist validated the bettors that made him the 6-5 favorite. He paid $4.40 on a $2 bet to win. The long shot Teeth of the Dog finished three lengths behind Alpha in third. They were followed by Tiger Walk, The Lumber Guy, Street Life, My Adonis and Casual Trick. Alpha acquitted himself well, and his runner-up earnings of $200,000 for the owner Godolphin Stable paves the way for his spot in the Derby field. “It was a good race and a good test; he did everything right except not winning,” his trainer, Kiaran McLaughlin, said. WinStar Farm and Pletcher have always thought highly of Gemologist. He has yet to disappoint. His owner paid $310,000 for him as a yearling, a bay son of Tiznow out of the Mr. Prospector mare Crystal Shard. The Wood was only Gemologist’s second race this year. He raced three times last year, his juvenile campaign capped off by a win in the Grade II Kentucky Jockey Club at Churchill Downs. He reappeared in an allowance race at Gulfstream Park on March 16, where he rolled to a seven-length win over last year’s Hopeful winner, Currency Swap. Although Gemologist responded to his first genuine test in the Wood, he will have to break free from the recent legacy of this prep race in the Derby. The last winner of the Wood to win the Derby was Fusaichi Pegasus in 2000. The last three winners have missed the Derby altogether because of injury: I Want Revenge, Eskendereya and Toby’s Corner. Not that this can concern his connections. If Gemologist makes it to Derby Day, they will have an unblemished colt who has shown a fondness for the track and a newfound grit. In a division of question marks, what else could they ask for? Pletcher said, “Being by a dual Breeders’ Cup Classic winner, one of those at Churchill Downs, and with this horse being 2-for-2 at Churchill Downs, I think he’d have as good a chance as anybody.” UPSET IN SANTA ANITA DERBY I’ll Have Another edged the 9-10 favorite Creative Cause by a nose in the $750,000 Santa Anita Derby, returning from a two-month layoff to make himself one of the early favorites for the Kentucky Derby. Sent off at 4-1 odds, I’ll Have Another ran one and an eighth miles in 1:47.88 under Mario Gutierrez in the West’s leading prep for the Derby. I’ll Have Another paid $10.20 on a $2 bet to win. The top three horses came charging down the stretch together to lead to an exciting finish in Arcadia, Calif. Blueskiesnrainbows was a half-length back in third for the Hall of Fame trainer Bob Baffert, who was trying to win his record seventh Santa Anita Derby. His other entries, Paynter and Liaison, were fourth and sixth in the nine-horse field. Trained by Doug O’Neill, I’ll Have Another won the Robert Lewis Stakes on Feb. 4 after returning from a five-month layoff. He was then given two months off to prepare for this race. Creative Cause, considered the West’s leading 3-year-old for much of the season, ran without blinkers for the first time in eight career races. The trainer Mike Harrington had hoped it would focus the colt, who had been wandering in the stretch. Harrington said the blinkers would stay off for the Derby. (AP) LONG SHOT WINS ILLINOIS DERBY The long shot Done Talking won the $500,000 Illinois Derby, beating Morgan’s Guerrilla by three-quarters of a length at Hawthorne Race Course in Cicero. Ridden by Sheldon Russell, Done Talking ran a mile and an eighth in 1:53.88 on the fast track from the No. 13 post position. The 55th running of the Illinois Derby featured a record 14-horse field. Done Talking, trained by Hamilton A. Smith, split between Morgan’s Guerrilla and Our Entourage just inside the one-eighth pole. He paid $27.10 on a $2 bet to win. (AP) 5,000 FOR SMITH The Hall of Fame jockey Mike Smith, 47, reached 5,000 career victories, winning aboard Amazombie in the $150,000 Potrero Grande Stakes at Santa Anita. It was Smith’s second win in a row Saturday, having earned No. 4,999 aboard the 4-5 favorite Lady of Shamrock in the $150,000 Providencia Stakes. (AP)


Finland Unnerved by Trial of Police Detective on Drug Charges

Abstract: Members of Finland ’s National Bureau of Investigation were working to crack a drug smuggling ring, when they intercepted phone calls and text messages between a suspected supplier and buyer emanating from Pasila, a district of Helsinki. One party to the communications, they suspected, was a notorious drug smuggler. The other they could not place. After months of more surveillance, prosecutors say, the officers were startled to discover that the mystery man appeared to be the head of the Helsinki police’s antidrug squad, a decorated officer, Jari Aarnio. The discovery led to Mr. Aarnio’s arrest two years ago. Now, as details of the scandal pour out weekly from what Finland’s news media has called “the trial of the century,” the case is testing this otherwise orderly Nordic country’s once-solid confidence in its laws and institutions. The deputy general prosecutor, Jorma Kalske, said in an interview that Mr. Aarnio, 58, a burly man once known as the Emperor among colleagues, used the lessons he gleaned in more than 30 years of fighting drug traffickers to become the leader of his own cartel. Mr. Kalske said Mr. Aarnio smuggled 10 million euros worth of hashish to Finland from the Netherlands. The scandal is “serious and very embarrassing for us, because it concerns such a high-level police officer, and it has shaken our society,” Tomi Vuori, the acting National Police Commissioner, said. Not only was the case exceptional in Europe, Mr. Vuori said, but it was particularly unnerving for a country like Finland, which is famed for its relative lack of corruption. Last year, Transparency International, the Berlin-based organization that surveys perceptions of corruption, ranked Finland as the world’s third least corrupt country, behind New Zealand and Denmark. In a nation that so prides itself on a culture of probity, the drug smuggling trial, which began in June, has been greeted with disbelief, spawning a media frenzy seldom seen at the modernist district court house in Helsinki. After being arrested in November 2013 after a police raid at his home, Mr. Aarnio has spent the past year and a half in the same prisons where he once put away criminals. Wearing a dark suit and rectangular glasses in court, Mr. Aarnio has steadfastly proclaimed that he is innocent and betrayed little emotion. He faces 13 years in prison on 30 charges, including drug-smuggling, forgery, abuse of public office, witness intimidation and obstruction of justice. Image The police found money in a bucket buried in Mr. Aarnio's yard. Credit Police of Finland Mikko Majander, adjunct professor of political history at the University of Helsinki, said the Aarnio case was captivating Finns, who he said “did not trust politicians or journalists, but do trust the police.” “People are amazed that what seems like fiction is fact,” he said. “We are not a country that has gunfights on the street or where the drug underworld is a part of daily life. It is a bit unreal, like having a television drama unfold before your eyes.” True to more usual Finnish form, however, the case has already spawned changes to improve oversight of law enforcement. The Finnish national police board now requires that every police department in the country have a legal unit with the task of ensuring that police officers themselves cannot breach the law. Still, as the Aarnio case has demonstrated, “No system is watertight,” Mr. Vuori said. At the core of the case, prosecutors say, is the accusation that while he was the chief detective of Helsinki’s antidrug unit, Mr. Aarnio arranged for six giant drums of hashish to be imported from the Netherlands to Finland from 2010 to 2013. Mr. Aarnio claims he was working undercover. Law enforcement officials say they found a cellphone, hidden in a shoe in his garage, that had been used for many of the conversations they had monitored, along with unsent handwritten notes advising the smuggler on how to deflect criminal charges. The notes, prosecutors say, were intended for Keijo Vilhunen, whom the authorities say was a leading figure of the United Brotherhood, the country’s most dangerous criminal organization, and, they suspect, the other party to many of the conversations they had monitored. Mr. Vilhunen, who has been charged with drug smuggling, witness intimidation and forgery of evidence, has denied the charges and that he is the leader of the gang. Investigators say Mr. Aarnio used his position in law enforcement and his accumulated knowledge of policing to try to throw his colleagues off his tracks and to conceal evidence. In December 2011, after the Dutch police seized a drum with 311 pounds of hashish, they sent it on to its manifest destination in Finland, in hopes of catching the smugglers. Informed of the attempted sting, Mr. Aarnio tipped off his subordinates in the ring not to accept the shipment, prosecutors say. One associate, Peter-Mikael Fagerholm, called the Fisherman, ignored his warning, and was arrested and sentenced to nine years in jail on drug smuggling charges. After Mr. Fagerholm decided to testify against Mr. Aarnio in hopes of a lighter sentence, prosecutors say, Mr. Aarnio sent two members of a drug gang to threaten Mr. Fagerholm’s lawyer, telling him that his client’s family would be targeted if Mr. Fagerholm did not recant his statements to the police. Image Money was also found inside a videocassette holder at Mr. Aarnio's home. Credit Police of Finland Mr. Aarnio also tried to scare him by transferring a dangerous former gang member to a cell adjacent to Mr. Fagerholm, prosecutors say. Investigators say Mr. Aarnio implicated himself further when, while in prison, he asked a police officer to tell his wife to put some “garden chips” under a bush at his home. When the police raided his house, they discovered nearly €65,000 hidden in the dirt. According to the indictment, he also had a long relationship with a prostitute called Saara, and stole €14,000 that she had given to him for safekeeping. In total, Mr. Aarnio, who owned eight cars, including an Audi and BMW, was estimated to have accumulated €500,000 in cash. Prosecutors say Mr. Aarnio expertly concealed his involvement in the crimes by structuring his cartel in a way that subordinates did not know or communicate with one another. Mr. Aarnio has denied any wrongdoing, saying that fictitious drug deals were routinely made to entrap criminals. He told the court he changed SIM cards and phones often for security reasons. “We are trained that in undercover operations everything possible must be done anonymously,” he told the court, calling the prosecutor’s accusations a “fiction.” His lawyer, Riitta Leppiniemi, has argued from the onset that the prosecution’s case is thin and built on circumstantial evidence. Already, however, Mr. Aarnio has been convicted of abuse of public office and accepting bribes and sentenced to nearly two years in prison. Mr. Aarnio’s evolution from cop to criminal has its roots in Maunula, a working-class suburb of Helsinki, where he grew up surrounded by drug addicts. During his police studies, he researched drug cartel structures. In an interview on Finnish public television in 2000, Mr. Aarnio emphasized that effective drug organizations were constructed in such a way as to ensure that there was no evidence against the “real leader,” who can “hide behind a fall guy.” An effective drug cartel, he added, was like a chess game where the pawns protect the king.

