As Visit Ends, Obama Presses India on Human Rights and Climate Change

Abstract: NEW DELHI — President Obama concluded his three-day trip here Tuesday with a tough-love message to his hosts, as he vowed to be “India’s best partner” in taking its place in the ranks of the world’s great powers but urged it to do more to protect human rights and fight climate change . In a pointed message wrapped in the language of friendship, Mr. Obama said India needed to combat human trafficking and slavery, elevate the status of girls and women in society, promote religious and racial tolerance and empower young people. He also argued that India had an obligation to curb greenhouse gases despite its economic challenges. Mr. Obama’s speech was aimed partly at his newfound friend, Prime Minister Narendra Modi , who has been criticized for not doing more to protect political dissent and to guard against sectarian discrimination and conflict. While the two shared a warm visit, Mr. Obama in effect was saying that their developing partnership did not mean Mr. Modi would get a free pass. “America can be India’s best partner,” he told an audience of 1,500 mostly young Indians at Siri Fort Auditorium before departing the country. “America wants to be your partner as you lift up the lives of the Indian people and provide greater opportunity.” Mr. Obama spoke forcefully about India’s responsibility to stop treating women as second-class citizens. “Every girl’s life matters,” he said, as his wife, Michelle Obama, watched from the audience. “Every daughter deserves the same chance as our sons. Every woman should be able to go about her day, to walk the street or ride the bus, and be safe and be treated with respect and dignity. She deserves that.” In a country where human rights groups say tens of millions of people are subject to forced labor, Mr. Obama added that India needed to crack down. “Together, we can stand up against human trafficking and work to end the scourge of modern-day slavery,” he said. But he did not mention the case of an Indian diplomat who was arrested in New York after being accused of exploiting her housekeeper, an episode that roiled the countries’ relationship for months. Mr. Obama called for religious tolerance in a nation that, like the United States, is home to a wide array of beliefs. “India will succeed so long as it is not splintered along the lines of religious faith — so long as it’s not splintered along any lines, and is unified as one nation,” he said. It was a notably sharp speech at the end of a trip dominated by displays of affection. But Mr. Obama had come under pressure from advocacy groups to deliver a strong appeal for human rights in a country proud of its democracy. Just before the speech, in fact, he met with Kailash Satyarthi , the Nobel Peace Prize laureate who has long fought child slavery in India. Mr. Satyarthi told him there were still five million children living as slaves worldwide. But as he often does, Mr. Obama couched his edged comments with an acknowledgment of American flaws, an effort to avoid seeming as if he were lecturing. He cited his own experiences as an African-American. “Even as America has blessed us with extraordinary opportunities, there were moments in my life where I’ve been treated differently because of the color of my skin,” he said. For many Indian listeners, Mr. Obama’s words on religious diversity were the most important, and the most delicate, part of his speech, said Siddharth Varadarajan, a veteran journalist in India, adding that the president’s warnings “will not go over well” with leaders in Mr. Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party. Since Mr. Modi’s election last year, right-wing Hindu groups have tried to convert members of religious minorities , arguing that Muslims or Christians, or their forebears, were originally Hindu themselves. One of Mr. Modi’s ministers recently asked an audience, in a play on words in Hindi, to “decide whether you want a government of those born of Ram, or those born illegitimately,” words interpreted as derogatory to Muslims. Although Mr. Modi is said to have discouraged such rhetoric in private, he has so far made no public comment about it, though human rights activists have urged him to do so. Image President Obama sat with Prime Minister Narendra Modi of India at the Republic Day parade in New Delhi on Monday. 1 / 6 “In as gentle and as diplomatic way as possible, Obama was drawing attention to something that is really, really important to India,” Mr. Varadarajan said. “In saying so, he has inadvertently drawn attention to Modi’s silence on the issue.” For the last decade, Mr. Modi’s own relationship with the United States was dominated by human rights, a fact that both sides now downplay. The United States government denied him a visa in 2005 over allegations that he had failed to stop religious riots in the state he led, in which 1,000 people were killed, most of them Muslim. An Indian trial court ruled that there was no evidence that Mr. Modi was responsible. Mr. Obama was careful not to tread on any of Mr. Modi’s sore points, such as by mentioning the 2002 riots, Mr. Varadarajan said. “I don’t think the United States is going to take this further,” he said. “There is too much riding on the commercial side for this to jeopardize anything. But I suppose somewhere down the line, the message goes out that in this globalized world, what you do at home is taken note of by your friends abroad.” Others, though, bristled at what they considered a hectoring tone. Chetan Bhagat, a popular author, noted that Mr. Obama would not give such an address at his next stop, in Saudi Arabia , a country known for its repressive monarchy, a ban on women driving cars and a recent conviction of a blogger sentenced to 1,000 lashes and 10 years in prison for supposedly insulting Islam. “He’s not even going to get a chance to give a speech like that there, and he is much closer to them,” Mr. Bhagat told the news channel NDTV. “To say the prime minister took it really seriously is to go a little too far.” On a morning when New Delhi was bathed in smog, the president’s remarks on climate change touched on a central priority of his visit. While he and Mr. Modi agreed to cooperate in promoting cleaner energy, Mr. Obama left without the sort of specific commitment to curbing greenhouse gases that he won in China last year . Instead, he used the farewell speech to press India to take on the issue more robustly. “I know the argument made by some — that it’s unfair for countries like the United States to ask developing nations and emerging economies like India to reduce your dependence on the same fossil fuels that helped power our growth for more than a century,” he said. “But here’s the truth: Even if countries like the United States curb our emissions, if countries that are growing rapidly, like India, with soaring energy needs don’t also embrace cleaner fuels, then we don’t stand a chance against climate change.”

Barack Obama
India
Women and Girls
Human trafficking
Climate Change
Global Warming
Narendra Modi
Human Rights
Child Labor
US Foreign Policy


Singer Steps Into Spotlight as Nation Changes Political Tune

Abstract: TEHRAN — The onetime underground pop singer smiled shyly as the high-pitched screams of his teenage fans drifted into his dressing room, just before his show on Friday. This superstar thing, he seemed to be saying, takes some getting used to. “Xaniar! Xaniar! Xaniar!” the crowds roared from the auditorium in North Tehran. In less than 15 minutes, Xaniar Khosravi , 29, an Iranian-Kurdish performer whose upbeat music was long deemed by Iran’s powerful Ministry of Islamic Guidance and Culture as illegal for being too Western, would step onto a stage before thousands of fans for his second official concert ever (the first was the night before). Mr. Khosravi was more accustomed to hearing his love songs, distributed on the Internet, blasting from car sound systems on Tehran’s crowded streets. His voice was famous, but only a few knew his face. “I was like a football player without a pitch to play on,” Mr. Khosravi said of his days as an illegal singer. “I had no album, just a collection of songs, and no concerts. It was as if I had no identity.” That had all changed with a ministry official’s stroke of a pen, the singer’s assistants explained while nipping from strawberry mocktails in the V.I.P. room next to the auditorium where Mr. Khosravi’s entourage had set up shop. Nobody really wanted to say it, as politics is a subject to avoid for the few who are allowed to stand in the limelight in Iran, but Mr. Khosravi’s presence on the stage was the direct result of the election of Hassan Rouhani, a self-proclaimed moderate , as president in June. During his campaign, Mr. Rouhani repeatedly called for more artistic freedoms. “Let’s just say that before no official would even meet with me,” Mr. Khosravi said. “But now I am allowed to have four concerts.” Despite Mr. Khosravi’s new concert career, Rouhani supporters have been disappointed at the slow pace of change, with few other signs of cultural relaxation in Iran’s capital. A female singer was allowed to sing a song by herself in a musical, “In the Last Days of Esfand,” a first in the Islamic republic’s 35-year history. Next week, an Iranian singer formerly based in the United States, Habib Mohebbian , will be allowed to publish a book of poetry. He is not allowed to sing, however. Several reformist newspapers were closed by the conservative judiciary and remain shuttered, and social media and millions of websites are still blocked. Mr. Khosravi’s concert, therefore, was mostly a chance to do something different in this city of 12 million, an opportunity quickly seized by Iran’s entertainment-starved young people. Hundreds of boys wearing baseball caps and girls covered with brightly colored head scarves waited excitedly in front of the concert hall, having been dropped off by parents who in all likelihood also shelled out the $20 cost of a ticket. Chewing gum and texting on their smartphones, few of them could recall the days when hard-line vigilantes raided pop concerts, calling the events “harbingers of a Western cultural invasion” and shutting down sound systems and at times attacking the audience members. Still, the fact that an underground singer was suddenly allowed to perform was widely perceived as a miracle. Image Mr. Khosravi, second from right, who has distributed his music on the Internet, joined members of his band for photographs backstage before a concert. Credit Newsha Tavakolian for The New York Times “We never expected him to be able to give a concert,” said Yasaman Tehrani, 21, a civil engineering student wearing light orange lipstick. “I think he changed some of his lyrics in order for his songs to be more acceptable. I don’t care as long as we can enjoy ourselves.” When the gates opened, they all rushed in, but only after having passed a gate where a huge policeman and a colleague in plainclothes checked all the head scarves to make sure they did not reveal too much hair. After that, the long line of teenagers passed a huge billboard showing a portrait of Mr. Rouhani, smiling like a benevolent grandfather, accompanied by his slogan: “The Government of Foresight and Hope.” Kimia Faroghi, a 17-year-old high school student, said that she hoped that someday her favorite American singers, Justin Timberlake and Christina Aguilera, would give a concert in Tehran, a thought that made her friends giggle. “Normally, we don’t have that many concerts here in Tehran,” Ms. Faroghi said, adding that she did not vote for Mr. Rouhani, “because I was too young to vote at the time.” Backstage, Mr. Khosravi changed into a dark blue Versace vest and took some selfies with his band of young musicians before his performance. Green laser beams flashed throughout the 2,000-seat concert hall as teenagers waved yellow fluorescent glow sticks, yelling for Mr. Khosravi. Everybody had to sit in allocated seats, and while boys and girls were allowed to sit next to one another, teams of Islamic hall monitors routinely passed by correcting those women whose head scarves were about to fall off. As in all public halls in Iran, a large portrait of the country’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, hung on the left of the stage, and one of the founder of the Islamic revolution, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, hung on the right. Mr. Khosravi kicked off the evening with one of his big hits, “Genuine Idea.” Drums pounded, guitars screeched and three huge video screens showed images of forests and rivers alternating with shots of the band members. Dancing, or “harmonious movements” to the ruling Shiite Muslim clerics, is forbidden in Iran, so everybody rocked in their seats, waving their arms during the more rhythmic songs. “It’s just you in my thoughts, I’m looking for a genuine idea, I want to be in your heart forever,” sang Mr. Khosravi, who is married. “Is it even possible at all that we are apart? Come put your hands in mine.” “We love you, Xaniar!” girls yelled at the top of their lungs. In one of the front rows, a family of three could be seen crying throughout the performance. Approached after the show, one of the family members, an older woman who had looked somewhat out of place, explained that her son, Amir Rad, 24, was the band’s drummer. Her son’s love for music had long been a point of contention for the family, said his mother, Fariba Rad, who said that she, like most Iranian parents, wanted him to become a doctor or an engineer. “We always told him he was wasting his time with those drums,” she said as her husband, Ali Rad, nodded in agreement. “But we were wrong, he really did it, and we are so proud.” Before the show, Mr. Khosravi had said that for years he had “pain in his heart” when he thought of giving a concert, knowing that it was nearly impossible. “I wish all underground singers can have their concerts,” Mr. Khosravi said. “Maybe we will have to wait for some time, but it will happen.”

