For Romney & Company, Campaign Is All Business

Abstract: Presidential campaigns, with their boiler-room pressure, news media scrutiny and organizational challenges, have always functioned as something of a dress rehearsal for the White House. How do the candidates make tough decisions? Are they willing to listen to opposing points of view? Do they micromanage? These questions have taken on a particular edge among the candidates for the Republican presidential nomination, who have remained for the most part ideologically close to President Bush but are trying to cast themselves as more competent. Mitt Romney , in particular, is staking his campaign in large measure on his image as a managerial guru. He has emphasized his advantage on this score on the stump, saying it derives from the data-driven, analysis-laden business practices he acquired in his years in the private sector — and which his aides say are evident in how he runs his campaign. “What concerns me about Washington is that people have answers before they’ve gathered any data, done any analysis, solicited opinions from people who disagree,” Mr. Romney said in an interview. “From the business world, you look at that and you say, ‘You’ve got to be kidding.’” No governing from the gut for Mr. Romney, his aides say. This is a man who relishes “metrics,” is always on the lookout for data to frame discussions and brings a devil’s advocacy to every discussion, whether it focuses on policy formation or advertising. “He challenges everything you first give him,” said Alex Gage, Mr. Romney’s director of strategy. “The worst thing to do is go into a meeting with him and say: ‘Well, we think this is the best thing to do. Anybody disagree? No, no, we all agree.’ That will be a red flag for him.” Even as his advisers talk up his management skills, however, they are not forthcoming on some of the tougher decisions Mr. Romney has faced since entering the race, like how much of his own money to pour into his campaign (of the $63 million he has raised, some $17 million has come from his own pocket), or how to deal with persistent accusations of flip-flopping. And many of the largest decisions are yet unmade, like if and when to give a major speech about his Mormon faith. Mr. Romney recently told reporters that he was inclined to deliver the address but that his political advisers had warned him against it, raising questions about who exactly holds sway in his campaign. His aides prefer to direct attention to his past, promoting his image as the turnaround artist who fixed companies, then the 2002 Winter Olympics and finally the state of Massachusetts, where he was governor from 2003-7. Any effort to cast Mr. Romney as a pragmatic, problem-solving politician must also take into account his partisan slide to the right since leaving the Statehouse, leading him to make blustery comments about doubling the size of the detention camp at the Guantánamo naval base in Cuba and to abandon ideas like requiring people to buy health insurance, which was at the core of his universal health care plan in Massachusetts. “Prior to running for president, Mitt was not particularly partisan or ideological,” said Eric A. Kriss, who worked with Mr. Romney at Bain Capital and later as the Massachusetts budget chief. “He was more likely to say, ‘Show me the data.’” Political observers typically cite the Romney campaign as the best-organized operation among the Republican contenders, from its hyper-focused field teams in early voting states to its efficient fund-raising apparatus. The effort is in stark contrast to that of Senator John McCain of Arizona, who was forced to scale back his presidential campaign significantly last summer when he found it had been far overspending what it had raised while pursuing a national strategy. Mr. Romney has bona fide management credentials, with joint M.B.A. and law degrees from Harvard (he attended Harvard Business School at the same time as Mr. Bush), and a stellar business reputation. His management approach is built on several core principles, he says, including picking the right team, demanding data, conducting thorough analyses and making sure to have ways to measure success or failure. He said he had developed the process over time in both the private and public sectors. “I don’t think there are many people who have had that experience in life, who have actually gone through that process again and again and again, and honed it down,” he said. Much of Mr. Romney’s style was developed in his years at Bain Capital, the private equity powerhouse he helped found. He led a small team that singled out companies for takeover, revamped them and then sold them for profit. But the premium was less on operational prowess, which might be brought to running the sprawling federal bureaucracy, and more on salesmanship and deal making, as well as on the kind of intense analysis he had employed as a management consultant. As governor, Mr. Romney did little direct managing, delegating much of that to his staff, Mr. Kriss said. When addressing challenges, including solving the state’s budget crisis and shaping its universal health care plan, he took an analytical approach. Both efforts began with Bain-style strategic audits. His style in the campaign is similar, his aides said, with Mr. Romney relying on a circle of lieutenants, many of whom are longtime friends from Bain, the Olympics or the Statehouse, who are familiar with what he expects. “He describes himself as the chairman of the company and me as the C.E.O.,” said Beth Myers, Mr. Romney’s campaign manager and former Statehouse chief of staff. “He does not manage this campaign.” Even so, Ms. Myers consults with Mr. Romney daily by phone or e-mail. She said he demanded explanations for everything, like his travel itinerary and the balance between fund-raising and campaigning. “It’s a daily thing of justifying,” she said, “making sure we’re not just doing something because we’re supposed to be doing it.” His aides said Mr. Romney had early on laid out broad expectations for his staff, including that the campaign follow a strict budget. A committee reviews any unplanned expenditures and requires departments to make weekly cash forecasts. Mr. Romney gets monthly budget reports; Ms. Myers receives daily updates. Another expectation was measuring progress in every aspect of the campaign. Mr. Gage, a veteran of several previous presidential campaigns, said the Romney campaign required a greater level of “documentation” than others he had worked for. “A lot of presidential campaigns just end up on yellow legal pads,” he said. “People don’t write memos, prepare presentations or organize defenses. It is just sort of ad hoc.” Staff meetings at the Romney campaign’s Boston headquarters are typically full of statistic-laden spreadsheets and PowerPoint slides. But the defining feature is the kind of back-and-forth that Mr. Romney demands before decisions. Illustrative of this approach was the way the campaign went about deciding whether to stay in the Iowa Straw Poll after two rivals, Rudolph W. Giuliani and Mr. McCain, announced on the same day in June that they were dropping out. The campaign had long been focused on the straw poll as a defining test that could lift Mr. Romney’s profile. But a watered-down field diminished its significance as a bellwether for the nomination and would still cost the campaign millions of dollars. After a flurry of deliberations at the staff level, Mr. Romney had a conference call with his advisers. Gentry Collins, his Iowa state director, advocated staying in and had prepared data on a number of factors, like cost estimates and get-out-the-vote operations. Mr. Romney ran through a list of questions about why the other campaigns had dropped out and what could be gained by staying in. “He was looking for a great deal of information,” Mr. Collins said. By the end of the call, the consensus was to go ahead. “He is not the kind of you guy can say, ‘We all decided to go do this,’ and he’ll sign off on it,” Mr. Collins said. “He demands to know why we wanted to make that decision, why someone else wants to make another decision.”

Romney Mitt
Presidential Election of 2008
Politics and Government


Gordon Brown and Ben Bernanke to Sit on Pimco Advisory Board

Abstract: Pimco, the global bond giant, said on Monday that it was setting up a global advisory board featuring luminaries like Ben S. Bernanke, the former chairman of the Federal Reserve, and Gordon Brown, the onetime British prime minister. Mr. Bernanke, who was hired by Pimco as a senior adviser in April , will be chairman of the advisory board. Other board members are Jean-Claude Trichet, the former president of the European Central Bank; Anne-Marie Slaughter, a former top official at the State Department; and Ng Kok Song, who previously was the chief investment officer for Singapore’s sovereign wealth fund. Pimco said the five experts would provide advice on global politics and economics to the firm’s team of portfolio managers, meeting several times a year at the company’s headquarters in Newport Beach, Calif., as well as in other Pimco offices around the world. They are also expected to feature prominently at the firm’s so-called secular forum, a talking shop held every May and lasting several days, in which Pimco economists and bond managers develop long-range investing themes. While Mr. Bernanke and Mr. Trichet have maintained fairly active profiles in global policy and investment circles, Mr. Brown, quite a private man for a politician, has been less frequently seen — except for his star turn in lobbying for Scotland to stay in Britain in 2014. Nevertheless, as former heads of governments go, Mr. Brown, who also served as chancellor of the Exchequer under Prime Minister Tony Blair, is as expert as they come in terms of international economics. Analysts have long thought that the ideal post-political job for him would be leading a global policy institution, like the International Monetary Fund. “The global advisory board is an unrivaled team of macroeconomic thinkers and former policy makers, whose insights into the intersection of policy and financial markets will be a valuable input to our investment process,” said Dan Ivascyn, Pimco’s chief investment officer.

PIMCO Pacific Investment Management Company


Gunman Kills 2 and Himself at Fresno Meat Plant

Abstract: LOS ANGELES — With the noise of a Fresno, Calif., meat processing plant drowning out the gunshots, a former convict carried out a chilling and methodical killing spree on Tuesday, the authorities said, leaving two people dead and two more wounded before taking his own life. Lawrence Jones, 42, was halfway through his shift at Valley Protein just after 8 a.m. Tuesday when he pulled out a handgun and began shooting co-workers in the head execution style, said the Fresno police chief, Jerry Dyer. Because it was so loud in the plant and many employees wore earplugs, the police believe that Mr. Jones fired several shots before any of the dozens of other employees in the room realized what was going on in their midst. Though police had not identified a motive on Tuesday, Mr. Dyer said it appeared that Mr. Jones had not fired randomly. “It appears, based on his actions, that he was selective in terms of who he was shooting because there were other employees present that he could have shot but chose not to,” Chief Dyer said. The first victim, Mr. Dyer said, was likely Salvador Diaz, 32, whom Mr. Jones walked up to and shot in the head with a single round. Mr. Diaz was pronounced dead at the scene. Mr. Jones next moved to Manuel Verdin, whom he also shot in the head with a single bullet, then put a gun to the neck of a third co-worker, Arnulfo Conrriquez, and shot him as well, Mr. Dyer said. Another employee, Fatima Lopez, saw Mr. Jones firing, and when she turned to run, Mr. Jones shot her in the buttocks, the police said. He then walked up to another co-worker, put a gun to his head, and pulled the trigger. Fortunately, the gun was empty. At that point, Mr. Dyer said, Mr. Jones reloaded the gun, walked outside and shot himself in the head about 150 yards from the plant. Mr. Verdin, 34, and Mr. Jones were taken to a hospital, where both were pronounced dead. Mr. Conrriquez, 28, remained in the hospital in critical condition Tuesday afternoon; Ms. Lopez, 32, was expected to recover. What the authorities do know is that Mr. Jones had a criminal history that stretched back at least to 1991, when he was sentenced to three years in prison for robbery and burglary, according to the police. The police said the serial number of the gun used in the shooting had been filed off. They also said they had found, in Mr. Jones’s house, 45 more rounds of ammunition that fit the gun. An autopsy of Mr. Jones, scheduled for Wednesday morning, could shed light on his mental state at the time of the killings, said the Fresno County coroner, Dr. David Hadden. “What will be very important in a case like this is the toxicology report,” Dr. Hadden said.