Police Brutality,Police Misconduct,Police Shootings


Rougher, Tougher Knicks Try on Hard Hats

Abstract: MILWAUKEE — Kyle O’Quinn grew up in Queens, presumably too late to fully appreciate what the 1990s were all about for the Knicks at Madison Square Garden. He was born in 1990, which means he was just developing a sense of professional basketball after the hard-hat Knicks of that decade had hit their prime. Charles Oakley — the name mean anything to you? It turns out O’Quinn, the Knicks’ new power forward , is an astute historian, but not in the most predictable way. Of Oakley, the sturdy enforcer who typically had Patrick Ewing’s back, he said: “He went to a historically black college — you know what I’m saying?” O’Quinn, who is 6 feet 10 inches, 250 pounds and played a little football in high school, attended the historically black Norfolk State. As a senior he led his team, a No. 15 seed, to an upset of Missouri in the N.C.A.A. tournament. He wound up a second-round draft pick of the Orlando Magic in 2012, which means he understands formidable odds, if not fairy tales. He went on to say that with players like Oakley and Ben Wallace, both products of Virginia Union, “You always look to guys like them and how they stayed in the league — if they could do it, I can do it. You never played at a black college, so you don’t know. It’s a little rougher than you think. Those guys paved the way with the style they brought their team. ” By now, long-suffering Knicks fans know where this is going. O’Quinn, 25, may soon have a warm place in their hearts. “I got six fouls — I mean, I probably won’t play long enough to use them,” O’Quinn said after grabbing 11 rebounds in 23-plus minutes as the Knicks manhandled the Milwaukee Bucks , 122-97, in their season opener Wednesday night. “But somebody got to go out there and sacrifice their body. Melo can’t go out there hacking nobody. We need him out there on the floor.” Image “I got six fouls – I mean, I probably won’t play long enough to use them,” O’Quinn said. Credit Darren Hauck/Associated Press Shots aren’t going to fall every night for Carmelo Anthony’s supporting cast the way they did Wednesday, when Anthony (11 points) was outscored by Derrick Williams (24), Kristaps Porzingis (16), Langston Galloway (16) and Lance Thomas (13). The Knicks made 45 percent of their attempts, including 9 3-pointers, but that wasn’t the takeaway point. This was: the Knicks were the rougher, tougher team, the one with the more competitive and conspicuous core, albeit on a night the Bucks were missing three important players. The Knicks’ home opener on Thursday night produced a far different result, a 112-101 defeat to the Atlanta Hawks — who, let’s remember, won 60 games and reached the Eastern Conference finals last season with an unremarkable cast that was widely appreciated for being greater than the sum of its parts. Given his ongoing roster remake, Phil Jackson could have worse role models. In trying to live down the humiliation of a 17-victory first full season as the Knicks’ president, he often spoke of plans to acquire players to fit a blueprint. He wasn’t necessarily referring to his beloved triangle offense, but to a collection of individuals who could provide elements that are not as noticeable in the flow of a fast-moving game, or in the box score. Center Robin Lopez happens to fit that foundational approach, even if his presence with the Knicks is owed more to loser’s luck than to Jackson’s architectural genius. By most accounts, Greg Monroe was higher on Jackson’s free-agent list than Lopez, and it was easy to see why on Wednesday night, when Monroe flashed his considerable southpaw low post moves, scoring 22 points to go along with 14 rebounds and several slick passes. Before his Bucks debut, Monroe explained that he chose Milwaukee over New York because of the young talent Coach Jason Kidd had assembled in steering the long-lowly Bucks to the playoffs in his first year on the job. “I haven’t been on any commercials to this point, honestly,” Monroe said facetiously. “Don’t know if that will ever change.” He will be fine in sleepier Milwaukee, and the Bucks figure to be much better with Giannis Antetokounmpo, Jabari Parker and O. J. Mayo back in the lineup. But Monroe is no rim protector. Lopez blocked two Bucks shots and challenged many more. For all the talk of how the N.B.A. is now and forever a small-man’s league, a long-distance shooter’s paradise, it remains advisable to invest in establishing a no-trespassing zone in the paint on defense. “That’s something we want to do from the beginning, have a lot of our energy originate from the defensive end,” Lopez said. “That’s something that grows organically and naturally. It’s contagious and, you know, we all want to help this kid out a little bit.” He meant Porzingis, who, at 7-3, has many intriguing qualities, not the least of which is his staunch refusal to back down. Suffice it to say that Porzingis of Latvia has made an early believer of O’Quinn of Queens. “He’s skinny, but I’ve worked out with him over the summer, and the boy has heart,” O’Quinn said with Porzingis within listening distance. “He’s not just a skilled European guy, 7-3, just willing to get pushed around.” Porzingis, 20, is bound to wear down over a grueling season, but Lopez and O’Quinn would appear to form a solid protective firewall for him and the others Jackson has assembled in trying to build that core, at least for now, around Anthony, who struggled for the second straight night, this time against the quick Atlanta rotations in a reality-check game. “Phil’s not a magician, not Harry Potter with a stick, coming in and changing everything,” said Sasha Vujacic, the Knicks guard who was also with Jackson in Los Angeles. “But when you are guided by someone like Phil, you just have to trust in the journey.” To that end, O’Quinn cited summer workouts at the team’s training base and in Puerto Rico, an Anthony orchestration of leadership where players bonded over dinners and softball. “We’re not the best softball players,” O’Quinn admitted. Not the best N.B.A. players, either. But based on very early returns, probably no longer among the absolute worst.