Music
Hassan Rouhani
Iran
Xaniar Khosravi
Tehran


Russell Wilson of Seahawks Shows Talent and Poise in Loss

Abstract: ATLANTA — In the morgue silence of the Seattle locker room, several Seahawks sat frozen on folding chairs, staring straight ahead at nothing. A few heads were hidden beneath white towels. One player sniffled. The rookie quarterback, in stark contrast, casually slipped into a patterned, conservative three-piece suit as if dressing for a day in the corner office. Russell Wilson’s demeanor belied the fact that he had just engineered a comeback of the highest drama, only to have it trumped by Atlanta’s beat-the-clock field goal in a 30-28 Falcons playoff victory Sunday. “Obviously, very disappointing,” Wilson said. “We had high, high hopes for the rest of the season.” But the gloom was fleeting. As he walked off the Georgia Dome field and into the tunnel afterward, Wilson gushed to the quarterbacks coach Carl Smith how excited he already was about his sophomore season. In the huddle, Wilson’s mantra is to move on to the next play. Evidently, he lives it, too. “The greatest thing about it is, we get to look forward to the next opportunity,” he said. Anyone tuning into Sunday’s game after swearing off the N.F.L. since the draft last April might have thought he was viewing a piece of fiction. Wilson was the 75th choice — 74 behind Andrew Luck and 73 after Robert Griffin III, quarterbacks who entered the league with far more acclaim — and height. Third-round selections are not supposed to start immediately at the increasingly complex position, much less advance their teams into title contention. Yet Seattle had won six straight games, averaging 33 points, while becoming a fashionable pick to surface in the Super Bowl. An analysis of the first half Sunday, after which the Seahawks trailed by 20-0, would not have revealed rookie jitters as the chief cause of Seattle’s situation. Tailback Marshawn Lynch’s lost fumble in Falcons territory poisoned one drive. Two others just before the break were capsized in the red zone by a pair of failed runs in short-yardage situations — neither, oddly, involving Lynch, who had exceeded 100 rushing yards in five straight games — and a coaching faux pas when the Seahawks neglected to save a timeout in case of a quarterback sack. When Wilson was dumped at the Atlanta 20 with about 12 seconds remaining, he could not reset the offense in time for another snap. For Seattle, the half could not have expired more frustratingly. “I still knew we were going to win,” Wilson said. “At least, that’s what I thought.” The sentiment was widely shared, especially by two frequent Wilson targets: wide receiver Golden Tate and tight end Zach Miller, who each scored a touchdown and exceeded 100 receiving yards. “At no point did we think the game was over with,” Tate said. Miller added, “For being down what we were, we were pretty positive at halftime.” Image Seattle quarterback Russell Wilson was tackled by Akeem Dent in the first half of Atlanta Credit David Goldman/Associated Press When the game resumed, Miller said, the voice in charge of the huddle kept emphasizing the one-play-at-a-time approach. “Just focus on the next one,” Miller said. Once momentum was mustered, Miller added, “I felt like nothing could stop us.” In the final two quarters, Wilson connected on 14 for 19 passes for 241 yards while splicing in 34 more yards on five scrambles. The scoring marches covered 80, 80, 62 and 61 yards, not a single one offering Seattle’s offense a shortcut after a turnover or lengthy kick return. “I love it when the game is on the line,” Wilson said, “when everyone else is nervous and I’m excited.” Upon Lynch’s 2-yard score that lifted Seattle ahead, 28-27, only 31 seconds separated Wilson from an N.F.C. Championship game, well after Luck and Griffin had closed shop for the season. Amid the disappointment of defeat, Seahawks Coach Pete Carroll rolled out the superlatives for Wilson, calling him incredible and amazing, just for starters. “It is unheard-of for rookies to do stuff like that, but he ain’t a rookie,” Carroll said. “He is just good.” As Wilson’s more distraught teammates were breaking out of their catatonic state and coming out from under the towels, he was displaying little emotion for the news media. “To start as a rookie, to grow so much, to play at a high level was great for me,” he said. From Wilson, who finished with 385 passing yards, the words rang modestly sincere, conveyed in such a tone that no Seahawks player would take offense. He was businesslike all the while, except for a moment by his locker. When someone found his wedding ring on the floor and handed it over, Wilson sighed with relief and thanked him. Today marks his one-year anniversary. For the workaholic who is loath to take a day off, Wilson alluded to a blessing from the loss: he and wife, Ashton, finally can go on a honeymoon.

Russell Wilson
Seahawks
Atlanta Falcons
Football
Playoffs


Boss in the Corporate Jet Is Likely to Be a Woman

Abstract: The private jet industry has long struggled against the stereotype of the typical user as a well-off guy in a big corporate jet. And you will see plenty evidence of the stereotype in New York next week, as squadrons of business jets arrive at regional airports delivering executives and clients for the All-Star game at Yankee Stadium. (Bringing along clients, of course, turns a day at the ballpark into a business trip.) But as the National Business Aviation Association points out, about 75 percent of the 11,000 business jets in the United States are operated by small to midsize companies and entrepreneurs. And increasingly, especially within that niche, the boss in the company jet is likely to be a woman. XOJet, the big private jet company, says that about 15 percent of its customers who contract for 100 hours or more a year in flight time are female. And while few keep precise statistics, all of the private jet companies I spoke with, including charter operators, said that women are a growing part of their market. For women, ego and status seem to be less important as motivators than considerations like avoiding the problems and delays of commercial airports. Essentially, some say, you are buying time. “I need to more carefully pick and choose how I spend my time, and the airplane to me is an enabler,” said Mary K. Swanson, a businesswoman in the Phoenix area who founded a wellness company, HealthCare Dimensions, in 1992 and sold it in 2006. She then founded the Swanson Family Foundation, a philanthropy that works among the poor in the United States and abroad. Her plane is a light-cabin seven-seat Hawker 400, whose 1,400-mile range makes it ideal for foundation business that has to be done in a day, when a trip by commercial air travel can take twice the time. “It often makes me say yes when I would otherwise say no,” she said. Ms. Swanson’s plane comes from Marquis Jet, a partner with NetJets. Marquis sells flying time in 25-hour increments, in various business jet models from the NetJets fleet of around 800 aircraft. Ms. Swanson, who also flies on commercial airlines when it is feasible, said that when she was building her own company, private flying was financially impractical. “I never spent money I didn’t have,” she said. She said when she sold her company, she decided to pour much of the profit into her foundation. “If you asked me 10 years ago if I would be flying around on a private jet, I would have said absolutely not,” she said. In Los Angeles, Nancy Furlotti, a psychotherapist and real estate investor, said she uses her private jet, an eight-passenger Cessna Citation X, when flying commercially would waste time. “I have a private practice, but I’m also currently president of the C. G. Jung Institute in Los Angeles, and I have to do a tremendous amount of traveling to various conferences and things like that,” she said. “Many times I would not be able to get to these meetings and get back in time for my practice here, and for family.” Many businesswomen who are balancing work and family responsibilities say a business jet solves logistical problems. Recently, she added, her son’s wedding required getting her 87-year-old mother, 94-year-old mother-in-law and several other relatives to San Francisco. “Managing that on a commercial flight? A potential disaster,” she said. None of this comes cheap. And the surge in private jet travel only underscores the growing disparity between the haves and have-nots in air transportation. A 25-hour Marquis Jet card on the Hawker XP model that Ms. Swanson flies costs about $132,000 (plus trip taxes and government fees) as of Jan. 1. XOJet said that for a Citation X like the one Ms. Furlotti uses, a $375,000 upfront fee guarantees 100 hours of on-demand flying time over five years, with an additional hourly flying charge of $3,600 to $4,000. But Ms. Furlotti says it is money well spent. “I usually fly out of Van Nuys airport about 35 minutes from my home, show my driver’s license, hop aboard and boom — off we go.”

