Astros Bolster Their Lead for Second Wild-Card Spot

Abstract: Colby Rasmus homered twice and George Springer added a two-run shot on Sunday to back a solid start by Collin McHugh and help the Houston Astros beat the visiting Oakland Athletics, 5-1. The Astros won their second in a row after a five-game skid that knocked them out of first place in the American League West. The victory left them a game and a half behind Texas in the division, but they hold an edge of two and a half games over both the Angels and the Twins for the second A.L. wild-card spot. Barry Zito pitched in the majors for the first time since 2013 and gave up Rasmus’s second homer, in the eighth. Zito, 37, had spent the season playing in Class AAA for Oakland after sitting out last year. TWINS 8, ANGELS 1 The rookie Tyler Duffey allowed three hits in seven shutout innings, Eddie Rosario and Joe Mauer hit two-run homers, and host Minnesota won to pull even with Los Angeles in the A.L. wild-card race. A day after the Angels swept a day-night doubleheader to pass the Twins in the wild-card standings, Duffey (4-1) struck out seven and walked one to stop Minnesota’s five-game losing streak. PIRATES 4, DODGERS 3 Starling Marte hit a tying home run against Mike Bolsinger, Pedro Alvarez had a go-ahead homer, and visiting Pittsburgh beat Los Angeles to open a two-game lead over the Chicago Cubs for the National League’s top wild-card berth. Gerrit Cole (17-8) allowed three runs and six hits in seven innings and struck out nine. Pittsburgh trails St. Louis for the lead in the N.L. Central by four games. CARDINALS 4, CUBS 3 Cardinals catcher Yadier Molina exited with a sprained left thumb sustained as the Cubs ran themselves out of late scoring chances, and visiting St. Louis avoided a sweep as it ended Chicago’s five-game winning streak. The Cardinals moved to six games ahead of Chicago in the N.L. Central. NATIONALS 13, MARLINS 3 Stephen Strasburg struck out 10, and Yunel Escobar had four hits and drove in four runs as Washington beat visiting Miami. Escobar was 4 for 4 and had a three-run double in a seven-run sixth inning. Bryce Harper had three hits, including a double, and scored three times. MARINERS 9, RANGERS 2 Felix Hernandez became the American League’s first 18-game winner, Robinson Cano drove in four runs, and Seattle won at Texas. Hernandez (18-9) gave up two runs, struck out five and matched a season high with five walks in five and two-thirds innings before leaving after 105 pitches with a stiff right elbow, a move that the Mariners said was precautionary. ROYALS 10, TIGERS 3 Kendrys Morales homered three times and set a team record with 15 total bases, and Kansas City routed host Detroit, avoiding a sweep in a three-game series. Morales also hit a triple, and Christian Colon had a career-high four hits for the Royals. INDIANS 6, WHITE SOX 3 Josh Tomlin pitched five and two-thirds scoreless innings, Lonnie Chisenhall had a two-run homer and drove in three runs, and Cleveland beat visiting Chicago. Cleveland is four games behind Houston for the second A.L. wild-card spot, also trailing the Angels and the Twins.

Baseball
Minnesota Twins
Los Angeles Angels
Astros
Oakland Athletics


Polls Predicted a Bloomberg Blowout, but Bruce N. Gyory Knew Better

Abstract: More than three months ago, Bruce N. Gyory was telling anyone who would listen, including advisers to both mayoral campaigns, that while Michael R. Bloomberg was favored to win, his margin would not be more than five to seven percentage points. Mr. Gyory, a lobbyist, political consultant and aide to three New York governors, was convinced that the race would not be the blowout predicted by numerous polls, precisely because of what the polls themselves consistently revealed: The percentage of New Yorkers who said they would vote for Mr. Bloomberg barely climbed above 50. Apparently, the only people who listened worked for Mr. Bloomberg. One after another, independent public opinion polls suggested that the mayor enjoyed a 16 to 18 point lead (a survey released the day before the Nov. 3 election said his lead was 12 percentage points) and was virtually invincible. That the Bloomberg campaign was not heeding those polls was evident in its lavish spending on advertising and its relentless criticism of the Democratic challenger, William C. Thompson Jr., the city’s comptroller. “I wouldn’t say we were scared,” Edward Skyler, the deputy mayor for operations, said in a recent interview. “I would say concerned.” Mr. Skyler was one of several top Bloomberg administration officials who argued a year ago against a third term. They cautioned, correctly as it turned out, that it would present a formidable challenge, particularly after the mayor lobbied the City Council to amend term limits through legislation rather than asking voters who had imposed or ratified those limits in two earlier referendums. “People said to me, ‘Are you crazy? It’s going to be a blowout,’ ” Mr. Gyory said. “But the polls showed he was at 50 percent pretty much from February, and they were unwavering. When you have an incumbent that well known, that’s the hard number. It’s an empirical fact in polling that polls will accurately measure the incumbent. What polls do not do well is measure the potential strength of the lesser-known challenger. “He spent $100 million, and he started at 50 and ended up at 51,” Mr. Gyory said, referring to the percentage of the vote that Mr. Bloomberg received on Election Day. “It’s not his fault. It’s the nature of a nonpartisan anti-incumbent riptide for which term limits was a lightning rod.” According to the unofficial returns, Mr. Bloomberg won a third term by five percentage points (he barely broke 50 percent) over Mr. Thompson, who got 46 percent of the vote. It was a larger margin than when Mr. Bloomberg was first elected in 2001, but much closer than most publicly released polls projected. Mr. Gyory (pronounced JOR-ree) said he learned how to scrutinize polls from Alex Rose, a former Liberal Party leader. “He said, ‘I’m going to train you to read what my friend Lou Harris puts in polls.’ ” Mr. Gyory remembers Mr. Rose telling him about the polling pioneer. Asked if the polls’ cavernous margins proved self-fulfilling, keeping lukewarm Bloomberg voters and deflated Thompson voters home, Mr. Gyory said: “The polling data was accurate. Bloomberg was stuck at 50, so it was going to be a close race, not a blowout. “Instead, everyone focused on the spread,” he added. “The misinterpretation I don’t think changed that many votes, but it stunted Thompson’s fund-raising and affected the coverage.” The most prominent pre-election polls were conducted by the Marist Institute for Public Opinion and the Quinnipiac University Polling Institute . “They would never have had so many attack ads if they really thought they were going to win by 15,” said Lee M. Miringoff, director of the Marist Institute, whose news releases, like Quinnipiac’s, accentuated the gap between the candidates. “I emphasized this in announcing the poll. I think there is and was a misguided focus on the margin separating Bloomberg and Thompson. “Polling has the goal of measuring the strength of each candidate, and a week out it’s a moving target, given undecided voters and turnout,” Dr. Miringoff added. “The idea that the race was going to be closer was not surprising.” Maurice Carroll, director of the Quinnipiac Institute, said: “Our numbers were too high. How come? I don’t know. But there is in any blowout prediction a self-correcting element,” which, he maintained, prompts some voters on both sides to stay home. Mr. Gyory said that more attention should be paid to an incumbent’s poll numbers and that in city and state elections, pollsters should survey only registered voters, not the narrower pool of so-called likely voters, since turnout is so unpredictable. (The number of voters in recent mayoral elections has ranged from nearly 1.9 million in 1993 to 1.1 million on Nov. 3.) Predicting the outcome by including likely voters who say they are “leaning” to a candidate proved precarious this year. Exit polls confirmed a “support gap” for the mayor — about 70 percent of those surveyed said they approved of Mr. Bloomberg’s job performance, but far fewer voted for him. “To just assign these leaners to Bloomberg misses the entire karma of this contest,” Mr. Gyory said in an interview a few days before the election. “Will this approval support gap break for or against Bloomberg? is not the $64 question. It is the $125 million answer.” “I still favor Bloomberg,” Mr. Gyory said then, “but I see it as a narrow win that will shock the pundits who have used phrases like ‘Bloomberg, who is way ahead,’ or ‘Thompson, who faces incredible odds.’ ” Mr. Gyory said he collected on his Election Day bets on the mayor’s victory margin in meals, not cash. “If I ate other than salads,” he said, “I would be as fat as Santa Claus by Christmas.”