Basketball
Bucks
Knicks
Phil Jackson
Kristaps Porzingis
Kyle O'Quinn


Manhattan: Donation to 9/11 Memorial

Abstract: The producers of the film “World Trade Center” are donating $1.3 million, or 5 percent of its opening-weekend proceeds, to the World Trade Center Memorial Foundation, the foundation said yesterday. Another $1.3 million will be divided among three other 9/11-related charities. The producers of the Paramount Pictures film, about police officers trapped in the trade center rubble, had promised a total donation of 10 percent of the box office proceeds from its opening weekend to the foundation and the other charities.

World Trade Center (NYC)
Monuments and Memorials
Philanthropy
World Trade Center Memorial Foundation
Paramount Pictures


Subprime Mortgages Linked to Rise in Foreclosures

Abstract: MOUNT VERNON QUANDA MOORE, 36, who is raising her two teenagers and two toddlers mostly by herself, finally owns her own home. On a street corner in a working-class section of this economically diverse city, her two-and-a-half-story, turn-of-the-century house may have soiled vinyl siding, but the interior reveals fine period details, like hardwood floors, ornate oak moldings and stained-glass windows. Buying the house in June 2006 for $561,000 was the realization of a longtime dream. “It was just a good feeling to have something that you could call yours,” she said last week. Now, though, Ms. Moore stands to lose her home because she can barely make the payments on her two mortgages. She is not alone. Reflecting statewide and national trends, there has been a steep rise in the number of Westchester County homeowners experiencing or facing foreclosures. In the first half of 2007, foreclosure filings in Westchester rose 32 percent and actual foreclosures increased 62 percent over the same period last year, said the county clerk, Timothy C. Idoni. Like Ms. Moore, the vast majority of those homeowners obtained so-called subprime mortgages, given to people with less-than-perfect credit, often at high interest rates, or rates that start low and then rise sharply after a year or two. In Westchester, the majority of people with subprime mortgages are black or Hispanic and live in communities like Yonkers, Mount Vernon, New Rochelle and Greenburgh. Veronica L. Raphael, a mortgage default counselor with Westchester Residential Opportunities, a nonprofit group that helps struggling homeowners prevent or remedy foreclosure, said the group counted more than 100 new foreclosures in the first two weeks of July alone. “The devastation that this is causing for families has increased,” she said, adding that some people were selling their homes at half value to get out of mortgages gone awry. Ms. Moore said she knew when she signed the mortgage papers that she would initially be paying $4,200 a month — a hefty chunk of the roughly $6,200 a month she makes working 80 hours a week running a day care center in her home and logging night and weekend shifts at a nearby nursing home. But, Ms. Moore said, her mortgage broker assured her that she would be able to refinance the mortgages — the smaller of which has an interest rate of 12.75 percent — within six months, cutting her monthly payments in half. But her request to refinance was declined, she said, and she learned that the mortgages had been sold to another lender. A bout with pneumonia, followed by back pain, kept her out of work for two months, and she began falling behind in her payments. In early July, she was told she was facing foreclosure. “It’s very stressful,” she said. “I’m always on pins and needles. I wouldn’t want anyone to go through this situation.” At a Yonkers public library on Tuesday, Ms. Raphael and other officials listened while Ms. Moore and three other Westchester women facing foreclosure testified, often amid tears, at the second of several hearings on the issue to be held statewide. The first was in Brooklyn last month. The hearings were organized by State Senate Democrats after Senator Jeffrey Klein, representing the Bronx and Westchester, released a report in May that said 20 percent of subprime mortgages made in New York in 2005 would face foreclosure by this fall. Senate Democrats are crafting legislation to prevent lending practices whereby borrowers are aggressively courted into subprime mortgages whose steep fees or sharply soaring interest rates are often buried in fine print. The proposed legislation would punish brokers who arrange such deals, require stricter income verification during the mortgage-approval process and ban “loan flipping,” in which lenders refinance loans at rates that drive borrowers deeper into debt. It would also step up efforts to educate borrowers on how to avoid such deals. “We have to make sure these are not just good deals for the lenders, but that they’re really something affordable for people,” said Senator Andrea Stewart-Cousins of Yonkers, who sponsored Tuesday’s hearing with Mr. Klein. John Pinard, president of the Empire State Mortgage Bankers Association, defended subprime loans, saying that they had worked out for the majority of borrowers, who would not have achieved homeownership without them, and that delinquent borrowers had themselves partly to blame. “I have sympathy for them,” Mr. Pinard said, “but I’m not so sure they didn’t understand what they were doing. Everybody knows the difference between a fixed-rate and an adjustable-rate mortgage.” Some laws already exist to combat predatory lending, like those that allow borrowers to undo a deal up to five days after signing. On other fronts, Gov. Eliot Spitzer recently announced a state-sponsored refinancing option, with affordable terms, to help borrowers no more than 60 days delinquent on mortgages avoid foreclosure. And with support from the national mortgage financer Freddie Mac, Westchester Residential Opportunities will start a campaign and hot line next month to help borrowers avoid or undo the damage from subprime loans. As for Ms. Moore, she is seeking the group’s help in trying to renegotiate her mortgage. Last month, she brought her payments nearly up to date, she said, and the lender has pulled back on the foreclosure warning. She came to Tuesday’s 9 a.m. hearing from her night job, after stopping at home to change. After the hearing, she sat in her living room with her four children and two others for whom she was caring, an arsenal of toys and stuffed animals stacked nearby. She was bleary-eyed, but philosophical. “I want to educate other people in this situation,” she said. “I’m doing what I can and leaving the rest to God.”