Airlines and Airplanes
Women
Executives and Management
National Business Aviation Assn
Families and Family Life


St. John’s Considers Norm Roberts’s Future as Coach

Abstract: Scoreless through the first 31 minutes, forward Justin Brownlee banged home a dunk over Marquette’s front line to give St. John’s its first lead Wednesday in their Big East Conference tournament game. On the Red Storm’s next possession, Brownlee timed a cut along the baseline and exploded toward the rim after D. J. Kennedy penetrated and passed to him. That, too, was punctuated with a slam. All of a sudden, the Red Storm was charging hard. “Norm’s team puts you in a blender,” Marquette Coach Buzz Williams said, complimenting St. John’s Coach Norm Roberts. “They spread you out and then mix you up with a little bit of everything.” At that point, Roberts’s players were coming from all directions, but their flourish eventually fizzled. What was gained in fighting back from a 14-point deficit was eventually surrendered in a 57-55 loss at Madison Square Garden. A 3-pointer by David Cubillan with 1 minute 11 seconds to play put Marquette ahead for good at 55-53. The Golden Eagles (21-10) will play No. 4 seed Villanova on Thursday in a quarterfinal matchup of guard-oriented teams. St. John’s (17-15) will wait for word from the National Invitation Tournament. “We did everything we had to win the game,” Roberts said. “There was no lighting up kids in the locker room because we were playing hard.” Questions remain as to whether effort is enough for Roberts to keep his job after compiling an 81-100 record in six seasons. Since signing on as coach of a program that had hit rock bottom, Roberts has used an energetic approach to reform his outfit into what he calls a “knuckle-up team.” He declared that his team went over the hump this season and now needs to find more consistency. Roberts said he expected to meet with university administrators within a week of the season’s end to discuss his future. He also said he would welcome a bid to the N.I.T. if one was extended. St. John’s would probably also be considered by the College Basketball Invitational. Justin Burrell, a junior forward, noted that the team wanted to continue improving. “Wherever we can play, N.I.T., C.B.I., I think they have the College Sport Insider, we want to play basketball,” he said. “That’s what we’re here for. We really don’t want to be in school doing schoolwork. We want to play basketball.” Chris Monasch, St. John’s athletic director, said, “We’ll evaluate at the end of the season.” Williams approached Roberts in the postgame handshake line and forcefully pointed toward Roberts’s face. He was expressing his respect for Roberts and the way his team played. “Coach Roberts doesn’t get the credit he’s deserving of for how hard his team plays,” Williams said. “If you were to ask our players who is the hardest-playing team in the league, they would tell you St. John’s. I don’t think teams play hard just for one another. I think they play hard for one another and their coach.” In many ways, the teams mirrored each other, but the Marquette guards and forward Lazar Hayward (20 points, 9 rebounds) kept breaking back door for easy layups and streaking across the lane for pull-up jumpers. Roberts often saw what was about to happen and screamed for his players to react. All too often, the St. John’s players did not recognize it in time. “We were there with them until the end,” Roberts said. He maintained that St. John’s lack of resources was not a concern to him. He understood the task ahead when he took the job. “We’ve got to love our potential,” Roberts said. “The thing I can control is my focus, my energy and my attitude. You’ve just got to do the right thing and keep working hard.” Roberts’s players supported his staying for next season. “We’re in the community changing the vision of what St. John’s is in the community,” Burrell said. “Unfortunately, we weren’t able to win games. As a basketball coach, that’s what he’s here for.” Roberts defended his recruiting, which has been criticized because of his inability to land New York City’s top players. Times have changed, and Roberts said that many of the city’s top players leave the area for high school, never mind college. “We just need to get the guys that fit us,” Roberts said. St. John’s mission, in his eyes, has remained the same. “St. John’s has always been a little school in Queens that works really hard,” Roberts said.

Roberts Norm
Coaches and Managers
Basketball
College Athletics
St John's University


New York Says Health Chief Abused Power

Abstract: ALBANY — Gov. George E. Pataki ’s appointment of Antonia C. Novello, a former surgeon general, as state health commissioner in 1999 was seen as something of a coup for New York. An appointee of President George H. W. Bush who was the first woman and first Hispanic to serve as surgeon general, Dr. Novello was praised even by the Clinton administration for her “vigor and talent” and promised to bring new attention to pediatric health. But the New York State inspector general’s office says that she turned her staff at the Health Department into her personal chauffeurs, porters and shopping assistants during her seven-year tenure, and has referred a criminal case, including potential felony charges, to the Albany County district attorney. A report from the office of Inspector General Joseph Fisch to be released Tuesday depicts Dr. Novello as preoccupied with shopping and routinely abusive of her authority over employees, ordering them to buy her groceries, pick up her dry cleaning and even water her houseplants. On one occasion, Dr. Novello purchased a heavy statue of Buddha during a shopping excursion in Troy, N.Y., then required a Health Department security guard to move it into her apartment, and then a few days later move it to another spot in her home because she didn’t like how it looked, according to the report, a copy of which was obtained by The New York Times. The guard told investigators that he often had to ask his teenage son to help him move her furniture around. Dr. Novello also ordered a Medicaid fraud investigator in her department to drive her on trips to Macy’s and Saks Fifth Avenue in Manhattan. On numerous occasions she had state workers drive her or her mother from the Albany area to Newark Liberty International Airport , roughly 300 miles round trip, to fly to Puerto Rico for personal business. When traveling between state offices in New York City and Albany, she liked to stop at the Woodbury Common Premium Outlets in Central Valley, N.Y., and she is also accused of using state workers to take her on excursions to three malls in the Albany area. Security guards who acted as her drivers said in interviews with state investigators that she would embarrass and yell at them if they did not do things the way she wanted and expected them to be at her beck and call at all hours. Dr. Novello, 64, declined to comment Monday. She has hired a top criminal defense lawyer in the capital, E. Stewart Jones, to handle the case. “I don’t believe that anything she did was unjustified or unwarranted or calls for criminal prosecution,” Mr. Jones said Monday. “The inspector general’s method of investigation and method of reporting leaves much to the imagination,” Mr. Jones added. “They aren’t held to the same standard of proof that’s required in a criminal investigation or a criminal trial. They tend to adopt hearsay as truth.” Dr. Novello, now an executive at Disney Children’s Hospital in Orlando, Fla., has also declined to be interviewed by the inspector general. Mr. Fisch has asked the district attorney, P. David Soares, to determine whether there are grounds to bring felony charges, including defrauding the government and offering a false instrument for filing, against Dr. Novello. Mr. Fisch, in a statement, said Dr. Novello “shamelessly and blatantly exploited and abused her staff, adding a new dimension to the definition of ‘arrogance’ and ‘chutzpah.’ ” Mr. Soares applauded the inspector general’s work and said, “We are moving forward with an investigation.” The report also says Dr. Novello brushed off a written warning from one of her subordinates and subsequently took steps to hide what she was doing. The report is the latest taint to surface in Albany, from former Gov. Eliot Spitzer’s political demise in a prostitution scandal to the federal corruption indictment last week of Joseph L. Bruno, the former Senate majority leader. The allegations against Dr. Novello, however, echo the controversy that engulfed former State Comptroller Alan G. Hevesi, who resigned in late 2006 after he admitted that he had used state workers to drive his ailing wife. At Mr. Soares’ insistence, Mr. Hevesi pleaded guilty to a felony. The report alleges that Dr. Novello required state employees to work more than 2,500 hours of overtime performing personal services for her, costing the state $48,000. One employee told investigators that “Novello’s fondness for shopping was so well known that employees in the office would give her sales fliers or coupons to encourage her to leave the office so that they would not have to work late,” according to the report. Asked whether she ordered state workers to ferry her on shopping trips and other errands, her lawyer, Mr. Jones, said: “That sounds highly unlikely and completely out of character. Saying it’s so doesn’t make it so.” The report also raises questions about the diligence of the Pataki administration in pursuing internal corruption. Complaints about Dr. Novello’s behavior were reported in 2001 and 2003 to the inspector general’s office, according to the report. In the summer of 2003, a former Health Department employee said the agency’s security desk was frequently empty because guards were being used to drive the commissioner around on personal business. Inspector General Jill Konviser referred the matter back to the Health Department, which was run by Dr. Novello. Ms. Konviser, now a state judge, declined to comment. In New York, the inspector general is an appointee of the governor. Dennis P. Whalen, then the executive deputy director of the Health Department, subsequently brought the matter up with his boss and eventually wrote her a memorandum in 2003 instructing her, “Never under any circumstances request or direct that an employee perform a personal (non-state) service for you or conduct business on your behalf.” Mr. Whalen currently serves as the director of state operations under Gov. David A. Paterson. He told the inspector general’s investigators that after his warning, he kept receiving complaints that Dr. Novello was using security guards as her drivers on personal errands. One security guard who was interviewed by investigators said that after the Whalen memo, he was called into a conference room. Dr. Novello told him that “she had been questioned on my hours and that we needed to calm down,” the guard said, according to the report. The guard testified that Dr. Novello told him to spread his overtime hours on different days of the work week so nothing out of the ordinary would be noticed. She also told him to park the state car in inconspicuous places on shopping excursions and even ordered the guard to drive her in his own personal car. The current investigation began in 2007 after she and Mr. Pataki had left office. David Catalfamo, a spokesman for the Mr. Pataki, declined to comment Monday, saying he had not seen the report. As surgeon general, Dr. Novello, who followed the highly visible Dr. C. Everett Koop, was known for battling tobacco companies for marketing campaigns aimed at children and focusing on improving health outreach to minority communities. A native of Puerto Rico and a pediatrician, she was controversial among abortion rights advocates for her support of a policy prohibiting workers at family planning programs that received federal financing from discussing abortion with their patients. The employees who spoke to investigators at the inspector general’s office said that Dr. Novello would call them at all hours on their cellphones and at home to come to her personal service, and that they feared ignoring the demands of the commissioner. But occasionally they balked. When Dr. Novello told one security guard to use his own car to drive her and her friends and family on a sightseeing trip to Cooperstown, N.Y., the guard refused and they used a state car, the report said. The same guard was instructed to drive her from Albany to Newark at 1 a.m. on Christmas Day, shortly before the end of the Pataki administration. He did so. But the final straw came when she ordered him to pick her up on her return trip, and by then it was January 2007. Dr. Novello was no longer the health commissioner. The guard “testified that Novello had urged him to take vacation leave and use his personal vehicle to chauffeur her,” the report says, adding that the guard said “it felt good to finally say no to Novello.”