Gyory Bruce N.
Bloomberg Michael R
Election Results
Polls and Public Opinion
New York City


Bevo Francis Dies at 82; Scored 116 and 113 Points in College Basketball Games

Abstract: In 1954, Bevo Francis scored 113 points in a single college basketball game, setting an N.C.A.A. record that stood for nearly six decades. But he may be remembered as much for a game that was wiped from the books, when he piled up 116. Francis, who died on Wednesday at 82, was a 6-foot-9 star center for the University of Rio Grande in Ohio, with a deadeye jump shot at a time when most players relied on two-handed set shots. When he arrived as a freshman in 1952, Rio Grande had only 92 full-time students and a basketball court made of worn tile under a leaky roof. The season before, the Rio Grande Redmen (now the RedStorm) compiled a 4-19 record against middling competition. But with Francis averaging about 50 points a game, the Redmen won their first 10 games of the new season, and the team became a national sensation. Francis scored 116 points in January 1953 during a home game against Ashland Junior College from Kentucky. He was helped by his teammates, who gave up free shots to feed him the ball, leading to a 150-85 victory. His outpouring came without the benefit of the 3-point line or the shot clock of today’s game. “With today’s rules, I probably could have scored 135 in a game,” he said in an ESPN biography . Rio Grande finished the season 39-0, with Francis scoring 1,954 points for a record single-season scoring average of 50.1. But other colleges began to question the legitimacy of his records, saying they had been set against unduly weak opponents, some of them unaccredited two-year institutions. After the season, the N.C.A.A. refused to count his statistics from many of those games — including the one in which he set the single-game scoring record — because the opponents were not institutions that granted four-year degrees. Rio Grande did not go undefeated the next season, but Francis stayed true to form. He set N.C.A.A. records for season average (46.5) and again for most points in a game — 113 in a 134-91 victory over Hillsdale College in Michigan. He also set records for most free throws (37) and field goals (38) during that game. “It was one of those nights that I could have probably drop-kicked one and it would have gone in,” he told The Boston Globe in 2002. Francis died at his home in Highlandtown, Ohio. The cause was complications of esophageal cancer, a Rio Grande spokesman, Randy Payton, said. Image Francis, center, averaged 46.5 points per game in his second season with the University of Rio Grande. Credit Joseph Scherschel/The LIFE Picture Collection, via Getty Images The 1953-54 season was Francis’ last. He said he was leaving Rio Grande to support his wife and son. The university said he had been expelled for absences and academic reasons. Even though his career was only two seasons long, he still holds the N.C.A.A. Division II record for most games with 50 points or more in a career (14) and a season (eight). Shortly afterward, Francis signed a $12,000 contract to barnstorm with the Harlem Globetrotters on a team called the Boston Whirlwinds. Losing to the Globetrotters twice a day while being separated from his family did not agree with him. “We’d play two quarters and then be the clowns,” he said. “It was a dog’s life.” Drafted by the Philadelphia Warriors in 1956, he was asked to play for less money but refused. He then played in the Eastern Professional League and the American Basketball League before becoming a shipper for a steel mill in the early 1960s. “Everything worked out good,” he said. “You can always get another job; you can’t always get another family.” Clarence Francis was born on Sept. 4, 1932, in Hammondsville, Ohio. His nickname, Bevo, came from his father’s favorite brand of near beer. Francis married Jean Chrislip while they attended Wellsville High School. He played only one year of varsity basketball under Coach Newt Oliver, scoring 776 points in 25 games, before departing for Rio Grande with Oliver, who had accepted the head coaching job there. The steel mill where Francis worked closed in 1982, six months before he would have earned a pension. His survivors include his wife; a son, Frank; a daughter, Marge Grimm; a sister, Norma Williams; and three grandchildren. Francis’ 113-point record endured until 2012, when Jack Taylor of Grinnell College scored 138 points in a game against Faith Baptist Bible College and Theological Seminary. Contacted by The New York Times, Francis had one question: “Is that a four-year school?”

