World’s Fair Showed a Different Side of the Port Authority

Abstract: The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey designs, builds and maintains the engines of the regional economy: airports, marine terminals, rail lines, tunnels, bridges and, of course, life-size fiberglass dinosaurs. Yes, dinosaurs. At least that was its mission a half century ago when Robert Moses, the president of the New York World’s Fair 1964-1965 Corporation, turned over the planning and development of the fair’s entire 80-acre transportation area to the bistate agency, then known as the Port of New York Authority. Moses was not one to relinquish control. But in the biography “The Power Broker” (1974), Robert A. Caro said Moses cared little for the detailed work of organizing an event that would last only two summers. He was more focused on using the fair as a means to create a permanent Flushing Meadows-Corona Park . Image An early drawing for what would become the U.S. Royal Ferris wheel. Credit New York City Department of Parks and Recreation Archive Thus it fell to the authority to concoct pavilion designs in the zone set aside for corporate sponsors like automakers, airlines, oil companies and manufacturers. The delightful legacy of this odd assignment is a set of architectural drawings, certified with official stamps, that depict the Port Authority — not known for a raucous sense of humor — as having once had an inventively whimsical streak. In Drawing E-138 of 1962, for instance, a giant brontosaurus stood guard atop the Sinclair Oil Corporation’s Dinoland pavilion. A few paces away, Tyrannosaurus rex was clearly contemplating triceratops tetrazzini for dinner. A half-scale Stonehenge appeared in Drawing E-149 of 1962 as a pavilion proposed by the authority for the New York Trap Rock Corporation. Image Terrace on the Park, built as a heliport and fair pavilion. Credit Dave Sanders for The New York Times The Unisphere was prefigured in Drawing E-61 of 1961: an enormous globe girdled by an even larger tire. By Drawing E-124, spokes had replaced the globe and the tire had morphed into a Ferris wheel for an unnamed rubber company. Eight drawings later, it had become the 80-foot-high U.S. Royal tire. The authority appeared agnostic when it came to who would sponsor these pavilions — as long as someone did. Exactly the same three-sided tower was drawn on April 6, 1962, for Hertz Rent-a-Car and its archrival, Avis. Despite the ups and downs of leasing spherical, needlelike and cone-shaped buildings, the Port Authority achieved what Moses had a hard time doing elsewhere on the fairgrounds. “We announced in October 1963 that we had rented all two million square feet of space,” said Patty Clark, the senior adviser for aviation policy in the authority’s aviation department. “We did our job, and Moses was grateful.” Image An early drawing by the Port Authority of the Sinclair Oil "Dinoland" exhibition. Credit New York City Department of Parks and Recreation Archive October 1963 was a key month. That was when the 120-foot-high Port Authority Heliport opened and when Sinclair Oil’s fiberglass dinosaurs, fabricated by Louis Paul Jonas , were brought into the city by barge along the Hudson River. Ms. Clark recalled a meeting in the mid-1990s with officials of the city’s Department of Parks and Recreation. On the office wall was a rendering of dinosaurs, stamped “Port of New York Authority.” “I was wondering what were we designing dinosaurs for,” she said. The question was left hanging until last year, when Ms. Clark and her colleagues were researching the authority’s role at the fair. The agency is involved with promoting tourism and economic development in Queens, home of La Guardia and Kennedy Airports. They reached out to Milton Pachter, 84, the senior litigation counsel at the authority, who was working for the agency in the 1960s and recalled the extent of the deal with Moses. Image The cover of the menu at Top of the Fair, the restaurant that was below the helipad at the World's Fair. Credit Port Authority of New York and New Jersey Steven Rizick, the director of document services for capital projects in the parks department, made 150 original fair drawings available to the Port Authority, whose own archives were destroyed in the collapse of the World Trade Center in 2001. “Thank God they have them,” Ms. Clark said, “because we wouldn’t.” Some reproductions of the drawings will be on display through July 31 at the Queens Theater in Flushing Meadows-Corona Park, then move to the Queens Botanical Garden. As Ms. Clark and a colleague, Sheila Kaufman, explored the old heliport — now an event space known as Terrace on the Park — they discovered the remnants of the circular Theater 360 at the base of the structure last week. Now done up in baroque décor, it was where fairgoers watched a 360-degree panoramic documentary, “From Every Horizon,” with a score by Norman Dello Joio . Ms. Clark surmised that a generous niche in the theater’s curving wall might have served as the display area for a large-scale model of the World Trade Center. It was on the Port Authority’s drawing boards at the time of the fair. Standing in the old theater, Ms. Clark called up the score for the documentary on her iPad and simply let it play. The darkened space filled with poignant melodies reminiscent of Aaron Copland. Up on the roof, from a ballroom built where the helipad used to be, one could have seen the silhouette of the new 1 World Trade Center against the growing twilight.

World's Fair
Port Authority
Flushing Meadows Corona Park
Robert Moses
Architecture


Artists Picking the Artists

Abstract: Over the years I have been a judge in many juried regional art shows, and most of them, I am sad to say, are the visual equivalent of a sleeping pill. But “Mixed Greens: Artists Choose Artists on the East End,” at the Parrish Art Museum in Southampton, is something else: an enjoyable, thoughtful exhibition that redefines and greatly improves upon the standard exhibition of this type. The museum solicited entries from local artists and asked nine prominent East End artists to review the submissions; each of the judges then visited the studios of two or three favorites, and in the end selected a single finalist. By inviting artists to select other artists and encouraging studio visits, the museum is helping foster connections among artists. Equally innovative is the decision to present the jurors’ and their selected artists’ works together. That makes for a much more varied and interesting show. The selected artists come from all over the East End and work in a variety of media, though the emphasis is on painting. (One explanation for that could be a natural affinity, since the bulk of the judges are also painters.) Over all the standard is high, as might be expected given that only nine artists were selected from more than 260 entries. Each artist exhibits several works, allowing maximum exposure. Lucy Winton, selected by April Gornik, provides a stunning demonstration of the potential of an exhibition like this to uncover talent. Ms. Winton, of Wainscott, makes arresting, oddball works, like the ink-and-pencil drawing “Rabbit Tricking Wolf #3” (2008), probably the most interesting single piece in the show. Her art is empathetic, playful and very strange, reminding me a little of the late, rather terrifying paintings of Francisco Goya. It is complemented here by two moody, atmospheric Gornik landscapes. Peter Dayton’s slick, elongated, high-gloss paintings on wood, modeled after the work of famous American abstract painters, are witty, well made and a bit kooky, for in their size, shape and finish they resemble surfboards. Mr. Dayton, who lives in East Hampton, was chosen for the exhibition by Richard Kalina, a well-known abstract artist whose own paintings share the same geometric, semi-industrial aesthetic. These two artists have much in common. Not surprisingly, several other jurors chose work that is similar to what they themselves make. John Torreano selected Kevin Teare, an artist from Sag Harbor who does colorful, rhythmic abstracts with blobs of paint on found objects; they bear a strong visual resemblance to Mr. Torreano’s own decorative abstractions, which use fake gems and wooden balls painted and stuck on plywood. Similarly, Michael Combs, an artist who comes from a family of decoy makers in Greenport, selected Randall Rosenthal of East Hampton, who makes trompe l’oeil sculptures of newspapers. Mr. Rosenthal’s craft, technique and powers of observation are extraordinary, as is evident here in a series of hand-carved and painted wooden re-creations of The New York Times. It’s hard to believe they are not real. At first glance, Stephen Laub, an assemblage artist from Water Mill, would seem to have little in common with his famous juror, the painter and printmaker Donald Sultan. Mr. Laub gives us two views of the same thing, combining objects with their photographic reproductions — in this case, men’s hats and shoes, with the shoe tips and hat brims stuck through the photographs to make three-dimensional collages that fool the eye. From the front, they look like photographs. But look closely at these works and some of Mr. Sultan’s mixed-media paintings of wall safes (with bas-relief elements) hanging nearby, and correspondences begin to emerge. Both Mr. Sultan and Mr. Laub are interested in the depiction of volume on a flat surface. Both artists also rely on a simple, no-frills mode of presentation. It is worth mentioning the precision and concentrated calm of the painting “Inside the Green Zone, Baghdad” (2008) by Jessica Benjamin, of Springs, selected by John Alexander. Then, finally, there is Frazer P. Dougherty, from Sagaponack, whose cryptic, puzzle-like paintings of random shapes and forms were selected by Mary Heilmann. Though I am still trying to figure them out, the artist’s technique is so highly developed that they look effortless.

Long Island (NY)
Parrish Art Museum
Art
Museums


A Croquet Standout, for His Age (15) and His Grit

Abstract: WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. — Since 1989, the world’s best croquet players have been invited to compete in the World Croquet Federation’s world championships, which this year were held in April at the National Croquet Center. Amid the white clothing and quiet cordiality, Edmund Fordyce stood out. At 15, Fordyce has already won several tournaments and awards in his native New Zealand, and this spring he was competing at the world championships for the first time. Image Credit Scott McIntyre for The New York Times Fordyce got his start in croquet at age 10, playing in the backyard with his father. He said he was drawn to the challenge of mastering the fine points of the game. But it is not just his age and talent that make Fordyce such a captivating player: His success and renown have grown as he has battled congenital heart disease that has led to eight heart-related operations. The most recent was last August, after Fordyce went to the hospital with what he thought was a cold. It turned out he was experiencing heart failure, a condition that required the installation of his fifth pacemaker and the replacement of a heart valve. To the obvious worries that accompanied that surgery, Fordyce brought one other: concern over whether he would recover in time to play in the worlds. “After every surgery, I always want to get back into it,” Fordyce said. “I’ll always play it unless I get to the point where I can’t physically play it.” At end of the week, Stephen Mulliner of England took home the title, defeating David Maloof of the United States in a five-game final that lasted 11 ½ hours. At 62, Mulliner was the oldest player to be named world champion. Fordyce, the youngest player in the tournament, won three of his nine games, but he saw his first performance in the tournament as a learning experience. “I think I learned a lot about what it takes to win at the highest level, and how I need to play and perform to be the best in the world,” he said. Image Credit Scott McIntyre for The New York Times Image Credit Scott McIntyre for The New York Times Image Credit Scott McIntyre for The New York Times Image Credit Scott McIntyre for The New York Times Image Credit Scott McIntyre for The New York Times Image Credit Scott McIntyre for The New York Times Image Credit Scott McIntyre for The New York Times Image Credit Scott McIntyre for The New York Times