Foreclosures
Westchester County (NY)
Mortgages


Far-Flung Placement of Children in Texas Raid Is Criticized

Abstract: SAN ANGELO, Tex. — Texas policy holds that when children are taken from their parents for investigation of possible abuse, geographic distances should be kept to a minimum to allow supervised visitation. That has not, by a wide Texas mile, been the experience of Nora Jeffs, who was among the dozens of women attending court hearings here on Monday. Since her eight children were taken in the raid at a polygamist compound last month, Ms. Jeffs has been transformed into more or less an itinerant traveler, trying to visit her children, who are 18 months old to 14 years old, according to a state case worker. Ms. Jeffs has two children in foster care in Amarillo, up in the Panhandle; one in Gonzales in south-central Texas; two in San Antonio, in Central Texas; and three in Waco, halfway between Dallas and Austin, a lawyer for Ms. Jeffs said. The closest are about 150 miles from her home in Eldorado, and the farthest are more than nine hours apart by car. The children themselves, who are not allowed to travel while in state custody, are being encouraged to use conference telephone calls to stay in touch and to send drawings and letters. “Her children are scattered to all corners of Texas,” said the case worker, Irene Schwaninger, in a hearing before Judge Thomas Gossett. “It’s something I’m working to rectify to the best of my ability.” The hearings, technically meant as a 60-day check-up of the state’s plan in handling the children and families of the raid, have exposed the clanking machinery of the Texas child welfare apparatus, which has strained at the seams and spent millions of dollars to handle one of the biggest and most complex child welfare cases in the nation’s history. Altogether, 465 children are now in state custody, after being taken from the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints , or F.L.D.S., in a raid that began on April 3 after someone called an abuse hot line and said that she was a 16-year-old child bride being abused by her older husband in the church’s compound in Eldorado, about 45 miles south of here. The caller has still not been found. The hearings, which are expected to go on for several weeks — one at a time before five judges at the Tom Green County Courthouse here — are the beginning step of differentiating all those families and children into individuals with their own stories. In a first round of hearings last month, lawyers represented groups of families and children. And even on Monday, there were moments of confusion. Some children, for example, still have names and ages rendered different ways in state records. Many of the families are also related and share last names like Jeffs, which is also the name of the F.L.D.S. leader, Warren S. Jeffs , who was convicted last year on a rape charge for imposing marriage between an under-age girl and older man in Utah. (Whether Ms. Jeffs is related to Warren Jeffs could not be determined on Monday.) In one case on Monday afternoon, a lawyer for a mother of four named Carlene Jessop argued that the state was lumping all the families together and not acknowledging that some of them lived apart from the communal experience that the state said exposed the children to the under-age marriage practices. “This family is not part of a commune,” said the lawyer, Nancy B. DeLong, referring to Ms. Jessop and her husband, William S. Jessop, who have said they have four children together, from 8 years old to almost 2, now in state custody. “They need to be separated out.” Ms. DeLong argued that the Jessop case should be separated out from the larger mass of F.L.D.S. custody cases because the family’s pattern is so different. Judge Jay Weatherby denied the motion but said he would be willing to revisit it later. In Ms. Jeffs’s case, which was the first of the day in Judge Gossett’s court, and took just over an hour, moments of cool if jargon-filled bureaucracy were interspersed with periods of seemingly heartfelt emotion. Judge Gossett, in approving the state’s interim plan for the family — that the children remain in state custody — but reserving the right to amend it later, had stern words for Ms. Jeffs, who said in a written statement supplied by her lawyer that she would do anything to get her children back and ensure their welfare as long as it did not violate the precepts of her religious belief. “That doesn’t give me a lot of confidence,” Judge Gossett said, staring down from the bench at Ms. Jeffs, who was dressed in a pale-blue prairie dress. “Your right to your religious belief ends when it violates the law.” The F.L.D.S. broke off from mainstream Mormons after Mormons disavowed polygamy in 1890. State officials said the raid and the taking of all the children in the church’s compound, called Yearning for Zion, were necessary because the culture of the sect led to illegal under-age marriage for girls and acceptance of that practice by boys — a pattern that state officials have said endangers both sexes.


Taliban Gain Ground in Afghanistan as Soldiers Surrender Their Posts

Abstract: KANDAHAR, Afghanistan — Besieged Afghan officials in the southern province of Oruzgan said on Sunday that scores of regular Afghan soldiers had surrendered in the past week to the Taliban, a trend also occurring recently in other provinces. The latest case involved 41 Afghan National Army soldiers who surrendered and turned their base, the Mashal base in Chora District, over to the insurgents on Saturday night, according to Dost Mohammad Nayab, the spokesman for the province’s governor. He said it was the third Afghan Army post in the province to surrender to the Taliban in the past week. Significant surrenders have been reported in Kunduz and Helmand Provinces as well. The Taliban have taken more territory in Afghanistan this year than at any time in their 15-year struggle against the Western-supported Afghan government, according to United Nations data. At the same time, the Afghan military has suffered declining numbers and high attrition rates, according to data from the United States military. Afghan officials have said military casualty rates are historically high. Oruzgan Province has been under heavy siege for nearly two months, and its capital, Tirin Kot, has nearly fallen to the insurgents four times in that period, according to the provincial governor, Abdul Karim Karimi . In the past, there have been numerous defections by Afghan police officers in Oruzgan, with 20 outposts abandoned in September and many of the officers suspected of changing sides , the governor said. But the better trained and equipped Afghan military has proved more cohesive than the police, which makes the recent surrenders particularly worrisome. On Thursday, Mr. Nayab said, 15 Afghan soldiers gave themselves up and surrendered their base, known as Kitod, which guards the road linking the provincial capital to the heavily contested Chora District. Twenty soldiers surrendered a base known as Sajawal on the outskirts of Tirin Kot a week ago. In addition, Mr. Nayab said, 70 members of the Afghan Civil Order Police, a militarized and elite police unit, surrendered their base near Tirin Kot, known as Garmaw, about three weeks ago. In all cases, the soldiers surrendered all of their equipment and weapons, he said. “The government is unable to provide supply by air, and the soldiers in the bases are stuck without even enough food, so finally they are surrendering to the Taliban,” Mr. Nayab said. A spokesman for the Afghan Ministry of Defense, Dawlat Waziri, confirmed that the Taliban had captured the Mashal base, but he denied that any Afghan soldiers had surrendered. “Afghan Army members have never surrendered to the enemy,” he said. “They have been killed or wounded, but have never in our history surrendered.” He said an investigation was underway. On Sunday, the Special Inspector General for Afghan Reconstruction issued its quarterly report to the United States Congress. It cited data provided by the American-led NATO coalition in Afghanistan showing the Afghan military declining in size because of recruitment problems and increased attrition. According to the report, the Afghan military’s uniformed forces declined by 2,199 in the third quarter of 2016, leaving the army at 87 percent of its authorized military strength of about 170,000. Attrition in the military, caused by rising casualties, declining re-enlistments and desertions, was about 33 percent annually as of August, the report said — an increase from 28 percent a year earlier. The American inspector general’s report also cited data showing that 33 of Afghanistan’s 400 districts were under Taliban control or influence, while 116 districts were contested, one of many indications of how much the conflict has spread. According to the United Nations, this year 382,000 Afghan civilians had been forced to flee from 196 districts, in nearly every province, as of October. That was up from 135 districts during 2015. In addition to Oruzgan, areas hit particularly hard by recent fighting include the provinces of Kunduz in the north and Helmand in the southwest. In Kunduz, the capital has been overrun by the insurgents twice in the last year . And in Helmand, the Taliban have repeatedly advanced to within short distances of the capital, Lashkar Gah, which remains under threat. United States airstrikes have repeatedly prevented all three places from falling completely to the insurgents. But American forces still in Afghanistan — numbering about 10,000, compared with a peak of 140,000 a few years ago — have made little difference on the ground. Lately, the Taliban insurgents have begun regularly uploading videos showing captured soldiers, boasting of treating them well and allowing them to return to their families as long as they promise not to rejoin the fight. One video showed the soldiers who surrendered at Sajawal, in Oruzgan, last week. An Afghan reporter for The New York Times who recognized one of the soldiers confirmed its authenticity.