Novello Antonia
Inspectors General
Ethics
Frauds and Swindling
Pataki George E
Fisch Joseph


6 Shot Dead by Neighbor at Building Near Miami

Abstract: HIALEAH, Fla. — A gunman shot and killed six of his neighbors and held two other people hostage during an eight-hour standoff before a police SWAT team raided an apartment and fatally shot him early Saturday morning, law enforcement officials said. The two hostages were rescued unharmed. The gunman, identified as Pedro Vargas, 43, lived in the apartment complex northwest of downtown Miami with his mother, according to neighbors. They said Mr. Vargas had been embroiled in a dispute with the building’s managers, a husband-and-wife team who were among the dead. The police said the episode began around 6:30 p.m. Friday when Mr. Vargas set fire to his apartment and began roaming the complex, shooting at his neighbors. By the time the authorities realized they were facing something more than a fire and police officers responded, the six victims were probably already dead, a police spokesman said. “Vargas ran throughout the building, firing shots at random in a very irrational fashion,” Detective Carl Zogby of the Hialeah Police Department told reporters. The gunman eluded the police for several hours inside the apartment complex, occasionally exchanging gunfire with SWAT members, before barricading himself in the apartment of a couple on the fourth floor, Mr. Zogby said. “No one seems to know why he acted the way he acted,” said Mr. Zogby, whose officers recovered a 9-millimeter pistol that Mr. Vargas had apparently used. “He still had plenty of live rounds of ammunition,” Mr. Zogby said. “This could have been a much greater tragedy.” Image Pedro Vargas Credit Hialeah Police Department, via Associated Press All but one of the six victims lived in the apartment complex, a series of beige and yellow structures in a predominantly Cuban residential neighborhood lined with oak trees. A man who lived across the street was killed as he arrived home with his two children. They were not injured. In all, four men and three women were killed, including the gunman, who had been holding the two hostages, a Pakistani couple, according to neighbors, in the evacuated 96-unit apartment building when negotiations with a SWAT team broke down. The dead included a 17-year-old girl, identified by The Associated Press as Priscila Perez. The police said the other victims were the property managers, Italo Pisciotti, 79, and his wife, Camira Pisciotti, 69; the neighbor from across the street, Carlos Javier Gavilanes, 33; Patricio Simono, 64; and Merly S. Niebles, 51. The gunman’s mother was not present when he set fire to the apartment, the police said. Shamira Pisciotti, the managers’ daughter, told WFOR-TV, the CBS affiliate in Miami, that there had been a complaint of some sort and that her parents had gone to check it out. “I heard about 15 to 20 shots, and so I went outside, and my neighbors were screaming that my parents have been shot,” Ms. Pisciotti told the television station. Neighbors said they saw her crying shortly after the shooting erupted. Other residents of the apartment complex said the barrage of gunfire had startled them from the peaceful dinnertime activities of a Friday evening. “I’m used to seeing gunfire on TV,” said Pedro Failde, 81, who lives in the building east of where the shootings occurred. “But this was something else — boom, boom. It sounded like 10 shots from an AK-47. I got away from the window very quickly.” Mr. Failde’s companion, Elizabeth Villalobos, described the whole experience as “terrible.” Another resident, Juan Carlos Arteaga, 51, said the shootings “sounded like a war.” He led a reporter to a landing outside the gunman’s apartment, where a charred doorway bore signs of the fire Mr. Vargas had apparently set. On a nearby landing, someone had set up a small shrine to the dead, with three candles in a glass, heart-shaped ashtray, surrounded by red roses.


A Preview of ‘Long Island Noir,’ Edited by Kaylie Jones

Abstract: THERE is plenty of mayhem for fans of dark fiction in the pages of “Long Island Noir”: shootings, killings, all manner of brutality. And Long Island, too, comes in for a beating. One story in the anthology, which will be released Tuesday as part of a series that began in 2004 with “Brooklyn Noir,” refers to Long Island as a “rootless, soulless place.” Characters elsewhere in the book describe it as having “all the inconvenience of the city and none of its perks,” and call it “a hundred-mile-long dump for hamburger wrappers and toxic waste.” Readers who feel offended are perhaps missing the point. “People say these are dark stories, but that’s what noir is,” said Kaylie Jones, an author and writing teacher who edited the anthology for Akashic Books , an independent publisher based in Brooklyn. Long Island is one of 50 locations where similarly bleak themes have been explored to date, in books ranging from “Paris Noir” to “Istanbul Noir” to “Philadelphia Noir.” Once word got around about the project, more authors began calling than could be included, said Ms. Jones, who believes “The Great Gatsby” could be seen as Long Island’s first noir novel. Besides violent acts, the 17 stories in the anthology revolve around “cheating, lying, having affairs — all those lovely things,” she said. Many of the writers represented are from Long Island. According to one of them, Kenneth Wishnia , a crime writer who lives in East Setauket and has been nominated for the Edgar and Anthony Awards, local residents frequently tell him about shadowy events that don’t make the news — things they would never tell an outsider. “That’s sort of our job,” Mr. Wishnia said of writers. “To peel back the curtain and show that every place has stories they don’t want you to know.” These literal crimes and moral transgressions occur in Amagansett, Great Neck, Huntington and other familiar locales. Often, the tales involve a person who tries to remedy a grim situation, only to make it worse. In the story “Ending in Paumanok,” by Richie Narvaez, a female literature professor at Stony Brook University is drawn into an affair with a student that quickly turns deadly. In Mr. Wishnia’s “Blood Drive,” a laid-off construction worker angered by his deteriorating lifestyle becomes a thug for hire. Things get out of hand for a teenage girl in Wainscott in Ms. Jones’s story “Home Invasion” after she meets a wild-haired surfer dude from an old-money family, who is described as looking “like a WASP kidnapped by Apaches.” The ending features a scene in which the girl wields a handgun she was taught to use by her father. The story was based somewhat on a real experience, said Ms. Jones, who lives in Manhattan but spent much of her childhood in Sagaponack. Her own father, James Jones, the author of “From Here to Eternity,” taught her and her brother to shoot when they were young. “He was a veteran of World War II , and he never felt completely safe,” she said. One of the themes the book explores is how easily disaster can befall even those leading so-called normal lives, said Tim McLoughlin, who lives in Brooklyn and edited the first book in the series, “Brooklyn Noir.” His story in the Long Island anthology involves a once-successful financial investor with a gambling habit that leads him to commit an armed robbery. Mr. McLoughlin said he had seen similar types in Brooklyn Supreme Court, where he works as a clerk. They look just like us, he said, because they are. “Of course, there are evil people in the world, but most crimes are committed by people who just had a bad day or made a bad judgment call,” he said. “I’m fascinated by how close each of us can come to that in our lives.” One of the more unlikely entries is from the author and Pulitzer-Prize-winning cartoonist Jules Feiffer , who lives on eastern Long Island. His graphic short story concerns a man obsessing over the breasts of a strangled woman he finds in his bedroom. Slowly, we discover that the man is less the innocent he at first seems and more like Norman Bates from the movie “Psycho.” “There’s only so many directions you can go with noir,” said Mr. Feiffer, who added that he had had great fun working in a genre where he didn’t have to be funny. “And if you don’t meet Hitchcock somewhere down the line, you’re going the wrong way.” But suburban noir? Really? The substitution of lawns and malls for the shadowy streets and ominous skyscrapers of the city doesn’t bother Mr. McLoughlin, who spent many weekends as a child visiting his aunt and uncle in Wantagh. “This is about the dark side of aspirational culture in America,” he said. “Long Island is the perfect setting.” In fact, he said, suburbia may be even meaner than the big city. People involved in nefarious doings in an urban environment often don’t know one another. In the suburbs, it can be more personal. “It’s a different world for all the players involved,” Mr. McLoughlin said. “Here, they live in each others’ pockets, and you’re more likely to have people on the lower rung working for people on the upper rung.” Mr. Wishnia, an associate professor of English at Suffolk County Community College in Brentwood who will moderate a panel of “Long Island Noir” authors there on May 5, said the book had just scratched suburbia’s surface. “We have our own serial killers,” he said. “There’s Joel Rifkin , the Gilgo Beach murders. Who knows, maybe there will be a ‘Long Island Noir 2.’ ”

Books and Literature
Long Island (NY)
Writing and Writers
Long Island Noir (Book)


Devils Use Social Media as Promotional Tool

Abstract: NEWARK — Jeff Vanderbeek, the Devils ’ owner and a New Jersey native, says it makes good business sense to listen to his team’s fans because they are customers, or can be. He had about a dozen meet-and-greet receptions with hundreds of fans on his first Jersey tour last off-season. The receptions went well, but Vanderbeek wanted the team’s connection to the fans to be tighter and more immediate. So the Devils have begun a social media project they call Mission Control, using converted storage space in their Prudential Center offices. At any time during the day, three or four fans among a group of 25 volunteers, in roughly two-hour shifts, monitor social media sites and hockey-related Web sites for news and other information related to the Devils, then pass the items along through Twitter and Facebook . “Fans want to drink from a fire hose when it comes to getting information about their favorite team,” Vanderbeek said in a recent interview. The Devils have won the Stanley Cup three times in the last 16 years, and their longtime general manager, Lou Lamoriello, is widely perceived as a shrewd judge of talent. But they have never been known as aggressive marketers. Partly as a result, their home crowds are lackluster. With five home games left in their fourth season at Prudential Center, the Devils are 26th among 30 N.H.L. teams in attendance, averaging about 14,400 fans per game, or 80 percent of capacity. Eighteen N.H.L. teams play to 95 percent of capacity or higher. Months before the Devils created a buzz by going on an astounding tear, the idea was to create more enthusiasm among a fan base that Vanderbeek considers relatively young and more likely to use social media to obtain, and exchange, information. So the Devils Army, with fans appointed as generals, was born in February. Although Gatorade and Dell have used similar initiatives to promote feedback from customers, Vanderbeek said he was not aware of anything quite like it in professional sports. “We’ll make up the rules as we go along, and they’ll help us,” Vanderbeek said of the fans. After collecting information from the Web, the generals share it on Facebook ( Devils Army Generals ) and Twitter ( DevilsGenerals ). That the project started about the time the Devils began turning their season around was a pleasant coincidence, team officials said. “They’re the voice of the fan inside the organization now,” said Anthony Oliva, the executive in charge of the project. Much of the original content has been happy chatter about the team and its playoff prospects, but the Twitter and Facebook pages can be an online customer-service desk. Families, for example, said they wanted more gluten-free concessions, and the team responded. Asked if the initiative would give fans a pipeline to Lamoriello’s Prudential Center office on player-personnel issues, Vanderbeek smiled and said, “Not in this organization.” But maybe the Devils can wear their red-and-green throwback jerseys more often. If the fans enjoy the experience of going to a game, he reasoned, attendance will rise, Prudential Center will become noisier and the Devils may play better. The generals in the Devils Army say they do not mind working free at Mission Control — which actually does look like one, with large, wall-mounted flat-screen monitors tuned to sports channels and three work stations with computers. “It’s part of making the fans feel like they’re part of the organization,” said Tim Joyce, a 28-year-old music teacher from North Arlington, N.J., who has been a season-ticket holder since the 2002-3 season. Joyce sat at one of the desks in Mission Control on a recent afternoon taking a sweep through hockey Internet sites, blogs and message boards, hoping to find a topic that might stir conversation among Devils fans. Because the Devils have played so well recently, issues remain polite. Most Twitter posts are game-related — updates, previews and recaps. Questions are light: where might Zach Parise, the energetic forward, fit into the lineup when he returns from knee surgery? “Any fan could start a conversation with a simple Tweet that goes on for hours,” said Carlos Figueiredo, 36, a general from Kearny, N.J., who has been a fan of the team since he was 7. “Before I started doing this, I was on Twitter every day basically talking about the Devils, anyway.”

