Student Loans Start to Bypass 2-Year Colleges

Abstract: Some of the nation’s biggest banks have closed their doors to students at community colleges, for-profit universities and other less competitive institutions, even as they continue to extend federally backed loans to students at the nation’s top universities. Citibank has been among the most aggressive in paring the list of colleges it serves. JPMorgan Chase, PNC and SunTrust say they have not dropped whole categories, but are cutting colleges as well. Some less-selective four-year colleges, like Eastern Oregon University and William Jessup University in Rocklin, Calif., say they have been summarily dropped by some lenders. The practice suggests that if the credit crisis and the ensuing turmoil in the student loan business persist, some of the nation’s neediest students will be hurt the most. The difficulty borrowing may deter them from attending school or prompt them to take a semester off. When they get student loans, they will wind up with less attractive terms and may run a greater risk of default if they have to switch lenders in the middle of their college years. Tuition and loan amounts can be quite small at community colleges. But these institutions, which are a stepping stone to other educational programs or to better jobs, often draw students from the lower rungs of the economic ladder. More than 6.2 million of the nation’s 14.8 million undergraduates — over 40 percent — attend community colleges. According to the most recent data from the College Board, about a third of their graduates took out loans, a majority of them federally guaranteed. “If we put too many hurdles in their way to get a loan, they’ll take a third job or use a credit card,” said Jacqueline K. Bradley, assistant dean for financial aid at Mendocino College in California. “That almost guarantees that they won’t be as successful in their college career.” So far, financial aid administrators say they have been able to find fallback lenders that students can switch to, but the hurdles are costly to students — in money and time. The maximum interest rate on federal loans, now at 6.8 percent on the most commonly used loans, is set by Congress, but lenders are scrapping benefits, like rate cuts for borrowers who make their payments on time or allow direct withdrawals from bank accounts. Some loan companies have exited the student loan business entirely, viewing it as unprofitable in the current environment. By splitting out community colleges and less-selective four-year institutions, some remaining lenders seem to be breaking the marketplace into tiers. Students attending elite, expensive, public and private four-year universities can expect loans to remain plentiful. The banks generally say these loans are bigger, more profitable and less risky, in part perhaps because the banks expect the universities’ graduates to earn more. Lenders will not say how many colleges they have dropped, making it hard to determine just how many institutions have been affected. Although financial aid administrators say the trend is widespread, they are often reluctant to identify which lenders have stopped serving their colleges, for fear that it will complicate matters for current students who have taken out loans from those lenders and still need to deal with them. Michelle McClain, 40, who is studying to become a teacher, learned on Friday that she would have to find a new lender after Citibank dropped William Jessup University. The news angered her. “The loan is between me and the lender,” Ms. McClain said. “I’m the one that’s taking out the loan, I’m the one whose credit is in jeopardy if I don’t pay it, I am the one totally responsible for the loan, and as long as I’m going to an accredited college, I don’t understand why it would make one iota of difference where I am going to college.” The government has been taking additional steps to keep the student loan market operating smoothly. And some lenders’ doors remain wide open. Sallie Mae and Nelnet recently reaffirmed their commitment to federal loans regardless of the institution a student attends. Kristin Shear, director of student financial services at Santa Rosa Junior College, said that days after the school was dropped by Citibank, Wells Fargo called to say it was eager to lend to students there. The banks that are pulling out say their decisions are based on an analysis of which colleges have higher default rates, low numbers of borrowers and small loan amounts that make the business less profitable. (The average amount borrowed by community college students is about $3,200 a year, according to the College Board.) Still, the cherry-picking strikes some as peculiar; after all, the government is guaranteeing 95 percent of the value of these loans. Mark C. Rodgers, a spokesman for Citibank, which lends through its Student Loan Corporation unit, said the bank had “temporarily suspended lending at schools which tend to have loans with lower balances and shorter periods over which we earn interest. And, in general, we are suspending lending at certain schools where we anticipate processing minimal loan volume.” Financial aid officials in California said that Citibank had stopped making loans to students at all community colleges in the state. Mr. Rodgers said the bank would not provide details about which schools were affected. The financial aid director at William Jessup, Korey Compaan, said he did not understand the bank’s explanation. “The logic is so flawed, that for us to have volume with them in the future, we have to have had volume with them in the past,” Mr. Compaan said. Simply to cut off students at a college, he continued, “I find it totally and completely unethical.” The government sets the criteria for college participation in federal loan programs, requiring that colleges be accredited and have low default rates to participate, for example. Now lenders are being more selective than the government. “There’s been a certain amount of market segmentation going on, but this is the first time we’ve seen a lender, especially as large as Citibank, saying, ‘We don’t want to do business with you,’ ” said Samuel F. Collie, director of financial aid at Eastern Oregon University in La Grande, Ore. “There’s a fundamental issue of fairness and equity that’s certainly not being addressed in this,” Mr. Collie said. “But short of completely revamping the way that financial aid, especially loans, is being delivered to students in this country, I don’t know that we have any easy answers.” The credit crisis, which has made it harder for some lenders to raise money, and a reduction in the government’s subsidy to lenders have contributed to the reevaluations by the lenders. “This is one of those perfect storm situations,” said Susan L. Mead, director of financial aid at Dutchess Community College in New York. She said her institution had been dropped by no less than six lenders: HSBC, Citibank, M&T, Chase, Citizens Bank and Student Loan Xpress. Christine Holevas, a spokeswoman for Chase, said that the bank considered several factors in deciding whether to lend to a particular college’s students. “The repayment rate, you look at the size and length of the loan,” she said. “We have tightened credit standards, yes, but we haven’t cut off any category of school.” Hugh Suhr, a spokesman for SunTrust, said it was “stepping away from some relationships” with universities, but that this was “not based on any particular type of school.” Mr. Suhr said the bank continued to lend to students at a range of institutions. Another danger for students is that as they are forced to find and switch to replacement lenders, they may lose track of some debt obligations and miss a few payments. “It might put them in default,” said Claudia Martin, director of financial aid at Monterey Peninsula College, a community college in California that was dropped by Citibank and two other lenders. “We always recommend that a student stay with the same lender all through school.” Commercial colleges, among the first to suffer when lenders withdrew from the market, have been openly critical of the new differentiation. “From what I can tell from our lawyers, it’s not technically illegal for them to reject schools,” said Harris N. Miller, the president of the Career College Association in Washington, a trade group for commercial colleges. “I just think that’s very objectionable.”

Student Loans
Banks and Banking
Colleges and Universities


Letters to the Editor

Abstract: N.F.L. Plants Seeds For Trouble In the Future To the Sports Editor: Re “ N.F.L. Shifts on Concussions, and Game May Never Be the Same ,” March 16: Jeff Miller, the N.F.L.’s senior vice president for health and safety policy, expresses concern that fewer children play organized football because of parents’ worries about brain safety. In response, the N.F.L. has developed new initiatives to hook children, including a fantasy football game where children age 6 to 12 compete for valuable prizes. It’s disappointing that the league encourages children to have a financial stake in its games, in that way planting a seed that could lead to gambling addiction later in life. Whether it’s the violent game of tackle football or the adult activity of playing fantasy sports for prizes, the N.F.L. should realize that not playing is better for children. DAVID MONAHAN, Boston • To the Sports Editor: Whether the N.F.L.’s admission that football entails risk of chronic brain injury will, as the article states, “profoundly affect the country’s most popular sport” is questionable. For while it may dilute the talent pool to some minimal extent, the immediate and lavish gratification provided these young athletes by the megamillion-dollar player salaries now commonplace will in most instances override the inchoate, years-later possibility of disabling health consequences, thus ensuring continued, widespread participation. RICHARD BOYCE, San Francisco • To the Sports Editor: While is it heartening to know that there has been a long overdue recognition by the N.F.L. of the risks that are involved in concussions, it is amazing that boxing escapes criticism for the same thing. Unless I misunderstand it, the primary goal of a boxer in a match is to knock his or her opponent out; it seems to me that a knockout almost by definition means a concussion. At least in football, banging on heads is incidental to the game, while in boxing it is the ultimate effort. Isn’t the time past due for a major adjustment, if not elimination, of boxing? KEN BUTERA, Philadelphia The Proper Authority To the Sports Editor: Re “ Something Is Missing in High School Hazing Stories: Adults ,” March 15: Colleges, high schools and religious entities should not have the choice on whether sexual crimes should be handled in house or by the legal system. As we’ve seen time and again, the vested interest in maintaining the thinnest veneers of moral authority takes precedence over the victims of such crimes. Sexual crimes are the jurisdiction of the police and the judicial system, period. Any person who creates and fosters an environment where these heinous acts occur must be held accountable for a woeful lack of guidance and morality. NANCY CERSONSKY, Oxford, Conn. A Model for the Mideast To the Sports Editor: Re “ Making Baskets, Not a Statement ,” March 13: The photo on the first sports page captures the excitement of young fans at being near Karam Mashour, the only player of Arab heritage in Israel’s top basketball league. His stance is kind as he leans in to talk with little boys who are wearing kippot (skullcaps). This is what the Middle East could be: the innocence of children; the understanding of adults; a shared love of basketball. RIVKAH BLAU, New York