Afghanistan
Afghan National Army
Taliban
Afghanistan War


Commerce Secretary Bryson Takes Medical Leave After Hit-and-Run Crash

Abstract: LOS ANGELES — It began Saturday afternoon at a railroad crossing in a run-down commercial neighborhood in suburban San Gabriel, on a street bustling with signs in Chinese characters. A man in a Lexus rolled into the back of a Buick waiting for a train to pass. Two miles and five minutes later, the Lexus smacked into the rear of yet another car, in neighboring Rosemead. The Los Angeles Sheriff’s Office found the driver passed out at the wheel and took him to the hospital for observation. He was cited for a hit-and-run. The driver was John E. Bryson , the commerce secretary, one of the lower-profile members of President Obama’s cabinet but a well-known figure in California energy and business circles. The episode set off a squall of speculation and questions from here to the White House about what had happened in the San Gabriel Valley. By late Monday night, Mr. Bryson informed the White House that he would be taking a medical leave of absence to undergo tests and evaluation and that Deputy Secretary Rebecca M. Blank would assume his duties. “The president’s thoughts are with Secretary Bryson and his family during this time,” said Jay Carney, the White House spokesman. “Secretary Bryson assured the White House that the Commerce Department staff will not miss a beat in their work helping America’s businesses compete.” The White House said Mr. Bryson had suffered a seizure. But officials there and at the Commerce Department declined to offer details on Mr. Bryson’s medical history, including what might have caused the seizure, and took pains to say they were not saying the seizure caused the episode. They said that this was the first such seizure he had suffered. “The commerce secretary was alone,” Mr. Carney said. “He had a seizure. He was involved in an accident.” White House officials said Mr. Bryson had told them that he did not recall the events leading to the episode. Mr. Bryson passed a breathalyzer test at the scene and submitted to a blood toxicology test, said Steve Whitmore, a spokesman for the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Office. He said that if the report came back negative, Mr. Bryson would not be charged. There were no significant injuries, or heavy vehicular damage, in the accidents, which took place shortly past 5 p.m. on Saturday. Mr. Bryson, 68, maintains a home here in San Marino, not far from where the accidents occurred, and in Washington, according to friends. He was in town to deliver a commencement address at Polytechnic School, a private prep school in Pasadena that his four daughters attended. He was not accompanied by a security detail, officials said. Mr. Bryson kept a low profile in the community — some neighbors said they were not even aware who lived in the two-story house at the end of a cul-de-sac — though they had noted a police car there at times. A black Lexus was parked in front of his house on Monday, but there was no answer at the door. The police can arrest a driver in a hit-and-run, but Mr. Bryson was cited instead because he needed to go to the hospital, Mr. Whitmore said. The San Gabriel police apparently allowed him to leave the state after he was released from the hospital, he said. Mr. Bryson had returned to Washington on Monday. According to the police, Mr. Bryson’s car hit the Buick, which had three men inside, at the railroad crossing. He got out to offer to exchange information, then returned to his car and slowly drove off. As he was leaving, he hit the car again, the police said. The three men followed Mr. Bryson as he drove two miles up San Gabriel Boulevard and called 911, before he hit the second car, a Honda Accord. Cesar Castaneda, 27, who works at Karina’s Tacos, on the corner of where the second accident occurred, said the Lexus did not appear to have been damaged. “I saw them as towing was taking the Lexus away,” he said. The Commerce Department notified the White House on Sunday evening, and Mr. Obama was informed Monday morning. Many of Mr. Obama’s nominations have faced complaints from the right and the left, but Mr. Bryson’s appointment as commerce secretary last May, to succeed Gary F. Locke, drew plaudits from both business and environmental groups. But it soon became ensnared. Mr. Bryson, a former chief executive of Southern California electric conglomerate Edison International and the founder of the Natural Resources Defense Council, was accused by Senator James M. Inhofe, Republican of Oklahoma, of advocating Mr. Obama’s “job-killing” environmental agenda. Mr. Bryson was confirmed in October 2011. On Monday, American Crossroads, the “ super PAC ” run by Karl Rove, posted on Twitter asking how Mr. Bryson could have had three car crashes in five minutes “and alcohol NOT be involved.” As more details about the accident emerged, Crossroads apologized for the post. Mr. Bryson has a valid driver’s license issued in California. Dr. Keith L. Black, the head of neurosurgery at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, said in this kind of episode, the Department of Motor Vehicles would typically suspend the driver’s license for six months, pending a review of medical treatment. Mr. Bryson helped to found the Natural Resources Defense Council in 1970 and spent almost 20 years at Southern California Edison. He was also president of the California Public Utilities Commission.

Bryson John E
Hit-and-Run Drivers
Traffic Accidents and Safety
Seizures (Medical)
Commerce Department
California


Michigan: New Mayor Detroit Asks Detroit Residents To Stay

Abstract: Mike Duggan delivered his first public address as the new mayor of Detroit on Tuesday, asking frustrated residents not to move out of the bankrupt city before giving his fledgling administration time to improve neighborhood services. “Give us six months to prove that we can turn things around,” said Mr. Duggan, who took office on Jan. 1. “Just push the pause button and don’t leave that house yet.” He said the success of his tenure as mayor would be determined by whether Detroit’s population — which has dropped by more than a million since 1950 — increases over the next four years.