New Jersey Devils
Social Networking (Internet)
Twitter
Facebook.com
Hockey Ice


Favre Works on Coles Connection

Abstract: HEMPSTEAD, N.Y. — A week into his new marriage with the Jets , Brett Favre still has moments of doubt. He so dislikes the drudgery of football — the practices, the film study — that it drove him to retirement five months ago. When he arrived for work Wednesday morning, his arm weary from the heavy dose of work since he was traded last Wednesday night, it drove him to distraction again. “I wondered this morning what in the heck am I doing,” Favre said after his fifth practice. “The answer to the question is: I love to play. I hate to study. At times I hate to practice, but I love to play. Up to this point, I’m willing to do whatever it takes to do that. It’s harder. I felt 38 today.” Favre quickly pointed out that his arm was not sore or painful — narrowly averting panic from the Jets — from all the snaps he has taken since Saturday. He planned to talk to Coach Eric Mangini about limiting his throws — Mangini had not heard about that until reporters told him minutes later — and he did not know how long he would play against the Redskins on Saturday. Favre said it might be the most important preseason game he would play. Favre said he was so anxious to play, though, that he would have taken a few snaps in Cleveland last week, less than 24 hours after he was traded, if the Jets had allowed it. He took fewer reps during Wednesday’s afternoon practice, which was the longest of training camp, at 2 hours 18 minutes. Favre’s comfort level grew on Wednesday, when he took Laveranues Coles aside for a chat. Coles is still so upset by the team’s treatment of his friend Chad Pennington that he has declined all interview requests. “I said, ‘Look, I heard you’re not talking to the media, I understand you don’t want to say anything good about me, it’s O.K.,’ ” Favre said, smiling. “He said, ‘It’s not that, it’s not that.’ “I said I’m not here to take Chad’s spot or replace him. Those two guys had great rapport. I’m not going to promise him I can throw him 90 balls. ‘Whatever you had with Chad, may that continue.’ We’re in this together, and I’d like to come out of it together.” Coles and Favre laughed about the situation, Favre said, and for segments of practice, Favre seemed to be paying particular attention to throwing to Coles. Favre did not throw well in that practice, and he blamed a series of overthrows, underthrows and off-target throws on his tired arm. But he also delivered a beauty of a fourth-down pass for 53 yards — about 45 in the air — for a touchdown to Brad Smith. “Some of the throws he makes out there, it’s kind of crazy,” said receiver Jerricho Cotchery. Of greater concern to Favre is jamming a few more plays into a memory bank already overloaded with material from Green Bay. He still confuses what a play call with the Jets means with what it meant with the Packers. And Favre plans to watch extra film of his receivers, to learn their tendencies and which passes they prefer. After 16 years, Favre knew the Green Bay offense so well that he was able to improvise with confidence, knowing without seeing where his receivers were. That level of familiarity is still a ways off and Favre’s lack of practice time will almost certainly be noticeable in Saturday’s game, when adrenaline causes the offense to speed up, Cotchery said. “I’ve got just enough plays down to run those plays Saturday,” Favre said. “How it turns out, I have no idea. I told Eric this, for any player the only way to play well consistently is to react and not think. If that means going into the game with 30 plays, so be it. We have to know what to do and do it fast. That’s been the biggest challenge.” But a bigger one may be coming Saturday, when Favre reports to the home team locker room at Giants Stadium. “I know where the visitors’ is, from there I can backtrack,” Favre said. “How many locker rooms are there? I better follow someone.”

Favre Brett
Coles Laveranues
Football
New York Jets
Mangini Eric


Foraging Early Humans Gathered Starchy Grains, Too

Abstract: Early humans were hunter-gatherers, but what did they gather? The easy stuff, archeologists say — roots, fruits and nuts. Until relatively late in the Pleistocene, which ended about 12,000 years ago, grains were thought to have been largely ignored by foraging humans, at least in part because they were difficult to process. But Julio Mercader, an archeologist at the University of Calgary, has now found evidence from a cave in Mozambique that humans were eating sorghum grasses at least 105,000 years ago. The evidence was in the form of microscopic starch granules found on stone tools from the cave. The limestone cave, in the highlands of northern Mozambique about 60 miles from Tanzania, has a long entry corridor that leads to chambers that are completely dark. “Humans were bringing in plants,” said Dr. Mercader, whose findings are published in Science. “Being so dark, you can’t argue that the plants were growing there naturally.” Dr. Mercader, who has been excavating the cave site for three years, examined 70 stone tools, including scrapers and grinders. Of more than 2,350 granules found, 89 percent were of sorghum. But he also found starches from nongrasses including the African false banana, which is actually a tuber, and the African wine palm, which has a trunk that is starchy and sweet. The addition of different food resources, Dr. Mercader said, shows that there was “economic complexity” in the behavior of these Middle Stone Age humans.

Archaeology and Anthropology
Grain
Diet and Nutrition
Science and Technology


Broncos’ Defense Keeps Patriots Off Rhythm

Abstract: DENVER — New England Patriots quarterback Tom Brady was already having a day to forget by the time Denver Broncos safety Darian Stewart intercepted a pass late in the first half of the A.F.C. championship game. Brady had been hit several times and sacked twice, had overthrown several passes and had tossed an earlier interception that the Broncos quickly converted into 7 points. But the Patriots were down by only 5, and Brady had started marching his team back down the field with 5 minutes 21 seconds left in the first half. They even got help from the Broncos, who were charged with a 15-yard penalty for unsportsmanlike conduct. On third down from his own 46-yard line, Brady saw running back James White streaking down the left sideline and lofted the ball about 20 yards downfield into double coverage. As he did, Broncos defensive end Malik Jackson slammed Brady to the ground. They never saw Stewart come up with the ball and run 10 yards before being hauled down. It was that kind of afternoon for Brady and the Patriots, who lost, 20-18 , and failed in their bid to win a second consecutive Super Bowl. The Broncos showed why they led the league this season in fewest total yards allowed and fewest passing yards allowed. The Broncos’ defense has looked like a modern version of the vaunted Orange Crush, which led them to the Super Bowl in the 1970s. Jackson, his fellow lineman Derek Wolfe and linebacker DeMarcus Ware bottled up the Patriots’ running game and kept Brady from feeling comfortable in the pocket. The Broncos’ defensive backfield — led by cornerbacks Chris Harris Jr., Kayvon Webster and Aqib Talib — forced Brady to throw mainly short passes over the middle of the field. The Patriots’ longest completion of the day went to tight end Rob Gronkowski, who rumbled down the field for 40 yards. Brady was hit 23 times during the game. Image Denver’s Derek Wolfe (95) and Von Miller after sacking Tom Brady in the A.F.C. championship game. Credit Dustin Bradford/Getty Images One hit came in the third quarter, when linebacker Von Miller flattened Brady on the 2-yard line, prompting howls from the announced crowd of 77,112, the second largest in Broncos history. Brady’s tough day even inspired fans on Twitter to post pictures of a distorted sketch of him drawn by a courtroom artist last summer. Although the Patriots scored a touchdown after a successful challenge of a backward pass by Broncos quarterback Peyton Manning, keeping the game close, little seemed to go smoothly for New England on Sunday, partly because of Denver’s pass rush. “It was tough for us to ever get in a rhythm,” Brady said. “There were definitely times where I had opportunities to hold the ball and didn’t really have great awareness of where people were around me.” Gronkowski concurred. “It’s not like we were going out there and playing some defense that has some nobodies on it,” he said. With less than three minutes left in the third quarter, the Patriots started a drive from their own 4-yard line. Brady found receiver Danny Amendola over the middle for 9 yards, then ran a yard on the next play for a first down. But two plays later, Jackson broke through and forced Brady to throw the ball away. The next play, Miller sacked Brady, forcing the Patriots to punt. Miller set a single-game franchise playoff record with two and a half sacks. “It was a D-line seminar today,” Talib said. “All those guys got a chance to say ‘Hi’ to Brady.” Manning did not fare much better. He was sacked three times and forced to scramble and throw the ball away. The Patriots also held the Broncos to under 100 rushing yards. But Manning had enough time to hit tight end Owen Daniels with two touchdown passes. For much of the game, Denver kept the Patriots receivers from breaking loose for big completions. Down by 8 points with six minutes to go, the Patriots had no choice but to forgo a field goal when they faced fourth-and-1 at the Denver 16. Brady, harassed again, hit Julian Edelman with a pass, but Edelman was quickly tackled for a 1-yard loss by Harris and a swarm of his Broncos teammates. With 4:35 remaining, the Patriots took over again. Brady finally seemed to find his stride. But on fourth-down-6 with 2:25 remaining, the LED signboards in the stadium urged fans to “Shake the House.” Brady dropped back and, under pressure, lofted the ball into the end zone but out of grasp amid the thicket of hands reaching for it. After the Broncos failed to get a first down and punted, the Patriots took over on the 50-yard line with 1:52 remaining. On another fourth down, Brady made the 40-yard completion to Gronkowski in the middle of the field. Again on fourth down and with 17 seconds left and the season on the line, Brady was thrown to the ground, but not before he had hit Gronkowski in the end zone for a 4-yard touchdown. If the Patriots completed a 2-point conversion, overtime would follow. Brady scrambled again, but his throw to Edelman at the goal line was intercepted by cornerback Bradley Roby. Denver’s defense had held firm when it mattered most. “It was like a movie and it was starring us,” Talib said.