Murders and Attempted Murders
Fresno County (Calif)
Jones Lawrence
Fresno (Calif)


For Stock-Picking Advice, Don’t Ask an Economist

Abstract: OVER the last few weeks, as the stock market has reached new highs, my thoughts have turned to my 85-year-old mother. “O.K. Mr. Smarty-Pants,” she often asks me, “what stock should I buy now?” She first asked me this question when I was an undergraduate at Princeton, majoring in economics. She asked again when I was a graduate student at M.I.T., earning a Ph.D. in economics. And she has asked it regularly during the last three decades when I have been an economics professor at Harvard. Unfortunately, she has never been happy with my answers, which are usually evasive. Nothing in the toolbox of economists makes us good stock pickers. Yet we economists have written countless studies about the stock market. Here is a summary of what we know: THE MARKET PROCESSES INFORMATION QUICKLY One prominent theory of the stock market — the efficient markets hypothesis — explains how answering my mother’s question would be a fool’s errand. If I knew anything good about a company, that news would be incorporated into the stock’s price before I had the chance to act on it. Unless you have extraordinary insight or inside information, you should presume that no stock is a better buy than any other. This theory gained public attention in 1973 with the publication of “A Random Walk Down Wall Street,” by Burton G. Malkiel, the Princeton economist. He suggested that so-called expert money managers weren’t worth their cost and recommended that investors buy low-cost index funds. Most economists I know follow this advice. PRICE MOVES ARE OFTEN INEXPLICABLE Even if changes in stock prices are unpredictable, as efficient markets theory suggests, we should be able to explain these changes after the fact. That is, we should be able to identify the news that causes stock prices to rise and fall. Sometimes we can, but often we can’t. In 1981, Robert J. Shiller, a regular contributor to this column and an economics professor at Yale, published a paper in The American Economic Review called, “Do Stock Prices Move Too Much to Be Justified by Subsequent Changes in Dividends?” He argued that stock prices were too volatile. In particular, they fluctuated much more than a rational valuation of the underlying fundamentals would. Mr. Shiller’s paper prompted a storm of controversy. My reading of the subsequent academic literature is that his conclusions, though not all his techniques, have survived the debate. Stock prices seem to have a life of their own. Image Credit Carl Wiens Advocates of market rationality now say that stock prices move in response to changing risk premiums, though they can’t explain why risk premiums move as they do. Others suggest that the market moves in response to irrational waves of optimism and pessimism, what John Maynard Keynes called the “animal spirits” of investors. Either approach is really just an admission of economists’ ignorance about what moves the market. HOLDING STOCKS IS A GOOD BET The large, often inexplicable movements in stock prices might deter someone from holding stocks in the first place. Many Americans, even some with significant financial assets, avoid stocks altogether. But doing so is a mistake, because the risk of holding stocks is amply rewarded. In 1985, Rajnish Mehra and Edward C. Prescott, both now at Arizona State University, published a paper in the Journal of Monetary Economics called “The Equity Premium: A Puzzle.” They pointed out that over a long time span, stocks have earned, on average, about 6 percent more per year than safe assets like Treasury bills. This large premium, they said, is hard to explain with standard economic models. Sure, stocks are risky, so you can never be certain you’ll earn the premium, but they are not risky enough to justify such a large expected return. Since the paper was published, economists have made some limited progress in explaining the equity premium. In any event, the large premium has convinced most of us that stocks should be part of everyone’s financial plan. I allocate 60 percent of my financial assets to equities. Stocks may be an especially good deal today. According to a recent study by two economists at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, given the low level of interest rates, the equity premium now is the highest it has been in 50 years. DIVERSIFICATION IS ESSENTIAL Every time a company experiences a catastrophic decline — consider Enron or Lehman Brothers — reports emerge about employees who held most of their wealth in company stock. These stories leave economists slapping their heads. If there is one thing we know for sure, it is that sensible financial management requires diversification. So, if you have more than 5 percent of your assets in any one company, call your broker and sell. Doing otherwise means exposing yourself to extra risk without extra reward. SMART INVESTORS THINK GLOBALLY One widely documented failure of diversification is what economists call home bias . People tend to invest disproportionately in their home country. Most economists take a more global perspective. The United States represents a bit under half of the world’s stock portfolio. Because Europe, Japan and the emerging markets don’t move in lock step with the United States, it makes sense to invest abroad as well. Which brings me back to my mother’s question: If I could pick just one stock for someone to buy, what would it be? I would now suggest something like the Vanguard Total World Stock exchange-traded fund, which started trading in 2008. In one package, you can get low cost and maximal diversification. It may not be as exciting as trying to pick the next Apple or Google, but you’ll sleep better at night.

Stocks,Bonds
Economics
Robert J Shiller
Burton G Malkiel
US Economy


Pentagon Counsel Looks Ahead to Post-Qaeda Legal Challenges

Abstract: WASHINGTON — The Obama administration’s top lawyer at the Pentagon laid out a vision on Friday for the legal challenges that will arise when the war against Al Qaeda winds down, looking ahead to when the terrorist network has been so degraded that the military conflict — and the legal authorities attached to it — will come to an end. When that point is reached, said Jeh C. Johnson, the Defense Department’s general counsel, the primary responsibility for mopping up scattered remnants of the group and unaffiliated terrorists will fall to United States law enforcement and intelligence agencies, and pressing questions will arise about what to do with any military detainees who are still being held without trial as wartime prisoners. “I do believe that on the present course, there will come a tipping point — a tipping point at which so many of the leaders and operatives of Al Qaeda and its affiliates have been killed or captured and the group is no longer able to attempt or launch a strategic attack against the United States, such that Al Qaeda as we know it, the organization that our Congress authorized the military to pursue in 2001, has been effectively destroyed,” Mr. Johnson said, according to a transcript of his speech . Mr. Johnson emphasized that he was not declaring the war to be over, and that he could not say that even the “beginning of the end” of the armed conflict against the network was yet at hand. He said affiliates of Al Qaeda, particularly in Yemen and North and West Africa, remained a threat. While other top military and national security officials have previously discussed the degradation of the original version of Al Qaeda and the evolution of the network, Mr. Johnson’s remarks represented the most searching public discussion by a senior administration official about the prospect of eventually dismantling the legal architecture of military conflict put in place after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, rather than leaving it in place in a perpetual state of war. Mr. Johnson, who is expected to step down early next year, made his remarks before the Oxford Union, the debating society in Oxford, England. The majority of his speech was devoted to an explanation of the legal authorities the United States government believes it has to wage war against Al Qaeda and its allies, which he and other Obama administration officials have addressed before but usually to domestic audiences.

Terrorism
Al Qaeda
United States International Relations
Espionage and Intelligence Services
Johnson Jeh C