College basketball
NCAA
Obituary
University of Rio Grande


Useful Mutants, Bred With Radiation

Abstract: VIENNA — Pierre Lagoda pulled a small container from his pocket and spilled the contents onto his desk. Four tiny dice rolled to a stop. “That’s what nature does,” Dr. Lagoda said. The random results of the dice, he explained, illustrate how spontaneous mutations create the genetic diversity that drives evolution and selective breeding. He rolled the dice again. This time, he was mimicking what he and his colleagues have been doing quietly around the globe for more than a half-century — using radiation to scramble the genetic material in crops, a process that has produced valuable mutants like red grapefruit, disease-resistant cocoa and premium barley for Scotch whiskey. “I’m doing the same thing,” he said, still toying with the dice. “I’m not doing anything different from what nature does. I’m not using anything that was not in the genetic material itself.” Dr. Lagoda, the head of plant breeding and genetics at the International Atomic Energy Agency , prides himself on being a good salesman. It can be a tough act, however, given wide public fears about the dangers of radiation and the risks of genetically manipulated food. His work combines both fields but has nonetheless managed to thrive. The process leaves no residual radiation or other obvious marks of human intervention. It simply creates offspring that exhibit new characteristics. Though poorly known, radiation breeding has produced thousands of useful mutants and a sizable fraction of the world’s crops, Dr. Lagoda said, including varieties of rice, wheat, barley, pears, peas, cotton, peppermint, sunflowers, peanuts, grapefruit, sesame, bananas, cassava and sorghum. The mutant wheat is used for bread and pasta and the mutant barley for beer and fine whiskey. The mutations can improve yield, quality, taste, size and resistance to disease and can help plants adapt to diverse climates and conditions. Dr. Lagoda takes pains to distinguish the little-known radiation work from the contentious field of genetically modified crops, sometimes disparaged as “Frankenfood.” That practice can splice foreign genetic material into plants, creating exotic varieties grown widely in the United States but often feared and rejected in Europe. By contrast, radiation breeding has made few enemies. “Spontaneous mutations are the motor of evolution,” Dr. Lagoda said. “We are mimicking nature in this. We’re concentrating time and space for the breeder so he can do the job in his lifetime. We concentrate how often mutants appear — going through 10,000 to one million — to select just the right one.” Radiation breeding is widely used in the developing world, thanks largely to the atomic agency’s efforts. Beneficiaries have included Bangladesh, Brazil, China, Costa Rica, Egypt, Ghana, India, Indonesia, Japan, Kenya, Nigeria, Pakistan, Peru, Sri Lanka, Sudan, Thailand and Vietnam. Politically, the method is one of many quid pro quos the agency, an arm of the United Nations in Vienna, offers client states. Its own agenda is to inspect ostensibly peaceful atomic installations in an effort to find and deter secret work on nuclear weapons. Plant scientists say radiation breeding could play an important role in the future. By promoting crop flexibility, it could help feed billions of added mouths despite shrinking land and water, rising oil and fertilizer costs, increasing soil exhaustion, growing resistance of insects to pesticides and looming climate change . Globally, food prices are already rising fast. “It’s not going to solve the world food crisis,” said J. Neil Rutger, former director of the Dale Bumpers National Rice Research Center in Stuttgart, Ark. “But it will help. Modern plant breeders are using every tool they can get.” The method was discovered some 80 years ago when Lewis J. Stadler of the University of Missouri used X-rays to zap barley seeds. The resulting plants were white, yellow, pale yellow and some had white stripes — nothing of any practical value. But the potential was clear. Soon, by exposing large numbers of seeds and young plants, scientists produced many more mutations and found a few hidden beneficial ones. Peanuts got tougher hulls. Barley, oats and wheat got better yields. Black currants grew. The process worked because the radiation had randomly mixed up the genetic material of the plants. The scientists could control the intensity of the radiation and thus the extent of the disturbance, but not the outcome. To know the repercussions, they had to plant the radiated material, let it grow and examine the results. Often, the gene scrambling killed the seeds and plants, or left them with odd mutations. But in a few instances, the process made beneficial traits. In the 1950s and 1960s, the United States government promoted the method as part of its “atoms for peace” program and had notable successes. In 1960, disease heavily damaged the bean crop in Michigan — except for a promising new variety that had been made by radiation breeding. It and its offspring quickly replaced the old bean. In the early 1970s, Dr. Rutger, then in Davis, Calif., fired gamma rays at rice. He and his colleagues found a semi-dwarf mutant that gave much higher yields, partly because it produced more grain. Its short size also meant it fell over less often, reducing spoilage. Known as Calrose 76, it was released publicly in 1976. Today, Dr. Rutger said, about half the rice grown in California derives from this dwarf. Now retired in Woodland, Calif., he lives just a few miles from where the descendants grow, he said. A similar story unfolded in Texas. In 1929, farmers stumbled on the Ruby Red grapefruit, a natural mutant. Its flesh eventually faded to pink, however, and scientists fired radiation to produce mutants of deeper color — Star Ruby, released in 1971, and Rio Red, released in 1985. The mutant offspring now account for about 75 percent of all grapefruit grown in Texas. Though the innovations began in the United States, the method is now used mostly overseas, with Asia and Europe the leading regions. Experts cited two main reasons: domestic plant researchers over the decades have already made many, perhaps most of the easiest improvements that can be achieved with radiation, and they now focus on highly popular fields like gene splicing. “Most scientists here would say it’s pretty primitive,” Norman T. Uphoff, a professor of government and international agriculture at Cornell University, said of the method. “It’s like being in a huge room with a flashlight.” But the flashlight is cheap, which has aided its international spread. Today, the process usually begins with cobalt-60, a highly radioactive material used in industrial radiography and medical radiotherapy. Its gamma rays, more energetic than X-rays, can travel many yards through the air and penetrate lead. Understandably, the exposure facilities for radiation breeding have layers of shielding. Scientists run small machines the size of water heaters that zap containers full of seeds, greenhouses that expose young plants and special fields that radiate row upon row of mature plants. In Japan, one circular field is more than 650 feet wide. A shielding dike some 28 feet high rises around its perimeter. Dr. Lagoda said a rust fungus threatened the Japanese pear, a pear with the crisp texture characteristic of apples. But one irradiated tree had a branch that showed resistance. He said the Japanese cloned it, successfully started a new crop and with the financial rewards “paid for 30 years of research.” The payoff was even bigger in Europe, where scientists fired gamma rays at barley to produce Golden Promise, a mutant variety with high yields and improved malting. After its debut in 1967, brewers in Ireland and Britain made it into premium beer and whiskey. It still finds wide use. “The secret,” reads a recent advertisement for a single malt Scotch whiskey costing $49.99 a bottle, is “the continued use of finest Golden Promise barley and the insistence on oak sherry casks from Spain.” The atomic agency in Vienna has promoted the method since 1964 in outreach programs with the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, in Rome. Starting roughly a decade ago, for instance, the atomic agency helped scientists fight a virus that was killing cocoa trees in Ghana, which produces about 15 percent of the world’s chocolate. The virus was killing and crippling millions of trees. In the city of Accra on the Atlantic coast, at the laboratories of the Ghana Atomic Energy Commission, the scientists exposed cocoa plant buds to gamma rays. The mutants included one that endowed its offspring with better resistance to the killer virus. The scientists planted the resistant variety on 25 farms across Ghana “with no evidence of a resurgence,” M. R. Appaih, executive director of the Cocoa Research Institute of Ghana, told the agency. The atomic agency had similar success in the Peruvian Andes, where some three million people live on subsistence farming. The region, nearly two miles high, has extremely harsh weather. But nine new varieties of barley improved harvests to the point that farmers had surplus crops to sell. In 2006, Prof. Gomes Pando won the Peruvian prize for Good Government Practices for her work on the radiation mutants. In Vietnam, the agency has worked closely with local scientists to improve production of rice, a crop that accounts for nearly 70 percent of the public’s food energy. One mutant had yields up to four times higher than its parent and grew well in acidic and saline soils, allowing farmers to use it in coastal regions, including the Mekong Delta. Last year, a team of 10 Vietnamese scientists wrote in an agency journal, Plant Mutation Reports, that the nation had sown the new varieties across more than one million hectares, or 3,860 square miles. The new varieties, they added, “have already produced remarkable economic and social impacts, contributing to poverty alleviation in some provinces.” Dr. Lagoda said that radiation breeding, though an old technology, was undergoing rapid growth. New methods that speed up the identification of mutants are making radiation breeding even more popular, he said. “Now it becomes interesting again,” he said of the method. “It’s not a panacea. It’s not the solution. But it’s a very efficient tool that helps us reduce the breeding time.” Spreading the secret, Dr. Lagoda added as he played with his tiny dice, “is very gratifying because we really, really help people.”

Atomic Energy
Radiation
Food
International Atomic Energy Agency


Accounting Board Delays New Rule

Abstract: The Financial Accounting Standards Board , under pressure from banks and auditors, voted unanimously on Wednesday to delay a new accounting rule that is aimed at forcing banks to put more assets on their balance sheets rather than hide them in so-called special-purpose entities. The board, reversing a decision it made on June 11, decided that the rule would go into effect for calendar-year companies in 2010, rather than a year earlier. The board said it still hoped to require additional disclosures of off-balance-sheet entities in 2009, even though the accounting for them would not change until the following year. Accounting for special-purpose entities came under attack after Enron collapsed in 2001, in part because of the misuse of the rules then in effect. The rules were tightened, but criticism erupted again last year after some banks suffered large losses from structured investment vehicles and other entities that had been kept off balance sheets under the rule. The board, which sets accounting rules in the United States, expects to adopt two rules. One would end the classification of some special-purpose entities as “qualifying,” a classification that meant they could be kept off balance sheets altogether. The other would tighten rules for the remaining off-balance-sheet entities, and require additional disclosures about the risks involved in them. In June, the board decided to make both rules effective in 2009 but to allow a one-year grace period, to 2010, for existing qualifying entities. Now all the rules, if adopted, will be effective in 2010. Among the arguments used to request the delay was that it would be confusing to have some entities go onto balance sheets in 2009 and others in 2010. Banks also argued that regulators would need more time to evaluate how the new rules would affect capital requirements. Auditing firms said they needed more time to prepare to audit under the rules. The current schedule calls for the board to publish drafts of the rules before the end of September and to adopt them early in 2009, to take effect for fiscal years that begin after Nov. 15, 2009. The board will also seek comment on a temporary rule that would require many disclosures in 2009 financial statements. It hopes to issue that rule before the end of 2008.