Football
NFL
Super Bowl
Super Bowl 2015
Concussion
Basketball


On Pro Football: Ryan’s Lack of Control Led to Jets’ Downfall

Abstract: FLORHAM PARK, N.J. Can you still be considered the ultimate players’ coach after one of your handpicked captains has been called out by teammates for quitting on you? For three years, we have driven home this notion about Rex Ryan to where it became a veritable news media mantra. There supposedly wasn’t a helmeted man in America who didn’t wish to block and sweat for Ryan — the anti- Tom Coughlin , the yapping Buddha of N.F.L. behemoths, the irresistible trash talker on an inevitable march to a Super Bowl title. But now we have the paradoxical disclosure of Ryan having ended his third season at the helm of the Jets by making a tearful plea for unity to an 8-8 team that sagged and collapsed under the weight of its own sloppy disposition. A disposition, mind you, that most accurately reflected its unconventional-to-a-fault head coach. It was guard Matt Slauson who told of Ryan’s emotions spilling over as he addressed the Jets on Monday, dispersal day, “because he loves us.” While love is a useful and occasionally powerful sentiment for a professional football coach to share with his players, it is probably not the most necessary one on the road to where Coughlin and the Giants have already gone. That would be the Super Bowl, won by the Giants over New England four years ago next month after Coughlin looked in the mirror and admitted to himself that fear was another extreme that on its own didn’t work either. On the subject of crying, Ryan copped to a plea of being Irish while also insisting that his reputation of coaching on the buddy system was also an exaggeration. “I’m always going to be myself,” he said, referring to his natural and often appealing affability. “But maybe I’m a little sterner than the perception is.” Here is the problem with that distinction. It misses the point on Ryan’s most glaring deficiency as a leader of men in a ferocious and necessarily regimented sport. How can he claim to have a firm command of his team if he too often doesn’t have control of himself? As a head coach on training wheels — and that’s what he still is, those consecutive conference title games notwithstanding — Ryan has mastered just one style, invoking the imagery of the Jets as a green-and-white steamroller, guaranteeing to obliterate everything in its path. Show no respect. Take no prisoners. And never back down, even when the steamroller breaks down, or when the coach is confronted by a screaming fan or a gloating opponent. The underlying message is that brash can’t possibly be bad, which is presumably how Ryan last summer had the remarkable epiphany of naming Santonio Holmes — nobody’s idea of a leader or behavioral role model — as one of his captains. Sunday’s embarrassment at Miami — where Holmes, the star receiver, drew the ire of teammates for, in effect, giving up — was only a symptom of a greater disease, of too many player and coaching agendas. The unity plea was at least three weeks late, according to Ryan. “For whatever reason, I didn’t think we were as close of a football team as we were the last two years,” he said. The social fabric of any family is bound to unravel when self-discipline is so short in supply. Naming Holmes a captain was worse than brash. It was reckless. It also put him in the position of having to be something he is not, the way Ryan has set Mark Sanchez up to contextually fail in the face of his silly Super Bowl guarantees. Holmes’s issues were apparently with the offensive coordinator, Brian Schottenheimer — who remains on the job at least until he can get another — but Holmes should have been disciplined or benched by Ryan for his ridiculous celebration after a touchdown catch in Philadelphia two weeks ago that drew a 15-yard penalty that snuffed out any chance of a comeback. What the juxtaposed seasons of Ryan and Coughlin teach us is that being a players’ coach is ultimately more about accountability than likability. Ryan owed it to the rest of his players to do something about Holmes before they were forced to take matters into their own hands in the season’s dying moments. “We will change things,” Ryan promised at his joint news conference with General Manager Mike Tannenbaum. This season’s implosion in no way negates Ryan’s strong work during the previous two. Even the almighty — Bill Parcells and Bill Belichick — have had the experience of the fallback season, fairly common in the Any Given Sunday N.F.L. But the question is what, if anything, has Ryan learned from it? If he comes back next summer and does the guarantee thing again, we will know right away the answer is nothing. On Monday, for starters, he announced that he was completely done with naming captains. With Sanchez performing so poorly of late, you half expected Ryan, in his own grand fashion, to say that the Jets would play next season without a quarterback. What Ryan doesn’t seem to get yet is that the head coach needs to weigh and limit his pronouncements. He should worry more about his team’s drive-killing penalties, the brain-lock timeouts and, most of all, the growing delight around the league whenever the mouthy Jets fail. If he is really the ultimate players’ coach, he should learn how to protect them from the bonfire of their vanities. Once and for all, he should stop telling the world how great the Jets are until they can prove it.

New York Jets
Ryan Rex
Slauson Matt
Coughlin Tom
Holmes Santonio
Football


Canada Is Trying to Change the Subject Back to Hockey

Abstract: MISSISSAUGA, Ontario, Feb. 13 - Wayne Gretzky stood in front of a black curtain backdrop Monday as the Canadian Olympic men's hockey team prepared to depart for Italy. He was hoping to answer questions about the team's prospects for defending its gold medal. The trouble was, few of the several dozen reporters were here to talk hockey. The news conference, at a hockey rink in this Toronto suburb, was dominated by questions concerning the gambling scandal that has shaken the N.H.L. and Gretzky's team, the Phoenix Coyotes. Gretzky chuckled nervously during the five-minute news conference. When one reporter asked him to respond to a gossip column report that he and his wife, Janet Jones, gamble at casinos, an official with Hockey Canada intervened. "We're just going to take questions about hockey, guys," the official said, as Gretzky rubbed the bridge of his nose, laughed and said, "Oh, gosh." Gretzky became ensnared in the controversy last week after reports surfaced that his wife, a former actress, had placed bets with a multimillion-dollar gambling ring. Rick Tocchet, a former Philadelphia Flyers captain who is now an assistant with the Coyotes, was one of three people who have been charged by the New Jersey state police in connection with the ring. Speculation over Gretzky's possible involvement increased after several published reports last week, citing law enforcement sources, stated that Gretzky had been caught on a police wiretap talking with Tocchet about the case. The implication was that the conversation had taken place weeks ago, which would have meant that Gretzky had had an idea of what was going on well before charges were filed against Tocchet. But more recent reports have stated that the wiretaps in question deal with conversations that took place last Monday, the day that Tocchet was being served with a summons. That would suggest that Gretzky might have learned about the case when he said he did. Asked if he was struggling to keep focused on the Olympics, Gretzky replied: "Oh, I can keep it. It's you guys who are having trouble." "There's nothing for me to talk about," he added. "I'm not involved, and it's been a hard week for my family, and the only focus I have right now is this hockey team and getting ready for the Olympic Games. The focus should be on these athletes who've worked their lives to be in the Olympic Games." Gretzky also said the Canadian team, led by Devils goalie Martin Brodeur and Colorado Avalanche center Joe Sakic, should not be distracted, either. "They're used to the attention, they're in the N.H.L.," Gretzky said. "They're always under a microscope. We're a team that is always looked at to win a gold medal. This will be no different. Our team looks forward to the challenge." Gretzky's ties to Tocchet's alleged gambling ring have caused reverberations across Canada, and prompted responses in his defense from the likes of Ken Dryden, the former Montreal Canadiens star goalie who is now a member of Parliament, and the newly elected prime minister of Canada, Stephen Harper. "I'm sure he'll do us proud over there," Harper said. Columnists for The Globe and Mail and The Toronto Sun have suggested that Gretzky should skip the Olympics because he would be a distraction. "I'd say 60 percent of Canadians believe Wayne's great and that he didn't do anything and are offended by any suggestion that he's done anything wrong," said Bob McCown, a broadcaster with the Toronto sports radio station the Fan 590. "He's beloved because he was a great hockey player, and in Canada, that's all you have to be. Everybody here puts blinders on regarding anything that could be regarded as negative."

GRETZKY WAYNE
OLYMPIC GAMES (2006)
HOCKEY ICE


Airlines Suspend Flights to Iraq’s Baghdad Airport After Jet Is Hit by Gunfire

Abstract: BAGHDAD — A commercial jet carrying 154 passengers was struck by gunfire as it landed at Baghdad International Airport, officials said Tuesday, adding to fears that Iraq ’s most important transportation hub remains vulnerable to militant attacks. One passenger, a 6-year-old girl, was lightly injured when at least three bullets struck the plane on Monday, airline and Iraqi officials said. The plane, a 737-800 operated by Flydubai, a budget carrier based in the United Arab Emirates, landed safely. The airline said that damage “consistent with small-arms fire” was discovered on the fuselage of the plane after it landed at 1:50 p.m. The airline and at least a half-dozen others, including the national airline, canceled flights to and from Baghdad on Tuesday. Officials did not say who had carried out the shooting, and there were no immediate claims of responsibility. Concerns about the safety of air traffic intensified greatly when the Islamic State group began capturing territory across Iraq more than six months ago, especially given the mounting evidence that the militants have acquired sophisticated antiaircraft weapons. The vulnerability of Baghdad’s airport has been of particular concern. The complex sits between the capital and its western suburbs, including farmlands that are periodically infiltrated by militants despite months of effort by Iraqi troops to secure Baghdad. Farther to the west, Islamic State fighters still control several strongholds in Anbar Province, including the city of Falluja, a 45-minute drive from Baghdad. The airport also serves as a logistical lifeline for military operations throughout the country, including for the United States. Over the past few months, Iraqi and American officials have delivered repeated assurances that the airport is secure, in an acknowledgment of the potential psychological impact of any attack on the facility or commercial aircraft. Early last summer, when advances by the Islamic State brought the militants within 15 miles of the airport, the Pentagon sent Apache attack helicopters, drones and 200 soldiers to defend the complex, believing it was vulnerable. Even as the airport was defended from being overrun, pilots still complained of being targeted by small-arms fire from areas surrounding the airport that have proven difficult to secure, including the Abu Ghraib district. In August, an Iraqi Airways captain told colleagues that his plane had been struck by gunfire as it approached the airport but had landed safely. Pilots at the time complained that airport officials were trying to play down the shooting to avoid scaring airlines away from the country. The director of Iraqi Airways, the national carrier, denied that report of a shooting, blaming rumormongering by the Islamic State, also known as ISIS or ISIL. A pilot who regularly flies to Baghdad Airport said that because of winds on Monday, the Flydubai flight had used an approach that brought the plane over Abu Ghraib. The pilot requested anonymity because he was not authorized to speak about the shooting. The passenger who was struck, Fatima Tabra, was sitting toward the front of the plane. She suffered light grazes to one of her hands, caused by bits of plastic that sprayed when one of bullets pierced the fuselage, according to her father, Ahmed Tabra. Mr. Tabra, who was not on the plane, said his family had said that the plane was struck about 10 minutes before landing. After the bullet sliced through the airplane, leaving a hole, the slug fell at Fatima’s feet, her father said. A State Department spokesman in Washington said in an email on Tuesday: “Local airport officials have informed our embassy in Baghdad that four shots struck a Flydubai aircraft yesterday. We are consulting with Iraqi security officials to obtain more details of the incident.” On Tuesday, several airlines appeared to take the threat seriously. At least two other airlines from the United Arab Emirates, Etihad Airways and Emirates, said that they were suspending flights to Baghdad. In a statement, Etihad, based in Abu Dhabi, said that it was complying with a ban by the United Arab Emirates General Civil Aviation Authority on flights to and from Baghdad for security reasons. “The safety of our guests and employees is always our first priority,” the airline said. “We will continue to work closely with the authorities and monitor the security situation before recommencing scheduled services to Baghdad.” Flights by Turkish and Jordanian airlines were also temporarily suspended, airport officials said. Speaking at the airport on Tuesday, Iraq’s transportation minister, Baqir Jabr al-Zubaidi, sought to reassure international airlines by dismissing the shooting as “accidental.” He said that the authorities had determined the area where the gunfire had originated, but did not provide any further detail about the source. “The whole thing was just a simple scratch to a little girl,” he added. Mr. Zubaidi said that Iraq’s national carrier was prepared to pick up passengers if other international carriers continued to suspend their flights. He asked journalists to join him on a 10-minute flight around the city, “to send a message to everyone that the airport is secure.”