Football
Tom Brady
Peyton Manning
Super Bowl
Patriots
Broncos


Bloomberg Says News Service Did Not Kill Articles on China

Abstract: Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg on Tuesday insisted that Bloomberg News, which he owns, did not censor itself by killing two articles related to China. But he also asserted that, for at least a couple more months, he is not involved with the news service because of his role as mayor. Responding to a question from a reporter at a news conference, Mr. Bloomberg criticized an article that was published by The New York Times on Friday, which reported that editors at Bloomberg News, a division of his company, Bloomberg L.P., had decided not to publish two investigative articles that might have been embarrassing to China’s leaders. “Bloomberg did not do that; the editors said that was just not the case,” Mr. Bloomberg said. According to an unidentified Bloomberg News employee quoted in The Times article, Matthew Winkler, the longtime editor of the news agency, said of one of the articles, “If we run the story, we’ll be kicked out of China.” The Times article also included a comment from Mr. Winkler disputing that account and saying that the articles had not been killed. At the news conference Tuesday, Mr. Bloomberg cited Mr. Winkler’s response, and defended the news service. “No one thinks that we are wusses and not willing to stand up and write stories that are of interest to the public and that are factually correct,” he said. The websites of Bloomberg News and The New York Times have been blocked in China because of articles about the wealth of the country’s leaders and their families. Under guidelines from New York City’s conflicts of interest board, Mr. Bloomberg’s assets are managed like a blind trust. As he noted at the news conference, that will no longer be necessary after he leaves office. “I don’t work for Bloomberg,” Mr. Bloomberg said. “I’ve recused myself from anything to do with the company. After Jan. 1, that restriction will go away.”

News media,journalism
Bloomberg LP
China
Matthew Winkler
Mike Bloomberg
The New York Times
Freedom of the press


California Work Program for Young Is Threatened

Abstract: MOUNT TAMALPAIS STATE PARK, Calif. — An hour before sunrise, Jason Prue, a shaggy-haired member of a California Conservation Corps work crew, stood scrubbing a breakfast dish in the rain, shaking off a night of sleeping in a wet tent and loving every minute of it. “I like working in the rain,” Mr. Prue, 21, said on Thursday. “It’s beautiful. And it’s a free shower.” But Mr. Prue, who joined the corps after living in his car for a stint, and hundreds like him could soon be jobless. A budget crisis has put the California Conservation Corps, the country’s largest and oldest work program for mostly hard-luck teenagers and young adults, on the chopping block. Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger wants to eliminate the program as the state struggles with a $42 billion budget deficit. Under the governor’s proposed budget, the state would take back the $34 million in general funds it spends on the corps each year, though some money would be funneled into work corps programs run by local governments and nonprofit groups. “The expense of the program did not justify keeping them,” said Sandy Cooney, a spokesman for the state’s Natural Resources Agency, which oversees the corps. “This is about making hard decisions.” That the governor might gut the corps even as President Obama’s new administration evokes themes of public works, national service and overcoming odds galls some youth advocates, who say the program serves as a model for the type of “green collar” jobs promised by the Congressional stimulus package . “To cut off the opportunity for disadvantaged kids to get their feet on the first rung of the ladder to future green careers is criminal,” said Van Jones, author of the best-selling “Green Collar Economy” and founding president of the Oakland-based nonprofit agency Green for All. Mr. Jones said the California program was the prototype for at least 13 similar corps in other states and an inspiration for conservation work programs being considered by the Obama administration. “How can you be a green governor and be taking the tools to green the state out of the hands of young people?” Mr. Jones said. California’s program is modeled on the Civilian Conservation Corps, which put three million young, unemployed men to work from 1933 to 1942. President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s “tree army” or “soil soldiers” planted more than two billion trees, restored eroding soil in the Dust Bowl states, developed 800 new state parks, erected one million miles of fences, and built bridges, roads and 13,000 miles of hiking trails in places like Yosemite and Grand Canyon National Parks. “This was without a doubt the most popular New Deal program; it radically transformed the landscape of this country,” said Neil Maher, an associate professor of history at the New Jersey Institute of Technology and Rutgers University and author of “Nature’s New Deal: The Civilian Conservation Corps and the Roots of the American Environmental Movement.” Each year the California corps — whose motto is “Hard work, low pay, miserable conditions ... and more!” — employs more than 1,300 young people between the ages of 18 and 25 for a year of hard labor in far-flung corners of the state. They restore salmon habitat in the redwoods, clear brush from highways and build trails in state parks. Most are unemployed young men hailing from poor urban neighborhoods, and nearly half have not graduated from high school. Though he has a high school diploma, Mr. Prue said he was living as a drifter in an old Dodge Intrepid with a dog named Buddy before joining. “I decided I needed to do something, to find a job I loved,” he said, standing on a muddy slope, surrounded by the pinging sound of pickaxes hitting rock. “This is it.” Plans to terminate the program have united an eclectic group of advocates, including those who benefit from the corps’ work, like off-road-vehicle enthusiasts, hikers, firefighters and sport fishermen. They are writing to the governor to urge that the program not be eliminated. Last week, four former governors signed a letter urging the same, including Attorney General Jerry Brown. Mr. Brown founded the corps program as governor in 1976 because, he said, “kids need to get out of the concrete of the urban world and encounter the complexities of nature.” While legislators continued to wrangle over what to cut and where to tax, a corps crew under a canopy of oak and fir trees on Mount Tamalpais hauled rock, rolled wheelbarrows brimming with dirt and hacked at stumps, carving a wheelchair-accessible trail in the mountainside. “I’m not that good a planner,” Mr. Prue said, his face smudged with dirt. “If this goes down, I don’t know what I’m going to do.”

California Conservation Corps
California
Teenagers and Adolescence
Labor
Infrastructure (Public Works)
Budgets and Budgeting


Justice Dept. Interviewing Former Aides to Nevada Senator John Ensign

Abstract: WASHINGTON — The Justice Department has begun interviewing former aides to Senator John Ensign , Republican of Nevada, as part of a criminal inquiry into accusations that he arranged lobbying work for a onetime senior aide in the fallout from an affair he had with the aide’s wife, people with knowledge of the case said Tuesday. The inquiries signal the Justice Department’s intensified interest in a case that has put Mr. Ensign, once considered a Republican presidential hopeful in 2012, in political and legal jeopardy. Officials said in early December that the Senate ethics committee was issuing subpoenas in the case and that the Justice Department was taking an active interest in the question of whether Mr. Ensign might have violated a federal prohibition on lobbying by former staff members. Since then, according to people involved in the case who spoke on condition of anonymity, agents from the Federal Bureau of Investigation and prosecutors from the Justice Department’s public integrity section in Washington have contacted at least three former aides to Mr. Ensign: Douglas Hampton, a former top Senate aide to the senator; Cynthia Hampton, his former campaign treasurer and the wife of Mr. Hampton; and John Lopez, his former chief of staff. Politico first reported Tuesday that the F.B.I. had contacted some people in the case. Mr. Ensign has acknowledged having an affair with Ms. Hampton beginning in late 2007, and The New York Times reported last October that after Mr. Hampton discovered the affair, the senator moved him off his Senate staff and arranged well-paid lobbying jobs for him with Nevada firms in an effort to contain the damage. Asked about the developments on Tuesday, Rebecca Fisher, a spokeswoman for Mr. Ensign, said, “Senator Ensign believes he fully complied with all ethics laws and rules and plans to cooperate with any official inquiries.” Robert Kelner, a lawyer for Mr. Lopez, the former chief of staff, declined to say Tuesday whether his client had been contacted by the F.B.I. But he said that Mr. Lopez “is someone who has an excellent reputation in Washington for integrity and professionalism, and we believe he has complied with the law.” Mr. Lopez left Mr. Ensign’s office last year and now works in Washington for R&R Partners, a Nevada-based lobbying and public relations firm. Mr. Hampton and his lawyer in Las Vegas, Daniel Albregts, declined to comment Tuesday, and officials with the Justice Department, the F.B.I. and the Senate ethics committees all declined to discuss the status of their inquiries.