Financial Accounting Standards Board
Accounting and Accountants


Wall Street’s New Pariah Status

Abstract: Monday was the last day of Iris Chau’s 11-year career at JPMorgan Chase and she says there’s a lot she’ll miss about the job, including her colleagues, her paycheck and her role managing a technical support team. But one thing she won’t miss about JPMorgan: telling people that she works there. “For a long time, it was kind of glamorous and I had friends who’d ask me ‘Can you get me a job there?’ ” says Ms. Chau, 35, who was part of a recent round of layoffs at the firm’s Manhattan headquarters. A few weeks ago, she mentioned her work to a photographer she’d met through a friend. “And he looks at me and says, ‘Oh, you’re one of them .’ ” Nobody in the investment banking world is expecting pity, or even a sympathetic ear, these days. But while the rest of the country fumes over the billions spent on government bailouts and year-end bonuses, the financial industry is focused on its new role as national pariah and its own lengthy list of anxieties. There are the endless rounds of corporate implosions to sweat. There is the widespread sense of being unfairly singled out for vilification in a crisis that a host of players helped create — among them homeowners, who were only too happy to feast on the bounty that Wall Street helped cater in the flush years. On top of all that, there is a lot of wincing about the profession’s catastrophic loss of cultural cachet. Wall Street has become a target of populist rage, raw material for talk-show tirades, the occasional street protest and a lot of punch lines. A recent political cartoon in The Record, a newspaper in Hackensack, N.J., shows rats fleeing a sinking ship, labeled “Wall Street,” with treasure chests held aloft tagged “CEO” and “Bonus.” There are “I Hate Investment Banking” T-shirts for sale online. Last week on “The Daily Show,” Jon Stewart rolled a clip of John A. Thain , Merrill Lynch ’s chief executive, defending bonuses as a way to keep “your best people.” “You don’t have ‘best people’!” Mr. Stewart shouted. “You lost $27 billion! Do you live in Bizarro World?” All of this has taken a toll on the few industry veterans willing to discuss the subject. “I’d almost rather say I’m a pornographer,” said a retired Wall Street executive who, for self-evident reasons, asked not to be identified. “At least that’s a business that people understand.” Financiers tell their not-for-attribution account of the mortgage crisis like this: Americans undersaved and overspent for decades, relying on rising property values to bankroll their lifestyles. But nobody on Wall Street forced United States homeowners to take out loans on houses they couldn’t afford, or refinance mortgages to spend money on cars they shouldn’t have bought. The esoteric securities underneath the current mess are, to the people who invented and marketed them, analogous to pharmaceutical drugs . Used correctly, they can enhance your life. Abused, they are lethal. Of course, mistakes were made on Wall Street, says Emanuel Pleitez, a 26-year-old former Goldman Sachs employee who resigned from his job a few months ago to run for Congress in his hometown, Los Angeles . But to a great extent, he says, those mistakes were born of misplaced trust. “Look, you can talk about collateralized debt obligations all day long,” he said, referring to a type of asset-backed security that has turned famously toxic. “But there were ratings agencies that were supposed to tell us how risky these securities were. We essentially closed our eyes and said, ‘O.K., you say this is rated triple-A, fine, I believe you.’ ” In hindsight, he said, “Everyone should have been more skeptical.” You hear a lot about the failure of regulators, too. But it’s difficult to find anyone in the financial trenches who thinks the problem is Wall Street itself. Difficult, but not impossible. “People say ‘Well, the Fed is to blame because there was all this loose money,’ ” said Luis E. Rinaldini, a former partner at the investment banking firm Lazard Frères, now at the merchant bank Groton Partners. “But guys who run banks are paid to be cautious when there’s loose money around.” “I mean, if you had a bus driver who went 100 miles an hour on an icy road, you’d think he was crazy,” he adds. “But if his boss said, ‘It’s our policy to drive faster as the roads get icier,’ you wouldn’t be surprised if the boss ended up in jail.” By historical standards, this is not Wall Street’s worst bout of infamy, though it might come pretty close. Last week, President Obama branded Wall Street bankers “shameful” for giving themselves nearly $20 billion in bonuses, even though the average bonus, $112,000, was down by 36.7 percent from the prior year. That criticism isn’t quite the buggy whippings that Franklin Delano Roosevelt routinely gave “unscrupulous money changers.” And the recent rallies in front of the New York Stock Exchange — with chants of “You bought it, you broke it” — are downright peaceful compared to the 1920 bombing of J.P. Morgan’s offices, which killed more than 30 people. Still, if your business card bears the name of an investment bank — or did before you were laid off — odds are good you’ve endured some very awkward moments of late. Stephen Chen, a former vice president in equity research at Bear Stearns , heard a lot of sarcastic comments when he went home to the Bronx for Christmas, where his family of 36 gather each year. When the story of another bank closing was broadcast on a TV, a cousin muttered, “Good riddance.” “A lot of my family are small-businessmen who own restaurants and Laundromats,” Mr. Chen said. “They just see Wall Street as overpaid and they don’t have a very clear idea of what it does. I try to explain that there’s this intimate connection between Main Street and Wall Street, that banks were created to provide liquidity for small businesses, so they can expand.” His relatives listen, but seem unconvinced, Mr. Chen said. “It’s kind of tiring having the same conversation over and over again.” The irony is that despite public perceptions, the outcry over Wall Street greed is happening just as the firms are getting stingy. At JPMorgan, Ms. Chau said, management clamped down on office supplies to the point where employees now need to ask a secretary for the key to the supply room for pens. At the San Francisco branch of Goldman Sachs, the days of free soy milk and Diet Cokes are over, and one day, the water cooler was wheeled right out of the office. “Word went around pretty quickly,” says Mr. Pleitez. “Bring your own water.” And for all the talk about taxpayer-financed bonuses, a lot of junior and midlevel executives have been told that they shouldn’t expect anything but their salaries this year. In a business where your bonus is often five times your base pay, that’s devastating news. And we’re talking about a line of work in which virtually all satisfaction is paycheck-dependent. “Fact is that this is a terrible way to make a living — except for the money,” Ken Miller, a former vice chairman at Credit Suisse First Boston and now a private investor, said. “The lifestyle is terrible — the hours, the sucking up. These guys must feel like they’re the victims of a capricious god.” That’s especially galling to the many in investment banks who had nothing to do with the mortgage end of their company’s business. Maria Anguiano, who works in Barclays ’ municipal finance department, has yet to hear if she is getting a bonus this year, but she thinks she deserves one, given the millions her department earned. “If you just take your base home, the question becomes, why not just work at a nonprofit from 8 to 4 instead of a bank where you’re expected to work weekends and every night till 10 or 11?” she said. Ms. Anguiano isn’t the only one asking that question. As money and prestige drain out of Wall Street, and as layoffs mount, other careers are starting to seem more appealing. Mr. Chen has helped start a retail company, GreenSoul Shoes, that sells sandals made by Cambodian villagers out of discarded rubber tires. He calls it a for-profit business with a social mission. Ms. Chau, a friend, is going to be joining him soon. To some longtimers in the industry, this reordering of priorities is overdue. Robert J. Birnbaum, the former president of the New York Stock Exchange, sees an upside to Wall Street’s diminished reputation. “It’s taken a hit, but so what?” he said. “We don’t need all the bright people going to Wall Street, chasing money. There’s a lot of things bright people can do. Like find a cure for cancer .”

Executive Compensation
Bank
Layoffs
Bonuses
HNWI,Wealth,Billionaires,1 Percent
Personal finance


As Crisis Unfolds Overseas, Diplomats Gather in Washington

Abstract: WASHINGTON — Nearly all the top United States diplomats from around the world met here on Wednesday, summoned by Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton to consider new strategies to energize diplomacy and streamline development, but their arrival coincided with one of the most tumultuous moments for American diplomacy in recent memory. The extraordinary convening of top diplomatic minds had been meant to take place at a slow time of year, Mrs. Clinton wryly told the meeting of nearly 300 ambassadors and heads of mission in the Dean Acheson Auditorium at the State Department. “What better time to pull you from your posts and responsibilities?” she asked, to laughter. Reflecting the ferment in the Middle East, there was one notable absentee: Margaret Scobey, the ambassador to Egypt, who remained in Cairo. The meeting, in fact, came at a time of high challenge for the department on many fronts beyond Cairo and other embattled Arab capitals, a part of the world where many career diplomats have seen service. The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan pose extreme demands. Congressional pressure for budget cuts is unusually sharp. And the fallout from the WikiLeaks disclosures continues to complicate diplomats’ day-to-day work. Mrs. Clinton called the meeting a “first-ever in American history all-hands-on-deck ambassadorial conference.” The department’s various bureaus have long convened ambassadors in their respective regions on a regular basis. These days, owing to post-Sept. 11 security concerns, these assemblies often occur in Washington. This week’s meeting, other than two major speeches, was closed to the press. But Craig Kelly, who until September was a deputy assistant secretary of state and involved in WikiLeaks-related issues, said Wednesday that he could not imagine that the unauthorized disclosures of sensitive diplomatic cables were not a major topic both of working groups and corridor talk. “The key is not so much the water already under the bridge,” said Mr. Kelly, now a vice president with the Cohen Group, a consultancy in Washington. “For the future, I think it’s very important that we convince the world that we’ve taken the sort of technical steps adequate to protect sensitive information,” he said.. The current global get-together, said Howard B. Schaffer, a former ambassador to Bangladesh and retired career diplomat, can be “enormously useful,” allowing the ambassador to India to speak face-to-face with the ambassador to Pakistan, for example, and to renew contacts in Washington. Several ambassadors shoe-horned in other business here in Washington. John R. Beyrle, ambassador to Russia, attended President Obama’s signing of the new Start treaty ; Ambassador James F. Jeffrey testified about Iraq on Tuesday before a Senate committee. Another diplomatic luminary, here from Beijing, had a rather different mission. Ambassador Jon M. Huntsman Jr. delivered his letter of resignation to Mr. Obama and is said to be contemplating a presidential campaign of his own. The assembly was addressed by Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. The choice of speaker, and the words he used, underscored the unusually close relationship Mrs. Clinton has forged with Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates, who has vigorously defended the need for a well-financed State Department. Admiral Mullen called such financing “absolutely mandatory.” Mrs. Clinton seemed to suggest that, given the budget battles ahead, it might not be a bad time for a few hundred people with honed diplomatic skills to be in Washington. “There is a great deal of push coming from the new Congress, particularly the House,” to cut State Department and the United States Agency for International Development budgets to 2008 levels,” Mrs. Clinton told the ambassadors, “despite the fact that we are about to inherit an overwhelming responsibility in Iraq.” Indeed, as the military mission there winds down, the American staff overseen by the Embassy in Baghdad is slated to more than double within the year, from an already substantial 8,000 to about 17,000. “We know that there are those in the Congress who have even advocated eliminating all foreign aid, eliminating A.I.D.,” Mrs. Clinton said. “And it’s going to take some outreach and education to discuss with them and lead them through our rationale.” The meeting was nominally convened to help diplomats better understand, and prepare to implement, the results of a signature project of Mrs. Clinton’s: the first quadrennial review of American diplomacy and development, an exercise modeled on the long-time practice of the Defense Department. The 18-month review produced a 210-page report, issued in December, that reflects Mrs. Clinton’s goals of placing heavier emphasis on resolving conflicts, while reinvigorating the Agency for International Development, which saw its staff shrink 38 percent from 1990 to 2007. She has promised to do so while saving money, a task made more difficult by the growth of her department that began under President George W. Bush.