Force Behind BlackBerry Makes N.H.L. His New Challenge

Abstract: A visit to the headquarters of Research in Motion , the Canadian company behind the BlackBerry, offers a hint about where the interests of James L. Balsillie, one of its co-chief executives, lie. Instead of by conventional numbers, boardrooms and conference rooms on the company’s campus in Waterloo, Ontario, are identified with the names of hockey’s greats: Gordie Howe, Maurice Richard, Frank Mahovlich, Bobby Hull, Guy Lafleur, Bobby Orr and Wayne Gretzky. Balsillie, 48, is something of a hero in Canada for creating (along with Michael Lazaridis) a company that smote former American giants like Palm Computing and Motorola. Now the prospect that he may bring the bankrupt Phoenix Coyotes to Canada has put him on a path to national sainthood of sorts. Balsillie’s plan must overcome considerable obstacles, starting with the opposition of N.H.L. Commissioner Gary Bettman and the league’s franchise rules. But the tactics Balsillie used over the past decade to put BlackBerrys under millions of thumbs around the world suggest that he is unlikely to be easily deterred in his quest to bring the Coyotes to Hamilton, Ontario. “I’ve said for years that anyone who wants to bring the N.H.L. to Hamilton should go on medication,” said Ron Foxcroft, a former investor in the Hamilton Bulldogs, a Montreal Canadiens farm team, and a friend of Balsillie’s. “Anyone except Jim Balsillie.” Balsillie has been twice thwarted in attempts to bring another N.H.L. team to Canada. The league blocked his plans to bring the Pittsburgh Penguins and the Nashville Predators north. Those rejections, and the prospect that bankruptcy laws may now allow a route around the league’s rules, appear to have fueled Balsillie’s $212.5 million bid for the Coyotes. “Jim’s a really complicated guy,” said Joan Fisk, a friend who also heads the chamber of commerce for Waterloo and neighboring Kitchener. “Jim’s drive to do this is partly because he was rebuffed. He is very, very dedicated to success.” Although Balsillie’s personal wealth is estimated to be more than $3 billion, he leads a life that still largely reflects his middle-class upbringing. He lives with his wife and two children in a relatively modest house in Waterloo, a medium-size city not noted for millionaires, let alone billionaires; has a modest summer cottage; and drives an ordinary sport utility vehicle. The son of an electrician at a nuclear power station, Balsillie grew up in Peterborough, Ontario, a hockey hot spot about 90 miles northeast of Toronto. Balsillie was a die-hard fan of the Montreal Canadiens, rather than the nearby Maple Leafs. Scholarships brought Balsillie to the University of Toronto’s Trinity College, something of an elite, establishment school, where he was named athlete of the year. He later earned an M.B.A. at Harvard. Unlike many college athletes turned chief executives, Balsillie did not leave sports behind. He heads to a hockey rink once a week at 5:30 a.m. to train and plays twice a week in a local old-timers league. He also competes in triathlons and cycles, and he coaches teams that include his two children. (Foxcroft, a former referee who is now an arena observer for the N.B.A., also supervises the officials for the basketball league that includes his and Balsillie’s sons and in which Balsillie coaches.) A 10-handicap golfer, Balsillie controls GolfNorth Properties, which owns 19 semiprivate courses in Ontario. While sports are clearly his passion, Balsillie has donated 50 million Canadian dollars (about $43 million) to establish a school of international affairs and governance affiliated with two universities in the Waterloo area. Balsillie declined to be interviewed for this article. But his role at Research in Motion provides a glimpse into how Foxcroft and others speculate he would run a hockey team. In 1992, when Balsillie joined the company, which was founded by Lazaridis, it was an obscure maker of radio-based electronics. Lazaridis is a widely respected engineer who single-handedly developed the key concepts behind the BlackBerry and its wireless e-mail service. But most analysts credit Balsillie with providing the financial and marketing strength that turned Research in Motion into a global company. In an earlier interview, Balsillie described meeting rejection after rejection as he tried to sell wireless phone carriers on the concept of wireless e-mail. Only one Canadian company, Rogers Communications, was willing to give the BlackBerry a try. Perhaps not by coincidence, it is now Canada’s largest wireless carrier. Foxcroft, who invented the pealess whistle and heads the Fox 40, the company that makes it, said that any hockey club owned by Balsillie would be a similar partnership. Balsillie, his frequent golf partner, would supervise the business side while turning the hockey operations over to a Lazaridis-style expert. “He wants the team for the right reason,” Foxcroft said. “This may be a business, but it’s also a passion. It would really make money from the beginning.” Fisk and most of the other residents of Waterloo hope the team will come to Research in Motion’s hometown. But Hamilton, which sits between Toronto and Waterloo, has an irresistible attraction: a suitable arena that opened in 1985 to lure an expansion team. The team went to Ottawa. Although Balsillie’s plan has dominated the news in Canada and apparently enjoys widespread support, not all Canadians endorse it. Rod Bryden, who snared the franchise Hamilton had sought for Ottawa, said last week that Balsillie’s attempts to thwart the league’s control over team moves might ultimately harm Canadian hockey. “If a team is just allowed to go to where the highest bid is, who’s next — Edmonton? Calgary?” he told The Ottawa Citizen. Like Steve Jobs at Apple, Balsillie exerts tight control over what information Research in Motion makes available to the news media and the public. If anything, that control has tightened since a Canadian securities regulator investigated Balsillie and Lazaridis for backdating stock options. As part of a settlement reached in February, the two men paid $15 million Canadian toward the cost of the investigation. But the clearest template for how Balsillie will handle the N.H.L. in court is provided by Research in Motion’s entanglement with NTP, a tiny intellectual-property holding company based in Virginia, which claimed that BlackBerry service violated its wireless e-mail patents. Many experts shared Research in Motion’s view that NTP should never have been granted wireless e-mail patents. Similarly, there was widespread sympathy about the apparent unfairness of the patent litigation system. Where analysts and others parted ways with Balsillie, however, was his scorched-earth approach. Despite repeated court defeats, Research in Motion rejected the idea of settling with NTP. That ultimately led to a point where BlackBerry service was in danger of being shut down by a court order. After spending millions on its legal defense, Research in Motion was ultimately forced to pay NTP $612.5 million to drop its suit. Foxcroft is among many in Canada who doubt that Balsillie, despite that bitter experience, will readily back down against any challenge from the N.H.L. “He’s the most dynamic, competitive sports guy in the world,” Foxcroft said.

Hockey Ice
Phoenix Coyotes
Canada
Research in Motion Ltd


At Olympic Trials, Phelps Stays Driven in 200 Butterfly

Abstract: OMAHA — A swimming career is like a chocolate sundae, Michael Phelps said the other day. It can be as sweet as you make it. The old-fashioned way requires a lot of work. Churning the butterfat mixture into ice cream takes time, and there are no shortcuts. And digging out each scoop can be tedious. But then come the rewards, as delineated by Phelps: “How big do you want your cherry to be? How much chocolate do you want to add?” After 13 years on the world stage, Phelps has not had his fill of garnishes. His record eight gold medals at the 2008 Olympics did not sate his appetite. He felt as if he left a couple of goals on his plate in Beijing. His time in the 200-meter butterfly, for one, has gnawed at him. Before Phelps exits the stage, he wants to lower his world record in that event so that it is beyond everyone. At the very least, he intends to be the first swimmer under 1 minute 51 seconds. Phelps, whose best time is 1:51.51, has recorded five of the six fastest times in history and has held the world record for 11 years, 3 months. When he claimed the mark for the first time, in March 2001, Missy Franklin, who finished second in the women’s 200-meter freestyle Thursday, a night after winning the 100-meter backstroke, was 5 years old. The 200 butterfly is the event that propelled Phelps onto his first Olympic team, in 2000, when he was 15. The two-time defending Olympic champion in the event, Phelps came into Thursday’s final with the third-fastest time, behind Bobby Bollier and Davis Tarwater. Phelps, who turns 27 on Saturday, let Tarwater set the pace for the first 100, overtook him on the third 50 and won going away in 1:53.65. Tyler Clary, whom Phelps beat out for the second and final Olympic berth in the 400-meter individual medley, passed Tarwater and Bollier on the last lap to make his first Olympic team, in 1:55.12. Phelps’s 1.47-second margin of victory was less than in 2004 (3.06) and 2008 (1.66), but it was enough to send a strong message: the 200 butterfly gold in London goes through Phelps. “I was just thinking about it today,” Phelps said. “This is my fourth Olympic Games in this event, so it’s special to me, special to my family, special to my mom. I have a couple of weeks to perfect some things that I’m going to need if I want to end with a good one.” Phelps’s training partner Allison Schmitt lowered her American record in the 200 freestyle by half a second with a time of 1:54.40. Franklin clocked a 1:56.79. Ryan Lochte advanced to the final of the 100 freestyle but announced his intention to scratch. Moving into the final will be the ninth-place finisher, Jason Lezak, who snatched victory from apparent defeat in the 400-meter freestyle relay in Beijing with his sizzling anchor leg. Lochte said he raced in the semifinals because he tended to swim faster at night and he wanted to post the fastest time possible so he would be considered for inclusion on the 400 freestyle relay in London. The schedule of events, he added, made racing the 100 final a ridiculous proposition. The final is Friday night, and he is already facing a difficult double, with semifinals in the 200-meter backstroke and the 200-meter individual medley, arguably his two best events. “I know I have enough time to do the 100 free,” Lochte said, “but we already made a plan going into this meet that I was just going to do semifinals, and whatever happens happens.”

Phelps Michael
Swimming
Olympic Games (2012)
Olympic Games
London (England)
Records and Achievements