Adultery
Ensign John
Federal Bureau of Investigation
Hampton Douglas
Justice Department
United States Politics and Government
Ethics


Resorts and Spas Offer Deals and Discounts as Clients Scale Back

Abstract: UNTIL a few months ago, it wasn’t uncommon for corporate executives to roll into the Tarrytown House Estate and Conference Center in Westchester County in a Mercedes or Ferrari and have meetings over free-flowing, top-shelf martinis, caviar and haute cuisine. Mixed in were dips in the pool, a tennis match or a bicycle spin in the fitness center, before guests retired to elegant rooms overlooking the Hudson River, for almost $1,000 per person, per night. But now, the Tarrytown House Estate, once a favorite meeting spot for the formerly behemoth, now defunct, Wall Street firms Bear Stearns and Lehman Brothers, is getting requests from corporations that still want to go there for business functions but need to scale things way back. “What we’re seeing is people can’t do the bells and whistles anymore,” said the Tarrytown general manager, Joe Santore. “It’s interesting to watch the psychology of the last 60 days. Instead of $20 martinis and open bars, our clients are asking for more value items, like beer and wine from New York State wineries and brewing companies, and simple, more affordable food.” So Tarrytown, the nation’s oldest conference center, with mansions dating to the 1800s, has just created the Value Meeting Package for corporate meetings, starting at $299 a night. Tarrytown is also offering a break for families and couples who want to get away for the weekend: For $159 a night, you get deluxe accommodations for two on the 26-acre Hudson Valley estate, with complimentary wine and a full breakfast. This is just one of many posh resorts, spas and conference centers around New York, Connecticut, New Jersey and Long Island that are offering special rates for leisure travelers and corporations, recognizing that some of their wealthy clients have taken a huge hit in the global economic crisis and unlimited budgets for luxury are dissipating — at least for now. “We’re all in this together,” said Janine Ziegler, sales and marketing director for the Inn at National Hall in Westport, Conn., a AAA Four-Diamond-Award hotel. “In these stressful times, we need to take care of each other. We’re offering lower rates, and we’ve put together some packages with local restaurants and stores, where you get great savings.” The Inn at National Hall has cut its rate for use of the executive board room to $500 from $750, and lowered its corporate room rate to $295 a night from $395. It is also offering a weekend Romance Package for two for $550, in a suite that would normally go for $695. The package includes Champagne and strawberries, dinner across the street at Napoli sul Fiume and breakfast the next morning. At the Ocean Place Resort and Spa in Long Branch, N.J., a place that prides itself on its Web site as offering “shameless self-indulgence,” the corporate rate just dropped to $199 a night from $350 and includes oceanfront accommodations, breakfast, lunch, dinner, two coffee breaks and audio-visual equipment. The rate for private guests was cut to $99 a night from $399, “and we’re throwing in a $20-off certificate to the spa for everyone,” said Joseph Jenci, director of sales and marketing. “This whole economic crisis has everyone in a tailspin — everyone has to make some changes.” Mr. Jenci said many financial companies are looking for bargains in the wake of news that the American International Group, the insurance giant, went for a weeklong retreat at a luxury resort in California just after the federal government committed $85 billion to bail it out of financial ruin. “I think a lot of companies have a perception issue right now after the A.I.G. thing,” he said, “not just with shareholders, but with taxpayers.” RATE cuts and incentives are also being offered at the Delamar Greenwich Harbor in Connecticut. Rated one of the best new hotels in the world by Condé Nast Traveler, “we’re still a popular destination, but we recognize that we need to do something to respond to the current economic climate,” said Steve Weber, Delamar’s director of sales. Room rates that used to run from $499 to $1,700 during the week are now starting at $289 on the weekends, Mr. Weber said. Other perks prompted by the economy at the Delamar include a wine-and-cheese reception, continental breakfast, complimentary tickets to the Bruce Museum across the street, and reimbursement for train travel from Grand Central Terminal , all included in the reduced room rates. On Long Island, at the Gurney’s Inn, Resort, Spa and Conference Center in Montauk, “we have just slashed all of our prices by at least 20 percent,” said Ingrid Lemme, director of public relations and marketing. A new package, Escape for a Break, includes two nights in an ocean-view room, breakfast, lunch, dinner, a 60-minute massage, a 25-minute “ocean radiance” facial, a 50-minute body treatment, a 60-minute fitness class, a manicure, a guided beach walk and Gurney’s signature makeup bag, for $695. Even the Ritz-Carlton in White Plains will lower its rates if you ask, said Vivian Deuschl, a spokeswoman. “We’re not putting our product on sale,” she said. “You don’t see Gucci or Louis Vuitton having fire sales. But we can work with you, significantly, if you talk to us.” A wedding, for example, that would normally cost more than $200 a person can be done for around $100 or less if you choose local wines and have chicken instead of salmon, she said. “You don’t have to give up luxury, you just have to be flexible.” The Ritz-Carlton is also giving all guests a $25 food and beverage credit, Ms. Deuschl said. At Winvian in Morris, Conn., a whimsical fairytale of a resort and spa that opened last year, the owners have just introduced a weekday Escape to Winvian package that is still expensive but a big drop from its normal rate: $999 a night, compared with $1,450 to $1,950. Denise Morris Curt of Milford, Conn., was at Winvian recently with her friend Pamela Hoiles of Greenwich, who had won a two-night retreat for two at an auction. Ms. Hoiles stayed in the Treehouse, a two-story structure that swings slightly in the breeze, suspended between three trees, 35 feet above ground. Ms. Curt stayed in Beaver Lodge, a wood cottage with a stone double fireplace, a waterfall bathtub, pebbled floors and a reconstructed beaver dam in the center of the circular ceiling. “It’s like being in a primeval forest; it’s the most restful sanctuary I have ever experienced,” said Ms. Curt, wearing a mink hat and flip-flops, with cloth weaved between her toes to protect the polish that had just been applied at the spa. She said the new $999 rate would enable her to return, maybe a few times a year. With a round-the-clock open bar, all meals prepared by a star chef, “out of this orbit” spa treatments, and “service attendants who are there in an instant, in a Mercedes, to bring you whatever you need or take you wherever you want to go, you truly want for nothing here,” she said. “The way the world is right now, we need this more than ever. You come here a frazzled mess, and you leave serene, your batteries recharged, your spirit awakened.”

Spas
Long Island (NY)
Subprime Mortgage Crisis
Discount Selling


Fans of Gourmet Magazine Accept No Stand-Ins

Abstract: Loren Shlaes, a pediatric occupational therapist in Manhattan, is the kind of amateur cook who bakes cakes for her friends’ weddings and makes her own spaetzle. She’s an avid reader of food magazines, and, over the years, has subscribed to Cook’s Country, Cook’s Illustrated, Saveur, Everyday Food and, beginning in the early 1990s, Gourmet. Last October, on the day she read that Condé Nast was shutting Gourmet, “I actually felt sick to my stomach,” Ms. Shlaes said. Within minutes, she had called Condé Nast, which offered to replace Gourmet with its surviving food magazine, Bon Appétit. Ms. Shlaes asked for a refund instead. “It wasn’t a learning experience,” she said of reading Bon Appétit. When Gourmet was closed, observers expected an industry food fight. Bon Appétit’s circulation was forecast to bloom as it absorbed former readers of Gourmet, and other magazines began eyeing Gourmet’s list of more than 900,000 subscribers. Though Gourmet was not thick with ad pages, its advertisers were expected to jump to competing high-end food magazines, like Food & Wine, Saveur and Bon Appétit. Half a year after Gourmet’s final issue, in November, the Gourmet readership and ad base seem to have largely vanished. And as the high-end magazines fight over the leftovers of Gourmet, it’s the mass food magazines that seem to be feasting. “I don’t think the closing of Gourmet has significantly caused the increase of dollars to other titles,” Robin Steinberg, senior vice president and director for print investment and activation at MediaVest Worldwide, said via e-mail. “In addition, they are all competing with dollars being allocated to online epicurean Web sites and soon-to-be iPhone and iPad applications.” Bon Appétit was in a position to benefit the most from its sister magazine’s closing. All the Gourmet subscribers were to be switched to a Bon Appétit subscription unless they chose not to. Those who already subscribed to Bon Appétit were given extensions. “Ninety-nine point nine nine percent of a subscriber file, as you can imagine, will not opt to get their money back, but some will,” said Carol Smith, who joined Condé Nast last month from Elle as vice president and publishing director for Bon Appétit. Still, Bon Appétit decided to add only 200,000 subscribers, or just over 20 percent of the Gourmet subscribers, to its rate base, the circulation it guarantees to advertisers. It now guarantees a 1.5 million circulation. Ms. Smith said the relatively small percentage was used because of existing overlap between Gourmet and Bon Appétit subscribers, because some Gourmet subscribers had only an issue or two left, and because Bon Appétit wanted to be conservative. With its March issue, Bon Appétit said in a preliminary Audit Bureau of Circulations filing, it reported a circulation of 1.67 million, well above the rate base. “It’s really a very healthy story,” said Ms. Smith, adding that she would soon unveil the company’s plans for the Gourmet brand and for Bon Appétit. In the first quarter of the year, Bon Appétit’s advertising rose by about five pages, or 3.8 percent, to 126 pages, according to the Publishers Information Bureau, suggesting it had not benefited from Gourmet’s closing. (In the last full quarter of Gourmet’s life, the third quarter of 2009, Gourmet posted 106 advertising pages.) “I was under the impression that with Gourmet closing, they would really invest in that title,” said Leslie Tucker, director for print negotiation at the Richards Group, whose clients include Sub-Zero and Wolf. “It seems like they haven’t done much at all. I really feel like they missed an opportunity,” she said. Competitors, too, are asking if Bon Appétit has missed a big opportunity. “I continue to read Chow and anything I can get my hands on with the Google alerts, and it’s amazing that people are not happy with the transfer of their Gourmet subscription to Bon Appétit,” said Merri Lee Kingsly, publisher of Saveur, owned by the Bonnier Corporation. At Food & Wine, by American Express Publishing, the Gourmet closing spurred a new approach to how the magazine markets itself, though it has not led to a big increase in ads. “We really had to relook at how we were selling, because all of a sudden we had all these sales materials that said, ‘Here’s Food & Wine in comparison to Gourmet and Bon Appétit,’ ” the publisher, Christina Grdovic, said. Food & Wine dropped the comparative approach. Its ad pages were up just barely in the first quarter, rising 2.6 percent, to 160 pages. But, Ms. Grdovic said, the July issue is up 22 percent compared with last year. With the March issue, according to a preliminary filing with the audit bureau, it had about 27,000 more subscribers than it did in October, and Ms. Grdovic said some of that was most likely because of marketing to Gourmet subscribers. At Saveur, although ads were up 22.6 percent to 72 pages in the first quarter, Ms. Kingsly said that was not related to Gourmet’s closing. “Gourmet always carried Cartier and Chanel and fragrance advertisers; Saveur never carried that, so when the market tanked, we didn’t lose those advertisers,” she said. However, Gourmet had carried travel advertising, a category Saveur also goes after. Lower-end food magazines, meanwhile, are thriving — but that is not because of Gourmet’s demise, they say. While their ad pages are generally up, their bigger boasting rights are on the circulation side. Food Network Magazine’s first official issue (after two test issues) was just a year ago, in June-July 2009, when the magazine’s guaranteed circulation was 400,000. The magazine, owned by Hearst, has since raised it twice, and will soon increase it to 1.25 million, or the combined guaranteed circulation of Saveur and Food & Wine. Every Day With Rachael Ray’s circulation is 1.79 million, Taste of Home, 3.2 million, and Cooking Light, 1.78 million, the magazines said in their most recent audit bureau filings, suggesting the wide appeal of these publications. “Some of their readers could be reading this magazine, but for the most part, I think they’re two different ideas,” Vicki Wellington, vice president and publisher of Food Network Magazine, said of Gourmet. “If they were here or not here, I think it would be the exact same.”