In Syria, Missteps by Rebels Erode Their Support

Abstract: BEIRUT, Lebanon — Syria ’s rebel fighters — who have long staked claim to the moral high ground for battling dictatorship — are losing crucial support from a public increasingly disgusted by the actions of some rebels, including poorly planned missions, senseless destruction, criminal behavior and the coldblooded killing of prisoners. The shift in mood presents more than just a public relations problem for the loosely knit militants of the Free Syrian Army, who rely on their supporters to survive the government’s superior firepower. A dampening of that support undermines the rebels’ ability to fight and win what has become a devastating war of attrition, perpetuating the violence that has left nearly 40,000 dead, hundreds of thousands in refugee camps and more than a million forced from their homes. The rebel shortcomings have been compounded by changes in the opposition, from a force of civilians and defected soldiers who took up arms after the government used lethal force on peaceful protesters to one that is increasingly seeded with extremist jihadis . That radicalization has divided the fighters’ supporters and made Western nations more reluctant to give rebels the arms that might help break the intensifying deadlock. Instead, foreign leaders are struggling to find indirect ways to help oust Syria’s president, Bashar al-Assad . And now arrogance and missteps are draining enthusiasm from some of the fighters’ core supporters. “They were supposed to be the people on whom we depend to build a civil society,” lamented a civilian activist in Saraqib, a northern town where rebels were videotaped executing a group of unarmed Syrian soldiers , an act the United Nations has declared a likely war crime. An activist in Aleppo, Ahmed, who like some of the others who were interviewed gave only one name for security reasons, said he had begged rebels not to camp in a neighborhood telecommunications office. But they did, and government attacks knocked out phone service. One fighter shot into the air when customers at a bakery did not let him cut into a long line for bread, Ahmed recalled. Another, he said, was enraged when a man washing his car accidentally splashed him. “He shot at him,” Ahmed said. “But thank God he wasn’t a good shot, so the guy wasn’t hurt.” Twenty months into what is now a civil war, both supporters and opponents of the government are trapped in a darkening mood of despair, revulsion and fear that neither side can end the conflict. In recent months, both sides adopted more brutal — even desperate — methods to try to break the stalemate, but they achieved merely a new version of deadlock. To many Syrians, the extreme violence seems all the more pointless for the lack of results. The most significant shift is among the rebels’ supporters, who chant slogans not only condemning the government but also criticizing the rebels. “The people want the reform of the Free Syrian Army,” crowds have called out. “We love you. Correct your path.” Small acts of petty humiliation and atrocities like executions have led many more Syrians to believe that some rebels are as depraved as the government they fight. The activist from Saraqib said he saw rebels force government soldiers from a milk factory, then destroy it, even though residents needed the milk and had good relations with the owner. “They shelled the factory and stole everything,” the activist said. “Those are repulsive acts.” Even some of the uprising’s staunchest supporters are beginning to fear that Syria’s sufferings — lost lives, fraying social fabric, destroyed heritage — are for naught. “We thought freedom was so near,” said a fighter calling himself Abu Ahmed, his voice catching with grief as he spoke via Skype last month from Maarat al-Noaman, a strategic town on the Aleppo-Damascus highway. Hours earlier, a rebel victory there ended in disaster , as government airstrikes pulverized civilians returning to what they thought was safety. “This shows it was a big lie,” Abu Ahmed said of the dream of self-government that he said had inspired him to lead a small rebel fighting group from his nearby village, Sinbol. “We cannot reach it. We can’t even think of democracy — we will be sad for years. We are losing victims from both sides.” A chain of calamities has fueled disgust and frustration on all sides, dozens of interviews with Syrians show. In July, a rebel bombing killed four senior officials in a heavily guarded Damascus building, bringing new insecurity to government supporters. The rebels’ growing use of large bombs that kill bystanders spurred concerns on both sides. Poorly executed rebel offensives brought harsh consequences. In September, rebels launched an offensive in Syria’s largest city, Aleppo , an ancient town that stood for centuries as the proud legacy of all Syrians. The fighting failed to achieve the turning point the rebels had promised. The government, trying to curb soldiers’ defections and reduce the strain on the military, kept more forces on bases and turned to air power and artillery, flattening neighborhoods with abandon. But the change in strategy did not restore control or security. After seeing a rebel bombing and small-arms attack on a downtown Damascus government building, a chauffeur for a wealthy businessman complained that conspicuous security measures made him “live in fear” — without being effective. “I want someone from the government to answer me,” he said. “The government cannot protect its key military and security buildings, so how can it protect us and run the country?” Even within Mr. Assad’s most solid base, his minority Alawite sect, discontent spilled over last month in a clash that began in a coffee shop in the president’s ancestral village, Qardaha. Some were shaken recently by heavy casualties in the disproportionately Alawite military and militias, according to Fadi Saad, who runs a Facebook page called Alawites in the Syrian Revolution. On the rebel side, the Aleppo battle catalyzed simmering frustrations among civilian activists who feel dominated by gunmen. One Aleppo activist said she met with fighters to suggest ways to cut government supply routes without destroying the city, to no avail. “You risked the lives of the people for what?” the activist asked. “The Free Syrian Army is just cutting the nails of the regime. We want results.” Nominal leaders of the Free Syrian Army say they embrace ethical standards, contend that the government commits the vast majority of abuses and blame rogue groups for bad rebel behavior. But that did not ease the disgust after last week’s video. It shows men writhing on the ground, staring up and screaming in terror. Rebels stand over them, shouting a cacophony of orders and insults. They move like a gang, not a military unit, jostling and crowding, kicking prisoners, forcing them into a pile. Suddenly, automatic weapons fire drowns out the noise. Puffs of dust rise from the pile, now still. “All the ugly stuff the regime practiced, the F.S.A. is copying,” Anna, a finance worker in Damascus, said of recent behavior. She blamed the government for making society abusive, but she said the rebels were no better. “They are ignorant people with weapons,” she said. In Maarat al-Noaman after the airstrikes, the disappointed fighter, Abu Ahmed, said Syrians would weep to see destruction in the city of “our famous poet and philosopher,” Abu al-Alaa al-Ma’arri. The poet, a skeptic and rationalist born in the 10th century and buried in the town, wrote often of disillusion, and of the fallibility of would-be heroes: “How many times have our feet trodden beneath the dust / A brow of the arrogant, a skull of the debonair?” Abu Ahmed said he found the town’s mosaic museum looted and littered first by soldiers, then by rebels. “I saw bodies of both rebels and regime forces, I saw beer bottles,” he said. “Honestly, honestly, words are stuck in my mouth.”

War Crimes Genocide and Crimes Against Humanity


Racer Timothy Tyler Andrew Walker Is Said to Have Led Police on Chase

Abstract: The police said a man who led the authorities on a chase in Nevada and Utah was a former Nascar driver. The Spectrum of St. George, a newspaper in Utah, reported that the police stopped Timothy Tyler Andrew Walker on Wednesday in southern Utah after a chase that began in Nevada. The authorities said Walker had marijuana, pills and open containers of alcohol in his BMW sedan. They also arrested a female passenger. Walker drove in 19 Nascar Nationwide Series and 9 Camping World Truck Series races before the association suspended him in 2007 for violating its drug policy.

Car Racing
Timothy Tyler Andrew Walker
Driving Under the Influence DUI


Manning Tosses Barber’s Words Back at Him

Abstract: ALBANY, Aug. 21 — For most of his closely scrutinized Giants career, quarterback Eli Manning has chosen to let the debate about his laid-back personality and his leadership skills swirl without adding much in his defense. He has stayed true to his low-key demeanor, hoping one day his on-field success will render the debate moot. So it was notable that Manning decided to fire back at one of his detractors Tuesday, although he did so in his own understated style. Without so much as raising his voice or arching an eyebrow, Manning acknowledged the former running back Tiki Barber ’s comments that Manning was “uncomfortable” with leadership and he shot right back at Barber. “I’m not going to lose any sleep about what Tiki has to say,” Manning said between training camp practices Tuesday afternoon. “I guess I could have questioned his leadership skills last year about him calling out the coach and having articles about him retiring in the middle of the season, that he’s lost the heart. It’s tough as a quarterback to read that your running back’s lost the heart in playing the game and it’s the 10th week.” With the slyest of smiles, Manning added, “I’m just happy for Tiki that he’s making a smooth transition to the media.” Barber’s comments came during “Sunday Night Football” in his new role working for NBC, after his retirement from the N.F.L. after last season. Barber said some of Manning’s comments to the Giants seemed “almost comical” and he questioned whether Manning would ever be a vocal enough leader. Manning, though, was making perhaps a larger statement. First, he led the Giants to a 13-12 victory in a preseason game Sunday over the Ravens, whose defense once tormented him. And he did not seem uncomfortable throwing a shot back at Barber, a player who despite his success has left some bitterness among his former teammates with comments critical of Coach Tom Coughlin and now Manning. “It’s hard for me to listen to that kind of stuff when last year at this same time when he was on our team he was talking about how great Eli was,” receiver Amani Toomer said Tuesday, saying that he thought Barber and Manning were friends off the field. “I just kind of don’t know where that came from.” Barber said on a radio show Tuesday night that his comments were not “said maliciously.” Whatever Barber’s motivations, Manning seemed intent on standing up for himself, in his own way. “He thought about what he was going to do, and he decided he would say exactly what he felt,” Coughlin said. From the Giants’ perspective, it is another step in the maturation of Manning, who is entering his fourth N.F.L. season and his third as the starter. Questions about his on-field development remain — particularly his dismal 54.1 percent career completion percentage — but the leadership issue is a trickier one to answer. Manning realizes he will not satisfy anyone looking for a fiery, public leader. He said he only hoped he satisfied his teammates. “I don’t have any problem with Eli’s leadership,” center Shaun O’Hara said. “He’s doing it his way. Players appreciate that. It’s a shame that everybody wants Eli to be somebody that they think he should be instead of just letting him be himself.” Manning played well against Baltimore, when he was 10 of 13 for 114 yards and a touchdown pass despite losing two fumbles. That performance might be more important to Manning than verbally fending off criticism. It had been the Ravens, after all, who had delivered his worst day as a pro. In his rookie season, Manning was 4 of 18 with two interceptions and a zero quarterback rating in a 37-14 loss. The Ravens disguised their defenses and blitzed him mercilessly. Coughlin pulled him in the fourth quarter. “It’s your rookie season and it’s one of your first starts and you’re playing against a tough defense,” Manning said. “You kind of think about it now, how things have gotten easier to read. They were still running around but you have a better feel for your offense and you’re not really worried about what you’re looking at. It’s just how I’ve progressed as a quarterback.” Although it was only a preseason game, O’Hara said he believed it was a significant step. “I think it’s great to see the confidence that he has now going back there, three or four years later,” he said. “It’s a different guy.” EXTRA POINTS Receiver Plaxico Burress returned to practice after missing much of camp with an ankle injury. The rookie receiver Steve Smith also practiced. He was cleared after sustaining a concussion Sunday against the Ravens. ... Michael Jennings, who tore his Achilles’ tendon Sunday, was waived Tuesday. So were the rookies Charrod Taylor, a defensive end, and Dan Parrish, an offensive lineman. The Giants claimed wide receiver Will Buchanon off waivers from Oakland and signed safety/kick returner J. R. Reed and the rookie center Nick Jones. ... Jeremy Shockey missed practice with what Tom Coughlin called a sore hamstring.