Iraq
Baghdad International Airport
Flydubai
Airlines,airplanes
Plane Crash


Real Madrid Wins Easily in Zidane’s Debut as Coach

Abstract: Zinedine Zidane’s career as a head coach got off to a winning start Saturday as Real Madrid routed visiting Deportivo La Coruña, 5-0, in the Spanish league. Gareth Bale had three goals, and Karim Benzema had two — one with a back-heel flick. Zidane, a former Real Madrid star midfielder, received a warm welcome at Santiago Bernabéu Stadium in Madrid, with fans loudly cheering him before and after the game. It was a completely different atmosphere compared with when Rafa Benítez was in charge; he was jeered in nearly every game since a demoralizing 4-0 home loss to Barcelona in November, a result that ignited a crisis at Real Madrid, a Spanish powerhouse. “The fans were behind the team from the first minute until the end,” Zidane said. “It was a great atmosphere. But we have to understand that this was only the first game; we have to keep winning.” Real Madrid is 2 points behind Barcelona, which earlier defeated visiting Granada, 4-0, with three goals by Lionel Messi and one by Neymar. It was Messi’s first hat trick of the season and the 33rd of his career. On a shortlist with Neymar and Cristiano Ronaldo, Messi is favored to win a record fifth Ballon d’Or, an award for the world’s top men’s player, on Monday. Second-place Atlético Madrid, which is 1 point behind Barcelona, can regain the league lead when it plays at fifth-place Celta Vigo on Sunday. But Barcelona will have a game in hand. Zidane, who thrived at Madrid until retiring in 2006, stepped up from coaching Madrid’s B team when Benítez was fired on Monday after seven months on the job. “It means a lot to me to be here,” Zidane said. “I want to enjoy this win.” ARSENAL RALLIES Arsenal began the defense of its F.A. Cup title with a 3-1 comeback victory over visiting Sunderland in the third round of the tournament while Manchester City defeated host Norwich, 3-0, and Manchester United beat visiting Sheffield United, 1-0. Aston Villa, a Premier League club, was held to 1-1 draw at fourth-tier Wycombe while host Eastleigh, of England’s fifth tier, tied second-division Bolton, 1-1. It looked as if there might be a shock at Emirates Stadium in London as Arsenal, the Premier League leader, fell behind on a Jermaine Lens goal after 17 minutes for Sunderland, which is second to last in the league. But Joel Campbell tied the score, and two goals in three second-half minutes, from the substitute Aaron Ramsey and Olivier Giroud, sealed Arsenal’s place in the fourth round. Manchester City had no problems at Norwich. Sergio Agüero beat four players before scoring the opener and assisted on the second goal, scored by Kelechi Iheanacho. Kevin De Bruyne added the third. Manchester United needed a penalty-kick goal from Wayne Rooney in second-half stoppage time to avoid a tie against third-tier Sheffield. Eastleigh went up by 1-0 in the second half of its match with an own goal by Bolton defender Dorian Dervite, but Darren Pratley saved Bolton from humiliation by leveling the score moments from the end. Villa became the second Premier League team to fail to beat a fourth-tier opponent. Micah Richards, Villa’s captain, gave his side the lead in the first half, but Joe Jacobson tied the score for Wycombe with a penalty kick. Villa is last in the Premier League, and the draw stretched its winless run to 16 matches. Everton beat fourth-division Dagenham, 2-0, at Goodison Park with goals from Arouna Koné and Kevin Mirallas. Host West Bromwich needed a late goal from James Morrison to tie second-tier Bristol City, 2-2. Bournemouth came from a goal behind to win at Birmingham, 2-1. Southampton lost, 2-1, to visiting Crystal Palace; host Watford beat Newcastle, 1-0; host West Ham edged Wolverhampton, 1-0; and Stoke won at Doncaster, 2-1.

Soccer
Lionel Messi
FA Cup
Arsenal Soccer Team
Sunderland Soccer Team
Deportivo La Coruna Soccer Team
Real Madrid


Rallying Round a Train That Gets No Respect

Abstract: If you will excuse a biblical flourish, the G train is the Moses of New York mass transit. Like Moses, it never made it to the Promised Land. That is, if Manhattan is your idea of divine promise. With its nosebleed-inducing apartment prices and rents, some think of it as flowing not so much with milk and honey as with bilk and money. In any event, the G train has the distinction of being the city’s only subway line that makes no stops in Manhattan, the heart and wallet of New York. It is a lime green squiggle on the subway map, running from Brooklyn to Queens. Much of the day it barely gasps into Queens, making but two stops there. It meanders through Brooklyn neighborhoods like Carroll Gardens, Cobble Hill, Fort Greene and Greenpoint, places that are enjoying grand revivals and impressive measures of cachet among the young and mobile. Would that the same might be said of the G line. That was the lament of about 100 people who gathered Wednesday evening at Lafayette Avenue Presbyterian Church in Fort Greene for a sort of pep rally. Next month, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority will consider possible improvements in subway service. You might not want to hold your breath. But should there be glad tidings, those who ride the G train want to make sure they are not shut out. They attended Wednesday’s meeting much the same way college students ring bonfires before a big football game — to get the juices flowing. Odds are strong that most of you have never ridden the G. Some of you may have never even heard of it. G train people understand. They’re used to being overlooked. “You can’t spell ‘neglected’ without G,” Councilman David Yassky of Brooklyn said. “You can’t spell ‘ignored’ without G.” When G riders talk about their line, the phrase “unwanted stepchild” passes their lips a lot. Rodney Dangerfield, as in “I don’t get no respect,” gets his share of mentions, too. Assemblyman Hakeem Jeffries of Brooklyn, who organized the church gathering, lost little time before making a Rodney-G connection. By most measures, the G ranks near the bottom. Transit officials put weekday ridership at 100,000 a day. Only two regular lines, the W and the M, and the system’s three shuttle trains have lower numbers. By comparison, the ridership of the most heavily used line, the No. 6, is 700,000. In a “report card” that the transportation authority solicited from riders last year, the G line got a dismal D-plus. Even a senior transit official, Peter G. Cafiero, acknowledged at a City Council hearing last month that G service, particularly on the Queens run, is “consistently inconsistent.” DESPITE improvements in recent years, riders cite statistics showing that G trains still arrive less often than those on most other lines. “I stand at Hoyt-Schermerhorn and wonder when is the Toonerville Trolley going to make it,” said Thomas F. Schutte, the president of Pratt Institute. That Toonerville Trolley line refers to another distinctive feature of the G train: It is only four cars long. That fact sticks in a lot of craws. With neighborhoods along the line growing, trains are often overcrowded. Then, too, with only four cars, trains do not extend the length of station platforms. “You often see a mad dash to that train,” Mr. Jeffries said. Twisted ankles are not unknown. In truth, the G has always been short on glamour, even if Charles Mingus once wrote an instrumental number called “GG Train,” the line’s designation before a systemwide phaseout of double letters in the 1980s. A decade ago, Stan Fischler, who has written books on New York’s subways, gave the G his lowest ranking: one star out of five, meaning it was “hardly worth the token.” (Some day, young ’uns, we’ll explain what a token was.) As much as anything, G riders share the long-simmering resentment of many New Yorkers who live outside Manhattan — namely that they don’t get their due because they are in “the outer boroughs.” Those feelings surfaced more than once on Wednesday, reflected in the applause for Jo Ann Simon, a Democratic district leader in Brooklyn, when she said, “We know that Manhattan is not the center of the universe.” Clearly, transit officials are sensitive about the unwanted-stepchild charge. Mr. Cafiero went out of his way to reject it at the Council hearing. He also dismissed long-heard whispers that “we are secretly trying to get rid of” the G line entirely. Not so, he said. Speaking of whispers, allow us to note that tradition holds that Moses stuttered. Kind of like the train service they get, G riders say.

Transit Systems
Metropolitan Transportation Authority
Brooklyn (NYC)
Manhattan (NYC)


Japan Nears Takeover of Troubled Tokyo Electric Power

Abstract: TOKYO — Japan is ready to nationalize Tokyo Electric Power, the operator of the ravaged Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, under a 1 trillion yen ($12.5 billion) bailout plan that was approved on Wednesday. The Japanese government has been scrambling to keep the utility company from collapsing so it can meet the billions of dollars in compensation claims and decommission the reactors at Fukushima Daiichi, all while continuing to provide the Tokyo metropolis with stable electricity. The government is also eager to push through reforms to restore public trust in a company that has played a vital role in Japan’s energy policy but has also admitted safety lapses and cover-ups at its power plants. The $12.5 billion bailout comes at a time when the government itself is carrying a debt burden that has mushroomed to more than twice the size of the economy. “I ask that you rebuild the trust that has been lost,” Yukio Edano, the Japanese trade minister, told executives of the utility on Wednesday after his ministry approved the 10-year plan. “We consider the plan a new start and are prepared to thoroughly carry it out,” said Toshio Nishizawa, president of Tokyo Electric, also known as Tepco. The Fukushima Daiichi plant was heavily damaged by a powerful earthquake and tsunami in March 2011, which eventually led to multiple meltdowns at the site and a huge radiation leak that forced tens of thousands from their homes. The government has separately committed 2.4 trillion yen ($30.1 billion) in taxpayer money to meet compensation payments arising from the accident. But estimates of the payments that Tepco might have to make have reached many tens of billions of dollars, making further government support likely. Finances at Tepco have also been battered by the costs of decommissioning at least four of the Fukushima plant’s six reactors, a process that could take decades. And the utility has been incurring large fuel costs as it makes up for capacity lost at Fukushima Daiichi, as well as two other nuclear power plants that have been shut down since the quake. Tepco has pushed to reopen at least one of those plants but has so far been hampered by local opposition. Tepco will issue special shares of up to 1 trillion yen to the government, which will acquire majority voting rights. The government will cede control of Tepco once its credibility is restored enough that it can raise money through the corporate bond market. To further shore up its finances, Tepco is expected to raise electricity rates — as much as 10 percent for normal households — in a move that is certain to add to the public anger already directed at the company over the disaster. The plan also calls for Tepco to make cost savings of 3.36 trillion yen ($42.2 billion) over 10 years. It calls for all of Tepco’s 16 directors to resign at its next shareholders’ meeting, in June, and for the new board to have a majority of outside directors. Tepco has already announced that a new president, Naomi Hirose, will take over in June, pending shareholder approval. Kazuhiko Shimokobe, a corporate turnaround lawyer, is slated to become Tepco’s next chairman, succeeding Tsunehisa Katsumata, who became something of a national villain for what appeared to be a lack of remorse after the nuclear calamity. Mr. Katsumata never visited Fukushima to meet with victims after the accident. Tepco said earlier this week that he had been busy directing the company response from its headquarters in Tokyo. “This plan forms the basis for how a new Tokyo Electric will proceed with reforms,” said Mr. Edano, the trade minister. “I strongly hope that under new management, Tepco will become more sensitive to the victims of the disaster, as well as its customers and the wider public, change the way it shares information, and reform its corporate culture.”

Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant (Japan)


Visa Names Chief Ahead of I.P.O.

Abstract: Visa named a credit card industry veteran, Joseph W. Saunders, as chairman and chief executive yesterday, to oversee preparations for a planned initial public offering. Visa, the world’s largest credit card payment system, had appointed Mr. Saunders to help Visa find a chief executive but in the end decided that he was the best choice, the company said. Mr. Saunders, 61, was previously president of card services at Washington Mutual, which he joined after the bank acquired his former employer, Providian Financial. Visa said in October that it planned a public offering to finance its expansion and help pay legal costs, saying it expected the process to take 12 to 18 months. As part of the lead-up to the offering, the company plans later this year to merge its United States, Canadian and international units to form Visa Inc., the entity that will go public and be led by Mr. Saunders.

Visa International Inc
Appointments and Executive Changes
Saunders Joseph W.
Credit and Money Cards


Spain Says 2 Confessed to 2006 Airport Bombing

Abstract: MADRID — Two men accused of being members of a militant Basque separatist group who were arrested last weekend have confessed to carrying out the December 2006 bomb attack on Madrid’s airport that killed two people and shattered peace talks with the militant group, the government said Wednesday. The capture of the men in the Basque region of northern Spain on Sunday could bolster the government of Prime Minister José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero. It was criticized for engaging ETA in talks after the group declared a cease-fire in March 2006. The government has cracked down on ETA since the airport bombing, arresting dozens of militants and others linked to the group, and it has thwarted several attacks. The Spanish interior minister, Alfredo Pérez Rubalcaba, told reporters that the men, Igor Portu and Martín Sarasola, carried out the attack on the Barajas airport along with a third man still at large, Mikel San Sebastián. The truck bomb destroyed a multistory parking garage and killed two Ecuadorean men who were sleeping in their cars. Mr. Rubalcaba said Mr. Sarasola told the police significant details about how the bombing was carried out and how the attackers fled that he could not have known if he were not involved. Mr. Rubalcaba said the men were also planning a new bombing on the scale of the Barajas attack, but he gave no details. A local radio station, Cadena Ser, said the attack was to be directed at a complex of shops and office buildings in northern Madrid. But the arrests stirred controversy when it became known that Mr. Portu had been taken to an emergency room after his arrest with a broken rib, a punctured lung and severe bruising. The newspaper El País reported Wednesday on its Web site that medical reports indicated that Mr. Sarasola was bruised during or after his arrest. Mr. Rubalcaba denied that the police had mistreated the detainees, who he said resisted arrest and had to be chased and forced to the ground. “Members of ETA always claim to have been tortured,” he said. “It’s in the instruction manual.” The police said the interrogations led them to two caches, one in the northern province of Huesca, which contained about 275 pounds of materials for explosives, and another in Navarra, also in the north, which held detonators, timers and explosives.

Basques
ETA
Spain
Bombs and Explosives
Airports
Politics and Government


Ryan Callahan and Carl Hagelin Have Shoulder Surgery

Abstract: Rangers forwards Ryan Callahan and Carl Hagelin are expected to miss at least part of training camp and perhaps the beginning of next season after each underwent surgery to repair a torn labrum in the left shoulder on Friday. The procedures were performed by Dr. Andrew Feldman at the N.Y.U. Langone Medical Center’s Hospital for Joint Diseases in Manhattan. Callahan, the Rangers captain, and Hagelin both skated through the Rangers’ 12 playoff games without any indication that they were hurt. Callahan scored 2 goals and 5 points, and Hagelin scored 3 goals and 6 points. The Rangers said both players were expected to recover in four to five months. Last year, Marian Gaborik, then still a Ranger, had surgery to repair a torn labrum in his right shoulder on June 6 and was cleared to return in mid-December, six months later. Like Callahan and Hagelin, he played through the postseason with the undisclosed injury. A four-month absence would enable Callahan and Hagelin to return at the beginning of October, after the start of training camp but before the start of the regular season.

Surgery
Rangers
Carl Hagelin
Sports injury
Ice hockey


Old-School Charm at Jim’s Shoe Repair

Abstract: On a recent Thursday afternoon, Jim’s Shoe Repair , at 50 East 59th Street between Park and Madison, was packed. Customers — surrounded by old-school shoeshine chairs with brass pedestals and other objects from bygone eras like an oversize gold register from the 1940s — waited to speak with Joe Rocco, 58, or his son Andrew Rocco, 27. Interactions were unhurried and convivial. Michael Kahn, a substitute teacher who lives on the West Side of Manhattan, was there to collect his too-tight black sandals he had taken in for stretching. He saw Joe, smiled, and asked, “How’re you doing Joe?” Handing Mr. Kahn his sandals, Joe said, “All good here, and always good to see you.” Image The shop, run by Joe Rocco, opened in 1932, and has remained a family business. Credit Sasha Maslov for The New York Times Mr. Kahn went to try them on in an individual waiting booth, one of six vintage seating areas, each with a padded chair and a half-door. The booths, lined up against the wall, were part of the original store, which used to be just across the street. Vito Rocco, Joe’s grandfather and an Italian immigrant, opened it in 1932, and it has remained a family business. The sandals were still lightly snug, and more stretching was needed. But a return trip didn’t seem to bother Mr. Kahn. “I’ve been coming in since 1970,” he said, “and I come for the company as much as I do for the craftsmanship.” Jennifer Ha, who works nearby as a financial analyst, relaxed in a booth while waiting for a repair to be finished. The heels of her purple suede pumps had worn out, and rather than drop them off, she stayed to take in the store’s ambience, as she had been doing for the past nine years. Image Evelyn Rocco at the counter. Jim’s was saved in 2014 after an expansion of an adjoining Duane Reade had threatened its survival. Credit Sasha Maslov for The New York Times “Being here is my break from work,” she said. “I love how old-fashioned it is, and I know I’m going to see the same faces each time I walk in the door.” Sitting quietly was Ms. Ha’s way to appreciate Jim’s, but Mark Snyder, a periodontist who lives in Midtown and a regular for more than 40 years, used his visit to chat with the shoe shiner Antonio De Oliveira, who has been tending to him for around two decades. As Mr. De Oliveira polished Mr. Snyder’s brown Oxfords, the two exchanged updates on their families and discussed the mutual relief they both still felt, nearly two years later, that Jim’s had been saved. It was in 2014 when the adjoining Duane Reade was set to expand into the shop. A longtime customer and lawyer, Bill Brewer, organized an effort to save the place. In early 2015, Joe signed a new eight-year lease. “Shutting the store would mean saying goodbye to my grandfather’s dream,” Joe said. Image In the basement of the repair shop. Credit Sasha Maslov for The New York Times That dream — owning a cobbler shop with the highest quality repairs — came to fruition for Vito Rocco over 80 years ago. He called it Jim’s, thinking an American name would bring in more business than a shop named Vito’s. It moved to its current location in 1940 and now handles a few thousand pairs of shoes at a time, with the help of 10 craftsmen. Joe’s father, also named Joe, now 86, works part time attending to customers while his aunt Cordelia, 82, handles the register. Meanwhile, the next generation is training to take over: Andrew’s two younger brothers, Thomas, 20, and Joey, 19, come in on school breaks and some Saturdays. A few days later, Giovanna Federico-Becker, a jeweler from TriBeCa who discovered Jim’s six months ago, waited patiently in a line that extended to the door. “This is a genuine place that’s not trying to be fancy, and my shoes come out of here looking like I just bought them,” she said. “I’m new here, but I consider myself a regular.”