Stepping Over the Dead on a Migrant Boat

Abstract: It began with blips on a radar screen, 12 miles off the Libyan coast. As the rescuers approached, they found overloaded wooden vessels and rafts that evoked scenes of the slave trade. Hundreds of African migrants were crammed into boats headed for Italy. More than two dozen people were dead in one boat alone, asphyxiated from the crush aboard. In other boats, bodies were splayed on the floorboards, forcing survivors to clamber over the corpses of their fellow voyagers. Image Credit Aris Messinis/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images Aris Messinis , an Agence France-Presse photographer aboard the rescue boat Astral, said it was like nothing he had ever seen. The passengers — from Eritrea, Ethiopia, Somalia, Nigeria and other sub-Saharan countries — were found by the Astral on Tuesday, part of a wave of more than 11,000 rescued in the Mediterranean by aid groups and the Italian Coast Guard this week. Migrants aboard a large wooden boat, which may have held 1,000 people — roughly five times its capacity — waited frantically for help. Some jumped into the water. Image Credit Aris Messinis/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images Even with life jackets tossed to them, migrants struggled to reach the Astral and other rescue vessels, which later transferred them to Italian Coast Guard ships bound for Italy. Image Credit Aris Messinis/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images Pandemonium punctuated the rescue operation, despite efforts by the Astral crew to calm the migrants. “These people were in panic,” Mr. Messinis said. Image Credit Aris Messinis/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images Migrants aboard the wooden vessel included infants, like the one below. Image Credit Aris Messinis/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images In one of the boats, holding roughly 150 people, Mr. Messinis said that rescuers found 29 bodies — 10 men and 19 women. “They told us these people were dead from the night,” he said. At one point, passengers held a child aloft to signal rescuers of their desperation. Image Credit Aris Messinis/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images Migrants crammed below deck were packed so tightly they struggled to get out. “Many of them haven’t seen the sea in their whole lives,” said Laura Lanuza, a spokeswoman for Proactiva Open Arms , a Spanish aid group that operates the Astral. Image Credit Aris Messinis/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images Despite a drop in sea crossings to Europe by migrants this year, more than 3,000 have died in perilous crossings from Libya, where political chaos has made it the main departure point for smuggling operators who care little about whether their clients survive. Image Credit Aris Messinis/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images Rescue officials attributed the spike in sea crossings in recent days to a stretch of good weather after days of storms and sea turbulence. Image Credit Aris Messinis/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images The wooden vessel’s cargo hold contained two-thirds of the roughly 1,000 people found aboard, Ms. Lanuza said, calling the conditions “just like a slavery boat — the same.” Image Credit Aris Messinis/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images After the living were rescued, Astral crew members put the dead in body bags and stored them in life rafts. Image Credit Aris Messinis/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images Migration officials and rescue groups in Europe say the migrant route from North Africa remains the deadliest . Joel Millman, a spokesman for the International Organization for Migration , said at least 38 migrant bodies were recovered in Mediterranean rescues Monday and Tuesday, including those found by the Astral. Mr. Messinis, 39, who has covered the conflicts in Libya and Syria, has been photographing the European migration crisis since it began three years ago. He has often put aside his camera to help rescuers. What he witnessed on the Mediterranean, he said, was different. The analogy to slave ships that once plied the Atlantic, he said, was “exactly right — except that it’s not hundreds of years ago.” "I’ve seen a lot of death, but not this thing,” he said. “This is shocking and this is what makes you feel you are not living in a civilized world.”

Middle East and Africa Migrant Crisis,European Migrant Crisis


Marc Staal Returns to Rangers in Winter Classic

Abstract: PHILADELPHIA — At last year’s Winter Classic, the Penguins’ Sidney Crosby received the first of two hits to the head that would sideline him with a concussion for almost 11 months. This year’s Winter Classic was the return of Rangers defenseman Marc Staal, who was sidelined the previous 36 games with postconcussion syndrome. “To be back in the lineup and part of the team and around the guys is a relief,” Staal said. Staal made a surprise debut against the Flyers on Monday at Citizens Bank Park and logged a relatively light 12 minutes 41 seconds of ice time. He was on the ice for a penalty kill with less than five minutes left in the Rangers’ 3-2 victory. Staal, who had been taking contact in practice for a week, was cleared to play by the Rangers’ trainer, Jim Ramsay, and by Dr. Robert Cantu, the Boston University neurosurgeon and concussion specialist who has been monitoring his recovery. “I had a long conversation with him yesterday,” Staal said, referring to Cantu, “and he said it doesn’t matter — if you get hit tomorrow or you get hit five days from now, it’s not going to make a difference in the effects on you. He said if I was physically and mentally ready to play a game, there was no problem with me jumping in.” Coach John Tortorella surprised reporters before the game by announcing that he had decided that Staal would suit up after saying Sunday that he would stick with the previous lineup. Staal said he felt a bit lost during his first shift, in the game’s second minute, and admitted making “some mistakes” early on, as when James van Riemsdyk almost beat him for a goal. He attributed a little of that to the “unusualness” of playing outside at a baseball stadium. “But I think it was more just playing hockey again,” he said. “I hadn’t played a game since April.” He added: “If I got bumped along the boards and I went back to the bench, I’d think about it a little bit. As the game wore on, I felt better physically and more comfortable.” Staal sustained his head injury in a game against Carolina last February when he was hit by his brother Eric. He missed four games, but that absence was attributed to a leg injury. In March, he missed two more games for unexplained reasons. At training camp last fall, Staal revealed he had played through a concussion last season. Another of Staal’s brothers, Jordan, played in last year’s Winter Classic after missing 39 games because of a broken hand. Marc Staal spoke with him Sunday. “He said he loved playing the game and it was worth it to come back,” Marc Staal said.

Staal Marc
New York Rangers
Hockey Ice
Concussions
Sports Injuries


Traumatized Iraqi Christians Lie Low for Christmas

Abstract: BAGHDAD — As they gathered to celebrate the birth of Jesus, the congregation here first contemplated death, represented by a spare Christmas tree decked with paper stars, each bearing a photograph of a member of a nearby church killed in a siege by Islamic militants in October. The congregants on Friday night were fewer than 100, in a sanctuary built for four or five times as many. But they were determined. This year, even more than in the past, Iraqi’s dwindling Christian minority had reasons to stay home for Christmas. “Yes, we are threatened, but we will not stop praying,” the Rev. Meyassr al-Qaspotros told the Christmas Eve crowd at the Sacred Church of Jesus, a Chaldean Catholic church. “We do not want to leave the country because we will leave an empty space.” He added: “Be careful not to hate the ones killing us because they know not what they are doing. God forgive them.” Throughout Iraq , churches canceled or toned down Christmas observances this year, both in response to threats of violence and in honor of the nearly 60 Christians killed in October, when militants stormed a Syrian Catholic church and blew themselves up. Since the massacre, more than 1,000 Christian families have fled Baghdad for the Kurdistan region in northern Iraq, with others going to Jordan or Syria or Turkey. Though the exact size of Iraq’s Christian population is unclear, by some estimates it has fallen to about 500,000 from a high of 1.4 million before the American-led invasion of 2003. Iraq’s total population is about 30 million. This week, a new threat appeared on a Web site that said it represented the Islamic State of Iraq, a militant group that claimed responsibility for the October church siege. The Web site referred to a church in Egypt that it said was holding two women because they had converted to Islam, and vowed more carnage. “We swear to God, if there are only two of us left,” the text read, “one of the two will keep fighting you.” Churches in Kirkuk, Mosul and Basra canceled or curtailed services for Christmas Eve and Christmas Day, and warned congregations not to hold parties or mount displays. In Baghdad, decorations were seen in stores, but many churches scaled back or held only prayer sessions. While Our Lady of Salvation, the church attacked in October, was among those that canceled services for Christmas Eve, it planned to hold services on Saturday. The Epiphany Dominican Convent canceled midnight Mass and then early Mass on Christmas morning so worshipers could avoid risky travel at vulnerable times. During the week, the church moved one Mass to a convent, so the nuns would not have to travel in religious dress. “People are lost,” said the Rev. Rami Simon, one of five brothers at the convent. “They don’t know where they live now. Is this Iraq?” For those who dare to attend services, he said: “I say, you must accept to live like the first Christians. They celebrated in a cave, and no one knew about it. So we are not the first to live it.” But he added: “If I wasn’t a priest, I would not stay one minute in Iraq. As a priest, I find myself a missionary in my country. And some stay because we are here.” At the Sacred Church of Jesus, attendance has dropped by half since October, Father Qaspotros said. He said he offered this reply to people who tell him they are afraid to come to church: “You are not supposed to be afraid. You are supposed to connect with God, and death is not the last step. If we die, we survive for God.” For Faez Shakur, 25, who attended Father Qaspotros’s service on Christmas Eve, this was the message he took away. “Whenever there is disaster,” he said, “it means a new day, a new life.” When he saw the tree decorated with the faces of the dead, he cried, he said. But he was where he belonged, he said. “We don’t have anything else,” he said, “just to pray and continue.”

Iraq
Christmas
Christians and Christianity


Latest to Quit Google’s Self-Driving Car Unit: Top Roboticist

Abstract: SAN FRANCISCO — A roboticist and crucial member of the team that created Google’s self-driving car is leaving the company, the latest in a string of departures by important technologists working on the autonomous car project. Chris Urmson, a Carnegie Mellon University research scientist, joined Google in 2009 to help create the then-secret effort. He took over leadership of the team after Sebastian Thrun, the Stanford computer scientist and founder of Google X laboratory, left in 2013. Johnny Luu, a spokesman for Alphabet, the parent company of X, the company’s research division that oversees the car project, confirmed Mr. Urmson was planning to leave. “Seven years ago, the idea that a car could drive itself wasn’t much more than an idea. Chris has been a vital force for the project, helping the team move from a research phase to a point where this lifesaving technology will soon become a reality. He departs with our warmest wishes,” Mr. Luu wrote in an email message. The departures come after Google’s decision last year to hire John Krafcik, the former president and chief executive of Hyundai America, to be chief of the car project, as part of a plan to spin the effort out as a stand-alone company under the Alphabet umbrella. The X research group, often called Google’s “moonshot” division, is under increasing pressure to show that at some point the company can expect a financial windfall from its projects. Google’s self-driving car project has been a pioneer in autonomous vehicle technology, but a commercial version of the car is still likely to be several years away. Mr. Urmson has been unhappy with the direction of the car project under Mr. Krafcik’s leadership and quarreled privately several months ago with Larry Page over where it was headed, according to two former Google employees. A spokesman for Google declined to comment on those discussions, but Mr. Urmson disputed they were a reason for his departure. After the dispute, Mr. Urmson decided to take the summer off and only recently decided to leave the company. He told members of the self-driving car team about his decision on Thursday, the former employees said. In a post published on Medium Friday afternoon, Mr. Urmson said he had not decided what he will do next. “If I can find another project that turns into an obsession and becomes something more, I will consider myself twice lucky,” he wrote. “I have every confidence that the mission is in capable hands.” As a researcher at Carnegie Mellon, Mr. Urmson was a member of a team of engineers that placed second in the 2005 Darpa Grand Challenge contest for autonomous vehicles that was won by a rival team from Stanford, led by Mr. Thrun. In 2007, Carnegie Mellon got revenge when it placed first in the Darpa Urban Challenge, while the Stanford team finished second. Earlier this year, a group of Google employees, led by Anthony Levandowski, former Google Car engineer, and Lior Ron, the product lead for Google Maps, left to found the self-driving truck start-up Otto, which is based in San Francisco. More recently, two other Google car engineers, Dave Ferguson and Jiajun Zhu, who are considered experts on so-called machine vision technology, left to found an as-yet-unannounced start-up, according to the two people with knowledge of the Google car project.