New York Giants
Football
Manning Eli
Barber Tiki


How Much Do We Love TV? Let Us Count the Ways

Abstract: You still love television. You use your tablet more than ever. And now you are as likely to have paid services like Netflix or Amazon Prime as you are to have a DVR service. Those are some of the findings of a study released this week by Nielsen that measured how we are consuming media these days (increasingly on devices we hold in our hands), and how much live TV we still watch (an average of more than five hours a day). The study comes just a few weeks after Netflix revealed some data about how quickly people will take to finish a season of a TV show — about five days, give or take, spending two hours a day watching. How much are we watching, and how are we watching it? Here is what Nielsen found: So Much TV On average, American adults are watching five hours and four minutes of television per day. The bulk of that — about four and a half hours of it — is live television, which is television watched when originally broadcast. Thirty minutes more comes via DVR. So even though ratings are falling and the broadcast networks don’t quite have the glamour they used to, TV is alive and well, right? Well. That five-hour figure is 19 fewer minutes, on average, than Americans were watching two years ago — and three fewer than they watched per day last year. You’re watching less TV live, but the rate of decline slowed between last year and this year. The Young Flee Live TV Let’s break this into groups. People over the age of 50 watch the most TV, somewhere in the range of 50 hours a week, according to Nielsen. In fact, people over the age of 50 are watching more TV per week this year than last. But that’s where that trend ends. People 24 and under are watching, roughly, two fewer hours of live TV and DVR programming per week than last year. And 25- to 34-year-olds (roughly speaking, millennials)? They’re watching an hour less per week, down from 27 and a half hours to 26 and a half hours. People between 35 and 49 mostly held steady and are watching about 22 minutes less television per week: 36 and a half hours from nearly 37 hours a week. Streaming Services Roar About 50 percent of Americans now have subscription services like Netflix, Amazon Prime and Hulu in their homes, Nielsen said. That is up from 42 percent last year. And that figure of 50 percent for the paid services equals for the first time the proportion of homes with DVR players. The DVR numbers have held steady for the past year. Tablets and Phones Rule Tablets are now in 58 percent of American homes, a jump of 17 percent from last year (for comparison, HD TVs are in 94 percent of American homes, an increase of about 4 percent). And time spent consuming media on tablets has increased 63 percent — to 31 minutes from 19 minutes a day (in 2014, the average was 12 minutes a day). Likewise, people are spending one hour and 39 minutes a day consuming media on their phones this year, versus an hour and two minutes last year — a 60 percent jump. Wired All The Time The amount of time you spend consuming media — watching TV, surfing the web on a computer, using an app on your phone, listening to the radio and so forth — continues to go up. Nielsen said that in 2015, Americans spent about nine and a half hours each day consuming content this way. This year? The average is 10 hours and 39 minutes. Still plenty of time to sleep, if not read a book.

TV
DVR
Amazon
Hulu.com
Netflix
Nielsen Media Research
Video Recordings
Downloads and Streaming


For John Madden, at 73, the Game’s Still On

Abstract: PLEASANTON, Calif. — Inside a warehouse-like building five minutes from his house, John Madden settled in to watch Sunday’s N.F.L. games in a leather chair that nearly swallowed him. Before him, nine 63-inch TV monitors flanked a 16-foot-by-9-foot screen, all provided free by DirecTV. Around him gathered a few dozen guests from Procter & Gamble, its Prilosec OTC division, which recently put Madden’s name on a new award for the league’s best offensive line, and the Safeway chain. They noshed on his chef-prepared omelets for the early games and his chili and Buffalo wings for the late games. In the latest phase of Madden’s career, he drives his white pickup to an industrial park here on Sundays, rather than travel the country in his Madden Cruiser bus to call games with Al Michaels. He retired from NBC in April, ending a 30-season run as a TV analyst that followed a decade as Raiders coach. NBC gave him options to stay, but as his older son Mike recalled, Madden was ready to leave. “I remember my grandmother asked him, ‘What kind of schedule are you working out?’ and he turned to her and said, with this boyish enthusiasm, ‘I’m going to retire,’ like a 5-year-old invited to the back of the candy store,” he said. Madden’s 10-screen-at-a-time viewing — big screen in the middle, four smaller ones on each side and one underneath — is something he wouldn’t want to do at home. He likes the spectacle, the people and the ambience. The viewing also serves as homework for his unpaid job as chairman of the coaches subcommittee of the N.F.L.’s competition committee, in which he is helping to improve player safety. “This is the right forum for John; he loves talking to coaches,” Commissioner Roger Goodell said. Madden, who is 73, said: “I still have a passionate love for the game, but when I retired from broadcasting, I didn’t have a place to put it. Now I do. I wasn’t going take a hike and eat cheese while the games were on.” The games began at 10 a.m. Pacific. Madden’s reserved demeanor is at odds with his former on-air exuberance. He never said, “Boom!” He didn’t have a Telestrator to diagram a play. His eyes scanned the screens. He intertwined his fingers and held his hands to his chin. He regularly flipped open the cellphone that Verizon gave him years ago to read or send text messages. (Eagles Coach Andy Reid is a text pal.) He watches games more as a coach than an analyst, he says. He observes more than he talks. His comments sound as if they are more for himself than an audience. “He’s a master,” he said when Saints quarterback Drew Brees threw a touchdown pass to Reggie Bush. Before a fourth-and-1 play by Denver against the Colts, Madden said, “Better run away from the stunt,” his body moving forward. “Don’t run into the overload.” When Denver failed, he said, “Ran right into it.” After a Peyton Manning interception, he said, “I would never go for his play-action.” Madden was gracious to the guests sitting on either side of him and was not distracted by their questions about football. “But if I’m talking to the guy from Safeway, I’m not asking him how many Prilosec pills he sold,” he said. An informed guest, his friend and NFL Network analyst Matt Millen, sat beside him for a while. During the San Diego-Dallas game, they spoke in tandem, with the Cowboys trailing, 20-10, with 26 seconds left. Madden: “Kick the field goal.” Millen: “Kick the field goal.” From the set, CBS’s Phil Simms said: “I’d take one shot in the end zone.” Madden: “ Kick the field goal.” With seven seconds left, he added: “I’d still kick a field goal. You can’t win going for the touchdown.” (Dallas scored a touchdown with seven seconds left but lost, 20-17.) The lucrative corporate life that Madden has built was left unchanged when he retired from NBC. When he made his surprise announcement, his agent, Sandy Montag, told Ace Hardware, Verizon, Tinactin, Sirius XM Satellite Radio, MCI International — which made the Madden Cruiser — and KCBS Radio in San Francisco that they could break their contracts. None did. The offer wasn’t made to EA Sports, where Madden’s input and high profile are intrinsic to the video game that bears his name. Scott Greenstein, the president of Sirius XM, said that dropping Madden from his half-hour slot on Fridays with the host Adam Schein was never considered despite the diminution of his television profile. “I’m happier that he’s not on TV,” he said. “It’s harder to find him, so that helps us.” Only Outback Steakhouse left the Madden portfolio. The restaurant chain’s deal ended this year and it made no sense to keep its name on his bus if he wasn’t traveling to call a game at a different stadium each week. But Madden still owns part of about 30 Outbacks in California as part of his family’s extensive real estate holdings. Unlike his old deals, the new ones with Prilosec and DirecTV are not product endorsements. He doesn’t have heartburn, so he would not be a spokesman for Prilosec; having had athlete’s foot, he stands behind relieving the itch with Tinactin. For Prilosec, he put his name to its Madden Most Valuable Protectors Award. “It really appealed to me,” he said. “It’s truly a team award, five guys working together.” DirecTV provided the video setup (and dispensation to watch blacked-out Raiders games) to be associated with Madden and for the publicity value, said Eric Shanks, an executive vice president of the company. In his new life, Madden misses the camaraderie of broadcasting, watching game film, attending practices, talking to coaches and spending time with the NBC crew. But he is pleased with his decision, his son Mike says. “He was done calling football,” said Mike Madden, who oversees the family’s real estate portfolio, which includes commercial and residential properties and three hotels. More than ever, Madden sits in the stands to watch the games played by the Foothill High School freshman team coached by Mike and assisted by his brother, Joe, who runs the family’s production studio. “I get to go with the grandkids,” Madden said, “and say: ‘Who wants hot dogs? Grandpa’s buying.’ ” The bus has become the family’s deluxe station wagon, recently taking Madden, his wife, Virginia, his sons, daughters-in-law and five grandchildren to the San Joaquin Valley to pick cherries at the family orchard. “With Mike and my kids between 5 and 8, these are golden years for him,” Joe Madden said. Madden jokes that his wife, who learned to live without him half the year, was not overjoyed to have him around all the time. “It’s not like she said: ‘John’s home. Yay!’ ” he said. “But I’ve missed every Christmas, every Thanksgiving, every anniversary. My 50th anniversary is coming up and I’m not going to miss this one.”