Judge Who Worked on Hate-Crime Cases Is Shot to Death in Moscow

Abstract: MOSCOW — A brief audio clip posted on an ultranationalist Web site was enough to evoke an angry argument in a Moscow courtroom early this year, when a federal judge challenged a teenage skinhead to justify murdering migrants selected at random on city streets. Ivan Strelnikov: “They come here, and they cannot find a job. They are not employed; there is nothing to do; they commit crimes. They rob average Russian people and rape girls.” Judge Eduard Chuvashov: “Do you know them personally? Do you know them?” Mr. Strelnikov: “They have such a mentality.” Judge Chuvashov: “Russians also have such a mentality, that sometimes they have to be hanged and killed, those who go abroad.” Galina V. Kozhevnikova, a deputy director of the Sova Center, a Moscow-based organization that tracks racist groups, recalled her alarm when she came across the clip, captioned “Judge Chuvashov Calls for the Murder of Russians,” and read the death threats that followed. She informed the police and crossed her fingers that no more would come of it. But on Monday, Judge Chuvashov, 47, was shot and killed in the stairwell of his apartment building in central Moscow around 9 a.m., in a killing that the police said was probably connected to his work in hate-crimes cases. The killer, who used a silencer and wore a baseball cap, was caught on a surveillance camera striding in and out of the building. Neighbors told reporters that the judge never talked about his work and had displayed no signs of anxiety. President Dmitri A. Medvedev vowed that “everything necessary will be done to punish the organizers and perpetrators of this callous murder.” In February, Judge Chuvashov handed down sentences ranging from 6 to 23 years to nine young men, the so-called White Wolves, who were charged with murdering dark-skinned people chosen at random, often filming the assaults on cellphones and posting the video online. Mr. Strelnikov, 17, who was heard being questioned in the audio clip, received a six-and-a-half-year sentence. Three defendants were acquitted. Last week, Judge Chuvashov reviewed sentences in the trial of a gang known as the Ryno band, which preyed on migrant workers, upholding two 10-year sentences and increasing a third to 22 years from 20. Judge Chuvashov had been threatened repeatedly, both verbally and on ultranationalist Web sites, but he had refused bodyguards, saying he felt he was protected by the law, a police official told the Interfax news service. The official said the killing bore striking similarities to the murders in January 2009 of Stanislav Markelov , a lawyer who had represented hate-crime victims, and a young reporter who had been walking beside him, Anastasia Baburova. A man with ties to violent nationalist groups confessed in November, saying he had killed Mr. Markelov out of revenge. News of Judge Chuvashov’s killing shocked his colleagues, said Boris V. Udov, a judge who worked alongside Judge Chuvashov for two years at Gagarinsky District Court in Moscow. “He was an honest, decent, courageous and well-qualified man; that is what I can say about my colleague,” he said. Nationalist groups proliferated in Russia after the collapse of the Soviet Union, and splinter organizations began boasting of killing non-Slavic migrants . After a crackdown, such killings are on the decline; the Moscow Bureau for Human Rights reported 74 racially motivated killings in 2009, compared with 120 in 2008. But the shootings of Mr. Markelov and Ms. Baburova pointed to new targets: lawyers, journalists and other professionals who protect minorities’ rights. Ms. Kozhevnikova said the online calls for the killing of a judge were almost unheard of. Artyom A. Tumishev, a lawyer who represented Artur Ryno, whose case came before the judge last week, said it was “absurd” to link the judge’s killing to his client. Mr. Tumishev said Mr. Ryno had received the maximum sentence of 10 years during a separate trial last year, so Judge Chuvashov could not add to it, “even if he wanted to.” Dmitri Agranovsky, who defended members of the White Wolves and the Ryno band, said there was no basis for linking the judge’s killing with either trial. Several defendants in the White Wolves case were acquitted, and Judge Chuvashov had little impact on the Ryno defendants’ sentences, he said. “I am shocked, and I am feeling very sorry for Chuvashov,” Mr. Agranovsky told Interfax. “I was supposed to meet him today to collect a copy of the verdict.”

Moscow (Russia)
White Wolves
Sentences (Criminal)
Chuvashov Eduard


Red Bulls Edge Montreal and Clinch a Playoff Berth

Abstract: Daniel Royer scored his first goal in M.L.S. in the 60th minute, and the Red Bulls clinched a playoff berth for the seventh straight year with a 1-0 home victory over the Montreal Impact on Saturday night. Royer headed down a cross from Chris Duvall, bouncing it into the right corner of the goal. Royer, an Austrian international, joined the Red Bulls (13-9-9) on Aug. 3. Bradley Wright-Phillips’s six-game scoring streak came to an end, but the Red Bulls took a share of the top spot in the Eastern Conference, tied at 48 points with Toronto F.C. and New York City F.C., which have also both clinched postseason berths. Dax McCarty, the Red Bulls’ captain, returned to the lineup for the first time since sustaining a small fracture in his leg in a 2-2 draw at Chicago on July 31. The Red Bulls extended their unbeaten streak to 13 games, a club record. Montreal (9-10-11) remained fifth in the East. STRONG RETURN FOR AGÜERO Sergio Agüero scored twice in his return from suspension as Manchester City beat host Swansea, 3-1, securing a sixth straight Premier League win. Agüero, back after missing three domestic matches for elbowing an opponent, has scored 11 goals in six games. Raheem Sterling also scored for City, whose only negative was the sight of the playmaker Kevin De Bruyne limping off late, favoring his hamstring. City has won its first 10 games under Coach Pep Guardiola and has a 4-point lead in the Premier League standings. Chelsea’s defensive frailties were exposed as the team was left with 1 point from three league games in September. Alexis Sánchez, Theo Walcott and Mesut Ozil provided first-half goals for Arsenal that gave the Gunners their first league win over Chelsea in five years, a 3-0 home victory. Chelsea had not even conceded a league goal to Arsenal since January 2013. Liverpool was already on its way to a 5-1 win over visiting Hull — its third straight league win — when Hull’s Ahmed Elmohamady was given a red card in the 29th minute. James Milner scored on the resulting penalty kick to double the lead, already established by Adam Lallana. Son Heung-min stepped up for Tottenham in the absence of the injured Harry Kane, scoring twice in the first 23 minutes at Middlesbrough, which lost, 2-1. Middlesbrough sustained its third consecutive loss while Tottenham secured its third league win in a row. Everton’s unbeaten start to the league season ended as Junior Stanislas scored on a 20-yard drive to give host Bournemouth its second win of the season, by 1-0. Still searching for its first win of the season, Sunderland established a 2-0 lead at home against Crystal Palace with two goals by Jermain Defoe but threw it away. The collapse began in the 61st minute when Patrick van Aanholt deflected a Joe Ledley shot past his own goalkeeper. James McArthur evened the score, and Christian Benteke headed in the winner for Crystal Palace in stoppage time. Stoke was denied its first win of the season when a header by Salomon Rondon of visiting West Brom in stoppage time canceled out a Joe Allen goal. BARÇA WINS WITHOUT MESSI Barcelona showed no signs of missing the injured Lionel Messi, cruising past visiting Sporting Gijón, 5-0, in its first Spanish league game without him. Neymar and Luis Suárez took over in Messi’s absence, and by the end of the day, Barcelona was only 1 point behind Real Madrid, which tied at Las Palmas, 2-2. BAYERN EKES OUT VICTORY Hamburger S.V. held visiting Bayern Munich, the Bundesliga leader, scoreless for 88 minutes before losing, 1-0. Just when it seemed Bayern would drop its first points of the season, Franck Ribéry crossed for Joshua Kimmich. Elsewhere, Javier Hernández scored a hat trick as Bayer Leverkusen came from behind to beat host Mainz, 3-2. TOUGH WIN FOR JUVENTUS Juventus labored past host Palermo, 1-0, in the Italian league, struggling to break down a resilient defense.

Soccer
New York Red Bulls Soccer Team
Montreal Impact Soccer Team
Daniel Royer


Nadal Reaches Semifinals

Abstract: The eight-time winner Rafael Nadal beat Fabio Fognini, 6-2, 7-6 (1), to advance to the semifinals of the Barcelona Open. Nadal broke Fognini three times on Friday to take the first set, but had to fight back from 4-2 down to force a tiebreaker in the second. Nadal will play Philipp Kohlschreiber on Saturday after he brushed aside Andrey Kuznetsov, 6-3, 6-1. ■ Angelique Kerber easily overcame Carla Suárez Navarro, 6-2, 6-4, in the quarterfinals of the Porsche Grand Prix in Stuttgart, Germany, needing just 29 minutes to win the first set. She will next face Petra Kvitova after Kvitova’s tough 6-1, 3-6, 6-0 victory over Garbiñe Muguruza.


Swedish Police Investigate Over 40 Reports of Rape and Groping at 2 Music Festivals

Abstract: The Swedish police said on Tuesday that they were investigating reports that dozens of young women and girls were sexually assaulted at two music festivals in Sweden last weekend. The police said there had been five reports of rape and 12 reports of sexual molestation at the Bravalla Festival in Norrkoping , about 100 miles southwest of Stockholm, while 32 sexual assaults had been reported at Putte i Parken , a music festival in Karlstad, about 190 miles west of Stockholm. Girls and women at the festival in Karlstad said they had been groped by boys and men, Inspector Leif Nystrom of the Karlstad Police Department said in a phone interview. Most were under 18 years old, and three were under 15. “These were reports of women being touched in unwanted places, such as on their breasts and on their bottoms and inside their underwear,” he said. The police have been examining seven suspects, six of them foreigners, whose ages range from under 18 to 35, Inspector Nystrom said; no arrests have been made. Police officials in Norrkoping could not be reached for comment. But the Police Department of Ostergotland County, which includes Norrkoping, confirmed in a statement on its website that the police had received reports of the assaults. Response has come from around the world. “We’re gutted by these hideous reports,” the British rock band Mumford & Sons, one of the headline acts at the Bravalla Festival, said in a Facebook post . “We won’t play at this festival again until we’ve had assurances from the police and organizers that they’re doing something to combat what appears to be a disgustingly high rate of reported sexual violence.” The Swedish police have already been under scrutiny. The Swedish newspaper Dagens Nyheter accused the police of failing to publicize details about sexual assaults at a festival in Stockholm last summer until the newspaper drew attention to the episode. The newspaper also accused the authorities of failing to warn the public ahead of the festival that similar attacks had taken place in 2014 and suggested that the police were trying to avoid an anti-immigrant backlash. In Germany, the police have been investigating reports of dozens of sexual assaults in the western city of Cologne on New Year’s Eve. The police said the attackers appeared to have “a North African or Arabic” appearance, heightening tensions over migrants. Sweden and Germany have been among the most welcoming European countries for refugees. But in recent months, Sweden has been tightening its asylum rules . Far-right parties have been gaining strength across Europe, in part by warning against the threat of immigration. The Sweden Democrats, a far-right anti-immigrant party, won almost 13 percent of the vote in a 2014 general election.

Women and Girls
Rape
Immigration
Sweden Democrats
Cologne
Europe
Germany
Sweden


Concern Over New Virus in France

Abstract: French officials said Friday that they are examining three people who came into contact with a man hospitalized with a new respiratory coronavirus related to SARS, to see if they have also contracted the disease. The man, 65, hospitalized in late April, got the disease on a package tour to Dubai. Officials are now examining a nurse at the hospital, a doctor and a former roommate of the man, all of whom are being monitored by doctors. The concern is how easily the new virus might spread from one person to another. Since the virus emerged last year, 18 people have died worldwide, but the man is so far the only confirmed case in France. He is in serious but stable condition.