Chris Urmson
Driverless Cars,Self-Driving Cars
Alphabet
Google
Appointments and Executive Changes


Giuliani Defends Spending on His Mayoral Security

Abstract: Rudolph W. Giuliani last night called a Web site’s account of his spending a “political hit job” as his campaign struggled to explain why hundreds of thousands of dollars in travel expenses for his mayoral security detail were billed to obscure city offices instead of the Police Department. Earlier yesterday, a senior aide to Mr. Giuliani defended the handling of the expenses, which were incurred from 1999 to 2001, calling them completely proper. The aide contended that the billing followed longstanding procedures in which legitimate travel expenses for the police detectives were spread among the budgets of various mayoral offices. Each agency, said the aide, Joseph J. Lhota, a former deputy mayor whom Mr. Giuliani has asked to look into the matter, was later reimbursed by the Police Department. The practice, he said, was put in place to ensure timely payment. Mr. Giuliani, in an interview on the CBS Evening News, went further. Speaking of the Web report, which was posted on Wednesday afternoon on Politico.com , he said: “This story is five years old. It came out two hours before a debate. It’s a typical political hit job with only half the story told.” But neither Mr. Giuliani nor Mr. Lhota explained why the travel expenses for the security detail were spread across the budgets of an array of obscure mayoral offices rather than paid out of a single account in the mayor’s office. “I’ve continued to try to find out,” Mr. Lhota said, adding that the practice of billing the security detail’s travel expenses to the agencies had been done consistently since some time in Mr. Giuliani’s first term. The Web site report focused largely on the security detail’s expenses for trips that Mr. Giuliani took to Southampton, N.Y., at a time when he was beginning an extramarital affair with Judith Nathan , who is now his third wife. Ms. Nathan had a condominium there, but the Web site said it was impossible to say how many of Mr. Giuliani’s 11 trips there in the summers of 1999, 2000 and 2001 were to visit her. The Web report and a torrent of subsequent news accounts renewed attention on that period of Mr. Giuliani’s life, highlighting it hours before Wednesday night’s Republican debate and as his campaign geared up for January’s Iowa caucuses. The reports also arrived as one of his rivals, Mitt Romney, was raising questions about fiscal stewardship of New York City during his two terms as mayor. It is unclear precisely how and when the billing practice developed, but there was no question that Mr. Giuliani’s travel itinerary grew more expansive toward the end of his tenure as mayor. He had been a mayor who seldom left the city and prided himself on rarely taking a vacation. But at that time, he began to move about the state and beyond, in part because he was running for the United States Senate against Hillary Rodham Clinton, and in part because of his relationship with Ms. Nathan. While the specific accounting mechanisms remained something of a mystery, the actual expense reports, which the Politico site obtained under the State Freedom of Information Law, do shed light on the precise nature of some of the spending. The New York Times obtained the reports late yesterday under the same law. Overall travel expenses for the mayor’s office — which included a broad range of trips beyond just those involving the security detail — were clearly growing at the end of the mayor’s term, according to the city comptroller, with a 151 percent increase from the fiscal year 2000 to the 2001 fiscal year, to $618,014 from $245,896. Some of the expense reports show that the mayor’s security detail traveled to upstate New York towns during the period in late 1999 and early 2000 when he was seeking the United States Senate seat. However, the documents also show that only a part of the spending was incurred by Mr. Giuliani’s detail as it traveled to accompany him to many places, including Washington, where he conducted city business, and Southampton, where he raised money and where Ms. Nathan had her condominium. Another significant portion of the money was spent on travel for police detectives who accompanied his second wife, Donna Hanover , on various trips, including several to California. City Comptroller William C. Thompson Jr. , a Democrat, said in an interview that the expenses should have been charged to a single budget account that would directly reflect who traveled and for what purpose, rather than distributed among offices that had nothing to do with the trips. “It’s definitely not the preferred way that one would like to see business conducted,” Mr. Thompson said. The Bloomberg administration, he said, has charged expenses in this preferred way. He said auditors working under his predecessor first raised questions about the travel costs during the Giuliani administration. Their requests to the Giuliani administration for details and justification went unanswered, Mr. Thompson said. Indeed, while Mr. Giuliani and his aides provided extensive responses yesterday to the reports about the billing practices, they did not, according to the Politico report, offer any explanation before its publication. Shortly after Mr. Thompson took office in 2002, he asked Mayor Bloomberg’s administration to review the matter. Mayor Bloomberg’s office ultimately concluded that the expenses were for legitimate security purposes but referred the matter to the city’s Department of Investigation for further review. “We were told it that it was for security purposes, that it was used for legitimate security reasons,” Mr. Thompson said. “And once you get that assurance, particularly from not the same mayor’s office, but from a different mayor’s office, that they had taken a look, then we had no reason to believe that it wasn’t.” “Our biggest concern,” he continued, “was making sure there was no misappropriation.” Mr. Thompson said he had not heard anything further about the matter from the Department of Investigation, but said normal procedures would call for the agency to contact him only if it found something improper. A spokeswoman for the agency declined to comment about the matter and would not say whether it had produced a closing memorandum, a standard practice in any investigation, saying it was “gathering the files related to the investigation.” Bernard B. Kerik, who was Mr. Giuliani’s police commissioner when some of the charges were billed, said in an interview yesterday that the security detail’s travel expenses would normally come out of the Police Department’s budget. “There would be no need for anyone to conceal his detail’s travel expenses,” said Mr. Kerik, who was indicted earlier this month on unrelated federal tax fraud and corruption charges. “And I think It’s ridiculous for anyone to suggest that the mayor or his staff attempted to do so.”

Giuliani Rudolph W
New York City
Budgets and Budgeting
Nathan Judith
Presidential Election of 2008
Accounting and Accountants
Hanover Donna
Thompson William C Jr
Hamptons (NY)


A Parent Answering a Call for Pre-K Teachers Goes Back to Work (and School)

Abstract: Long before her campers tumble out of bed for breakfast, Lisa Martino is huddled over her kitchen table, poring over her graduate school textbooks and clack-clack-clacking on her laptop as she absorbs lessons on literacy and curriculum development. By the time the children arrive at camp around 8 a.m., she has been up for three or four hours. And her day is just getting started. This summer, Ms. Martino is guiding a phalanx of 4-year-olds as they dash through sprinklers and navigate the complex social universe that is summer camp in Glendale, Queens. To the children and parents, she is simply Miss Lisa, a group leader who tames the unruly buckles of wayward water shoes and tells engrossing stories about sharks and giants. But she is not just a camp counselor. She is a 48-year-old career changer, soon to be in the vanguard of New York City’s sweeping expansion of early childhood education. In the fall, Ms. Martino will join the army of new teachers — as many as 1,000 in all — who will lead classrooms across the city as Mayor Bill de Blasio rolls out the first phase of his universal prekindergarten program. Her campers may be savoring the summer days, but for Ms. Martino, the weeks are flying by. In September, she will be in charge of 18 4-year-olds at Little Stars, a prekindergarten program run by the Greater Ridgewood Youth Council in Queens, which also sponsors the summer camp. Will she be ready? Some days, she’s certain. Some days, she’s not. “I’m nervous,” Ms. Martino said, taking a rare break. “I’ve never been so excited about work in my life. But I’m still learning the lay of the land.” This will be Ms. Martino’s first preschool classroom and her first full-time job after a decade as a stay-at-home mother. (Her children are now 6 and 9 years old.). She is working on her second graduate degree, having earned a master’s degree to become a guidance counselor in her 20s. She is one of 95 scholars enrolled in a new, city-funded fellowship program run by the New York Early Childhood Professional Development Institute , which is training new prekindergarten teachers for the fall. The program — which offers a fully funded master’s degree in early childhood education from the City University of New York, along with a full-time prekindergarten teaching position — was aimed at people who were new to teaching but had a bachelor’s degree in liberal arts, a 3.0 grade-point average and a passion for working with young children. One can imagine the kind of interest the promise of free graduate studies and a full-time job with benefits generated in this unsettled economy. About 1,200 people applied for the roughly 100 slots. Many of those chosen were career changers like Ms. Martino, who had worked as a director of student activities at a local college and then in accounting and legal compliance for a corporate political action committee before deciding to stay home to raise her children. Over the years, she began to think that working with young children might be her calling. She volunteered for the PTA and for her local Girl Scout troop. After she and her husband split, her search took on greater urgency. In January, she started working as a substitute teacher. But without state certification in teaching, she couldn’t find a full-time job. When she found out in May that she had been selected for the fellowship, she felt as if she had won the jackpot. Ms. Martino’s job at Little Stars will pay $44,000 a year. She still weeps sometimes when she talks about it. “Some people never get to do what they dream about,” said Ms. Martino, who will receive state certification once she completes the fellowship program. This summer, she helps to lead the camp classroom, singing days-of-the-week songs, teaching new vocabulary and leading discussions about kindness and respect. Then, four nights a week, she typically heads to Queens College for her graduate courses, where she and her fellow teachers-in-training are currently working on developing curriculums for the coming year. The workload won’t ease up after school starts. Ms. Martino and her colleagues will work toward earning nine to 12 credits per semester, in addition to holding their full-time jobs, to ensure that they can get their degrees and certification next summer. A program liaison will help them juggle their multiple responsibilities, offering advice and support in their classrooms. “I’m a little nervous that it might be a little overwhelming,” said Janine Mahon, the director of program operations for the Greater Ridgewood Youth Council, who hired Ms. Martino. Several people have dropped out of the program. But Ms. Martino said she is determined to see it through. She owes it to herself, she said, and to the children who will be counting on her in September.