Twitter and Facebook Are Backbone of Saudi Dissent

Abstract: AL KHOBAR, Saudi Arabia — When Manal al-Sharif posted a video of herself breaking the law by driving her own black S.U.V. around this hot, flat city and called for a collective protest on Friday, the government responded harshly: she was jailed for nine days . But unlike in the past, government censure did not quash debate. Instead, the Internet buzzed to life in Ms. Sharif’s defense, building on the surge of social media here after the uprisings in Tunisia and Egypt. Twitter and Facebook overflowed with comments denouncing both Saudi Arabia ’s ruling princes and the clerics who called for her to be flogged as Neanderthals completely detached from the realities of life for women here. More than 30,000 comments about Ms. Sharif’s arrest showed up within days on Twitter, the vast majority from supporters, said Abdulaziz al-Shalan, who tracks Saudi-related Twitter messages. “Are you accusing a woman of being a sinner because she went to jail for driving? What kind of religion would come up with that?” wrote a woman in Jidda, on the Red Sea coast. Social media, which helped drive protests across the Arab world, seems tailor-made for Saudi Arabia, where public gatherings are illegal, women are strictly forbidden to mix with unrelated men and people seldom mingle outside their family. Virtually any issue that contradicts official Saudi policy now pops up online, including the status of prisoners being held without trial or a call to boycott municipal elections this September. Louai A. Koufiah, a Twitter enthusiast, quipped: “Saudis cannot go out to demonstrate, so they retweet!” Essam M. al-Zamel, who helped start the municipal election boycott campaign, boasts that he cannot gather 30 people in a room, but that he can reach more than 22,000 instantly on Twitter. But wherever the public goes, the government follows. After Saudis thronged Twitter, activists noted a rash of new users without pictures who described themselves in patriotic terms and attacked government critics. Since the default picture on Twitter is an egg, they earned the nickname #saudieggs. “My purpose in life is to be a watchdog to protect my religion, my state,” read part of one such user’s information. Abdulaziz AlGasim, a lawyer and activist in the capital, Riyadh, is convinced that such users work for the government because in attacking him they used information unknown to the general public. “Oh, this is a famous egg!” he said laughing as he flipped through his account, pointing out how they try to provoke factional or sectarian fights. Previously, government critics were nervous about seeking out allies, never sure whom to approach. But the combination of bold opinions online and monitoring whom the “eggs” attack has expanded contacts between activists nationwide. Seeking to highlight the plight of prisoners held for years without trial, activists recently put a video on YouTube called “Absent Saudis.” It featured the distraught relatives of some of the 16 men imprisoned in 2007 for what Bassem Alim, a defense attorney, said was taking rudimentary steps toward creating a political party and what the government said were links to terrorism. They were only formally charged last August. The video response was called “Saudis Are Present,” featuring an interview with the father of a Saudi girl killed in an attack by Al Qaeda and mixed in with pictures of famous Saudi dissidents. “Keep them locked up!” screams the zipper running across the bottom of the screen. “Side with the country against them and distribute this video.” Maj. Gen. Mansour al-Turki, the Interior Ministry spokesman, denied any government role in such counterattacks. Its main online effort was seeking out Qaeda ideology, he said. “It is not our way to challenge individuals or social networks on the Internet. That is nonsense,” he said. While social media was once almost solely the playing field of the liberal elite, Saudi activists say it has become more democratic this year, with more varied voices. The religious conservatives are catching up. Gone are the days when they issued one fatwa reported by the newspaper Al-Watan that commanded women to avoid writing “LOL,” or laughing out loud, because the very idea of a woman laughing might arouse male strangers. Two Saudi conservatives started a special YouTube channel, CH905 , to highlight the work of the most prominent clerics in the Sahwa or Wahhabi traditionalist movement in the country. (The telephone number for directory assistance is 905.) One cleric called for the Saudi government to tear down the mosque around the Kaaba, the sacred shrine in Mecca toward which Muslims turn when they pray, and put up a new, stacked structure so that men and women circulate on different floors. Others have attacked proposals for co-education in early elementary school. Saudis who follow social media closely say that the crosscurrents, particularly on Twitter, have had a moderating affect. The more extremist religious figures and the hard-core social liberals have adopted flexible attitudes on some issues — seen as an attempt to increase followers and an indication that the different camps no longer talk solely among themselves, they said. The women’s driving campaign shows what online organizing can accomplish — and what it cannot. Ms. Sharif, a 32-year-old information technology specialist working for Aramco, the state oil company, announced her campaign in April, and Saudi activists said they expected women at least in the hundreds to drive on Friday. But her open challenge to the government in posting the videos alienated countless supporters who thought she should have simply waited until the announced date. Supporters believe the nine-day jail sentence was a deliberate attempt by the monarchy to eradicate any kind of online movement inspired by Tunisia and Egypt. It most likely had the desired effect of scaring off many women. But it has not squelched the robust online debate. Some men suggested that Ms. Sharif, a single mother, was simply looking for a husband. Supporters, even Abdel Aziz Khoja, the minister of information and an avid Twitter user, weighed in, saying, “My personal opinion is that a woman has the right to drive as long as she respects public etiquette and Islamic behavior.” Younger women are particularly defiant, with a group of five 20- to 30-year-olds detained in Riyadh last Thursday for taking driving lessons. One brazenly kept posting to Twitter even when thrown into a holding tank by the morals police: “We are waiting in a tiny, dirty, dusty room!” One weakness in online movements is that their organizers often stay hidden to avoid government wrath. In March, nobody knew exactly who was calling for street demonstrations. The day was suddenly named after Hunain, a famous battle in Islamic history that Shiite Muslims revere more than Sunnis. Numerous activists think the government planted the name online to try to turn the protests into a sectarian issue. Saudi activists said they recognized that social media alone would not bring changes, although it exposes issues and links organizers. “If you can reach the public, it will put pressure on royal family to modernize,” said Mr. AlGasim, the Riyadh lawyer, who found that even his 72-year-old mother had signed a democracy petition online. “Change will come from demonstrations, not from talking.”

Middle East and North Africa Unrest (2010- )


Keeping Investors on a Need-to-Know Basis

Abstract: Trust, but verify . That’s certainly a timeless investing rule. But for anyone interested in vetting regulatory filings made by investment advisers with the Securities and Exchange Commission, it can be easier said than done. Large investment advisers, under S.E.C. rules, must give their clients extensive information about their operations and update it regularly. These materials are, in turn, published online in the Investor Adviser Public Disclosure database for all to view. Two types of documents appear on this website: Part 1 is a factual questionnaire completed by money managers that includes their regulatory records, assets under management and other facts. Part 2 is a descriptive and lengthy brochure explaining crucial aspects of an investment adviser’s operations. Included in this document is a narrative outlining the risks, fee arrangements and potential conflicts that investing with the money manager involves. This brochure, according to the S.E.C., is “designed to promote effective communication” between an investment adviser and its clients. Toward that end, the regulator requires investment advisers to highlight any material changes made to the same document issued previously. A look through these filings shows that investment advisers regularly report that their filings contain no such changes. But checking on previous brochures filed by some advisers raises questions about these statements. Since 2014, for example, Apollo Global Management — the giant private equity firm that owns, among other things, the teenage retailer Claire’s, Norwegian Cruise Line and the gambling concern Caesars Entertainment — has amended three of its investment adviser brochures in meaningful ways. But in each filing, the firm contended that it had made “no material changes” to the document since its last annual update. A spokesman for Apollo declined to comment. Digging into Apollo ’s filings shows that some changes involve a central issue: fees the firm levies on portfolio companies its funds invest in. Costs borne by these companies are ultimately paid by private equity investors, including pension funds and endowments. One charge levied by private equity firms is for watching over the operations of companies in their funds’ portfolios. Known as monitoring fees, these charges are typically subject to yearslong contracts. When a portfolio company is sold, it often pays a lump sum consisting of the remaining monitoring fees owed under the contract. This practice of accelerating monitoring fees essentially charges portfolio companies for services that are never actually rendered. And while this has been an all-too-common industry practice, these fees came under S.E.C. scrutiny in early 2014. In a filing that September, Apollo’s brochure discussed its practice of collecting accelerated monitoring fees for the first time. But it did not highlight the change. Why not? Apollo isn’t saying, but the notice may yet be found to be a material change. In fact, regulators are looking at Apollo’s practice in this area. When it announced its 2015 earnings this month, the company said it had set aside $45 million related to an S.E.C. inquiry concerning “the acceleration of fees from fund portfolio companies.” Apollo also added new information to a March 2015 Form A.D.V., as they are called, regarding fee-sharing arrangements through which private equity firms reduce the management fees they charge to investors by deducting other fees levied on portfolio companies. Management fee offsets , as these are called, include charges for financial advice or merger-and-acquisition transactions. In the March 2015 brochure, Apollo acknowledged that its affiliates may collect fees from portfolio companies that are not subject to the typical offset arrangements. A third change involved disparities between what the firm pays for legal services and what its private equity clients pay for some of that work. The May 2014 brochure noted in a new disclosure that Apollo receives discounts for legal services while its investors may pay a premium. This unlevel playing field on legal fees came up in a $39 million settlement the S.E.C. struck last October with Blackstone, another private equity giant. The S.E.C. said Blackstone had not informed its clients that it received greater discounts from an outside law firm than those provided to its funds. Other private equity firms have also changed their investment adviser brochures without highlighting the modifications. Bain Capital, for example, has made two relatively recent changes having to do with conflicts of interest faced by its investors. One emerged in March 2013, when the firm described how it might allow an investment opportunity to be purchased by an unaffiliated person — perhaps a limited partner or a broker on a transaction — even though such an opportunity need not be made available to other fund investors. And in an A.D.V. from March 2015, Bain made a new disclosure related to how the firm determines what a portfolio company pays in fees for advisory services. In certain cases, Bain said, an independent third party may not be involved, creating a conflict of interest. A spokesman for Bain declined to comment. One would think such disclosure practices might raise red flags at the S.E.C. True, the private equity firms, if challenged, would probably argue that their changes were immaterial or that their investors have access to past brochures, so they can easily identify changes as they appear. But such an exercise is much harder for teachers, firefighters and other beneficiaries of pension funds whose retirement money is invested in private equity firms. That’s because the S.E.C.’s database of investment adviser brochures, unlike its corporate filing system, provides no archives of past documents. Anyone interested in getting previous investment adviser brochures must request them from the S.E.C. It’s time for this to change, said Betty Yee, the California state controller. In late January, she wrote a letter to Mary Jo White, the chairwoman of the S.E.C., asking the commission to post past brochures on its investment adviser website. The S.E.C. said it was looking into the matter. In a recent interview, Ms. Yee explained her position. “There’s been a lot of attention recently on broadening transparency in the disclosure of private equity fees and costs,” she said. “Given how complicated the fee structures are in private equity, we need the ability to look at historic filings so we can see how those fee structures have changed. The current filings would be much more useful if they could be compared.”