In Colorado, Debate Over Program to Check Immigration History of the Arrested

Abstract: DENVER — In September 2008, a Guatemalan immigrant named Francis Hernandez sped his S.U.V. through a busy Aurora intersection and plowed into a pickup truck, knocking it into an ice cream parlor. Three people were killed, including a 3-year-old boy. Mr. Hernandez, as it turned out, was in the country illegally and been arrested more than a dozen times over the years, but had managed to elude deportation. A task force recommended that Colorado institute a federal background check program called Secure Communities, which helps the authorities check an arrested person’s immigration history through a government database, for possible deportation. Now, as Gov. Bill Ritter Jr. weighs whether to use Secure Communities, already in effect in 480 jurisdictions in 27 states, immigrant rights groups have been privately pushing him to reject the program. Critics say it promotes racial profiling by the local police and would undermine trust between immigrants and law enforcement, in a state that has particularly strict immigration laws. “Secure Communities is an overbroad dragnet that will end up destroying communities and families while driving victims and witnesses underground,” said Hans Meyer, policy coordinator for the Colorado Immigrant Rights Coalition. But officials with Immigration and Customs Enforcement , or ICE, the federal agency that runs Secure Communities, says the program is shoring up a system that has allowed illegal immigrants with criminal records to escape notice. “It allows ICE and local law enforcement agencies to know as much as possible about people in local custody without any additional costs or procedural changes by local officers,” said Richard Rocha, deputy press secretary for the agency. Under Secure Communities, created in 2008, people arrested have their fingerprints run through an immigration database, a process that takes only a few hours and is swifter and more efficient than the old method of local law enforcement making referrals to ICE. If they have had prior contact with immigration authorities — like having been previously deported, having been detained or having applied for a work visa — their names will appear in the database and the authorities can place an immigration hold on them. Congress has allotted $550 million to pay for the program so far, and Janet Napolitano , the homeland security secretary, said she wants it available to every law enforcement agency by 2013. Nearly three million people have been screened since the program’s debut in Harris County, Texas, in October 2008, through June of this year. Of those, 39,054 were identified as having committed violent crimes like rape, murder and assault, and 9,831 have been deported. Of an additional 223,752 people who had committed less serious offenses, ranging from property crimes to misdemeanors, 24,805 were deported. Mr. Rocha says the priority is finding violent criminal illegal immigrants. But critics say that most illegal immigrants identified by Secure Communities have committed low-level offenses and that the program is like an immigration sweep. Bridget Kessler, a teaching fellow at Benjamin N. Cardozo law school at Yeshiva University in New York said the Obama administration was acting hypocritically by pushing for Secure Communities. “It seems that the administration is speaking out of both sides of its mouth: standing strong to condemn state-imposed ICE and local partnerships in the context of Arizona, and quietly but forcefully, and on a much larger scale, promoting similar state-imposed ICE and local partnerships nationwide,” Ms. Kessler said. Cheryl Little, executive director for the Florida Immigrant Advocacy Center in Miami, said: “ICE claims, as it has done for years, that it is targeting dangerous criminals. Yet the program screens the fingerprints of anyone arrested by local police, not just those convicted of crimes.” Florida is one of three states that have carried out the program statewide (Virginia and Delaware are the others). Lt. Michael Lindsay, with the Harris County Sheriff’s Office, said the program was effectively ferreting out illegal immigrants. “You’re being deported for being in the country illegally,” Lieutenant Lindsay said. “The crimes bring them to our attention. And the more heinous the crimes just gets them a front seat.” Opinion on Secure Communities is divided among law enforcement in Colorado. Keith Ikeda, the police chief of Basalt, a small mountain town with a sizable Hispanic population, said, “If we start talking about misdemeanor arrests and traffic infractions, then I believe it erodes the public trust.” But Lance Clem, a spokesman for the Colorado Bureau of Investigation, which supports the program, predicted it would discourage racial profiling because everyone is subject to the same background check. There is also the issue of the program accidentally ensnaring victims of crimes, particularly domestic violence, where the perpetrator can be unclear. Domestic violence and immigrant rights’ advocates in Colorado have said that those arrested for domestic violence should not be subject to a Secure Communities screening until they are convicted, and that the program should exempt victims of crimes. Mr. Ritter, a Democrat who is not seeking a second term, has not indicated whether he will sign on for the program. Lost in the debate over the issue is the fact that Secure Communities would not have identified Mr. Hernandez, who was sentenced to 60 years in prison for vehicular homicide, had it been operating at the time, according to ICE. Because Mr. Hernandez came into the country as a child and used multiple aliases to avoid deportation, ICE said, he was never referred to immigration officials despite his many arrests.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement (US)


What a Tangled Web We Weave

Abstract: Among the more unnerving sights a traveler may come across in distant corners of the world are giant hairballs of wires, clumped at the tops of utility poles or hanging perilously from the sides of buildings. They speak of the exuberant, confounding and sometimes dangerous disorder of a country free of the rules and regulations that make modern life safe. For example, Hanoi, the capital of Vietnam, is famous for its buzzing, swirling, incomprehensible traffic. If you dare take your eyes off the road, a glance overhead will find a representation of this same tangled, heedless, even insouciant approach to life. One Vietnamese author wrote fancifully of the huge cobweb of electrical, telephone and cable-television wires covering the city. Utilities in most developed countries don’t keep their overhead wiring tidy for tidiness’ sake; safety is on the line. A crazy tangle can make repairing faults difficult and dangerous, and wiring improvised by amateurs can be a serious fire hazard. No visitor to a place where they are common, like Vietnam, India or Pakistan, is more likely to be appalled — and intrigued — by these Gordian tangles than a traveling engineer. “It’s sometimes an intellectual challenge to look and try to figure out what’s going on,” said Dickon Ross, the editor in chief of Engineering & Technology, a magazine published by an institute in London. In July, the magazine invited its 138,000 readers to send in pictures of “the worst and most dangerous examples of electrical wiring from around the world.” Out of 500 submissions, it selected 12 to publish for readers to rank, each seeming more outrageous than the last. Image Credit Illustration by KangHee Kim One from Vietnam showed a “terrifying image of a hapless Vietnamese electrician, totally entangled in the cobweb of crossed wires and hanging above the street like a giant spider in a hard-hat,” wrote the magazine’s features editor, Vitali Vitaliev. By a wide margin, the readers’ choice was a showy image from Madras, India, depicting a metered main power line tapped by “multiple bare, unterminated wires,” all loosely hung from a wood board that already bore the scorch marks of a fire. Mr. Ross pointed out that the survey was hardly comprehensive: Which countries were included had less to do with where the wiring is wackiest than where engineers like to take vacations. A case in point: One of the most eye-catching pictures, he said, came from St. Tropez, in the south of France.

Electric power
Regulation and Deregulation
Engineering
Hanoi


Legal Fees for Fannie and Freddie Near $50 Million

Abstract: Taxpayers have advanced almost $50 million in legal payments to defend former executives of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac in the three years since the government rescued the giant mortgage companies, a regulatory analysis has found. In that time, $37 million has gone to three former Fannie Mae executives accused of securities fraud, according to the analysis by the inspector general of the Federal Housing Finance Agency, which oversees both companies. Acting as their conservator, the agency is charged with protecting taxpayers from further losses at Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Those losses now stand at $183 billion. Although the legal costs for the former executives are a small fraction of the companies’ mortgage losses, it is imperative that the housing agency move to limit these fees, said Steve A. Linick, inspector general of the agency. “F.H.F.A. and Fannie Mae believe that their options are limited in paying current legal fees for former officers and directors,” Mr. Linick said in a statement. But he called for greater oversight. The legal costs are the responsibility of taxpayers because of contracts struck by the companies before they collapsed. Those agreements, which are typical in corporate America, state that legal fees incurred by executives defending against lawsuits will be advanced by the companies. If a court or jury rules that officials breached their duties or acted in bad faith, the officials will have to repay the advances. But with legal outlays since 2004 reaching $99.4 million for Franklin D. Raines, Fannie Mae’s former chief executive; J. Timothy Howard, former chief financial officer; and Leanne G. Spencer, former controller, it seems unlikely that the taxpayers will ever recover the money even if some or all of them are found liable. The three former executives were accused of a comprehensive accounting fraud that the company’s former regulator said was aimed at maximizing their bonuses. The inspector general’s report noted that the legal contracts could have been repudiated when the companies were taken over in September 2008. They were not, though, and taxpayers have covered the costs since then. Taxpayers are also bearing the cost of recent lawsuits by the Securities and Exchange Commission against the top executives who were running the mortgage companies when they failed. “The inspector general’s report on legal fees clearly demonstrates the need for continued Congressional oversight over these entities,” said Representative Randy Neugebauer of Texas, chairman of the House Financial Services subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations. “I strongly agree with the inspector general’s findings that at the end of the day, much more needs to be done to ensure that the enterprises and the F.H.F.A. are accountable to the taxpayer and that a strategic plan is implemented to control costs.” The agency has submitted a plan to Congress that calls for shrinking Fannie and Freddie so that they guarantee a smaller share of the nation’s home loans. Under the plan, released on Tuesday, borrowers would begin paying slightly higher fees, helping private lenders compete. The agency recommended significant fixes to some of the lax mortgage industry practices that have generated so many problems since the real estate bubble burst. For example, agency officials called for the standardization of loan servicing practices to ensure that the financial institutions administering mortgages owned by others treat borrowers and investors fairly. Among its suggestions, investors in mortgage-backed securities would receive extensive details about the kinds of loans in the pools well before they are issued. The housing agency also tackled executive compensation , which has generated severe criticism. The 2012 compensation program, for example, eliminates bonuses at the companies, the housing agency said. Future pay will consist only of salary, with much of it deferred. These amounts may be reduced if performance criteria are unmet by the executives. There were no recommendations in the housing agency’s proposal regarding the rising legal bills for former executives. They were the subject of heated Congressional hearings in February 2011. Since then, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac have moved to control the fees, the report noted. For instance, the companies have set up policies to avoid duplicate legal representation and to monitor legal expenses to determine if they are reasonable. But the efforts are uneven. Fannie Mae, for example, questions bills for depositions if more than one lawyer attends representing former officials; Freddie Mac does not, the report noted. More significant, the housing agency has not independently validated the processes used by Fannie and Freddie to monitor the legal services provided to their former executives or the amount of the bills that are paid. The inspector general’s report suggested several ways that the housing agency could limit the mounting legal costs. Among the suggestions were writing new agreements that would reduce the obligations for future payments, and using directors’ and officers’ insurance to control legal outlays. Responding to the report, agency officials agreed to pursue the suggestions made by the inspector general. They said that the agency would “continue its efforts at cost controls and will work expeditiously to seek greater standardization in the administration of such legal costs by the enterprises.” The agency also promised to provide the inspector general with a summary report of those efforts in June. A regulation issued by the housing agency last July places claims arising from successful litigation against Fannie and Freddie at the bottom of the repayment priorities if the companies are reorganized, the report noted. But the regulation is facing a legal challenge, and many people consider it unlikely that the companies will ever earn enough to repay the taxpayers and emerge from conservatorship.

Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corp (Freddie Mac)

Federal National Mortgage Association (Fannie Mae)


Guam: Gay Couples Allowed to Marry

Abstract: Gay couples began applying for marriage licenses Tuesday after Guam became the first United States territory to recognize same-sex marriage. Judge Frances Tydingco-Gatewood of Federal District Court on Friday struck down Guam’s ban on same-sex marriage and gave it a couple of days to prepare applications.


Yankee Hatred Is Losing Its Point

Abstract: It’s not clear whom my father hated more, the Yankees or Judge Judy. There’s no question whom he hated longer. Some of my earliest memories involve sitting around a big Sylvania black-and-white television set and watching him mutter, “Yankee luck,” in between the Ballantine Beer ads as they piled up championship after championship in the 1950s and ‘60s. Over the years the objects of his scorn shifted from the epochal Mantle/Ford/Berra era to the louts and loudmouths of the Steinbrenner/Martin/Jackson Imperium to the infuriating perfection of Mariano Rivera (“the Devil,” my father hissed as Rivera strode triumphantly off the mound) and the Rivera/Jeter/A-Rod regime now coming to a close. My father passed on to that great dugout in the sky just in time to miss what feels like this black hole of Yankee decline, a combination of injuries, age and ineptitude that has caused the Yankees to miss the playoffs for two years in a row for the first time since the early 1990s and left them facing the future with a decrepit core of players. Image Credit Barton Silverman/The New York Times His sons have done their best to carry on for him. But after this Wagnerian week in the Bronx, my father would have seen two somewhat contradictory lessons. Betting against the Yankees, even with rust and decay seeping into their bones, is still like betting against the house. And Yankee hating is not what it used to be. Not that there isn’t plenty still to hate. Where to start? John Sterling’s shrill victory calls (“Ballgame over! Yankees win! Thuuuuuuhhhhhh Yankees win!“)? The bloated payroll that makes rooting for the Yankees like rooting for the Koch brothers? The radio broadcasts with a commercial between every pitch? The now-annual hagiographic victory laps for retiring Yankees stars? It’s the same big-money bombast that has always made the Yankees both loved and loathed, only, like everything else in our amped-up age, bigger and louder than ever. As the WFAN radio host Steve Somers told me: “I always say about the Yankees, ‘Our tradition, your checkbook.’ Everything’s for sale, even those $409 used Jeter socks.” But, mostly, you think: really? The second-biggest payroll in baseball gets you a team that is scraping the bottom of the American League in runs scored with no Plan B other than to find some more old and expensive stars to buy. It all seems like a validation of the great April 2013 New Yorker cover showing Derek Jeter, Alex Rodriguez, Ichiro Suzuki et al. using crutches, canes, walkers and wheelchairs. This is what the mighty Yankees have come to? After all, it was only because of the expanded wild-card system — like elementary school, where everyone gets an award — that the season dragged on, the march of the undead, allowing the Yankees to remain marginally alive until the season’s last week as the teams ahead of them stumbled to the finish line. Even Jeter’s night for the ages Thursday had a note of momentary triumphalism along with the heroics. Amazing career, classy guy, one of the most compelling moments of sports theater ever. You can be a Yankee hater and a Jeter fan. But the night’s biggest achievement was to make the whole lousy season temporarily disappear as if all were still wonderful in the Bronx. Still, if there’s much gloating out there (outside Boston, which, of course, has its own issues — the Yanks and the Red Sox these days are like feuding doddering uncles), it’s hard to find it. In truth, Yankee hatred peaked in the early 1960s, when baseball was still undeniably America’s favorite sport. But these days, people, especially young ones, are far more invested in football and basketball, real and fantasy. On Facebook, there are more popular hate pages for the Cowboys, the Steelers, Manchester United and LeBron James. On normally cranky Twitter, it’s a Yankees love fest. Given their history, the Yankees will probably find a way to acquire Clayton Kershaw, Mike Trout and Miguel Cabrera over the winter, but, in the cast of current characters likely to be around next year, it’s hard to find a Yankee eminent enough to hate. Brett Gardner? Jacoby Ellsbury? At least there’s A-Rod, if he returns. Image Derek Jeter after his single to right field with one out in the ninth inning that ended the game, a 6-5 Yankee victory. 1 / 17 Yes, there have been extended dark ages for the Yankees, from 1965 to 1975, and 1982 to 1993. But Yankee haters have become accustomed to expecting the worst, meaning success every season. So, not surprisingly, a trip to the Bronx to take in last Sunday’s game against the ever-accommodating Toronto Blue Jays proved to be a mixed experience. A search for dissenting voices turned up not a loyal opposition with some kind of edge, but only very nice Blue Jays fans like Eric Comte of Alberta and J. J. Powell of Toronto. They didn’t get the Yankee Hatred concept. “When you’re always on top, people are going to dislike you, right?” Powell, decked out in a Colby Rasmus jersey, said sympathetically. “I don’t have a problem with them. Baseball’s a gentleman’s game. I respect what they’ve done.” It may be a Canada thing. To be honest, the Yankees haven’t exactly been Ruthian for a while. If you really want a vibrant dynasty, you should go to a Cardinals game. But at a time when the rich tend to stay rich and the poor tend to stay poor, no one at the Stadium seemed too worried about the Yankees’ swoon-let extending very far. Not Blue Jays like Kevin Pillar, a young reserve outfielder, who said: “It’s the show of the show; the Yankees set the bar even in a down year. The ownership is too good, they have too much money, and they’re going to go out and get the players they need. They always do.” Derek Jeter’s Two Decades of Excellence 22 Photos View Slide Show › Image Barton Silverman/The New York Times Not Sterling, who briefly pondered the thought of a long-term decline, sounding as if it were akin to announcing the games in Urdu. He said he’d believe it when he saw it. “I would say the Yankees are still the most-loved and most-hated team in sports,” he said. “I understand what you’re saying. If they become losers, will anyone hate them? But we’re a long way from that.” Not relative Yankee newcomers like Brian McCann and Chase Headley, who seemed to think, down year or not, that they’d died and gone to heaven in the Bronx. “There’s a mystique, an aura, a tradition of success, that’s different than any other organization,” Headley said. “A down year or a down couple of years isn’t going to take away what’s been built over decades.” It’s not clear whether Jeter’s Immaculate Farewell says more about an era that’s ending or some supernatural Yankee powers that will endure. And who knows what’s scarier: the Yankees resurgent or the Yankees so diminished they’re not really the Yankees? As they say, the opposite of love isn’t hate, it’s indifference, so Yankees fans and haters occupy seats on the same train. But between Thursday’s Yankees Woodstock and my one trip to Yankee Stadium (a 5-2 victory with Masahiro Tanaka triumphant in his return), it felt depressingly like old times. It’s as if the Yankees don’t even have to be winners to look that way. I left clutching the fuzzy white Derek Jeter Beanie Buddy teddy bear they gave away in the press box, headed home in need of a 2011 Paso Robles cabernet sauvignon from the Yankees Reserve collection, and began worrying about next season.