Saturday’s College Football Games to Watch

Abstract: 22 CLEMSON at 1 FLORIDA STATE 8 p.m. Eastern, ABC Last season, quarterback Jameis Winston and the Seminoles traveled to Death Valley and absolutely crushed Clemson, 51-14. The game was a crucial step on their national title run and a big part of why Winston went on to win the Heisman. That was a matchup of top-five teams, while in this one, Florida State is a favorite even though Winston has been suspended for the game for shouting obscenities. Sean Maguire will step in against a defense that will be daring him to throw the ball. He definitely has the weapons. Receiver Rashad Greene has been superb, and Nick O’Leary is a hard-nosed, old-school tight end who had a monster game in this matchup last season. Clemson was supposed to be fearsome up front, with Vic Beasley leading the way, but the Tigers’ line was not impressive in a loss to Georgia. If the Tigers can force Maguire into some mistakes and get out to an early lead, this one will be closer than many people think. FLORIDA at 3 ALABAMA 3:30 p.m., CBS Florida needed triple overtime last week to avoid losing to Kentucky in the Swamp for the first time since 1979. Gators Coach Will Muschamp is taking a lot of heat, and a victory on the road against Alabama would help quiet some of his critics. That seems like a tall order, however, as Florida is a two-touchdown underdog. One matchup that everyone is looking forward to is the one between Alabama receiver Amari Cooper and Florida defensive back Vernon Hargreaves III. Cooper is one of the best receivers in the nation and is getting some Heisman momentum going, while Hargreaves may be the best cornerback in the Southeastern Conference. 4 OKLAHOMA at WEST VIRGINIA 7:30 p.m., Fox West Virginia kept it close against Alabama to open the season, but almost blew a 22-point lead against Maryland last week. The Mountaineers play a quick-tempo, air-it-out style (Clint Trickett threw for 511 yards and 4 touchdowns against Maryland), and this should be an interesting test for an improved Oklahoma defense. The Sooners are without running back Keith Ford, but the freshman Samaje Perine is a 243-pound bruiser who will look to take advantage of a West Virginia defense that allowed 288 yards rushing to Alabama. Oklahoma quarterback Trevor Knight and receiver Sterling Shepard make up one of the most exciting combinations in the Big 12. If the Oklahoma defense can step up, the Sooners will roll. Otherwise, expect a shootout.

College Sports
College football
Clemson
Florida State University
University of Florida
University of Alabama


Day 80: The Latest on the Oil Spill

Abstract: New Cap to Be Installed BP will begin replacing the cap on its runaway well with a tighter one meant to collect more oil . Adm. Thad W. Allen of the Coast Guard, who is leading the federal response to the spill, said technicians would take three or four days to install the tighter cap, during which time oil will spew unabated. The containment cap is currently collecting about 15,000 barrels of oil a day; an additional 8,000 to 10,000 barrels is being collected through pipes below the cap. The new cap is designed to capture all, or nearly all, of the oil spewing from well, estimated at 35,000 to 60,000 barrels a day. Different Source Is Seen for Tar Balls in Texas New laboratory tests show most of the tar balls that have washed up on Texas shores in the past few days are not from the gulf spill and may be from another leak or from naturally occurring seepage from the seabed, said Petty Officer Richard Brahm, a Coast Guard spokesman. Effort to Relocate Turtle Eggs Begins Loggerhead sea turtle eggs were dug up from nests on Florida’s Panhandle on Friday in hopes of keeping the hatchlings alive, The Associated Press said. The eggs are headed to a temperature- controlled warehouse at the Kennedy Space Center, where officials hope they will hatch and from there be released into the Atlantic Ocean. Officials plan to move 800 nests in an attempt to save 70,000 eggs. An interactive map tracking the spill and where it has made landfall, live video of the leak, a guide to online spill resources and additional updates: nytimes.com/national .

Oil (Petroleum) and Gasoline
Accidents and Safety
BP Plc
Gulf of Mexico
Offshore Drilling and Exploration


Psychologists Vote to End Interrogation Consultations

Abstract: Members of the American Psychological Association have voted to prohibit consultation in the interrogations of detainees held at Guantánamo Bay , Cuba, or so-called black sites operated by the Central Intelligence Agency overseas, the association said on Wednesday. The vote, 8,792 to 6,157 in a mail-in balloting concluded Monday, may help to settle a long debate within the profession over the ethics of such work. Psychologists have helped military and C.I.A. interrogators evaluate detainees, plan questioning strategy and judge its psychological costs. The association’s ethics code, while condemning a list of coercive techniques adopted in the Bush administration’s antiterrorism campaign, has allowed some consultation “for national security-related purposes.” The referendum, first posted on the Internet as a petition in May, prohibits psychologists from working in settings where “persons are held outside of, or in violation of, either International Law (e.g., the U.N. Convention Against Torture and the Geneva Conventions) or the U.S. Constitution, where appropriate,” unless they represent a detainee or an independent third party. The association’s bylaws require that it institute the policy at the next annual meeting, in August 2009. “The good part of this is that the membership has spoken, the process worked, and we’re going to follow it,” said Alan E. Kazdin, the association’s president and a psychologist at Yale University. “Will everyone be happy? Well, it’s a typical human enterprise, and there are nuanced positions on both sides. So, we’ll see.” Steven Reisner, a New York psychoanalyst running for the association presidency on the issue, called the vote “fabulous news.” “The membership has sent a strong message to the leadership of the association that it wants to see this ethical prohibition as policy,” Dr. Reisner said, “and now it has to be policy.” He added that the association should add the ban to its ethics code immediately and work out details of its enactment in the coming months. “This is a major step, but it’s a first step,” he said. Like other professional groups, the association has little direct authority to restrict members’ ability to practice. But state licensing boards that can suspend or revoke a psychologist’s license often take violations of the association’s code into consideration. Many military and civilian psychologists have resisted a prohibition, arguing that consultants provide some accountability, making sure that questioning does not become abusive, for example. The association, these experts contend, should focus on the behavior of individual psychologists, rather than abandon the work altogether.

Psychology and Psychologists
Detainees
American Psychological Association
Prisons and Prisoners
Ethics
Torture
Guantanamo Bay Naval Base (Cuba)
Central Intelligence Agency
Bush George W