Private equity
Apollo Global Management
SEC
Regulation and Deregulation
Bain Capital


10/10/10: They Love Just Thinking About It

Abstract: Sunday is the big day for saying “I do.” More than 39,000 couples chose 10/10/10 as their wedding day — a nearly tenfold increase over the number of nuptials on Oct. 11, 2009, the comparable Sunday last year, according to figures gathered by David’s Bridal, the wedding superstore chain. The reason for the surge is a blend of superstition and symbolism, said Maria McBride, the wedding style director at Brides Magazine. “You cross your fingers and hope it lasts a lifetime,” she said, and so “a perfect 10, times 3” suggests good luck. Besides, Ms. McBride said, “You’ll never forget your anniversary.” At the Viva Las Vegas Wedding Chapel, the owner, Ron DeCar, has 150 ceremonies planned in five chapels, beginning at midnight. He has had to hire extra Elvis impersonators, he said, to bring the contingent to six. There was a similar surge on July 7, 2007, and he is already planning for 11/11/11 and 12/12/12. For those of a geeky bent, the date has another layer of importance — it is made up entirely of ones and zeros, the binary language of computing. Kevin Cheng and Coley Wopperer of San Francisco have been waiting nearly two years for their wedding date to roll around, having realized over dinner with friends in 2008 that, as one suggested, “you could have a binary-themed wedding!” he recalled. “Both of our eyes just lit up,” he said. “We’re very much technology people,” Mr. Cheng explained, as if it were necessary to point this out. The dinner group quickly calculated the more familiar base-10 value of the binary number 101010, and found that it was 42. “That totally sealed the deal!” he recalled. Footnote: For fans of Douglas Adams, author of the series of science fiction comedic novels beginning with “The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy,” the number 42 is instantly recognized as the punch line to one of literature’s most revered shaggy dog stories. In it, super-intelligent beings have created the most powerful computer ever to provide the “Answer to the Ultimate Question of Life, The Universe, and Everything.” The computer labors for 7.5 million years. Finally, it answers: “Forty-two.” Which means, gentle reader, that Kevin Cheng and Coley Wopperer are truly meant for each other.

Weddings and Engagements
Superstitions
Calendars
Adams Douglas


Obama to Visit New Orleans for Hurricane Katrina Anniversary

Abstract: WASHINGTON — President Obama will travel to New Orleans next week for the 10th anniversary of Hurricane Katrina , one of the costliest disasters in United States history. Mr. Obama will use the Aug. 27 anniversary to promote his administration’s efforts to restore the economy and infrastructure of the region, which include building barriers to protect against a recurrence of the disaster, according to the White House. The anniversary also comes amid a string of events and rule changes that demonstrate the president’s increasing focus on climate change . Hurricane Katrina serves as a stark reminder for Mr. Obama of the types of disasters the United States will probably face unless drastic efforts are taken here and internationally to curtail certain kinds of heat-trapping pollution. Mr. Obama is scheduled to travel to Alaska at the end of the month to visit the Arctic Circle, where he will discuss climate change. This month, he unveiled final rules meant to cut emissions of carbon dioxide from power plants, and to increase the proportion of the nation’s electricity generated from renewable sources like solar and wind. On Tuesday, the administration released proposed rules to cut back on the emissions of methane, another gas that contributes to climate change. Hurricane Katrina left more than 1,800 people dead, and recovery efforts are estimated to have cost more than $100 billion. The hurricane also came to be viewed by many as a political disaster for President George W. Bush, whose administration was seen as having offered a belated and ineffective response to the overwhelming needs in the region.

Hurricane Katrina
Barack Obama
New Orleans
Climate Change
Global Warming
Greenhouse gas


I.M.F. Asks Rich Nations for Support

Abstract: WASHINGTON — The International Monetary Fund, showing heightened concern over a slowing world economy, said on Tuesday that cash-rich countries like Germany needed to step up large public investments to help keep the flagging global recovery on track. The comments — from the fund’s managing director and its lead economist — reflect growing concerns within the I.M.F. that Germany, which recently passed China as the country with the largest trade surplus in the world, is not doing enough to spur growth in Europe. At a news conference at the start of its semiannual meeting, an event that attracts financiers, policy makers and central bankers from around the globe, the fund’s top economists highlighted a shift in the global economy in which many major nations are failing to keep up with what is still a relatively modest recovery in the United States. In an interview on Friday, Christine Lagarde, the managing director of the fund, said global growth risked being stuck in a rut for a long time. “If nothing gets done in a bold way, there is a risk of a new mediocre” level of growth for the global economy, she said. And she took note that Germany could do more to stoke growth in Europe. “Given Germany’s current position, it could certainly spend more on infrastructure,” she said. The fund’s growth worries were underscored on Tuesday when Germany said that orders for industrial goods in August shrank by the largest amount since 2009, plunging 4 percent on a month-over-month basis. For investors, the warnings in the I.M.F. forecast and the report from Germany helped send the broad stock market down sharply on Tuesday, with the Standard & Poor’s 500-stock index falling 1.5 percent. The Dow Jones industrial average and the Nasdaq each fell about 1.6 percent. The I.M.F. brought its estimate for global growth this year down to 3.3 percent from 3.7 percent and reduced its forecast for 2015 to 3.8 percent. The fund pointed to weaker growth in China, Europe, Japan and Latin America — Brazil in particular — as the main culprits behind the broad retrenchment. Germany’s growth forecast for 2014 was cut sharply to 1.4 percent from 1.9 percent. Its estimate for United States growth in 2015, 3.1 percent, outpaces all major industrialized countries and exceeds as well a number of emerging markets, which in theory are supposed to grow at a substantially more rapid clip. The assessment reflected a broad acceptance by global investors that, at least for the near future, the United States economy was set to advance ahead of many large economies, not just in terms of growth but also in corporate profitability and international competitiveness. As a result, large investors and central banks have become aggressive purchasers of the dollar, betting that the currency will keep rising in value against the euro, the yen and the wobbly currencies of countries like Russia, Brazil and Turkey. Economists have been warning for some time now that a situation in which the American economy becomes the prime engine for the global recovery brings with it significant risks by creating financial uncertainty in emerging markets as currencies weaken and capital flows reverse. “At this stage, the question is, can the U.S. continue to power along while the rest of the world acts as a drag on global growth,” said Eswar Prasad, a professor of international finance at Cornell University and the author of a recent book on the dollar. “This is a very unbalanced recovery.” Fund economists expect annual growth in the eurozone of just 0.8 percent, with inflation coming in at 0.9 percent — a figure that Ms. Lagarde raised pointed concerns about. “We’ve been warning for over a year now about persistent low inflation, and frankly we faced a bit of denial — everyone said we don’t need to think about it,” she said. “But now it’s there.” Image In Brazil, cars outside a General Motors assembly plant in Sao Jose dos Campos. The I.M.F. reported slowing growth in Latin American countries. Credit Reuters The fund unveiled this week a paper arguing that large-scale infrastructure investments, if properly undertaken, could bring relatively quick growth benefits — a message that seemed to be directed at deficit-obsessed eurozone governments, including Germany. “Infrastructure investment, even if debt-financed, may well be justified,” Olivier Blanchard, the fund’s senior economist, said at the news conference on Tuesday. And while he did not mention Germany by name, he left little doubt to whom he was broadly referring. “Eurozone countries should be ready to do more,” Mr. Blanchard said. Mr. Blanchard pointed out that with interest rates at modern-day lows — Germany can borrow money for 10 years at below 1 percent — taking on extra debt to stimulate the economy need not be seen as profligacy. He offered up a brief economic primer to underscore his point. “It is an irony of macroeconomics,” he said with a small smile, “that for countries with too much debt, sometimes the solution is to create more debt.” Mr. Blanchard, who oversees economic research at the I.M.F., was behind the fund’s public recognition two years ago that heavy-handed austerity policies in Europe had a larger-than-expected impact on economic growth. Now, it seems, the global watchdog seems to be going one step further by urging eurozone officials to relax their rigid austerity measures. Both Ms. Lagarde and Mr. Blanchard also made it clear that they had their doubts about the two-year bull run in eurozone government bonds. Ms. Lagarde, in the interview, said that there was a “disconnect between what’s happening in markets and, on the other hand, progress in the real economy.” Mr. Blanchard said that the markets “were too complacent” and that policy makers should be especially watchful. “The risk is there,” he cautioned. The tough tone may well reflect a sense within the fund that this time around it needs to be more forceful in warning of financial trouble spots before it is too late. The I.M.F. was criticized for not spotting the last financial crisis. It has responded by recently publishing a series of papers outlining how it might improve on its watchdog capabilities. The fund has repeatedly cautioned that investors have become too reliant on very loose monetary policies on the part of global central banks to bolster their returns. Wholesale purchases of bonds by monetary authorities have inflated equity and bond markets in countries around the world where investments were minimal and growth subpar, economists for the fund said in the report. The warning echoes a rising chorus from economists and regulators who say that when the Federal Reserve in the United States starts raising interest rates — expected to begin in 2015 — so-called hot money flows that sought out high-yielding but risky returns in Europe and in emerging markets, including China, will head for safer shores. A consequence could be a broad disruption in financial markets, similar to but greater in scope than the market spasm that hit markets in the developing world earlier this year.