Trying Everything Against Geese

Abstract: FRANK DeBLASIO lifted his gaze from the turtle his young son had just plucked from the edge of Clark’s Pond in Bloomfield to the Canada geese floating on the water’s surface. Then he gestured toward the weird terrain underfoot: denuded earth, scattered with goose feces and feathers. “It’s nice when there are a few geese, but this whole place is disgusting,” said Mr. DeBlasio, 52, an amateur nature photographer and frequent visitor to the pond, situated behind a middle school and playing fields. “The other day I counted 70.” When you live in the New York metropolitan area, it’s easy to believe that there are too many geese, or that they hang out in the wrong places. Since the 1980s, geese have made such a spectacular comeback here that goose-control companies have become nearly as numerous as yoga studios. Two decades of eradication efforts by towns, golf courses, airports, public water authorities and others have succeeded in ridding specific sites of the birds. But wildlife biologists say the killings and relocations have barely made a dent, and “human-goose conflicts” still blanket the region. In a few cases, they turn fatal. For the goose. Last month a Princeton orthopedist with a summer home at the Jersey Shore was arrested on animal cruelty charges after the police said he killed a gosling with a rake. The orthopedist, Dr. Michael P. Coyle, 62, told the police in Mantoloking that he intended only to disperse the geese and used the rake in self-defense after being attacked by an adult goose. This spring also produced reports of a goose in Stamford, Conn., walking around with an arrow through its body; of a former state senator accused of killing goslings in his barbecue grill in Jackson, Miss.; and of a golfer who charged a goose with his golf cart in Omaha, Neb. Yet hundreds of people are using more peaceable means to combat geese, coating their eggs with corn oil to prevent embryos from developing. The strategy, aggressively promoted by a Virginia-based nonprofit group called GeesePeace, has become popular. For example, officials and volunteers this spring reported the oiling of more than 200 eggs in Greenwich, Conn.; 94 in parks in Morris County; and 85 in Ridgewood. In Huntington, on the North Shore of Long Island, officials have also decided egg oiling is the way to go. The town has counterattacked with border collies, noisemakers, fake wolves and a hawk kite flown five feet above a golf cart, but geese remain a nuisance. “Next year, we’ll try to oil eggs,” said Donald McKay, director of the Huntington Parks and Recreation Department. Many people admire Canada geese. They are intelligent, tough-minded, monogamous, family-oriented and not easily fooled. The downside is their droppings — a pound or more a day, per bird. “They are just machines at passing grass through their systems,” said Bryan L. Swift, waterfowl specialist with the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation. The state has about a quarter-million resident geese, with the highest densities in the lower Hudson Valley and on Long Island. Though their waste is not considered a public health threat, “one hundred geese depositing fecal matter on lawns and sidewalks is an aesthetic nightmare,” he said. Mr. Swift once studied a goose program in Rockland County to determine where the resident geese went after being chased by dogs. The answer was athletic fields within a couple of miles’ flight. “When geese are pushed out of one community with a good budget for goose control, they might end up in a community that can’t bear the brunt of the cost,” he said. Keeping geese on the move is expensive. It costs Larchmont $700 a week year-round, according to Mayor Elizabeth N. Feld. The birds’ overabundance is not their fault. Migratory Canada geese nest in subarctic Canada and fly south each October, but resident geese have not gone anywhere in years. They are descendants of Canada geese whose wings were clipped in the early 1900s by hunters using them as decoys, and of geese farmed by state wildlife agencies that stocked rural areas with them during the 1950s. Since then the region has suburbanized and developed perfect geese habitat: open stretches of fertilized and manicured grass, near water. “We have beautiful lawns, and we keep cutting them; every time we do, it’s like a new spring salad for them,” said Denise Savageau, director of the Conservation Commission in Greenwich, Conn. Like hundreds of other bird species, Canada geese are protected by the Migratory Bird Treaty Act of 1916. But in 2006, citing booming numbers of geese and widespread damage to property and natural resources, the United States Fish and Wildlife Service eased the rules. It also allowed states to extend goose hunting seasons. Permits for egg oiling, once a complicated business, can now be obtained online. Few towns kill live geese, and fewer still admit it. In 2006, only 7,700 of the 1.3 million Canada geese residing within the Atlantic Flyway, from Maine to Florida, were killed, according to the United States Department of Agriculture. In Bloomfield, Steve Jenkins, athletic director for the schools, deplores the mess by Clark’s Pond. “I have no moral compunction with someone killing them,” he said. “It’s equivalent in our opinion to rats scurrying around on the field.” But others are unlikely to agree with him, Mr. Jenkins said. One of the few jurisdictions that owned up to killing geese is the Union County Department of Parks and Community Renewal. The county originally had geese quietly gassed, but officials faced protests after The Star-Ledger in Newark reported the fact in 2003. This year the county will use a contractor who captures the birds and transports them live to a poultry processor supplying a food bank, said Daniel J. Bernier, director of the Division of Park Planning and Maintenance. July is the time for roundups; the geese molt and lose their flying feathers, making them easy targets. David Feld, the founder of GeesePeace, started wondering what to do about geese while president of his homeowners association in Lake Barcroft, Va. A dispute over the neighborhood’s goose problem was tearing the association apart: Some homeowners wanted the geese killed; others did not. Mr. Feld, an engineer, developed a multistep “recipe” for eliminating nuisance geese through egg oiling, followed by various measures to keep them at bay. Oiling is considered humane because it is applied only to eggs in early stages of development. The method keeps air from passing through the shell, preventing the embryo from developing. “The geese aren’t here by choice; they’re trapped,” Mr. Feld said. “We help them break the cycle so they can leave.” Adults without goslings will fly to Canada to molt and not return until early fall. “What you’ve done is freed the spring and summer and part of the fall of goose issues,” he said. GeesePeace trains volunteers, who treat eggs in receptive communities. One volunteer is Jim Borghoff, 46, of Ridgewood. Mr. Borghoff, a jogger, his wife, Doreen, and their two children had all encountered goose waste in Ridgewood’s parks. Last year he trained as a GeesePeace volunteer and braved brush, thorns and poison ivy to search for nests along the Saddle River. “Finding the nests was surprisingly easy,” he said. “The next part was kind of terrifying. Some of the geese are more aggressive than others and harder to get off the nests. You walk very slowly at them with an open umbrella. They hiss and flap their wings, but ultimately they hop off.” This April Mr. Borghoff went on the hunt again, detailing his activities in a lively blog ( nopoop07450.blogspot.com ). He also began working on a plan, which would include a volunteer dog patrol, for dispersing geese on school property. Sometimes, all it takes to win the goose war is a fresh approach. In 1998 Jim Strauch was a stay-at-home dad with an infant daughter in Allendale. He enjoyed taking the baby to the borough park, which has a lake, but found himself stepping over mounds of goose droppings. Overhead, a loudspeaker blared bird calls from known goose predators. “It was funny for the first few minutes, but then it became a form of torture,” he said. It was also ineffective. Mr. Strauch, 48, sought permission to have his dog, a female shepherd-greyhound mix, try herding the geese away. She succeeded. Soon other residents volunteered their dogs, and the Allendale Volunteer Goose Patrol was born. Today it has nearly 20 volunteers, including Mr. Strauch, now a councilman. His original dog is no longer alive, but two new dogs succeeded her. Other times, people are just lucky in the fight against geese. Or blessed. In 2006, the Queen of the Rosary convent in Amityville had a terrible goose problem. Their droppings ruined the fish pond, devastated the vegetable garden and slimed the walkways. The convent carpenter made 16 plywood wolf cutouts and set them out on the grounds. The geese took off at first sight and never returned, Sister Margaret Briody said. “We have been blessed with having them leave without our having to hurt them in any way,” she said recently. “The fellows fixed them on a spring, so they bounce a little and turn in the wind. They also move them around periodically.”


A Mouse to Aid Warriors in Their Arena of Choice

Abstract: Adventurous questing and fierce battles are much easier when a player has good weapons on both sides of the screen. Made with the needs of videogame fans in mind, the Avatar mouse from NZXT comes with seven programmable buttons that can be custom-configured for different types of games, including multiplayer online worlds, real-time strategy contests and first-person shooters. To increase its responsiveness and accuracy in those do-or-die sharpshooting situations, the Avatar mouse also comes with an optical sensor under the hood that can reach a maximum resolution of 2,600 dots per inch, or d.p.i. — compared with the 800 or 1,000 d.p.i. offered by many standard mice. The Avatar gaming mouse connects through a U.S.B. port and costs about $60; full specifications and a list of stores are at www.nzxt.com/products/avatar . The Avatar’s Teflon feet keep gameplay smooth; even southpaw warriors need not worry — the Avatar has an ambidextrous design. J. D. BIERSDORFER

Computers and the Internet
Computer and Video Games
Mouse


Australia Struggles in Rugby Championship

Abstract: AUCKLAND — It was not supposed to be like this. Australia, under its new coach Ewen McKenzie, was supposed to rediscover its verve and once again challenge New Zealand as the leading rugby team in the world. But three games into McKenzie’s tenure, all that optimism has turned to angst after heavy defeats to New Zealand (twice) and South Africa. The stark reality is that Australia is vulnerable and could lose to Argentina in Perth this weekend if it continues to repeat the mistakes that have plagued it so far in the Rugby Championship, the annual Southern Hemisphere competition. When McKenzie took over, he promised his side would play a more entertaining and attacking brand of rugby than had been seen under his predecessor, Robbie Deans, who resigned in July after the demoralizing series loss to the British and Irish Lions. But what Australian rugby fans have seen instead has been three error-strewn performances, marred by poor ball skills, bad decision-making and flimsy defense, which has resulted in Australia’s sliding to fourth in the world rankings behind New Zealand, South Africa and England. Australia’s game-breaking players, Israel Folau and James O’Connor, have barely touched the ball over the past three games, and when it has gotten to them, they usually have been smothered immediately by the opposing defense. When Quade Cooper was handed his first start of the tournament against South Africa last weekend, the expectation was that he would ignite the backline and bring more creativity to the attack. But that never came to fruition, and the Wallabies ended that match without scoring a try. Will Genia, a world-class scrumhalf, has also struggled to make his usual impact. When he is at his best, he gets Australia the advantage with sniping runs around the ruck, but that has not been the case so far. Genia has paid the price for his faltering performances and has been dropped to the bench for the match Saturday against Argentina. It is a bold move by McKenzie. Not only is Genia’s replacement, Nic White, inexperienced at the test level — this will be his starting debut in Perth — but Genia has been captain while James Horwill has been out injured. Genia’s demotion means the captaincy has now been handed to loose forward Ben Mowen, who has played just six tests. Mowen has a big task in front of him, as do the forwards in general, who have performed poorly so far, though the group is missing several key players due to injury — Horwill, Scott Higginbotham, Wycliff Palu, David Pocock, Tatafu Polota-Nau and Hugh McMeniman. The weakness in the Australian scrum has been highlighted by the new engagement rules, which requires good technique rather than just brawn. McKenzie has reinstated Ben Alexander to the front row this weekend in the hope that will change things against the technically savvy Argentine front row. Australia has also come off as second best at the breakdown, where it has been losing the collisions and giving away penalties or turning over the ball, which has been a major issue for both the forwards and the backs. Those turnovers have been costly for Australia. In the three games of the Rugby Championship so far, the Wallabies have conceded 12 tries and scored just three. They have let in 112 points and notched just 57. It will not get any easier against Argentina, which is renowned for its ferocious scrummaging and forward play, and now the side is showing far more enterprise on attack. After a humiliating 73-13 defeat to South Africa in the opening round, the Pumas rebounded strongly. In the return match against the Springboks, Argentina led until late in the game, though it ultimately fell, 22-17. That result earned the Pumas a bonus competition point for finishing within seven points, and it left Australia at the bottom of the Rugby Championship standings with zero points. Last weekend against New Zealand, the Pumas pushed the world champions hard. Their scrum was more than a match for the New Zealanders, and their physical play, particularly on defense, forced the All Blacks into uncharacteristic errors. While New Zealand was ultimately good enough to overcome all of that to earn a relatively comfortable 28-13 victory, Australia simply isn’t in the same league as the All Blacks at the moment, and a similar performance from the Pumas could earn them their first victory in the Rugby Championship. McKenzie is well aware of his side’s failings and was blunt in his assessment following the 38-12 defeat to South Africa, even conceding he might have to “dumb down” the game plan to turn around his team’s fortunes. But in the lead-up to the match on Saturday, he has backed away from that statement, stressing the team will not be shifting away from its philosophy of playing “smart, attractive and running rugby.” But McKenzie acknowledged that the coaching staff had had to provide the players “with further clarity on certain areas to ensure we are making smarter decisions in different parts of the field. “By doing this we will endeavor to remove some of the pressure we are applying on ourselves and shift that pressure to the opposing team.” Another loss for the Wallabies, and the pressure off the field will only intensify, too.

Australia
Rugby
2011 Rugby World Cup
Tri-Nations Rugby