Gourmet
Shutdowns (Institutional)
Magazines
Bon Appétit
Conde Nast Publications Inc


Losing Candidates in Afghan Election March in Kabul

Abstract: KABUL, Afghanistan — In an election so fraudulent that there were no clear overall winners, who exactly stole it? That question, and related ones equally unanswerable, were taken to Kabul’s streets on Sunday as hundreds of disappointed candidates marched to protest the results of Afghanistan’s Sept. 18 parliamentary elections . Four hundred, to be exact: the number of members of the Afghan Candidates Union, a new organization of defeated or disqualified candidates for Parliament. Perhaps coincidentally, the day before, the Electoral Complaints Commission had asked the attorney general to investigate 413 candidates whose victories were annulled on suspicion of fraud. That means approximately one in six of the candidates who ran is under investigation. (There had been 2,500 candidates contesting 249 seats.) That is either a measure of how well the election commissions — the Electoral Complaints Commission and the Independent Election Commission — did their job, how corrupt the election process was, or both. Politics made for curious marching partners on Sunday as protesters gathered under black and white banners (all apparently printed at the same shop). Tribal elders and generals, political scientists and former lawmakers, the main thing they had in common was that they had lost, at least according to preliminary results — which will not be final for weeks, pending a protracted appeals process. Some lost because no one voted for them, others because the Independent Election Commission disqualified their votes. They thronged through downtown Kabul, demanding new elections, recounts, or an investigation by the attorney general of the election commission, which organized the elections, and the complaints commission, which investigated the ensuing mess. Haroun Mir, a political scientist known as a proponent of good government, was among the losing candidates marching on Sunday — though he seemed a touch sheepish about it. “I’m not here to protest because I lost, but because for the first time Afghans can protest without violence.” He said he was sure he had been defrauded because in one Kabul polling place the election commission recorded zero votes for him — and he and his family had voted there. “By punishing some bad guys, they punished some good ones, too,” he said. Perhaps at the other extreme was Mohammed Daoud Sultanzoy, who lost re-election to Parliament from war-torn Ghazni Province in eastern Afghanistan after nearly all the votes in Pashtun parts of the largely Pashtun province had been disqualified because of widespread ballot box stuffing. The only new members of Parliament from Ghazni will be members of the Hazara minority. Nationwide, the election commission invalidated 1.33 million or nearly a fourth of the 5.74 million votes recorded, according to an official fact sheet. “If millions of people are incapable of voting, what do you think will happen to democracy?” Mr. Sultanzoy said. “It’s mind-boggling; the Pashtuns will all go over to the insurgents.” Abdullah Ahmadzai, the Independent Election Commission’s chief electoral officer, acknowledged the challenging political problem in Ghazni, but he said that, legally, the electoral issues were clear. Polling stations where no people appeared on election day returned ballot boxes full of votes, and the commission had no choice but to disqualify them all, he said. In all, 19 candidates from Ghazni are among the 413 referred to the attorney general for investigation. Mr. Sultanzoy said he did not know if he was one of the accused, but “all of the protesters are probably on the list they sent to the attorney general.” He complained that in previous elections, his tribe was so strong that he got 100 percent of the votes in his district of Ghazni; this time he had what he called an “astonishingly low” 80 percent, but even so the election commission disqualified those votes, on the grounds that no live voters were part of that 80 percent. Sunday’s march was orderly, particularly by Afghan standards, with marshals keeping the marchers in neat rows, and riot police officers with shields lining the route. If the candidates’ protest often seemed to lack a clear focus, it may be because the election lacked a clear outcome. Supporters of President Hamid Karzai did not do very well, so it is hard to accuse him of stealing the parliamentary election the way he is widely credited with having done in last year’s presidential election. Nor did his main political opponent, Abdullah Abdullah, do well enough that he could be accused of a conspiracy to rig the parliamentary election results. Many former warlords won seats, but many were also disqualified by the election commission. Fraud was widespread, universal and brazen — but it was also confused, chaotic and, in the end, inconclusive on a national level. “Most of the people who made their way into the Parliament are kidnappers, gangsters, criminals, people who make their living killing,” said Hajji Abdul Qadir Sharifi, a losing candidate from Kandahar. As an elder of the influential Alokozai tribe, he said, it is inconceivable that he got only 25 votes. “They bought their votes,” he said of his opponents. Gen. Zalmai Wardak, a high-ranking police official, was just as astonished that he lost in his province, also named Wardak, particularly given his family connections. However, he said, all of his supporters were in districts where the election commission closed the polls because of a lack of security. “The international community spent $135 million on this election,” he said. “It was a waste of your money.” Waste or not, there is little if any groundswell for a recount outside the candidates’ union. “Declaring the election null and void will not happen,” said Ahmad Nader Nadery, a commissioner of the Free and Fair Election Foundation of Afghanistan, a watchdog group, who said that a lot of the protesters on Sunday were probably mainly concerned that they might be on the list of 413 to be prosecuted. Like other community leaders, Mr. Nadery complained that the two election commissions have not identified those accused of irregularities or criminal conduct, nor has the attorney general divulged the identities of the 413. “There should be transparency. There should be a naming and shaming process,” he said. The march ended, as many here do, in front of the United States Embassy. Speakers with bullhorns used a flatbed truck as a platform. “Dear Americans,” Mr. Sultanzoy said, in English. “Nullify this fraudulent election.” Then the marchers went quietly home. Not a shot was fired, nor an arrest made.

Elections
Demonstrations Protests and Riots
Karzai Hamid
Afghanistan


Male Sensitivity Written in the Genes

Abstract: In human development, certain genes act as master switches, ensuring that we are born with similar attributes (one head, two lungs, 10 fingers) in nearly all circumstances. Such genes tend to be highly reliable and resistant to environmental factors. But the gene responsible for activating male development is surprisingly unstable , leaving the pathway to male sexuality fraught with inconsistency, a study finds. The SRY gene on the Y chromosome sets off the growth of male sex organs in human embryos (all of which start out essentially female). To study the gene, researchers at Case Western Reserve University looked at families in which daughters inherited a Y chromosome, a rare occurrence in which SRY fails to fire, leaving a genetically male embryo to develop as a sterile female. They found that SRY is highly vulnerable to environmental factors, allowing the slightest interruption to significantly alter male sexual development. That leads to a wide divergence of testosterone-related male attributes (among them muscle mass, aggression and genitalia development) from one man to another, according to the study, which was published in The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The variability probably serves an evolutionary purpose, said one of the authors, Dr. Michael Weiss . “This tenuous switch is what underlies the variability of testosterone secretion in utero,” he said, producing men with a wide range of gender styles and capabilities that can help ensure a community’s survival.

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America


Mayor’s Checking Account Falls Prey to Two Thieves

Abstract: Willie Sutton may have been an old-fashioned bank robber who relied on a gun, but his slogan — “go where the money is” — still seems to apply in the Internet age. Prosecutors quoted Willie Sutton’s pearl of wisdom yesterday as they disclosed that Mayor Michael Bloomberg ’s personal bank account had fallen prey to thieves, one armed with nothing more than a computer. A Newark man, Charles Nelson, 31, has been charged with stealing $10,000 from the mayor’s personal account through an online transaction on May 14, prosecutors in the Manhattan district attorney’s office said yesterday. The billionaire mayor — or at any rate, his financial managers, Geller & Company — did not question the $10,000 withdrawal until June, after a second man, Odalis Bostic, 23, forged two checks for a total of $420,000, drawn on the same account, prosecutors said. Mr. Bostic tried to deposit the two checks — for $190,000 and $230,000 — into his own business accounts in Elizabeth, N.J., prosecutors said. But because of the large amount of money involved, his New Jersey banks, Sovereign Bank and PNC, put holds on the checks and discovered that they had been forged, prosecutors said. James Kindler, the top deputy to the Manhattan district attorney, Robert M. Morgenthau, said yesterday that the two men appeared to have chosen Mr. Bloomberg as their victim because they went “where the money is.” It was unclear how they got information about the mayor’s account, Mr. Morgenthau said, adding, “It would appear that maybe they saw a check that was drawn on that account.” It was also unclear whether the two men were working together. A spokeswoman for Geller & Company did not return a call for comment. Both men were arrested in August in New Jersey and have been in custody since then, prosecutors said. In State Supreme Court in Manhattan yesterday, Mr. Bostic pleaded not guilty to attempted grand larceny. Jeremy Glickman, an assistant district attorney, asked a judge to set bail in the amount that Mr. Bostic is accused of trying to steal: $420,000. Justice Laura Ward, noting that Mr. Bostic did not necessarily face jail time, set bail at $10,000. Elias Martinez, Mr. Bostic’s lawyer, told the judge that his client was a single parent caring for a 4-year-old son, and had just finished training to work as a medical assistant in a hospital. He said that Mr. Bostic was not as sophisticated as the district attorney portrayed him to be, and that he might have been duped by others. Prosecutors said that Mr. Nelson transferred $10,000 from the mayor’s bank account to a brokerage account he had set up, and spent most of the money on expenses like cellphone bills. Mr. Nelson, who is wanted in Virginia for identity theft, is in custody in New Jersey, where he faces weapons charges related to two guns the police said they found when he was arrested in Newark for the $10,000 transfer, prosecutors said. Mr. Glickman said that both men lived modestly. Antonia Merzon, the chief of Mr. Morgenthau’s identity theft unit, said that prosecutors were reviewing all the activity in the mayor’s bank account for any other irregularities.

Robberies and Thefts
Bloomberg Michael R