IMF
International trade
Economy
Christine Lagarde
Olivier J Blanchard
Germany
US Economy


With Goalies Shaky, Momentum Sways to Blackhawks

Abstract: BOSTON — Losing their balance in the Stanley Cup finals, the Chicago Blackhawks righted themselves Wednesday night with a 6-5 overtime victory in a wild Game 4 that they almost frittered away. The Blackhawks tied the series by reverting to what they do best, even though it was hardly a masterpiece and they blew a pair of two-goal leads. They played a wide-open game and broke through the Bruins’ neutral-zone blockade. They got another clutch overtime goal from defenseman Brent Seabrook, whose overtime goal in Game 7 beat the Detroit Red Wings in the second round. And Coach Joel Quenneville reunited his stars Jonathan Toews and Patrick Kane for the first time in this series. Toews and Kane each scored a goal, the first of the series for both of them. Along with their linemate, Bryan Bickell, they combined for 11 shots on goal. They were all on the ice for Seabrook’s winner at 9 minutes 51 seconds of overtime that was assisted on by Kane and Bickell, with a screen provided by Toews. Kane and Toews finished at plus-2 each, and Bickell finished at plus-3. “I like that line,” Quenneville said. “Big picture getting reunited. They seem to have some chemistry.” The last time Quenneville put Kane and Toews together, in Game 5 of the conference finals against the Los Angeles Kings, Kane scored a hat trick, including the series winner in overtime, and Toews had two assists. So after the Blackhawks managed only one goal in Games 2 and 3 against Boston, Quenneville was asked why he did not put them back together sooner. “You always get second-guessed,” he said. “Maybe it looks like I didn’t know what I was doing.” The game punctured for good any notion that the two goalies, Tuukka Rask of Boston and Corey Crawford of Chicago, were invincible. It was the third overtime game in four games in the series, which resumes Saturday in Chicago. Rask, who entered the game with a .960 save percentage in this series, stopped 41 of 47 shots, an .872 mark. At one point in the third period, he tried to catch a shot from Bickell that was going well wide; instead, he deflected it with his glove, it struck the crossbar and, fortunately for Rask, bounced away. Crawford, who entered with a .940 save percentage in the series, stopped only 28 of 33 shots, an .848 mark. He allowed all five goals to sail in over his glove. At least two of them were stoppable. “We were playing our game to a T,” Crawford said, but he acknowledged that he had a tough time in goal. “You have no choice but to brush off what happened and get ready for the next shift.” Image Patrick Sharp was upended by Johnny Boychuk, but his third-period goal gave Chicago a 5-4 lead. Credit Elise Amendola/Associated Press The Blackhawks held leads of 3-1 and 4-2 but could not hold them. Patrice Bergeron evened the score with his second consecutive goal, at 2:05 of the third period. The TD Garden crowd was roaring, with the fans sensing a comeback victory, even though their Bruins were playing the kind of track-meet game the team hates. Patrick Sharp gave Chicago the lead with the Blackhawks’ first power-play goal of the series at 11:19. It was his 10th goal of the playoffs, the most of any player. Marian Hossa, back after a one-game absence because of an undisclosed injury, earned an assist. But only 55 seconds later, Bruins defenseman Johnny Boychuk tied the score from 44 feet out, slapping the puck to Crawford’s vulnerable spot above his glove hand. The game was bound for overtime, and the stage was set for Seabrook to become the savior again. “It doesn’t matter if I score or anybody else scores — it’s nice to get the win and move on to the next day,” Seabrook said. Even though Seabrook scored the winner, it was Toews and Kane who ignited the Blackhawks’ offense. Toews tried to explain his chemistry with Kane. “Kane and I have played together over so many years,” Toews said. “Whenever we get the chance to get back together, we complement each other.” Kane added of himself, Toews and Bickell: “I thought all three of us played pretty well. Just playing with each other for the first time in a little while again, we feel we can get even better.” Kane and Toews noted that their success Wednesday came against the 6-foot-9 defenseman Zdeno Chara, who finished the game at minus-3. “If you’re matched up against him, try to win that battle and make some plays,” Kane said. “We’ve done it for a long time in our careers, so no use backing down now, I guess.” Quenneville described it best, however, in his own inimitable way. “The excitement of that line: Kaner in possession, Bick around with the big body, they scored some different kind of goals,” he said. “But Jonny had a nice night.” SLAP SHOT N.H.L. general managers on Wednesday approved the mandatory use of protective visors for all players entering the league. They also approved an extra two-minute penalty for a player who removes his helmet before a fight and banned the “spin-o-rama” move from shootouts. In a decision aimed at cutting down injuries from icing chases, hybrid icing will be used in preseason games on a trial basis. The changes are expected to be finalized by the league’s Board of Governors later this month.

Ice hockey
Stanley Cup
Chicago Blackhawks
Bruins
Tuukka Rask
Brent Seabrook


White House Believes Karzai Will Be Re-elected

Abstract: WASHINGTON — The Obama administration has told the government of Hamid Karzai that it believes he will be re-elected as president of Afghanistan for another five-year term, two administration officials said Sunday, even though the results from the disputed Aug. 20 vote are still under review because of evidence of widespread fraud . The United States and other NATO countries also told Mr. Karzai’s government that they have pledged to help him wage an expanded campaign to peel away insurgent fighters from the Taliban, these officials said. At a meeting of NATO foreign ministers in New York on Friday that included Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and the foreign minister of Afghanistan, Rangin Dadfar Spanta, the ministers agreed that Mr. Karzai would likely prevail, either by his current victory margin of more than 50 percent, or by winning a runoff against his main competitor, Abdullah Abdullah, the former foreign minister. The “assumption” of a Karzai victory did not erase a deep uneasiness about Afghanistan’s governance among the participants, according to a senior administration official. If a runoff were required and not held before the brutal winter starts in November, the consequences of a delay would be “catastrophic,” said this official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the deliberations were private. Among those expressing particular concern about getting a final election result was Kai Eide, the United Nations special representative, who gave a presentation at the meeting, known as the “Friends of Afghanistan.” The results of the meeting were first reported Sunday evening on The Washington Post’s Web site . The United States has been very careful not to prejudge the outcome of the election, which was marred by allegations of widespread irregularities . But officials said they wanted to send a message that NATO remained committed to helping Afghanistan’s government combat Taliban militants. “Once he’s confirmed, we will push him hard on governance and corruption,” another senior official said. Administration and Pentagon officials also said Sunday that a troop request from President Obama’s top commander in Afghanistan was expected to offer the president a range of options, including an increase of as many as 40,000 troops, alternatives for lower increases and a proposal to redeploy troops there now to better effect. The redeployment option calls for moving troops from sparsely populated and lawless areas of the countryside to urban areas, including Kandahar and Kabul. Many rural areas “would be better left to Predators,” said an administration official, referring to drone aircraft . The troop request by the commander, Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal , was submitted to the Pentagon over the weekend. But before additional troops were approved, commanders on the ground in Afghanistan would have to prove that the forces they have now are being used as effectively as possible, senior administration officials said Sunday. To measure this effectiveness, General McChrystal in recent weeks has launched a “force optimization” study, according to senior Pentagon and military officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the study has not been made public. For the study, these officials said, General McChrystal told subordinates to find 10 percent savings in troop numbers by identifying inefficiently organized units that could be reassigned to protect population centers, train Afghan security forces and guard against roadside bombs. The study has found “perhaps a couple of thousand” troops who could be replaced or whose missions could be refocused to better carry out the current strategy, according to one senior military officer involved in the effort. General McChrystal’s request for more troops is expected to include different troop levels for different goals, an administration official said. The figure of 40,000 would be what one official described as the “we’re in this to win” option, which would include ambitious goals for securing the cities, clearing out the countryside of Taliban insurgents and nation-building. More modest troop increases could achieve more limited goals, the official said, including redeploying existing troops to focus mainly on cities. Senior administration officials made clear that any action on General McChrystal’s troop request would await the president’s decision on whether the right strategy was in place — a decision that in turn might prompt a reevaluation of the right number of troops required. “We’re in the middle of a process of evaluating, really, the decisions the president made in late March to say, ‘Have we got the strategy right?’ ” Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates said Sunday on CNN’s “State of the Union.” He added: “And once we’re confident we have the strategy right, then we’ll address the question of additional resources.” Mr. Gates said that timelines and exit strategies at this point “would all be a strategic mistake. The reality is, failure in Afghanistan would be a huge setback for the United States.” In an interview on Sunday on ABC’s “This Week,” Mr. Gates acknowledged that when General McChrystal arrived in Kabul and conducted his initial assessment, he found the situation on the ground in Afghanistan “worse than he anticipated.” “And so I think what the president is now saying is in light of the election, in light of McChrystal’s more concerning assessment of the situation on the ground, have we got the strategy right, were the decisions that he made at the end of March, the right ones?” Mr. Gates said. “ And once we’ve decided whether or not to make adjustments in the strategy, then we will consider the additional resources.”