Diplomatic Service Embassies and Consulates


UnitedHealth to Pull Back From Insurance Exchanges, Citing Losses

Abstract: The UnitedHealth Group, one of the nation’s largest health insurers, told investors on Tuesday that it continued to lose hundreds of millions of dollars selling individual policies under the federal health care law. The company said it planned to pull out of a majority of states where it offered coverage and would offer policies on the public exchanges in “only a handful of states” for 2017. UnitedHealth, which was a late and seemingly reluctant participant in the public exchanges, surprised investors last year when it announced its sizable losses, now estimated at more than a combined $1 billion for 2015 and 2016, because of its poor performance in the public exchanges. Policy analysts have been watching UnitedHealth closely as an indicator of whether the new individual market developed under the Affordable Care Act is sustainable. Addressing investors, Stephen J. Hemsley, the company’s chief executive, continued to offer a pessimistic view. “The smaller overall market size and shorter-term, higher-risk profile within this market segment continue to suggest we cannot broadly serve it on an effective and sustainable basis,” he said. UnitedHealth estimated its losses from the exchanges would be $650 million this year. UnitedHealth reported overall earnings from operations of $3 billion on revenue of $44.5 billion for the first quarter of 2016, compared with earnings of $2.6 billion on revenue of $35.8 billion for the 2015 quarter. The company would not specify which states it planned to exit. It appears to be staying in Virginia and Nevada next year, but it is not known what other states remain attractive. A small unit of UnitedHealth, which offers exchange plans that feature a primary care clinic, is being tested in some states, including Georgia, where United says it is pulling out. Despite the concerns over United’s decision, just how much of its struggles are because of a lackluster embrace of the market and small presence is unclear. The company has 795,000 people in its plans, a small fraction of the roughly 13 million people who have signed up for 2016. Without large numbers of customers, insurers are unable to demand low prices from hospitals and doctors. They also cannot balance the high cost of very sick patients with the low expense of more healthy customers. The number of insurance carriers for every state has increased every year, Ben Wakana, a spokesman for the Health and Human Services Department, which oversees the exchanges, said in a statement. “With millions of Americans insured through the marketplaces, it’s clear that this is a growing business for insurers,” he said. While United is not alone in finding the new market challenging, some insurers, especially those that have traditionally served low-income customers in Medicaid programs, appear to be more successful. “This is still a new market, and both entrants and exits come with the territory,” Cynthia Cox, one of the authors of a recent analysis from the Kaiser Family Foundation, said of the impact if UnitedHealth were to leave all of its markets. While the analysis found the overall impact to be modest, if UnitedHealth left all the markets and was not replaced by another carrier, the Kaiser analysis found, “the effect on insurer competition could be significant in some markets — particularly in rural areas and Southern states.”

UnitedHealth Group
Obamacare,Affordable Care Act
Health Insurance
Stephen J Hemsley


Vanity Fair Ad Gives Life to What Killed the Cat

Abstract: SCHWEPPES, for many years, sold tonic water as “curiously refreshing.” Hendrick’s gin staged a “theater of curiosities” and billed its unusual website as a “Curiositorium.” And it is, of course, common knowledge what curiosity did to that cat. Now, Vanity Fair is introducing a brand campaign that promotes the readers of its print, digital video and online editions as “born curious.” The campaign, which is to begin Monday, includes print, video and online elements as well as a presence in social media like Facebook, Tumblr and Twitter, using the hashtag #vfborncurious. The goals of the campaign, which has been created internally, are to stimulate circulation for Vanity Fair and generate additional advertising pages. It may also help promote a more contemporary image for a magazine that sometimes seems to be channeling an episode of “I Love the ’90s .” The campaign is the first such effort for Vanity Fair in some years, but all magazines are seeking ways to remain relevant in a media landscape that is increasingly digitally focused. Compared with a special-interest magazine, which can sell itself to readers and advertisers as focused on a subject like food, fashion, entertainment, public affairs or travel, a general-interest magazine like Vanity Fair — which publishes editorial content on all those topics and then some — has a trickier task to find favor and fortune. That is where “born curious” comes in, celebrating the quest for knowledge of the Vanity Fair reader. The theme was derived from research conducted among more than 2,000 readers and nonreaders by the A. T. Kearney consulting firm, said Edward J. Menicheschi, vice president and publisher of Vanity Fair in New York, part of the Condé Nast division of Advance Publications. Mr. Menicheschi said the research was intended to answer a question that came up in a conversation he had with Graydon Carter, the editor of Vanity Fair. “We were asking, ‘Is there anything that connects all of our audience together?’ ” Mr. Menicheschi said, and according to the research, those readers share traits like being “obsessive about information” and casting a wide net when it comes to the sorts of subjects they want to learn more about. Another trait is that “they’re discerning,” he added. “You have to earn your way into their feed; they’re looking for expert-level content.” Curiosity applies to readers, the editorial staff of Vanity Fair and many of the subjects of its articles, who “did not get where they are without being curious,” Mr. Menicheschi said. Mr. Carter had this to say: “By and large, we edit the magazine for the world’s affluent intelligentsia. And they are curious about a lot of things.” As for what motivates the editorial staff, Mr. Carter said: “Well, curiosity and passion are what drive most editors, and I suppose I’m no exception. ‘Born passionate’ seemed a bit strange. So we went with ‘curious.’ ” What about the idea that “curious” is a curious kind of word, sort of fusty and old-fashioned? “Curiosity may have killed the cat,” Mr. Carter replied, “but it’s the lifeblood of the well-read, well-traveled reader” of Vanity Fair. Mr. Menicheschi said he believed the word was “not at all” outdated and described “multigenerational readers” of Vanity Fair, “men and women.” “I felt curiosity is the thread that connects them all,” he added. Jesse Dylan, who was hired to direct a video that explains the “born curious” concept, described the word “curious” as “sort of curious” but also “a good descriptor.” And it is far superior to buzz phrases and words like “outside the box” and “innovation,” Mr. Dylan said, adding of the latter, “If I have to hear that word again, I’ll blow my brains out.” The video features Vanity Fair journalists along with familiar faces like the chef Tom Colicchio and the actors Jon Hamm and Eva Longoria because, after all, would a Vanity Fair undertaking be complete without celebrities? The clip can be watched on YouTube as well as at vfborncurious.com, where visitors can also read a blog devoted to curiosity . “We want to create a place for the curious to meet others like themselves and share their own curiosity stories,” Mr. Menicheschi said. “And it’s a really great way to give our advertisers a 24/7 view of what’s on the minds of our readers.” The print and online ads in the campaign will start this week in outlets like adweek.com, The New York Times and Women’s Wear Daily, which, like Vanity Fair, is part of Condé Nast. They are to be expanded to other Condé Nast publications in August. Because a large part of the campaign is to run in Condé Nast’s own ad space, it is hard to quantify the spending; the media value is estimated at $1.5 million. Vanity Fair joins a lengthening list of Condé Nast magazines to run marketing campaigns; others include Condé Nast Traveler and The New Yorker , promoting the 2014 New Yorker Festival. Come to think of it, Vanity Fair may be onto something with “curious.” Hilton Worldwide announced last week that it would introduce a group of upscale hotels called Curio — A Collection by Hilton.