Dale T. Mortensen, Labor Economist and Nobel Laureate, Dies at 74

Abstract: Dale T. Mortensen, an economist whose pioneering work on labor markets won a Nobel and helped governments and policy makers better understand the stubborn complexities of unemployment, died on Thursday at his home in Wilmette, Ill. He was 74. The cause was cancer, his son, Karl, said. Professor Mortensen was one of three economists who shared the 2010 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences for their work on a line of economic thinking known as search theory. Together he and the other two laureates, Peter A. Diamond of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Christopher A. Pissarides of the London School of Economics, developed a model to help explain why even in times of economic health, when employers have many job openings, it can be hard for unemployed people to find work, and conversely, why employers may have a hard time filling open positions even during periods when the pool of available workers is large. The answer, which had to do with the facts that neither people nor jobs are cookie-cutter units and that there are inefficiencies associated with matching them up, can be applied to housing, public finance, even dating — any market where buyers cannot automatically link up with sellers and where traditional forces of supply and demand do not play out. His work helped steer policy debates about joblessness beyond the level of worker pay and unemployment benefits and toward other factors, among them interest rates and search costs. His books included “Wage Dispersion: Why Are Similar Workers Paid Differently?” (2003) and “Job Matching, Wage Dispersion and Unemployment” (2011), written with Mr. Pissarides. In a comment posted as part of an obituary on the website of Northwestern University, where Professor Mortensen had taught since 1965, Robert E. Lucas, the John Dewey distinguished service professor in economics at the University of Chicago, said Professor Mortensen “combined sophisticated economic theory and careful empirical work in ways that will continue to inspire economic researchers for decades to come.” Dale Thomas Mortensen was born on Feb. 2, 1939, in Enterprise, Ore. His father, a Danish immigrant, was a forest ranger, and Dale developed a love of the outdoors as a child that continued through his final days, his son said. He graduated from Willamette University in Salem, Ore., with a bachelor of science degree in economics, and earned his Ph.D. from Carnegie Mellon. He joined the Northwestern faculty in 1965 and stayed at the university for his entire career except for a stint as a visiting professor at a university in Denmark. It was during a luncheon on a return trip to Denmark for an academic conference that he learned he had won the Nobel. In addition to his son, Professor Mortensen is survived by his wife of 50 years, Beverly, a religion scholar on the Northwestern faculty; two daughters, Lia DuBarry Mortensen and Julie Mortensen Glanville; eight grandchildren; and two brothers, Arne and Irving. Though Dr. Mortensen made his career in what many a college student has considered a dry discipline, his outside interests were more lively. He and his wife were patrons of the symphony, opera and theater, and he was a member of his church choir, which his wife directed. “He was a big singer,” Karl Mortensen said.

Dale T Mortensen
Economics
Obituary
Jobs


Mediator to Enter Talks With Drivers of Wheelchair Vans

Abstract: A federal mediator will arbitrate talks between four companies that provide 8,000 daily van rides for disabled and frail passengers in New York City and the union that represents their drivers. The drivers walked off their jobs yesterday after twice rejecting a tentative contract their leaders had signed off on late in August. The strike should continue at least until tomorrow, when the parties are expected to resume negotiations with the mediator and try to resolve their differences over wages and health benefits, according to representatives on both sides. “We are absolutely willing to go back to the table with an open mind,” said Jeffrey Pollack, chief negotiator for the companies. At issue is a proposed increase in employee health care contributions that the drivers say would offset the wage hike the companies have offered. Since 1997, drivers have made 40 weekly contributions of $15 toward health insurance, with the companies paying the full amount of the premium in the remaining 12 weeks of the year. The new contract would require health care payments from drivers all year. The contract also calls for an increase in weekly health care contributions to $20 in 2009 and $25 in 2011. Salaries would rise to $20.75 an hour for all drivers, who now make $13 to $17 an hour, depending on seniority and other criteria. “We’re not saying that the increase in the health care premium is a problem,” said Tommy Mullins, a trustee at the Amalgamated Transport Union Local 1181, which represents the striking drivers. “The problem is that the pay raise doesn’t turn out to be much when you take into consideration the additional health care payments our members would have to make.” The Metropolitan Transportation Authority, which runs the city’s public transportation system, hires 14 van companies to serve about 30,000 disabled, sick and elderly people through its Access-a-Ride program. The four companies whose drivers are on strike — Atlantic Paratrans, Maggie’s Paratransit, Transit Facility Management and MV Transportation — account for about half of the program’s estimated 18,000 daily trips, carrying thousands of passengers to doctor’s appointments, work, school and social outings. In a statement, the authority’s New York City Transit division, which oversees Access-a-Ride, said that it had authorized five times as many taxicab trips and had issued twice the number of car-service vouchers for passengers with urgent medical needs. The van companies whose workers are not on strike also pitched in to transport stranded passengers, as did private ambulette carriers. Yesterday, the agency managed to make 65 percent of the program’s scheduled morning trips and 70 percent of its afternoon trips, the statement said. Transit officials estimated that 14,000 trips would be made today. The strike forced people like Marty Sesmer, who needs a wheelchair to move around, to ride the bus from his home in the Kipps Bay neighborhood of Manhattan to his job at a nonprofit near Gramercy Park. “It’s hard to roll the wheelchair into the bus, and once you get it inside, the wheelchair rolls over people’s feet because the bus is too crowded in the morning,” said Mr. Sesmer, 69, who lost mobility in one leg and had half of the other amputated because of vascular disease. “I had my home-health attendant accompany me, but it was hard for me, hard for her, and over all, a huge inconvenience for everybody who didn’t have their usual van ride.” Van drivers from the same four companies staged a weeklong strike in 2004, which ended after both sides agreed to a three-year contract that provided a 14 percent salary increase. This time, the companies are offering a five-year deal; union leaders signed off on Aug. 31, but the union membership rejected the agreement. Mr. Mullins said that drivers were “reluctant to lock into a long-term commitment they’re not happy about” and that after failing to get a concession from the companies, they had no other choice but to call a strike. “We did so with the heaviest of hearts,” he said. “We know that we serve a segment of the community that has no alternative means of transportation and we recognize their needs, but there’s an issue of fairness here that we need to resolve.”

Handicapped
Strikes
Labor
Arbitration Conciliation and Mediation


Draghi Praises Lithuania as Economic Example to Europe

Abstract: FRANKFURT — At a time when the euro currency is slumping against the dollar and the eurozone is in need of positive turnaround stories, the tiny country of Lithuania may have provided one on Thursday. During a visit to the capital of Vilnius on Thursday, Mario Draghi, the president of the European Central Bank, cited Lithuania as a model for other eurozone countries because of the way it overcame a brutal economic downturn in 2009 to become one of the fastest-growing members of the European Union. “Certainly it is a powerful message to everybody else,” Mr. Draghi said during a news conference. The overall good prospects for the Lithuanian economy come despite the impact of Western sanctions against Moscow, which have boomeranged in Lithuania to hit its dairy industry — for which Russia was its largest export market. A retaliatory Russian embargo against Lithuanian dairy products is expected to shave a few tenths of a percentage point off Lithuania’s growth this year. Mr. Draghi’s visit, to mark Lithuania’s impending membership in the eurozone, happened to come on the same day that the euro currency hit a nearly two-year low against the United States dollar. While the weak euro is good news for export countries including Lithuania, because it makes their products cheaper in foreign markets, it was also a sign of how warily investors view growth prospects in Europe compared with the United States. The strong dollar and weak euro translated into a bad day Thursday for European stocks, which were down broadly in a late sell-off partly in sympathy with a big dip in United States stocks. Lithuania, which will adopt the euro in January, provided an example of what Mr. Draghi clearly would like to see more of in the eurozone, which is in danger of slipping back into recession. The country, Mr. Draghi said, was an example of “growth-friendly consolidation.” In other words, Lithuania showed it was possible to corral government spending and debt in the midst of a steep downturn, and ultimately return to growth. Economic output in Lithuania plunged 15 percent in 2009 after the financial crisis. But the country of 3 million people, which pegged its currency, the litas, to the euro in 2002, stayed the course. Instead of allowing the litas to devalue, the government embarked on a harsh austerity program, cutting the government deficit to 2.1 percent of gross domestic product last year, from 9.4 percent in 2009. Lithuania’s Baltic neighbors, Latvia and Estonia, underwent similar transformations, making them paragons of a kind of virtue that some Europeans would like big eurozone countries like France and Italy to exhibit. “The Baltic countries have demonstrated that adjustment is possible — even without currency devaluation,” Mr. Draghi said at an event organized by the Bank of Lithuania, the country’s central bank. Last year, the Lithuanian economy grew 3.3 percent. This year growth will slow to 2.9 percent, according to an estimate by the Bank of Lithuania, crimped in part by the retaliatory Russian sanctions. But Lithuania will nonetheless remain among the most dynamic economies in the European Union. Not everyone agrees that the Baltic countries are an example for others. During the Draghi news conference, a Lithuanian reporter pointed out that the economic downturn had prompted huge numbers of Lithuanians to leave the country in search of better opportunities elsewhere. Mr. Draghi agreed that the mass exodus was unfortunate, but predicted that many people would return now that the economy was improving. “When countries go back to growth, you have the opposite flows of immigration,” he said. In any case, the euro currency union may not be the economic draw it once was. Recent data has raised concerns that the eurozone economy is slowing, which is damaging the currency’s global value. At 1.27 to the dollar on Thursday, the euro was at its lowest point since November 2012. It has fallen 9 percent since May. A weaker euro is good for exporters inside the currency zone — or, like Lithuania, anchored to it — because it makes German cars or Italian shoes less expensive abroad. But it is also a verdict on the eurozone economy, a sign that investors believe they can earn a better return on dollars than euros. In another sign of the eurozone’s questionable health, the European Central Bank published data on Thursday indicating that lending to private corporations, excluding banks, continued to decline, although the falloff was occurring at a slightly slower rate. The central bank has already cut its benchmark interest rate to a record 0.05 percent in an effort to end the credit crisis. And Mr. Draghi repeated Thursday that the bank remained ready to go further than it already has to stimulate the eurozone economy. But his praise of Lithuania was a variation on a theme he has repeated in recent statements and speeches — namely that the European Central Bank can do only so much, and that the onus is on eurozone governments to remove obstacles to entrepreneurship so their economies can grow more quickly. “We can draw an important lesson from the Baltic experience,” Mr. Draghi said. “Governments not only acted boldly, but also immediately. They used the momentum of the crisis to implement the necessary consolidation and thus managed to convince the public of the need for these measures.” “The Baltic case,” he added, “shows that — while consolidation might weigh temporarily on economic growth in the short term — it is the basis for sustainable growth in the longer run.”