United States Defense and Military Forces


After Years in Shadows, Cricket Emerges in Ireland

Abstract: WELLINGTON, New Zealand — After recording two wins in its first three matches, Ireland could reach the knockout rounds of the Cricket World Cup for the first time if it can win one of its remaining three games. In the previous two World Cups, Ireland defeated Pakistan, Bangladesh and England. This year, it opened with victories over West Indies, a two-time champion, and the United Arab Emirates before losing Tuesday to South Africa, considered one of the three favorites for the World Cup. While the Irish cricket team is on an upward trajectory, perhaps the biggest wonder is why it has taken the country so long to make it this far, considering the country has excelled in other sports with British roots, like soccer and rugby. An easy answer: history. “In terms of field sports being participated in, if you exclude athletics, then by the 1870s cricket is without question the most popular field sport in Ireland,” said Paul Rouse, a specialist in Irish sport and a lecturer at University College Dublin. There were over 300 cricket clubs in Ireland, and the game bridged class and sectarian divides. But the archetypal English game did not sit easily with the rising tide of Irish nationalism. In 1884, the Gaelic Athletic Association was formed to propagate “Irish” sports like hurling and Gaelic football. “Our politics being essentially national, so should our athletics,” said the founder of the G.A.A., Michael Cusack. In 1901, the G.A.A. prohibited those who played, or even watched, “foreign” sports like cricket from playing in Gaelic sports, a ban that was not revoked until 1971. So great was the resentment toward cricket that Eamon de Valera, a leading figure in the Irish independence movement and later the country’s president, once dropped a cricket bat he was playing with instead of being photographed with it. Where cricket continued to be played, it was poorly organized. “Local authorities fought among themselves and fought spectacularly,” Rouse said. “The lack of a single body for cricket is the starting point for understanding the demise of Irish cricket.” It was only in 1923 that the Irish Cricket Union was created to oversee the sport across Ireland, which had been partitioned into the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland the previous year. While Ireland enjoyed occasional successes — it defeated the West Indies in an exhibition match in 1969 — Irish cricket lived in the shadows for most of the 20th Century. Ireland did not even become a member of the International Cricket Council, making it eligible for official international matches and World Cup qualification, until 1993. The sport was seen as a niche, middle-class and decidedly English pursuit; those who played cricket were disparagingly referred to as “West Brits.” While trying to qualify for the World Cup in 2001, Ireland twice had to enlist a journalist covering the team to serve as a substitute fielder. The following year the South African Adi Birrell was appointed as the third full-time coach in Ireland’s history. On his first day, Birrell was handed the keys to a car, and told that the trunk doubled as the storeroom for Ireland’s equipment and uniforms. “I was the only full-time employed person,” Birrell said. “I literally just didn’t have a clue where to start.” It was around 2005 that Irish cricket began to lift itself up. It qualified for the 2007 World Cup, which was newly expanded to 16 teams. The national team was a beneficiary of the “Celtic Tiger” economic boom, as the country attracted workers from cricket strongholds who also qualified to play for the cricket side. Four prominent members of the World Cup squad in 2007 — Andre Botha (South Africa), Jeremy Bray (Australia), David Langford-Smith (Australia) and captain Trent Johnston (Australia) — were immigrants. Its success of 2007, when Ireland defeated Pakistan on St. Patrick’s Day and made it to the final eight of the Cricket World Cup, resonated in the Emerald Isle and beyond. It provided Warren Deutrom, who had been appointed chief executive of Cricket Ireland in 2006, with a platform to transform Irish cricket. Deutrom said he was “ruthless” in how he prioritized scarce funds, placing particular emphasis placed on developing elite players and the national team. “The success of the sport at the top end will be the route that creates the finances that will eventually cascade down to the sport at all levels,” Deutrom said. “The international team has become Irish cricket’s shop window.” Cricket Ireland introduced player contracts in 2009 — the team had previously been completely amateur — and 24 players today have contracts. But the changes extend beyond the national team. Between 2006 and 2013, the total number of cricket players in Ireland has almost quadrupled , from 12,202 to 43,838. Ten of the eleven Ireland players that beat the West Indies in its first match at the 2015 Cricket World Cup were born and raised in Ireland. Ireland has gone from a team that imports cricketers for its national team to one that exports them, albeit unwittingly. Eoin Morgan and Boyd Rankin, two former Ireland players, now compete for England. If Ireland qualifies for Test status in 2018 — it now is an associate member, a lower tier than the 10 Test countries — it would have a much better chance of retaining its best players because it would open the door to far more lucrative international matchups. Cricket Ireland has proved that an audience exists for cricket. It has drawn sold-out crowds in Ireland. For a game against England in 2013, Ireland had to sell 8,500 tickets to break even; they managed to sell out 10,000 after a marketing push. “You have to be prepared to take a risk,” Deutrom said. Cricket Ireland’s annual commercial revenue has risen from 104,000 euros ($117,000) to €1.8 million since 2006. Success has also led to a new image for the sport. John Mooney, the Irish all-rounder who scored the winning runs against the West Indies, has said that there was “a big stigma” attached to the sport when a young boy in North County Dublin, and that he “never owned up” that he played cricket to people he had just met. Mooney has been prominently used in marketing campaigns by Cricket Ireland. “We are changing public opinion on cricket,” he said. No detail is too small. Cricket Ireland is even using the same jersey manufacture as the one used by the national soccer team and the G.A.A., thereby “making cricket more ‘Irish’,” Deutrom said.


Closing Arguments Are Made in Trial Over Potsdam Boy’s Killing

Abstract: CANTON, N.Y. — After nearly five years of living under suspicion, Oral Nicholas Hillary — accused of murder, and steadfastly proclaiming his innocence — is about to have his fate decided by a single man. Betraying little emotion while facing up to life in prison, Mr. Hillary watched as his defense team laid out an exhaustive closing argument on Thursday in his trial over the killing of Garrett Phillips, the 12-year-old son of his former girlfriend, Tandy Cyrus. The boy was found strangled in his mother’s apartment in nearby Potsdam, N.Y., in October 2011. The closing arguments, coming after six days of testimony and years of legal machinations, offered contrasts. Earl Ward, the experienced New York City criminal defense lawyer who joined Mr. Hillary’s legal team this year, spoke for nearly 90 minutes, methodically dissecting the prosecution’s assertions, which he called “a torn and tattered quilt” of a case. The lead prosecutor, William J. Fitzpatrick, the Onondaga County district attorney, who was brought to St. Lawrence County to assist in the prosecution, offered a fiery indictment of Mr. Hillary’s character, describing him as a stupid and arrogant killer with no remorse. The case has sharply divided residents in St. Lawrence County, a rural region bordering Canada, and has drawn an outsize local and national media contingent, something that Mr. Fitzpatrick noted before he began to plead for a guilty verdict. “The country is watching,” he said to Judge Felix J. Catena, who is overseeing the bench trial. Mr. Hillary’s case has drawn attention in part because of his assertion that he was singled out for investigation and prosecution because of the color of his skin. Mr. Hillary is black, while Ms. Cyrus and most of St. Lawrence County are white, as was Garrett. And the quick focus on Mr. Hillary — recordings of the police in court indicated he was being considered a suspect even before Garrett’s death had been declared a homicide — was also a theme of Mr. Ward’s presentation. “Before any evidence had been gathered, Nick Hillary was a suspect in the death of Garrett Phillips,” he said. “You have to ask yourself, why was he a suspect?” Yet efforts to find evidence proved hard, he added, noting that searches of Mr. Hillary’s home, body, car and office proved fruitless. “They found nothing,” Mr. Ward said. At the time of the crime, Garrett’s mother had ended her relationship with Mr. Hillary, a 42-year-old Jamaican immigrant and former soccer standout, and prosecutors asserted he had killed the boy to avenge a broken heart. But Mr. Ward returned more than once to the dearth of evidence linking his client to the crime: There were no fingerprints, DNA, hair or fiber samples, or witnesses. “There is absolutely no direct evidence tying Mr. Hillary to this crime,” Mr. Ward said to the judge. He noted Mr. Hillary’s lack of a violent history, adding, “Nick Hillary is not the type of person that would walk into a room, put his hands around the neck of a child and strangle him, kill that child.” Prosecutors have conceded theirs is a circumstantial case, but have pointed to a series of inconsistencies and oddities in Mr. Hillary’s statements about the day of the murder that suggest he is lying about his involvement in the crime. “Either Nick Hillary is the victim of the most bizarre convergence of coincidences since man first learned to write and record history, and he sits there an innocent man,” Mr. Fitzpatrick said, or “he entered that boy apartment’s, he chased him down, he dragged him into a bedroom, and he spent 90 seconds choking the life out of him.” Speaking after Mr. Ward concluded, and to a courtroom nearly full of observers and members of family from both sides, Mr. Fitzpatrick went into an often emotional appeal, occasionally wiping tears from his own eyes. The prosecution had made a major plank of its case on a video showing Mr. Hillary, shortly before the crime, seemingly briefly following Garrett as he traveled home from his local middle school just minutes before the attack is believed to have occurred. The prosecution has said Mr. Hillary was “hunting” Garrett on that rainy afternoon, and on Thursday, Mr. Fitzpatrick returned to that video, narrating it as the courtroom watched and Ms. Cyrus cried in the front row. “It’s a 12-year-old boy heading home,” Mr. Fitzpatrick said, his voice cracking. Moments later, the prosecutor grew more animated, as the image of Garrett passed by the parking lot where Mr. Hillary was parked. “I want to yell back in time: ‘Garrett, Garrett, look to your right! Stop Garrett!’” he said, referring to Mr. Hillary. “But he doesn’t. He goes home.” Judge Catena has said that he intends to return a verdict next week.