Vanity Fair
Online advertising
advertising,marketing
Magazine
Video Recordings
Downloads and Streaming
Social Media


Is There Any Hope for Peace in South Sudan?

Abstract: JUBA, South Sudan — For nearly two weeks, they have hunkered in a schoolyard with nothing to do and nowhere else to go , dozens of people battling hunger, swarms of mosquitoes — and fear. “I just want peace so I can go back to school,” said Betty Christian, a chatty 19-year-old who fled her home here in the capital, Juba, when clashes erupted across the city this month. As she ran to find shelter, she passed soldiers who debated whether to shoot her, she said. When they decided not to shoot because she was female, she thanked them. Eventually, Ms. Christian made her way to this makeshift displacement site with her aunt and several of her cousins. But she has not heard from her mother since the gunfire began, and does not know where to find her. South Sudan’s civil war is supposed to be over. In April, after more than two years of conflict that killed tens of thousands of people, the opposition leader, Riek Machar, returned to Juba with nearly 1,400 troops to resume his post as the vice president to his wartime rival, President Salva Kiir. To steady South Sudan, the world’s newest nation , Mr. Kiir and Mr. Machar formed a transitional government , and for months soldiers from both sides of the conflict endured a tense coexistence in Juba. Then, on July 7, a checkpoint shootout between the rival sides ended in the deaths of five soldiers who were loyal to the president. The next day, gunfire erupted at the presidential palace as Mr. Kiir and Mr. Machar were meeting inside. By July 10, heavy artillery could be heard all over Juba as the two sides fell back to their old war footing and took up arms once again. Hundreds of soldiers and civilians lost their lives in the crossfire. Image Displaced people this month at the United Nations compound in Juba, South Sudan. Many in the city say they are frustrated with a government that has failed to ensure peace and stability for its people. Credit Eric Kanalstein/U.N. Mission in South Sudan, via Associated Press A cease-fire agreed upon last week has largely held across the capital. But Mr. Machar maintains the recent fighting was part of a deliberate plot against him and his soldiers. He still fears for his safety, he said, and was in hiding at an undisclosed location not far from Juba. On Thursday, Mr. Kiir issued a statement calling for Mr. Machar to return to the capital, and asked for a response within 48 hours. The statement, however, did not clarify what would happen if the vice president failed to do so. “If Riek Machar comes back to Juba without attack forces, there will not be any other problem,” said the president’s spokesman, Ateny Wek Ateny. Mr. Machar has said he would return to Juba only when other nations in the region send troops here to serve as a buffer. At an African Union summit meeting this week in Rwanda, representatives of Mr. Machar accused Mr. Kiir’s government of targeting opposition members, saying that the army had used helicopter gunships to destroy Mr. Machar’s residence during the clashes. The African Union has called for the deployment of regional forces in South Sudan, with a stronger mandate than that of the approximately 12,000 United Nations peacekeeping troops already stationed here. But Mr. Kiir has said he would not allow additional international forces. The peace plan that officially ended the war, which called on the former rivals to work together, appears to be unraveling. Image The bodies of unidentified people killed in fighting this month near a checkpoint in Juba, South Sudan. Credit Jok Solomun/Reuters Mr. Machar’s troops have been driven out of Juba, leaving Mr. Kiir’s forces in control of the capital. Since then, some opposition members — while serving as ministers in the transitional government — have faced intimidation and, in at least one case, assault. “The transitional government cannot operate under the current situation of intimidation,” Mr. Machar said. “People are fearing for their lives, and the president cannot protect me. After all, it was started by me being targeted.” With its leader in hiding, the opposition has become increasingly fractured. Some of those loyal to Mr. Machar have accused Mr. Kiir’s government of trying to unilaterally appoint the mining minister, Taban Deng Gai, who represented Mr. Machar during last year’s peace negotiations, as the new head of the opposition. “The idea of unity of command has always been a fictitious idea in the context of South Sudan; that applies to Riek Machar and to Salva Kiir as well,” said Harry Verhoeven, a South Sudan expert and professor of government at Georgetown University. “As we saw during the war, sometimes their generals take command on their own. That’s one of the big problems in general with the peace process.” The situation is also tense outside Juba. Deadly skirmishes have continued to erupt in several states since the peace agreement was signed last year. In the northeast, where much of the civil war fighting occurred, the government is warning militias not to take up arms in response to the clashes in the capital. Civilians should not get involved because “the conflict is between rival militaries, and there are political dimensions,” said Lul Ruai Koang, an army spokesman loyal to Mr. Kiir, warning that the government would launch airstrikes if civilians in the northeast began to mobilize. Many residents of Juba say the politics behind the recent bloodshed are perplexing and, ultimately, beside the point. They are simply frustrated with a government that, they say, has repeatedly failed to ensure peace and stability for its people. Image President Salva Kiir of South Sudan, center, and first Vice President Riek Machar, left, after the formation of a transitional government in Juba, in April. Credit Albert Gonzalez Farran/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images While the streets of the capital are lively once more, tensions still remain. Thousands of people remain displaced by the latest round of fighting. The smell of dead bodies still wafts through some of the worst-hit areas. There has been an uptick in robberies; abandoned homes, as well as the World Food Program’s main warehouse, which stores more than 4,000 tons of food for emergency assistance, have been looted. Like so many of the displaced people around her, Ms. Christian says she cannot return home. Much of her neighborhood has been destroyed. The charred hulks of government tanks sit along the road. What was once a row of small shops has been decimated, leaving behind heaps of corrugated steel. Scattered among bullet casings are mementos of lost livelihoods: locks of copper-colored hair extensions, children’s schoolbooks, scraps of clothing. But Ms. Christian is also afraid to go to the United Nations displacement camps, citing ethnic divisions that played a role in the civil war. Mr. Kiir belongs to the Dinka ethnic group, South Sudan’s largest, while Mr. Machar is a member of the Nuer, which is believed to be the second largest. Tens of thousands, mostly members of the Nuer, fled to the camps after being targeted by government forces in Juba when South Sudan’s civil war began in 2013. Ms. Christian is Equatorian, a catchall term that encompasses several ethnic groups from the country’s southern regions. She says she fears mistreatment at the camps because she is not Nuer, and she does not trust the United Nations peacekeepers to protect her . She is also afraid of being exposed to cholera. A new outbreak of the disease, in the capital and across the country, has made an already desperate situation worse. “The fighting has pushed people into more crowded areas, and they don’t have the access they usually have to food or clean water,” said Maria Guevara, medical coordinator for Doctors Without Borders , which has set up four clinics in Juba and is delivering water despite a number of recent staff evacuations in response to the clashes. “That will obviously contribute to a higher risk of spreading.” Ms. Christian says she has no idea where to go, or how to stay safe. She also does not know who to blame, because she has heard that both Mr. Kiir and Mr. Machar have called for peace. “But they don’t hear,” she added. “The soldiers — they don’t hear.”