Euro
European Central Bank
Mario Draghi
Lithuania


Okinawans Grow Impatient With Dashed Hopes on U.S. Base

Abstract: GINOWAN, Japan — Okinawans like Zenji Shimada, who have spent most of their lives under the thudding of helicopters from a busy American air base, are accustomed to disappointment. Decades of complaints about the base here and others on the island have gone largely unheeded, and a painstakingly negotiated plan to move the Marines from populated areas remains years from completion. This summer was no different. Hopes stirred by the election of a new Democratic Party government were quickly dashed after members of the administration of the incoming prime minister, Yukio Hatoyama, backed away from the party’s pre-election promises to move the base off the island. “We feel like Mr. Hatoyama has been jerking us around,” said Mr. Shimada, 69, a Protestant pastor who joined a lawsuit against the base. When President Obama visits Tokyo on Friday as part of a weeklong tour of Asia, the base issue is perhaps the most prominent of several he will face as the countries’ long-close relations enter a new period of uncertainty. While Mr. Hatoyama has affirmed that the military alliance with the United States remains the cornerstone of Japanese foreign policy , he has also called for ending Japan ’s “overdependence” on Washington and reorienting his nation toward a resurgent Asia. “Japan-American relations have entered a new stage that people don’t really understand yet,” said Masaaki Gabe, a professor of international relations at Okinawa’s University of the Ryukyus . “Japan feels a lot of uncertainty about the future in Asia, but it also feels like it doesn’t have to follow quite so closely behind the United States.” As the two nations search for a new balance, the fate of the base, the sprawling United States Marine Corps Air Station Futenma, has taken on heightened significance. Futenma has occupied the center of Ginowan , a city of 92,000, since it was built on land seized in the closing days of World War II. It was this base, with its busy runway lying adjacent to homes and a university and its flight paths running directly over crowded neighborhoods, that Washington initially agreed to move in 1996 after a public outcry over the rape of a 12-year-old schoolgirl by three American servicemen. Washington wants to proceed with a 2006 agreement to move the Marines to a less heavily populated part of Okinawa by 2014. But Mr. Hatoyama’s party is now backtracking, saying it may seek to renegotiate the deal. Mr. Hatoyama has postponed making a formal decision until after local Okinawan elections in January. The airfield still operates in this densely populated city, 13 years after the initial deal, because of bureaucratic foot-dragging and Tokyo’s inability to find another community to take the Marines. Public clamor for the base’s removal surged again after a Marine cargo helicopter crashed in 2004 in a fireball on the neighboring campus of Okinawa International University , injuring three crew members. Today, the university has turned the crash site into a small shrine by preserving a burned tree trunk and a concrete wall cleaved by the falling helicopter’s propeller. For many Okinawans, Futenma has become the most visible symbol of an unfair burden placed on the island, home to about two-thirds of the 37,000 shore-based United States military personnel in Japan . On Sunday, 21,000 protesters gathered in Ginowan to demand that Mr. Hatoyama fulfill his party’s earlier promises to move the base off Okinawa. “Our fight against the injustice of these bases has been going on ever since the Battle of Okinawa” in World War II, said Ginowan’s mayor, Yoichi Iha, one of the protest’s organizers. “The backlash will also be huge if the Democratic government reneges on its promises.” His sentiments, and those of many here, are written in English across the roof of its city hall, for American aviators to see: “Don’t Fly Over Our City!” Mr. Iha said he was demanding the base’s removal from the island because he did not want to shift his city’s burden onto another Okinawan community. Indeed, the 2006 deal to move the Marines to a V-shaped airfield to be constructed near the fishing village of Henoko only angered many Okinawans, who see the continued American presence as a symbol of Tokyo’s neglect of the island, which was part of the independent Ryukyu Kingdom before annexation by Japan in the 1870s. Okinawans said they felt betrayed last month when a Democratic leader, Foreign Minister Katsuya Okada, seemed to reverse his party’s longstanding promise to move the base off Okinawa, saying such a move would be too time-consuming. Mr. Okada said that instead he wanted to consider moving the Marines to a larger United States Air Force base on Okinawa, a plan that both nations had already rejected. Anger here also runs high at the Obama administration after Secretary of Defense Robert M. Gates’s visit to Tokyo in October to press for the existing deal for a move to Henoko. When Mr. Gates warned that any changes might undo a broader agreement with Washington to move about 8,000 Marines to Guam, he was criticized in the Japanese news media as a bully. Officially, the White House has said it wants to give the new government time to assess its predecessor’s policies. But there have been concerns in Washington and Tokyo, voiced last week in an editorial by the conservative Yomiuri Shimbun, Japan’s largest daily newspaper, that what it called Mr. Hatoyama’s indecision was eroding trust between the allies. Not all Ginowan residents are against the base. Manami Onaga, 40, who helps manage a 1950s-theme diner selling hamburgers and tacos outside Futenma’s main gate, said the Marines brought Ginowan needed jobs and money. Okinawa had Japan’s lowest per capita annual income in 2006, less than half of Tokyo’s $45,000, according to the Cabinet Office. But more seem to agree with Mr. Shimada, the pastor. “Obama promised change, and that’s what we want,” Mr. Shimada said. “We want him to recognize the problems that his country’s military is inflicting on us.”

Okinawa and Other Ryukyu Islands (Japan)