Murders and Homicides
Oral Nicholas Hillary
Garrett Phillips
Potsdam


Army Lets a Felon Join Up, but N.Y.P.D. Will Not

Abstract: NAWA, Afghanistan — On the day after he completed a one-year sentence at the Rikers Island jail, Osvaldo Hernandez walked into an Army recruiting office in Elmhurst, Queens. He was a felon with a plan to change his life. It was late in 2003. Mr. Hernandez had been convicted of possessing an unregistered pistol the year before. The Army, struggling to meet its recruiting goals, granted him an enlistment waiver for the crime and soon swore him in. Four years later, Mr. Hernandez, 25, is Specialist Hernandez, a paratrooper in the 82nd Airborne Division in Afghanistan. His transformation from inmate to productive citizen would seem to be complete. His Army supervisors say he is reliable, honest and brave. Barring something unforeseen, he will be honorably discharged at the end of his 15-month combat tour this year and hopes to become a New York City police officer. But Specialist Hernandez is finding that what the Army forgave is still remembered at home. The New York Police Department is among the broad mainstream of departments that say a felony conviction is an absolute bar to police work, no matter his exemplary military record, even in a combat zone. “Basically they told me, word for word, ‘You’re good enough for the Army, but you aren’t good enough to be a police officer,’” Specialist Hernandez said, describing an exchange with a police recruiter on the department’s recruitment hot line. “They said, ‘You need more moral stature to be a police officer.’” The rejection of Specialist Hernandez underscores the inconsistencies in the standards for uniformed service in the country’s many different police and military services, and the conundrums resulting from the varying rules. It is also a case with multiple interpretations, many of them balancing notions of crime, punishment and the possibilities for redemption against the risks of allowing applicants with checkered pasts into positions of public trust, even at a time when New York is struggling to fill the ranks of its police force. New York City currently has about 35,400 officers, nearly 2,500 below its authorized head count of 37,838. The number has recently been holding steady, in part because of a lull in the pace of retirements. One of the department’s barriers to recruiting, police officials say, is the $25,100 starting salary; police officials say the salary is low enough to discourage many qualified applicants. Were it not for his record, Specialist Hernandez, a well-regarded member of a renowned military unit, might be an ideal applicant. The department has long made it a priority to recruit military veterans, noting that most are already adjusted to the peculiar demands of regimented life and many are extensively trained. In recent years, many veterans have also been seasoned and tested by their experiences in war. The value placed on prior military service is clear in both the department’s recruiting efforts — it has offered the civil service test for officers on several military bases around the country, as it does on some college campuses — and a waiver it routinely grants. Under the current hiring rules, two years of active-duty military service, with an honorable discharge, can be substituted for the 60 college credits otherwise required to join the force. In all, officials said, 8 percent to 10 percent of officers have military experience. The institutional value of military service also runs to the top of the department. Three of the four most recent commissioners served active-duty military tours: William J. Bratton and Bernard B. Kerik in the Army, and Raymond W. Kelly in the Marines. (The remaining former commissioner, Howard Safir, began but did not complete Marine Corps officer training.) Chuck Wexler, who heads the Police Executive Research Forum, a nonprofit group focused on improving police tactics, said he sympathized with Specialist Hernandez’s disappointment. But, he said, he believed few, if any, police departments in this country had ever considered hiring an officer with a felony conviction, particularly a recent one. “With the scrutiny that the public puts the police under, it is hard to ignore,” he said in a telephone interview. If Specialist Hernandez made a mistake on the streets or got in trouble, he said, it “would be pretty hard for a police department to defend.” But Mr. Wexler said that for all the similarities, the jobs of urban police officers in a Western democracy and Army soldiers in Afghanistan were nonetheless different. “If you’re working in a war-torn environment, the level of concern, the level of threat, the level of security is very different,” he said. Specialist Hernandez said that the same military service the police value in potential recruits should justify a waiver in his case. “One percent of America is doing what I’m doing today,” he said recently, sitting behind the turret on a patrol through a part of the Afghan desert where Taliban fighters operate openly. “But I’m not good enough to go serve New York City?” He and several of his Army supervisors noted that he was fit and disciplined, and that his firsthand sense of the streets and his record of public service could make him an especially informed patrolman on the beat. He grew up in Corona, Queens, raised by his mother after his father abandoned the family when Specialist Hernandez was 6. By the time he graduated from Newtown High School in 2000, he said, he had seen the value of work. “We were poor as dirt can be,” he said. “But my mother got her education, and we were fine after a while.” He also said that his crime was less severe than many of the felonies that are understandably disqualifying. He was arrested in 2002, court records show, after being pulled over by plainclothes police officers in Richmond Hill, Queens. The officers found a semiautomatic .380 pistol under his car seat. He admitted that the pistol was his, but said that a friend had given it to him a week before he was arrested and that he had not used it to commit a crime. His neighborhood was dangerous, he said, and he kept the pistol with youthful notions of self-defense. “I don’t even know if it worked,” he said. He pleaded guilty in court to third-degree criminal possession of a weapon, a D felony in a penal code that lists felonies in severity from A, the most serious, to E, the least. He had never been arrested before. When he began to serve his sentence in jail, he said, he was mentored by a correction officer who had been an Army Ranger. The officer encouraged him to consider trying to enlist. “After two months, my mind was set that that’s what I wanted to do,” he said. No matter the circumstances, Paul J. Browne, the Police Department’s chief spokesman, said that the department could not offer a waiver because a felony conviction is an “absolute bar” to joining the force, a stricture laid out in the city’s Administrative Code. Even misdemeanor convictions, Mr. Browne said, often disqualify candidates. And most felons are prohibited by law from carrying weapons — clearly a bar to service as a police officer. Specialist Hernandez, in his current job, legally carries an M4 assault rifle and operates a medium machine gun from behind a vehicle turret. The government has trained him in other weapon systems as well, and he said he had taught himself to use some of the weapons commonly used by the Taliban, including the Kalashnikov assault rifle. While in some ways the case might seem awkward for the Army — which sharply improved the quality of its ranks with decades of volunteer service, and has never wanted to be seen as a means for ex-convicts to launder their lives — officers in Specialist Hernandez’s command have been supportive of his efforts to find work in law enforcement. His platoon leader, First Lt. Mordechai Sorkin, went so far as to research the possibility of a pardon from Gov. Eliot Spitzer. But because there is no question that Specialist Hernandez committed the crime for which he was convicted, Lieutenant Sorkin said he learned, the chances are slim. Lieutenant Sorkin, when asked what kind of police officer Specialist Hernandez might make, spoke without hesitation. “This is a soldier who wants to better himself, and wants to give back to his community and his city,” he said. In an official character reference, the lieutenant wrote that Specialist Hernandez’s “hard work and leadership capabilities easily make him one of the best paratroopers in the platoon.” The specialist, Lieutenant Sorkin added, “is a model of how our country’s correctional system should work.”

Draft and Recruitment (Military)
Afghanistan
Police
Firearms
Decisions and Verdicts
Hiring and Promotion
Prisons and Prisoners
Crime and Criminals
Rikers Island Prison Complex
Queens (NYC)


Marijuana Law in Connecticut Gains Ground

Abstract: HARTFORD, June 10 — Seventeen years ago, Mark Braunstein dived 60 feet off a footbridge into a river, landed wrong and became a paraplegic. A librarian at Connecticut College, Mr. Braunstein, 55, walks with the aid of crutches and leg braces. He smokes marijuana every three days or so to control the pain and spasms in his feet that would otherwise immobilize him. “I grew it in my woods, but the penalties for cultivation are higher than for possession, so people are forced to patronize the black market,” said Mr. Braunstein, who lives in Waterford. “I have a friend who grows it organically, and I buy it from him.” In addition to potential legal jeopardy, people who use marijuana for medical reasons endure a financial pinch, he said, as an ounce can cost $300 to $400, depending on its quality. For five years, Mr. Braunstein and others have pressed the Connecticut General Assembly for an alternative. A few weeks ago, they came closer to getting one. On June 1, the State Senate, following the House, passed a bill that allows people with certain “debilitating” medical conditions to grow as many as four marijuana plants for “palliative use” with the recommendation of a doctor and registration with the State Department of Consumer Protection. If passed, the bill would make Connecticut the 13th state in the nation to permit the use of marijuana for medical purposes. But it is unclear whether Gov. M. Jodi Rell will sign the bill. Last week, Rich Harris, her spokesman, said she had not decided. Even if the bill were to become law, it would not legalize the drug, as growers could still theoretically be charged under federal law, which bars its medical use. The governor’s stance reflects that conflict. “In the past, she has been sympathetic to helping the terminally ill and those with debilitating symptoms find relief,” Mr. Harris said, “but she would frankly prefer to see the policy change at the federal level since it is a chronic problem for any state that takes up the issue.” Given the avalanche of bills at the close of the legislature’s regular session last Wednesday, it is unclear when Mrs. Rell will consider this one. All bills must go through procedural matters before being sent to the governor; as of Friday she had not received the marijuana bill. Mrs. Rell has 15 days to sign or veto the bill once it lands on her desk. If she does neither, it will become law automatically. The Connecticut General Assembly passed a bill in 1981 that authorized doctors to write prescriptions for marijuana if their patients had glaucoma or were undergoing chemotherapy, but it was largely toothless because no pharmacies carry the drug. For the past five years, the legislature has considered various bills that support the use of marijuana for palliative care, but until now not one has passed. On Friday, one supporter of the most recent bill addressed opponents’ concerns that allowing use of the drug for medical use could send mixed messages to children. “There is a psychic barrier that many people wrestle with,” said Andrew J. McDonald, Democrat of Stamford and deputy majority leader of the State Senate, where the bill passed 23 to 13. “But nobody is condoning its use for recreational purposes. We’re trying to create a regulated system where people in vastly compromised medical conditions can have benefits of it.” The House voted in favor of the bill, 89 to 58, on May 23. State Representative Marie Lopez Kirkley-Bey, a Democrat from Hartford who is deputy speaker, said she had been “vehemently opposed” to the legalization of marijuana for medical purposes and voted against such bills in the past because she feared a negative impact on children. But she changed her mind when two of her cousins died of cancer last year. “When I saw the pain and suffering they endured while trying to maintain their dignity and composure, the bill came to my mind,” Ms. Kirkley-Bey said. “There was a feeling that before, I didn’t do the right thing.” Under the bill, people with multiple sclerosis, cancer, AIDS , epilepsy or neuro-spinal damage, among other conditions, could grow marijuana indoors with a doctor’s recommendation and a state permit. But the proposal differs in some ways from medical marijuana laws in other states. Unlike California’s law, the first in the nation, Connecticut’s would not permit buying marijuana from stores or using the drug merely to manage pain, said Gabriel Sayegh, a project director for Drug Policy Alliance, a national advocacy group based in Manhattan. State Senator John McKinney, a Republican from Southport whose father, a congressman, died of AIDS in 1987, expressed sympathy for people with debilitating illnesses. But he said that supporting the bill would be “sending the wrong message,” one that marijuana is not a bad drug. “It is an illegal drug under our federal laws,” Mr. McKinney said. “So are we going to ask people to break the law to get seeds from the black market? Are they going on a street corner?” Mr. McKinney also said that patients could ease their symptoms with prescription drugs. But Representative Penny Bacchiochi, a Republican from Somers, said prescription drugs did not alleviate the pain of her husband, who died after having bone cancer in the late 1980s. On the recommendation of his doctor, she bought marijuana for him. “I remembered how much fear I had,” she said, “but you do anything for someone you love.”

Marijuana
Law and Legislation
Drugs (Pharmaceuticals)
Handicapped
Connecticut


Armenia: 10,000 Protesters Demand New Elections

Abstract: More than 10,000 antigovernment protesters rallied in the capital, Yerevan, on Thursday, demanding new elections and the release of their incarcerated colleagues. Their leader, former President Levon Ter-Petrosian, left, said the protest movement had been inspired by the revolts in the Arab world, and promised that any change in government would be peaceful. The demonstrations began in February, on the third anniversary of the violent suppression of a protest after a disputed presidential election in 2008.

Demonstrations Protests and Riots
Armenia
Elections