War Crimes,Genocide,Crimes Against Humanity


James S. Vlasto, Adviser to New York Politicians, Dies at 82

Abstract: James S. Vlasto, a public relations and political adviser to New York politicians and public officials over six decades, died on Thursday in Manhattan. He was 82. The cause was pulmonary disease, his son Christopher said. In addition to serving as a counselor and confidant to leading candidates, Mr. Vlasto was press secretary to Gov. Hugh L. Carey, a Democrat, in 1976 and 1977, and to Joseph A. Fernandez, the New York City schools chancellor, from 1990 to 1993; and director of communications for Betsy Gotbaum, the city’s public advocate, from 2003 to 2008. “He was never afraid to speak his mind, even if it was going to offend the person he was working for, and he had good instincts and judgment,” said Stephen Berger, who worked with him in several campaigns and recommended him to Mr. Carey. Mr. Vlasto’s first experience with politics and press relations was as a young assistant during Nelson A. Rockefeller’s first campaign for governor of New York in 1958. He also worked in the mayoral campaign of Attorney General Louis J. Lefkowitz in 1961 and the Senate campaigns of Jacob K. Javits in 1962 and Kenneth B. Keating in 1964. All were Republicans. (Mr. Rockefeller and Mr. Javits won.) Most of Mr. Vlasto’s clients after those days were Democrats, among them Franklin D. Roosevelt Jr., who challenged Mr. Rockefeller as a Liberal Party candidate in 1966; Herman Badillo, the Bronx borough president and later congressman, in his 1969 and 1973 campaigns for mayor; and Richard L. Ottinger, a New York congressman who ran for the Senate in 1970. All three lost. Mr. Vlasto also worked as a New York state adviser in several presidential campaigns and established his own public relations firm, which represented candidates, members of Congress, corporate clients and the president of Cyprus. He was later communications director for the nonprofit New Visions for Public Schools and the editor of Medal of Honor News , a website dedicated to medal recipients. Dimitrius Solon Vlasto was born on June 11, 1934, in the Washington Heights section of Manhattan to a prominent Greek-American family. His father, Solon, was an immigrant from Athens who became the publisher of The Atlantis, a Greek-language daily newspaper based in New York that was founded by an uncle of his. It was published from 1894 to 1972. His mother was the former Tima Stamaton. He attended the private Hackley School in Tarrytown, N.Y., Greenwich High School in Connecticut and the School of General Studies at Columbia University, though he did not graduate. He served in the Army in Japan after the Korean War. In 1956, he joined the business staff of The Atlantis, where he was later named managing editor. In that post, he hired a young reporter and painter named Pete Hamill as a freelance illustrator and writer. Mr. Hamill went on to fame as a journalist and novelist. Mr. Vlasto’s marriages to Dianne Chappas and to Carol Opton ended in divorce. Both survive him. In addition to his son Christopher, who is executive producer of “Good Morning America” on ABC, Mr. Vlasto is survived by a daughter, Tima Vlasto, both from his first marriage; a son from his second marriage, Josh, who was press secretary to Gov. Andrew Cuomo and Senator Chuck Schumer; and four grandchildren.

James S Vlasto
Obituary
Greek-Americans
New York
Politics


I.B.M. Names Virginia Rometty as New Chief Executive

Abstract: Virginia M. Rometty, a senior vice president at I.B.M. , will be the company’s next chief executive, the directors announced on Tuesday. She will succeed Samuel J. Palmisano , 60, who will remain as chairman, at the start of next year. Ms. Rometty, 54, is well known within the technology industry, but not widely beyond. She has led strategically important divisions of the company as it has shifted to services and products with high profit margins, like software that mines vast troves of corporate and online data for sales and cost-saving opportunities. The directors’ choice of Ms. Rometty, who managed a crucial merger as well as sales in fast-growing new markets, ends a competition that has been under way for years. The leading candidates were always from within the company’s executive ranks. A leading rival to succeed Mr. Palmisano, analysts say, was Steven A. Mills, the senior vice president who led I.B.M.’s highly profitable and growing software division. But his age, analysts note, was probably an obstacle. Mr. Mills has just turned 60, the traditional retirement age for I.B.M. chief executives. Mr. Palmisano, in an interview Tuesday, singled out Mr. Mills for praise, saying “he’s done a phenomenal job.” The selection of Ms. Rometty for the top job at I.B.M. will make her one of the most prominent women executives in corporate America, joining a small group of chiefs that includes Ursula Burns of Xerox, Indra Nooyi of PepsiCo, Ellen J. Kullman of DuPont and Meg Whitman of Hewlett-Packard. Gender, according to Mr. Palmisano, did not figure into Ms. Rometty’s selection. “Ginni got it because she deserved it,” Mr. Palmisano said, using the informal first name by which she is known to friends and colleagues. “It’s got zero to do with progressive social policies,” Mr. Palmisano added. Ms. Rometty has led the growth and development of I.B.M.’s huge services business for more than a decade. The services strategy, analysts say, is partly a marketing tactic. But, they add, it also represents a different approach to the technology business, with less emphasis on selling hardware and software products. Instead, I.B.M. puts together bundles of technology to help business streamline operations, find customers and develop new products. “I.B.M. is selling business solutions, not just products,” said Frank Gens, chief analyst for the technology market research firm IDC. “Rometty has been at the forefront of that effort.” Ms. Rometty, who graduated from Northwestern University with an undergraduate degree in computer science, joined I.B.M. in 1981 as a systems engineer. She quickly moved up to a series of management jobs, working with clients in industries including banking, insurance, telecommunications, manufacturing and health care. In 2002, Ms. Rometty championed the purchase of the big business consulting firm, PricewaterhouseCoopers Consulting, for $3.5 billion. The deal was made shortly after Mr. Palmisano became chief executive and it was seen as a big risk. The PricewaterhouseCoopers consultants were used to operating fairly independently, in a very different culture from the more regimented I.B.M. style of the time. The danger, analysts say, was that the business consultants would flee in droves, leaving the business a shell. Ms. Rometty was put in charge of coordinating the work of the acquired firm’s consultants with I.B.M.’s technologists, to tailor services and software offering for specific industries. Ms. Rometty, analysts say, worked tirelessly and effectively to win over the consultants. “She did the deal, and she made it work,” Mr. Palmisano said. “Ginni Rometty combines performance and charisma,” said George F. Colony, chairman of Forrester Research. “She orchestrated a massive charm campaign to bring the PricewaterhouseCoopers people into the fold. That was the trial by fire for her.” In 2009, Ms. Rometty became senior vice president and group executive for sales, marketing and strategy. Part of the job is leading the I.B.M. drive to sharply increase its business in overseas growth markets, like China, India, Brazil and dozens of emerging markets, including several African nations. Such markets now account for 23 percent of I.B.M.’s revenue, up from 20 percent when she took over. It should reach 30 percent by 2015, the company projects. The top marketing job also includes spotting opportunities to use the science coming out of I.B.M.’s labs in new products and services. In that perch, Ms. Rometty has pushed to expand the company’s fast-growing analytics unit, which blends data-mining software with services expertise. “It’s not about capturing markets, it’s about making new markets,” Ms. Rometty said in a brief interview after the announcement. Mr. Palmisano succeeded Louis V. Gerstner Jr., an outsider who became chief executive in 1993, and led a historic turnaround of I.B.M., an endangered corporate icon. Mr. Palmisano inherited a company that had returned to health, but he set about transforming it once again. Under Mr. Palmisano, I.B.M. sold its personal computer and some other hardware lines, and focused increasingly on services and software. I.B.M. sells mainly to business and governments, leaving consumer technology to others. His strategy for driving the company behind big services projects to use technology to tackle big business and societal challenges, like energy, traffic and water management, had a catchy title, “Smarter Planet.” But such grand themes were initially met with skepticism on Wall Street. “The challenge is that you have to bring investors with you,” Mr. Palmisano explained. That led to the development of a “financial roadmap,” setting out five-year plans for its growth initiatives and profit targets for the company as a whole. This year, I.B.M. is completing the first five-year roadmap, with the numbers running ahead of the plan, despite the 2007-2009 recession. I.B.M.’s profits have increased sharply since Mr. Palmisano took over, and its stock price climbed. Earlier this year, I.B.M. passed Microsoft to become the second most valuable technology company, measured by market capitalization, trailing only Apple, the consumer technology powerhouse. I.B.M. must steadily evolve, Ms. Rometty said, but she does not anticipate changing course abruptly. “What you’ll see is an unfolding of the strategy we have in place,” Ms. Rometty said, noting that she had a hand in creating it.