Tropical Storm Hits Haiti, Leaving Several Dead

Abstract: MEXICO CITY — Tropical Storm Isaac whirled across Haiti on Saturday, delivering strong winds and rain that caused flooding, mudslides and at least a few deaths, according to preliminary reports, but not the kind of widespread destruction feared in the earthquake-battered nation. Radio news reports and social media users reported streets flooding in the capital, Port-au-Prince; some mudslides in rural areas; downed trees and power lines; and shredded tents that left people miserably soaked in the camps that house about 400,000 survivors of the January 2010 earthquake. The brunt of the storm slashed through Haiti’s southern peninsula, its 60-mile-an-hour winds blowing the roofs off houses in Jacmel, a tourist resort on the south coast, residents said. After crossing Haiti, the storm skirted the eastern coast of Cuba late Saturday, heading toward the Florida Keys. No deaths were reported in Cuba. The storm is expected to strengthen and could be a hurricane by the time it reaches the United States later on Sunday. In Tampa on Saturday, Republicans canceled the opening day of their national convention because of the storm, which is predicted to slide past Florida’s western coast. In Haiti, at least four people were reported killed by early afternoon, including a 10-year-old girl who died in Thomazeau when a wall collapsed, The Associated Press reported, citing the civil defense authorities. Reports were still trickling in by early evening, and hillsides have been known to give way hours after heavy rains. But spot checks by journalists and aid workers suggested Haiti had avoided a major calamity. Still, the suffering was evident. One small earthquake survivors’ camp near Port-au-Prince was obliterated. “There was wind, wind and the whole camp fell down,” Marie Yolande Dorcin, 33, who is four months pregnant, said, shivering, as she and a friend tried to salvage belongings from her collapsed shelter. “Everybody went running to the church, screaming, falling.” Joselain Joseph, 32, watched as a swollen river carried away trash, branches and even a basketball. It had destroyed a concrete depot where she kept rice, beans and other goods she sells. “I rely on God now,” she said. “I don’t know what to say or do.” In the Sou Piste camp in Port-au-Prince, violent winds lacerated lean-tos of wood scraps and tarp. Berta Brutus, 30; Riche Silface, 32; and their two young children were briefly trapped early Saturday when the storm came through. “We were all on the bed when the wind blew the house down,” Ms. Brutus said. “We started screaming ‘Jesus! Jesus!’ because we thought we could die.” A neighbor took the two children, but there was no room for Ms. Brutus and Mr. Silface, so they spent the rest of the night under the tarp of their collapsed house. Local radio reports indicated that 5,000 people had been evacuated in the provinces and more than 3,000 around the capital. They were sent to government buildings, schools and other temporary shelters, though many mistrusted the plans and stayed behind in the camps. American Embassy officials began damage assessment in the afternoon. Gov. Rick Scott of Florida declared a pre-emptive statewide emergency on Saturday; state agencies were already setting up storm shelters. The storm also left about 70 rural communities in the Dominican Republic cut off by flooding and mudslides, the United States Agency for International Development said. Some flooding was also reported in Cuba. In Haiti, the Red Cross sent trucks into camps perched on the hillsides of the capital to broadcast warnings over loudspeakers, said France Hurtubise, a spokeswoman for the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies in Port-au-Prince. On Friday, the Haitian government began evacuating 2,000 women, children and elderly people from government-run camps in the capital that were at risk for mudslides, and other residents were asked to seek shelter with friends and relatives. Many people were unwilling to leave their homes in the camps for fear of looting. “We cannot force them to leave,” Ms. Hurtubise said. “We can only make sure that they have the best protection.” Lina Millien’s shelter at the Sou Piste camp stayed standing, but her tarp roof leaked so badly that there was no way for her, her husband and their six children to stay dry. “I put the baby under a table, and we tried to go under the bed, but there was water coming up from the floor,” said Ms. Millien, 35. “In past storms we could stand in the corners where the leaks are not too bad to stay dry, but with this storm there were no corners, there was no escape.” Some in Sou Piste ran to a nearby health clinic built by Partners in Health, a nongovernmental organization, to take shelter, but Ms. Millien said she was afraid of what would happen if she went outside. “The wind sounded like a plane landing, and I could hear people everywhere praying loudly and crying,” she said. “I looked outside in the night and saw mothers with their babies screaming and trying to run to the shelter.”

Hurricane Isaac (2012)
Hurricanes and Tropical Storms
Haiti
Deaths (Fatalities)


China’s Coast Guard Rams Fishing Boat to Free It From Indonesian Authorities

Abstract: JAKARTA, Indonesia — China ’s Coast Guard rammed one of the country’s fishing boats to pry it free from the Indonesian authorities who had seized it over the weekend, angering the Indonesian government and heightening yet another diplomatic dispute over the South China Sea . The boat was stopped for fishing illegally in Indonesia ’s waters and was being towed to port when the Chinese took it back, leaving its crew in the hands of Indonesia. Jakarta reacted with uncharacteristic fury, summoning the Chinese ambassador to a meeting on Monday. The high-seas confrontation also indicated that Indonesia might be toughening its stance toward China in the region. It began at 10 p.m. on Saturday when a special task force vessel operated by the Indonesian Ministry of Maritime Affairs and Fisheries caught a Chinese fishing boat within Indonesia’s maritime 200-mile exclusive economic zone, off the Natuna Islands northwest of Borneo, said Arrmanatha Nasir, a spokesman for Indonesia’s Foreign Ministry. Indonesian personnel boarded the Chinese boat, the Kway Fey; took its captain and eight-member crew into custody; and began towing the ship back to a base on the Natuna Islands, Mr. Arrmanatha said. But around midnight, he said, a Chinese Coast Guard vessel, which had been following the Indonesian ship, approached it on or inside the 12-nautical-mile line marking Indonesia’s territorial waters. The Chinese Coast Guard vessel rammed the fishing boat, apparently to compel the Indonesian authorities to release it, he said. “To prevent anything else occurring, the Indonesian authorities let go of the Chinese boat and then left toward Natuna, still with eight fishermen and the captain on board,” Mr. Arrmanatha said, adding that the Indonesian crew was “only lightly armed.” Indonesia’s maritime and fisheries minister, Susi Pudjiastuti, held a news conference on Sunday and labeled the Chinese Coast Guard’s intervention “arrogant.” Video Susi Pudjiastuti, the Maritime affairs and fisheries minister, said Indonesia's efforts to promote peace and regulate fishing in the South China Sea is being usurped. Credit Credit Beawiharta/Reuters On Monday morning, Retno Marsudi, the Indonesian foreign minister, met with Sun Weide, minister counselor of China’s Embassy in Jakarta, the capital, and handed over an official letter of protest about the confrontation. Mr. Sun represented the embassy because the ambassador, Xie Feng, was out of the country. Later on Monday, a spokeswoman for the Chinese Foreign Ministry, Hua Chunying, called the area where the episode took place “traditional Chinese fishing grounds” and said the coast guard vessel had not entered Indonesian territorial waters. “China immediately requested Indonesia to release the detained Chinese fishermen and ensure their physical safety,” she said at a regularly scheduled news conference in Beijing. The confrontation was not the first between Indonesia and China over Chinese fishing vessels near the Natuna Islands, but the government in Jakarta has de-emphasized previous ones or kept them under wraps. China is one of Indonesia’s largest trading partners and an important market for its commodities, including palm oil and coal. The countries recently signed an agreement for China to build a high-speed rail link between Jakarta and Bandung, the capital of West Java Province. In March 2013, an Indonesian Maritime Ministry vessel caught a Chinese fishing boat operating in the same region near the Natuna Islands and confiscated the vessel and detained its nine-person crew. Several hours later, the Indonesian ship was confronted by a Chinese vessel, reportedly armed with mounted machine guns and light cannons, which demanded the release of the boat and its crew. Outgunned and fearing the Chinese ship might open fire, the Indonesian captain complied, and the episode has seldom been spoken of since. Indonesia’s strong reaction to the latest confrontation, in particular because it may have occurred within its territorial waters, may have been a tipping point in how it deals with Chinese aggressiveness in the South China Sea, said Ian J. Storey, a senior fellow at the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies in Singapore, where he researches South China Sea disputes. “I think we can say that it is far more serious than the 2013 incident, and I think the Indonesians will be apoplectic,” he said. “Indonesia has tended to downplay them, but they couldn’t this time, and it demonstrates how frustrated that people are getting with China.” Strain is growing on multiple fronts in the region, where China has territorial disputes with four members of the 10-nation Association of Southeast Asian Nations, known as Asean. Members of the group have increasingly expressed concern about China’s aggressive posture in the South China Sea, including naval standoffs and land reclamation projects in disputed areas, and the stationing of military personnel and surface-to-air missiles in the Paracel Islands. Last week, Malaysia’s defense minister, Hishammuddin Hussein, raised the possibility of a “pushback” against China by Southeast Asian nations. Indonesia is not a claimant in the disputes, but a contentious line drawn by China, which marks its territorial claims to around 90 percent of the maritime region, appears to overlap with part of Indonesia’s maritime 200-mile exclusive economic zone around the Natuna Islands, according to analysts. Since 1994, Indonesia has sought clarification from China about whether the line encompassed the Natuna Islands or its exclusive economic zone, but, until recently, it had never received an official response from Beijing. In November, however, China’s Foreign Ministry acknowledged Indonesia’s sovereignty over the Natuna Islands, although it did not address the issue of the exclusive economic zone. Indonesia has said China’s territorial claims in the South China Sea have no legal basis under international law. That assertion was made most recently by President Joko Widodo during a visit to Japan last March, less than five months after he took office. One of Mr. Joko’s main foreign policy goals is to transform Indonesia, an archipelagic nation of 250 million people, into a regional maritime power. The Maritime Ministry has initiated a policy of scuttling all ships confiscated for illegal activities, in particular fishing with Indonesia’s maritime economic zone. Mr. Arrmanatha said the Chinese Coast Guard might have acted as it did on Saturday because it did not want the Indonesian authorities to confiscate and destroy the vessel. Indonesia has been building its military presence in the Natuna Islands, according to analysts, and has contemplated deploying eight Apache attack helicopters it bought from the United States.