Staten Island Ferry Crash Puts Focus on Experience

Abstract: When a Staten Island ferry rammed into a concrete pier on the St. George terminal in 2003, killing 11 people, its pilot and captain had 26 years of ferry experience between them. When the same boat, the Andrew J. Barberi, crashed again this month, injuring dozens of passengers, the two top-ranking members of its crew had worked on the city’s ferries for barely a decade. Yet the leaner experience of the boat’s crew was in part a consequence of the earlier, more devastating crash, which prompted a top-to-bottom overhaul of lax management practices at the ferry system, run by the city’s Department of Transportation. Crew members, once veterans plucked from the salty world of tugboats and commercial shipping, now often arrive directly from maritime academies. Formal training is prized over more experience on the water. The new system has produced sailors like Donald Russell, 27, the captain of the Barberi. In less than five years after graduating from a local maritime academy, Mr. Russell rose from mate — the lowest licensed rank on the ferry — to become a captain of one of the biggest boats in the city’s fleet. By his side at the time of the crash stood Maqbool Ahmed, 47, two decades older than Mr. Russell but also a relative newcomer. Mr. Ahmed joined as a deckhand in 2004 and was piloting ships by 2008. He was at the helm of the Barberi when it crashed on May 8 . Human error has not been suggested as a cause in the most recent accident, as it was in the 2003 crash , when the pilot, Richard J. Smith, then 55, was found to have passed out on painkillers. But the lack of experience among some of the younger ferry operators has created discord among older hands, who grumble about the “academy boys” taking over the system. “Years ago, traditionally, every captain down here started as a deckhand,” said Mike Brandon, a six-year deckhand who is the secretary-treasurer of Local 333 of the International Longshoremen’s Association. “If one of my deckhands wanted to come up, they’d give him an opportunity,” Mr. Brandon said, and then he added, referring to a popular maritime academy: “But how can you compete with a guy coming out of Kings Point with all kinds of paperwork?” The recruitment of more academy graduates is chalked up to the arrival of James DeSimone, the ferry system’s chief operations officer, who had a mandate for reform when he took over after the 2003 crash of the Barberi. Over the past six years, Mr. DeSimone has pushed through many changes to the ferry operations, including a systemwide safety-management system like those used on the biggest oceangoing ships. Spending has increased: The budget rose by 10 percent from 2007 to 2009, climbing to $81 million from $73.7 million, according to the city’s Independent Budget Office. Maintenance costs drove the increase, rising to $25 million from $16 million during that period. The budget office estimates that ferry expenditures will climb an additional $11 million by the time the fiscal year ends on June 30. That rise is due entirely to increased maintenance expenditures; $14.7 million in federal stimulus money will be spent this year on maintenance. Overtime, which is built in to the pilots’ contract, is another cost factor; although pilots earn $90,000 a year in base salary, contractual overtime raises the income to as much as $135,000. (City officials say they must pay higher salaries to compete against private operators, like the Sandy Hook Pilots , the sailors who board the biggest ships coming into New York harbor and steer them into ports.) Changes are also noticeable in the fleet’s wheelhouses. The captain and assistant captain are required to be side by side as one of them steers the boat into a dock, with newly installed video cameras recording their every move. And more of the pilots are newcomers with college degrees, a shift that has created a clash of cultures and some dissension in the ranks. Along with their diplomas, the academy graduates often carry a valuable credential: a master’s license from the Coast Guard. Those licenses, which clear them to operate the biggest boats, speed the sailors’ rise up the chain of command. Mr. DeSimone acknowledged that there had been some grumbling about his preference for fellow academy graduates. “I think originally they thought all they’re doing is stuffing this place with academy graduates, and that’s not true at all,” he said. But Mr. DeSimone said that some recent promotions of employees who started out on the bottom rung should change that. “If we have an employee who started out as a deckhand and then works on his own and gets his mate’s license and then gets his pilotage to be an assistant captain, I guarantee we’re going to move him up,” he said. Mr. Ahmed, an immigrant from Pakistan, is a generation older than Mr. Russell, but he, too, attended a maritime academy — though his was in Karachi, not New York. Otherwise, his experience hews closer to the customs established in the first 100 years of the ferry service. His progression up the ranks is known in the trade as “coming up through the hawsepipe,” an allusion to the opening that a ship’s anchor chain passes through. But a representative of the deckhands’ union said such a climb, though once the norm, has become rarer with the influx of graduates from schools like SUNY Maritime and the Merchant Marine Academy at Kings Point on Long Island. City and federal officials have said that the Barberi’s crew appeared to have no role in the cause of the May 8 accident, and some have gone so far as to praise individual members for acting swiftly to minimize the impact from the collision. “The captain’s a young guy. He’s well educated, he’s smart, he’s got good reflexes, and, you know, my hat’s off to him,” Mr. DeSimone said. “He’s a good example of where we should be going.” His defense of the men he hired contrasted markedly with the chaotic aftermath of the 2003 crash. Mr. Smith, who had blacked out at the wheel as the 310-foot Barberi approached the St. George terminal, rushed home after the wreck and attempted to kill himself. Both he and Patrick Ryan, who was the operations director for the ferries, pleaded guilty to seaman’s manslaughter and were sentenced to prison. The ship’s captain, Michael J. Gansas, who some crew members had said was not near the pilothouse at the time of the crash, was fired for refusing to cooperate with the ensuing investigation. In contrast, the men who piloted the Barberi in this month’s crash were back at work on the ferries by the end of last week. On Friday morning, Mr. Ahmed was steering the John F. Kennedy, the oldest boat in the fleet, as it crossed to Staten Island from Manhattan, according to a ferry captain who did not want to be identified because the employees were not authorized to comment. Mr. Russell had been on board a ferry the previous day, this captain said.

Ferries
Accidents and Safety
Staten Island (NYC)


F.D.A. Rule May Alter Cheese-Aging Process

Abstract: A decision by the Food and Drug Administration to question the use of wooden planks to age some cheeses has produced a stink that rivals Limburger, prompting an uproar among the artisanal cheese makers and consumers who fear they might lose access to products like obscure blue cheeses from Vermont and imported Parmigiano-Reggiano . The agency recently interpreted a decades-old regulation requiring that cheese-making equipment be designed and constructed of material that is “adequately cleanable” in ways that made it appear that wood, which has been used for centuries to help age cheese, was no longer sanitary enough. “The porous nature of wood enables it to absorb and retain bacteria, therefore bacteria generally colonize not only the surface but also the inside layers of wood,” Monica Metz, chief of the dairy and egg branch of the Office of Food Safety, wrote in a letter to the New York State Agriculture Department at the beginning of this year. For some styles of cheese, wood is an essential part of the process. It aids in the control of moisture that helps form rinds on big wheels of English Cheddar and small, delicate washed-rind cheeses. It also provides an amenable surface for the microbes that add flavor and character to cheese. But the wrong bacteria can sicken consumers, which is what the F.D.A. was trying to control with its initial decision. Cheese makers from California to Vermont took to social media in the last few days to express outrage. The hashtag #saveourcheese surfaced on Twitter. Chefs and cheese lovers took to Facebook and blogs to rebut the notion that wood was harmful. Tuesday evening, the agency seemed to backtrack, saying that it planned to work with artisanal cheese makers “to determine whether certain types of cheeses can safely be made by aging them on wooden shelving.” To take away wood as part of the cheese-making process would mean wholesale change for more than a third of the cheese makers in America and could have implications for imported cheese, about half of which is aged on wood, said Nora Weiser, the executive director of the American Cheese Society, an organization that represents the nation’s farmstead and artisanal cheese makers. In Wisconsin alone, more than 33 million pounds of cheese — of the 2.7 billion pounds produced in the state — is sitting on wooden shelving, she said. “Wood is a perfectly safe surface,” she said. The F.D.A., however, says wood could be a potentially hazardous surface, and recently cracked down on one small cheese maker in New York, which prompted state officials to seek clarification from the agency. The issue began during an F.D.A. inspection in 2012, when the Finger Lakes Farmstead Cheese Company in Trumansburg, N.Y., was barred from making cheese after Listeria monocytogenes, a type of bacterium that can cause fatal illnesses, was found on one of the wooden boards on which cheese was aged, as well as on other surfaces. After the inspection, the proprietor, Nancy Taber Richards, thoroughly cleaned the facility, she said in a telephone interview, but another F.D.A. inspection in 2013 again turned up evidence of listeria contamination. “I’m not opposed to regulation,” she said. “I’m a consumer, I get it. I think people producing food should be held to standards.” Ms. Taber Richards cleaned and disinfected her equipment and kitchen yet again, conferring with the F.D.A. about what cleaning products and processes she was using. “It was kind of like trying to hit a moving target in the dark,” she said. “I never knew explicitly what they wanted done.” Image The agency recently interpreted a decades-old regulation that made it appear that wood was no longer sanitary enough. Credit Justin Sullivan/Getty Images So in October 2013, she was surprised to receive a letter from the F.D.A. demanding that she agree to a consent decree stipulating that she could not receive, prepare, process, pack, hold or distribute food until she developed a program to rid her operations of listeria once and for all or face a lawsuit. “I thought I had been cooperative and responsive,” she said. “But when I called, they said, ‘You didn’t get rid of your wooden aging shelves.’ Well, no one had ever told me I needed to get rid of them.” State regulators then wanted to know whether that prohibition on wood applied to all cheese makers, and in January, Ms. Metz sent them her interpretation of the federal regulation requiring equipment that was “adequately cleanable.” She did not definitively state that wood could not be used to process cheese, however, and cheese makers in New York continued to fume. “Were they going to enforce a ban on wood in New York but not Wisconsin, in Pennsylvania but not France?” said Robert Ralyea, a senior extension associate in the department of food science at Cornell University and a cheese maker himself. “All we knew was that a ban was enforced on Finger Lakes Farmstead Cheese.” So on Thursday, Mr. Ralyea started an email blast “to a relatively large crowd,” which lit up social media and the blogosphere. Vince Razionale of Jasper Hill in Greensboro, Vt., where a series of aging caves are lined with wooden shelving that hold prizewinning cheeses, said, “We’re feeling really nervous about this whole situation. Like a lot of other cheese makers, we’re feeling very exposed.” Representative Peter Welch, Democrat of Vermont, now plans to attach an amendment to an agriculture appropriations bill moving through Congress that would prohibit the F.D.A. from spending any money to enforce a ban on the use of wooden shelves in cheese making. He said he expected widespread support from lawmakers in Wisconsin, New York and other states with large cheese production. “The F.D.A. is mixing up the hygienic practices of a producer with the materials being used in production,” Mr. Welch said. “If you have an unhygienic operation in the production of food, probably everything is going to be infected, so is the F.D.A. going to ban the use of stainless steel when it finds listeria on it?” He said the issue was creating a tremendous amount of financial uncertainty among cheese makers, noting that Jasper Hill would have to spend about $20 million to replace the wooden shelving it uses for aging. He said a ban on wood also would affect the taste of cheeses that rely on it for aging and kick off an international trade war. “Many European cheeses are aged on wood, so if the F.D.A. enforces this rule, it will mean those cheeses cannot be imported into the United States and that will surely lead to retaliation,” Mr. Welch said. The statement issued by the F.D.A. on Tuesday noted that the ban was not a new policy because the regulation on “adequately cleanable” utensils and surfaces dated back to 1986. “Historically, the F.D.A. has expressed concern about whether wood meets this requirement and has noted these concerns in inspectional findings,” the agency said, adding that it was “always open to evidence that shows that wood can be safely used for specific purposes, such as aging cheese.” Asked for an example of the F.D.A.’s historical concern over the use of wood, a spokeswoman pointed to the Finger Lakes Cheese Company case. Mr. Welch snorted when the statement was read to him. “They should be able to give a definitive point of view one way or the other rather than creating more ambiguity and uncertainty with their wishy-washy statement,” he said.

Cheese
FDA
Wood
Regulation and Deregulation
International trade
Food Safety
Consumer protection