International Business Machines Corporation


Eight Doping Tests Are Positive at Pan Am Games

Abstract: Dr. Eduardo De Rose, the head of the medical commission for the Pan Am Games in Toronto, said there had been eight positive doping tests so far, a figure he put “in the average range” for what would be expected at the Games, a multisports event with 6,000 athletes.


Site of Somali Government Is Put Under Islamic Law

Abstract: MOGADISHU, Somalia — The radical Islamist insurgents who have seized the provisional capital moved Tuesday to consolidate their control of the town and announced that they were imposing Islamic law there. The Shabab , one of the most militant Islamist militias fighting for control of the country, captured the town, Baidoa, on Monday, hours after the withdrawal of the Ethiopian troops who had been protecting it. Speaking to thousands of spectators at a soccer stadium in the northeastern part of town, the Shabab spokesman, Sheik Muktar Robow, urged calm and ordered an end to the looting that took place on Monday. “I want you to be calm,” said Sheik Muktar, also known as Abu Monsur. “From today on, Islamic Shariah law will be the rule of this town. If anyone opposes the Shariah, appropriate steps will be taken.” In addition to Baidoa, a market town that has served as the seat of Somalia’s transitional government, the Shabab controls most of Mogadishu, the main city and official capital, and much of the southern part of the country. The Shabab, listed by the United States as a terrorist organization, seeks to turn Somalia into an Islamic state under its particularly strict brand of Islamic law. Sheik Muktar, whose speech on Tuesday was broadcast on the radio in Mogadishu, also ordered Baidoa residents to turn over any looted property to the Shabab or face unspecified consequences. The offices of the transitional government were looted and ransacked Monday after the Ethiopian troops left, a witness said. The weak transitional government had been defended by Ethiopian troops since 2006 and supported by other countries in an effort to prop up an effective central government in a country that had not had one in 18 years. But by the time the Shabab arrived in Baidoa, there was little government left. The president resigned last month. Most members of Parliament departed over the weekend for Djibouti, where they are taking part in United Nations-brokered peace talks and what now amounts to a shadow Somali government. Once the Ethiopian military abandoned the town on Monday, the insurgents were able to take it without firing a shot. The transitional government now controls only a few blocks in Mogadishu, although parts of Somalia are under moderate Islamist militias that support the government. Several moderate factions have sent delegations to Djibouti, where they are working with the Parliament to establish a unity government based on a power-sharing deal made in October. That process moved forward on Monday when the Parliament voted to expand its membership to add 200 legislators from the ranks of the moderate Islamists. The new members are to be sworn in on Wednesday, bringing the total number of seats to 550. The Parliament also hopes to elect a new president within five days, according to local radio reports, to replace Abdullahi Yusuf Ahmed , a former warlord who was widely accused of trying to thwart peace negotiations and who resigned as president in December. Around 3,000 African Union peacekeepers are in Somalia, trying to protect the few government enclaves. They have increasingly come under attack by the Shabab and other militias. The Bush administration had pressed for a larger international force for Somalia, which it feared could become a base for Al Qaeda and other terrorist organizations. But the proposal met with little international support.

Somalia
Al-Shabab
Islam
Shariah (Islamic Law)
Civil War and Guerrilla Warfare
Politics and Government
Yusuf Ahmed Abdullahi


Quebecers Reject Separatists, Handing Power to Liberal Party

Abstract: OTTAWA — An attempt to secure power in Quebec by calling a snap election turned against the separatist Parti Québécois on Monday. In a reversal of early campaign expectations, the Liberal Party, which supports remaining in Canada, emerged with a strong victory. Not only was the Parti Québécois removed from power, but Pauline Marois, the premier and its leader, was not re-elected to her seat in the legislature. The result was a severe rebuke of the movement for Quebec independence. Before the election, Ms. Marois and other party leaders played down the likelihood that they would begin a third referendum on separation if re-elected. For years, polls have shown that a firm majority of Quebecers oppose leaving Canada. But the party’s attempt to avoid the issue, which was the basis of its founding, fell apart last month when it unveiled its star candidate: Pierre Karl Péladeau, a media magnate with extensive broadcasting, newspaper and cable television holdings. He immediately vowed to make Quebec a nation in a rousing speech that concluded with a raised fist. For 18 months, the Parti Québécois relied on support from the opposition in the legislature to remain in power because it lacked a majority. Ms. Marois called the election after her party’s proposal to ban the wearing of religious symbols by public servants elevated its ratings in several polls. But by late Monday night, the Liberals had secured 70 seats, seven more than they needed for a majority. The Parti Québécois held onto 30 seats, putting it not much ahead of the third-place Coalition Avenir Québec, a right-of-center party. Not long after television networks began predicting a Liberal triumph, protesters unhappy with the result began filling some streets in Montreal. But unlike the demonstrations that frequently paralyzed the city two years ago, the protest eventually dissipated. The Liberals were handicapped by an unfolding scandal involving early governments headed by the party, organized crime and contractors. After examining corruption in municipal governments, a public inquiry, suspended during the campaign, is now turning its attention to the provincial level. Philippe Couillard, who was campaigning for the first time as Liberal leader, is a respected neurosurgeon not known for his charisma. His public image was so unfocused at the outset of the vote that there was concern that he might not win election in his electoral district. He was, in fact, elected by a comfortable margin. Ms. Marois announced late Monday night that she was stepping down as the party leader. That could leave open the possibility that Mr. Péladeau, who won a seat in a suburb of Montreal, will move to fill the void.

Election
Parti Quebecois Canada
Liberal Party Canada
Pauline Marois
Pierre Karl Peladeau
Canada
Quebec


Meitu of China, Built on the Selfie, Could Be Worth $5.23 Billion in I.P.O.

Abstract: HONG KONG — For users of Meitu’s signature app, a beautiful touch-up at the press of a button is free. But Meitu is hoping that investors in the company, which wants to “make the world a more beautiful place,” will value it somewhere between $4.6 billion and $5.23 billion. Meitu plans to offer shares at between 8.5 Hong Kong dollars and 9.6 Hong Kong dollars, raising $629 million to $710 million. The company is known for its eponymous selfie app, which allows users to digitally alter their photos, as well as its livestreaming app, Meipai. It also makes smartphones, designed to improve selfie-taking, which are endorsed by the Chinese actress Angelababy. The share listing will offer a rare gauge of whether global investors agree with the sky-high valuations often found in China’s tech start-up scene. Venture capitalists and private investors have leapt into the field, which has given rise to successful app- and gadget-makers amid an e-commerce and financial technology boom. But many of China’s hottest start-ups have been snapped up by its three major internet companies — the e-commerce giant Alibaba Group, the social media and gaming conglomerate Tencent Holdings and the search provider Baidu — before they go public. That leaves it unclear whether the high valuations of many Chinese start-ups can be sustained. The Hong Kong Exchange has not seen a technology offering of this size in nearly a decade. The biggest previous I.P.O. of this type was Alibaba’s listing of its business-to-business e-commerce unit in 2007, in which it raised $1.7 billion, according to data from Dealogic. In general, 2016 has been a quieter year globally for listings. ZTO Express, a Chinese delivery company whose growth was underpinned by its links with Alibaba, raised $1.4 billion when it listed on the New York Stock Exchange in October. Line, the Japanese messaging company , raised about $1.3 billion in July. Meitu said in a news release that it planned to use the proceeds from the offering to expand its smartphone business, buy or invest in other businesses and bolster its marketing. “Through growing our user base and enhancing users’ engagement in a cost-efficient manner, we are determined to develop Meitu as a portfolio of innovative photo and community apps so as to retain and attract more business partners to our ecosystem — which could ultimately contribute to our revenue,” Cai Wensheng, the founder of the company, said in a news release. The company has a variety of beauty-focused apps with about 456 million users, but most of its revenue comes from selling smartphones in China, Hong Kong, Macau and Taiwan. Shares are expected to start trading on Dec. 15. The offering is sponsored by Morgan Stanley, Credit Suisse and China Merchants Securities.

IPO
Mobile Apps
Hong Kong
Meitu
Stocks,Bonds
Hong Kong Stock Exchange
Smartphone