Indonesia
China
Commercial fishing
South China Sea
Hishammuddin Hussein
Natuna Islands
Retno Marsudi
Boat Accidents


Greenland: Humpback Whales Are Deemed Eligible for Hunting

Abstract: The International Whaling Commission on Friday authorized Greenland ’s native population to hunt a few humpback whales for the next three years, expanding the list of species the Greenlanders are allowed to kill under the license of subsistence hunting. In another disappointment for conservationists, the commission ended its annual meeting in Morocco with no decision on whether to authorize limited hunting for profit to curb unrestrained killing in the most sensitive oceans.

Greenland
International Whaling Commission
Whales and Whaling
Humpback Whales


Three Exhibitions Elevate the Lowly Potato at the Islip Museum

Abstract: EAST ISLIP, N.Y. A TROUPE of 16 battery-operated, dancing Mr. Potato Heads, which can be set to skitter across a gallery floor, suggests the whimsical side of the three exhibitions on the subject of potatoes currently at the Islip Art Museum . But they represent only part of what Jeffrey Allen Price, an artist and teacher who curated all three shows, calls the “potato-art spectrum,” ranging from the ridiculous to the socially relevant. One of the exhibitions, “Potato Project Room: Unpacking My Potato Collection — Artifacts, Ephemera and Recent Acquisitions,” draws on about 5,000 potato-related items, including the Mr. Potato Heads, that Mr. Price has collected over several years. Most of them, he said on the exhibitions’ opening day in September, are in the museum’s Historical Room, though many are in boxes that he said he would unpack, catalog and repack most afternoons throughout the run of the show as part of his conceptual-art installation. The four galleries in the main part of the museum contain “Occupying Potato: The Cult of the Potato 2012,” a concurrent exhibition of 100 pieces of potato-themed art — including paintings, photographs, videos and sculptures — by 30 artists from 12 countries. “Archie Rand: The Potato Prints,” an exhibition mainly in the museum’s gift shop, has 29 works that Mr. Rand, a Brooklyn artist, made in 1988 with Jon Cone, a printmaker. Rather than having potatoes as the subjects of his works, Mr. Rand used hand-cut chunks of color-stained potatoes to create intricate images of cartoonish people, stars, swirls and other figures. Beth Giacummo, the museum’s administrator and curator, said she wanted to work with Mr. Price, whom she has known for a few years, after seeing a very different potato exhibition he organized at the Williamsburg Art and Historical Center in Brooklyn last year. “Our mission is to present exhibitions that expose the community to contemporary art and make it accessible,” she said. “What is more accessible than the potato?” The three-pronged show is “part parody and part sincerity,” Mr. Price, who lives in Lake Grove, said. There is humor in many of his own pieces, like a surreal video in which his face appears on a screen that is surrounded by a mound of real spuds as he continuously repeats the word “potato” for one hour. But the potato is also important economically and historically, he said. For instance, in a hallway at the beginning of the exhibition is a work of folk art embroidery showing a harvest on mountainous terrain. It is from Peru, which he called “the birthplace of the potato,” where the cultivation of potatoes as food started millenniums ago. A 1979 totemlike sculpture by the Italian-born American artist Italo Scanga, “Irish Potato Famine No. 1,” refers to the famine of the late 1840s, Mr. Price said. He called the five-foot-tall work, which he placed in the center of the museum’s largest gallery, “poetic.” It arrived with spikes on which the museum had to place fresh potatoes, Mr. Price said, as specified by the artist, who died in 2001. Another piece in that large gallery is based on the same tragic episode: a model of the Irish Hunger Memorial that the New York artist Brian Tolle designed for Battery Park City in 2002. The actual memorial covers a half-acre on the Hudson River. Mr. Tolle refers to the scientific name for the blight that destroyed the Irish crops in “Phytophthora Infestans,” a 2009 sculpture that is actually about Levittown. The same disease affected potato fields on Long Island, Mr. Price said, causing many farmers to sell their land cheap, “helping to pave the way for Levittown and suburban sprawl.” Mr. Tolle’s piece incorporates a wheelbarrow, plastic potatoes and a rubbery deflated-looking house. At least two artists in the exhibition grew up on Long Island, though their works don’t refer to it specifically. Ryan Seslow, whose “ipotatoi” portrays a man with a large potato as his head, was raised in Island Park and now lives in Port Washington, according to Mr. Price, who said he knows Mr. Seslow as a colleague and a friend. Anna Alicja Feitzinger, a former student of Mr. Price’s at the Art League of Long Island , grew up in Lindenhurst and now lives in Brooklyn, he said. She contributed “Solanum Universom,” a microscopic photograph of potato cells displayed in a light box. Ms. Feitzinger’s work is in the same gallery as a video made by Viviane Le Courtois , an artist based in Denver with a French background: it focuses on her hands briskly peeling potato after potato. In the exhibition’s catalog, Ms. Le Courtois writes that her work “deeply connects with my heritage and the basic actions of life: women in my family have obsessively peeled and cooked potatoes for generations.” Ms. Le Courtois’s video makes for a nice contrast with another one on a monitor in the entrance hallway, Mr. Price pointed out. Made by Ciprian Muresan , a Romanian artist, it shows five soldiers “resigned to the mundane task of peeling a giant heap of potatoes,” according to Mr. Price. The work is humorous in a deadpan way, he said. Several other pieces have comic touches, including “Potato Portraits,” by Ginou Choueiri , a Lebanese artist. She transferred photographs of real people onto the wrinkly skins of odd-shaped potatoes and then photographed the results. Andrzej Maciejewski , who was born in Poland, took close-up photographs of peculiar-looking spuds and gave each a name — one is “Mathilde Mol.” He writes in the catalog that he named his potatoes “not in order to suggest that they look like people, but simply to emphasize their individual uniqueness.” The artists who lent their works, Mr. Price said, “are humble, generous and have a sense of humor,” qualities he also attributes to the lowly tuber. The artists, he said, “evoke the potato spirit.”

Art
Potatoes
Islip (NY)
Islip Art Museum
Price Jeffrey Allen